Best advice I've received from a professor in a long time: If you're not nice to librarians, you're an idiot!
One of my dearest friends is a librarian, and I'm sure she'd concur.
Brilliant Irish Studies Professor (BISP) also told us that if we were mean to librarians, we should consider going into hiding. Now, I've taken some time to mull that one over. It sounds like there could be a network of vigilante librarians out there. I'm a little worried. Armed with encyclopedic knowledge and the mysteries of the Dewey decimal system, who knows what could happen?
While my dream of librarians riding cardfiles into the sunset isn't realistic, the truth is we need some vigilante librarians around here. We need some card-stamping, metadata-slinging, librarians to hit some people over the head with the books they're not reading. While some argue that reading online (eegads, you're reading this schlock aren't you?) IS reading, it's not like reading books. What we miss when we move away from books is the ability to sustain an interest in a topic. I see this inability on a daily basis. We are a generation of very short-term attention spans, people. Hold on, I'm getting IMd here, ok, so where was I?
Oh yeah. We can't pay attention to things.
As much as the book snobs disparage Oprah's Book Club, at least she's gotten people to read. And that, my friends, is worth something.
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2 comments:
I am simultaneously frightened and turned-on by librarians...at least, by female librarians. It wouldn't matter if it was Janet Reno...there's something in the way they sashay through the bookcases that is viscerally intellectual.
Also, I couldn't be more proud of the JeanGenie. What a post. (Meet me at the library? Say, noon, on that loveseat under the Faulkner collection?)
When my mom came to visit last week I was HORRIFIED to discover that she had POINT OUT to me the library in my own hometown. WHICH, by the way, was ON THE MAIN DRAG, right next to Town Hall.
I blame the cars. I blame the cars. If we didn't have cars, we'd all read more. If I was walking, I'd have seen that gorgeous old building...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5c/PostcardStratfordCTLibrary1909.jpg/250px-PostcardStratfordCTLibrary1909.jpg
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