Subject: [NGC4LIB] NY Times review of “This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All”

From: "B.G. Sloan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:59:16 -0700

The NY Times recently reviewed Marilyn Johnson's “This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All”:
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/books/review/Kennedy-t.html
 
It's largely a favorable review, but there is one interesting passage: 
 
"Johnson cheerleads for these Brave New Librarians, championing the efficiency of online searches and digitized archives. And yet, without meaning to, her book comes off as a paean to a previous age, when fact-finding meant trekking through the Dewey Decimal System. Johnson writes best when she’s meandering and browsing, in the manner of a woozy reader exploring the stacks. In her most absorbing passages, I felt as if I were back in the children’s library, scrutinizing a volume of the World Book Encyclopedia."
 
I guess even when folks are championing the future role of librarians in society, they tend to wax rhapsodic about the libraries of their pasts. Which may not be particulalry helpful to those of us trying to shape the library systems of the future...
 
Bernie Sloan

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From: Tim Spalding <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:30:10 -0400

I wonder, though. Patrons have these ideas about libraries that are
totally out of whack with what many librarians, particularly the techy
types on here, think libraries are for. Maybe we're wrong. Maybe, when
we're not developing the digital systems of the future, we should
urging libraries to keep their "stacks," not skimp on paper books to
get those crap disposable Playaways and useless ebooks.

I also wonder what would happen if librarians stopped pushing the
"open," modern, perfeclty soulless interiors that are now standard,
and took either the beautiful, quirky and intimate or the grand and
gorgeous spaces of the past as their models. The patrons who go on and
on about the beauty of old library's reading rooms are not wrong...

Tim

-- 
Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding

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From: "B.G. Sloan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:59:34 -0700

Tim,
 
Sounds like you may also be waxing rhapsodic about the libraries of your past. :-)
 
But I think you may very well be on to something.
 
Bernie Sloan

--- On Mon, 3/15/10, Tim Spalding <[email-masked]> wrote:

From: Tim Spalding <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] NY Times review of “This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All”
To: [email-masked]
Date: Monday, March 15, 2010, 8:30 PM

Tim

---

From: "Jacobs, Jane W" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:56:03 -0400

An equally interesting piece from the NYT is "Fending Off Digital Decay,
Bit by Bit":
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/books/16archive.html?pagewanted=2&ref=
books

So much information, so many media, so little time, so many new tools,
so many old tools!
JJ

**Views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent those of
the Queens Library.**

Jane Jacobs
Asst. Coord., Catalog Division
Queens Borough Public Library
89-11 Merrick Blvd.
Jamaica, NY 11432
tel.: (718) 990-0804
e-mail: [email-masked]
FAX. (718) 990-8566

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