Oh, how I miss being a passionate young librarian looking down my righteous nose at the granny librarians and their quaint old fashioned ways! This gaming thing might get the kids in the door, I get that. I get that games help increase a kid’s ability to learn. I will even buy that that gaming helps the young learn to read. But you are really going to have to sell me on the fact that they get valuable information from Guitar Hero. The Library Garden librarian says that “if you choose not to have any kind of video games in your library, you’re living in the past,” and that providing gaming services is expensive. Ok, your library has money. Good for you. But what if you are a library with very little budget and you can only afford a couple of these games? There’s this thing called Collection Development. If a library can’t sustain the service/collection and keep it relevant to the user then it becomes more lame than a library that doesn’t provide it at all. Try to keep in mind that some public libraries are doing everything they can to just to keep body and soul together before accusing them of being obsolete. Sometimes libraries have to focus on doing their primary mission really well. I choose to support them and, in some cases, beam with pride as they keep making it happen for their communities while their budgetary support dwindles.

What really grabbed me about this article is Wisner’s description of his own “imaginative” library program where his community college library gives coffee away and he sits around talking academic subjects with students. This sounds more like a small liberal arts college than a community college. I’m sure no one is sitting around talking about MSDS sheets and the NEC codes over a cuppa, and if you are, I want to come work for your library! I just don’t see the average community college student having the time or inclination to just sit around and think deep thoughts with a librarian over caffiene. At least at my college. We have 35,000 students passing through during the school year and they are hard-pressed to get to class, get to work and get on with their lives. We do them the most benefit by being efficient and intuitive to their needs. Anyhow, rapping with students about Plato over free coffee is really the same thing as offering space to play games, in my opinion. It is simple marketing. It is getting the bodies in the door so we have an opportunity to work with them and hopefully influence their learning.

As far as our Wisner’s accusation that librarians are deconstructing the library via technology…we cannot force people to actually read, man. Our charge as librarians is to provide the best possible scenario for a patron to locate information. And not just the patron that needs the traditional books and silence library. We have to provide for disparate age groups, learning styles and abilities. Wisner accuses us of prioritizing information over knowledge. I hope he isn’t saying that learners’ acquisition of knowledge is our responsibility. Synthesizing information by engaged reading is a responsibility or choice of the individual. Librarians create conditions most conducive to the improvement of the mind. And that is the best that we can do. If the person needs a computer, we provide it. If they need silence, we provide it. If they need a collection of hundreds of books on the same topic, we hopefully can provide that or will find them a library that can. If they need to sit and talk for an hour about their topic of interest, we do it and provide free coffee to boot. And if they need us to stand on our heads–we’re all over it. I call that noble.

Wisner, W. Restore the Noble Purpose of Libraries. July 17, 2009. http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0717/p09s01-coop.html

2nd Anniversary, originally uploaded by HVX Silverstar.

Alright, so, I pole danced for charity…I am proud of it! (well, not really, but it was for the Libraries in Second Life–an excellent cause). Its amazing just how far librarians will go to support their own!  Dancing with me is Rocky Vallejo, who runs “Imagination Island” a wonderful resource for children’s lit librarians.

ALA Junk Mail, originally uploaded by notmarian.

I made the grievous error of joining ALA with my home address. Well, I used to have a membership with my work address but the ALA website and database is so stellar that I couldn’t use my work address and could not simply renew (long story). Almost at the very moment I gave ALA my home address, the junk mail from publishers started to arrive. Here is the pile from the last 4 weeks or so. Advertising and catalogs from publishers and, my favorite, boxes of books from vanity presses. Really awful books they have to give away. This is my final straw with ALA. I will not be renewing my membership unless threatened by pain of torture. Well, maybe I will renew if ALA improves. At this point, I feel quite sure that I will never have to make good on that bargain. I’m ashamed of ALA for selling our addresses to vendors. Not to mention the crap state of the ALA website. As a librarian, I’m more ashamed of that than this tree-killing pile of junk.

Larry Irving quoted at stat about youtube usage that was so astounding that I had to look it up to believe it. Irving said that over 150,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. Daily. I am astounded by this. As a librarian, it made me think about the evolution of information and a whole bunch of other stuff that I’m too tired to deal with right now. So, here’s a youtube video. It is not information…or is it?

Oh, there’s also a gadget for google scholar. I know! Pass the smelling salts.  Too bad Scholar makes me want to cry since the student can’t get to the full text most of the time. Then they call to ask me why.