Apparently there are a lot of librarians who aren't familiar with the idea of holidays. I've been lounging around the ancestral manse gobbling turkey and teaching my nephew to play gin rummy for a penny a point. The good news is that if he ends up as successful as my brother, I can fund my retirement with my gin winnings.

While I've been doing that, pathetic morons have been attempting to destroy the discourse community that is my comments section. I mean, really, don't you people have anything better to do than try to imitate other commenters? Or is it that you just don't like free speech? Or perhaps you're just too intellectually and morally stunted to behave any better? Probably a combination of all three. Oh well, there's not much one can do with people too unskilled to write their own blogs that anyone would bother to read and too stupid to go head to head with a pse...Read More

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Despite all the great benefits from running libraries like businesses - from three martini lunches to government bailouts - we all know this wouldn't really work. Oh sure, go on about being "responsive" to the "customers" all you want, sensitive pony-tail man, but all this talk about libraries as businesses ignores that fact that libraries don't provide a product or service for money. Without that, we're missing two crucial components of the business experience: profitability ratios and incentives.

Though the phrase grates on my nerve, some librarians nevertheless like to talk about the "bottom line." In libraries, there is no bottom line. Without some way to gauge profitability, it makes no sense to talk about a business model. How would you really know if you were successful? Especially if you're trying to perform an actual public...Read More

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Now that we've all explored how the Annoyed Librarian has managed to make a mockery of the extremely important institution known as the peer-reviewed journal, let's move on to other targets.

I often notice in the comments section what I assume are the business librarians amongst us making the oft heard complaint that libraries are not run more like businesses, usually followed by the prediction that if libraries don't become more like businesses, they will become extinct!

So if libraries were run more like businesses, what would we see happening?

AT WILL EMPLOYMENT

This is always a good one. I realize a lot of librarians have at-will employment right now, but plenty others have the protections of civil service contracts, unionization, tenure, etc. However, if we got rid of all those selfish employment protections, then librar...Read More

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Once again one of the most controversial issues in bibliotek blogland is little old me. Everyone is so sweet to keep paying so much attention to me.

I've hinted for a while now that the Annoyed Librarian was finally going to be in print - genuine, old fashioned library 1.0 paper - and that day has arrived. There is now a special issue of the Journal of Access Services (Volume 5, Issue 4) devoted to yours truly. You can purchase the volume, or, better yet, just ILL all the articles and distribute the PDFs to your friends. The articles cover a range of standard AL themes, with some new stuff and some stuff from the blog brought together and revised into thematic essays...Read More

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To use a prison metaphor, it's clear that librarians dropped the soap decades ago.

The bibliotek blogosphere is abuzz with chatter about how OCLC and its evil minions are trying to "steal" our libraries. (If you want to explore the issue ad nauseum, visit this site.) When I first saw that line, I wondered if OCLC was planning to pull up a big truck out front and start packing our books into it. I'm not sure I'd have minded, because some of the areas are getting pretty tight and could use a good weeding.

Instead, it seems that OCLC is planning to change its policy on the use and transfer of WorldCat records, and we know how librarians hate change. The sticking point seems to ...Read More

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My goodness there are some thick librarians out there, and that's saying something. Some of the respondents to my last post were so earnest and misguided that I decided to address the topic again.

The oddest ones are the commenters who declare, "That's not funny!" Funny is always in the eye of the beholder, so I take those comments with a grain of salt. Less than a grain, actually. I break the grain into sodium and chloride, and take them with just the chloride. A lot of people just don't have a sense of humor, and then again I'm not always trying to be funny. This is the Annoyed Librarian, not the Comical Librarian. If you want the comical librarian, go read some of the blogs of my critics.

Then there are the oh so earnest respondents who thought I was somehow making light of library closures in Philadelphia. "Oh, you're so mean!" Check...Read More

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As reported right here in the Library Journal (boy, that sounds strange to me), the Philadelphia library system will be closing 11 of 54 branches and fire 111 people (or rather "111 positions will be lost"). I didn't actually read about it in the Library Journal, because I seldom read LJ, but one of my commenters last week mentioned it, and I followed up. That's the sort of library journalist I am.

That's a lot of closings, and I wanted to know what was really going on. Sure, the mayor claimed it had something to do with a recession, but that might just be a nutty idea. Other cities are having recessions and they're not closing up so many libraries, so I suspected a conspiracy against libraries here. Because it's my duty as an impartial library journalist to bring the truth to light f...Read More

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I read the paper this morning and found out we had a Presidential election yesterday. Somebody should have told me about it, though where I live - like in most of the country - it doesn't really matter how I vote. Browsing the bibliotek blogosphere, I get the impression that a lot of librarians were supporting Obama. I seem to recall an email on an ALA listserv where ALA President Jim Rettig said, "You may not use ALA listservs to campaign for political candidates or the ALA may lose its tax-exempt status. So definitely do NOT send messages like, 'Please vote for that outstanding Presidential candidate Barack Obama.' No matter how fine a candidate he might be, and no matter that Palin woman may have once tried to ban a library book and thus stands against all our intellectual freedom propaganda, you definitely cannot endorse any candidates in this space." Or something like tha...Read More

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One might have noticed that there's often a big difference between academic libraries and librarians and public libraries and librarians. Even as a wee librarian manque in library school, I could spot the difference between those students interested in scholarly pursuits and those interested in storytelling and prostrating themselves before an indifferent public. The former usually became academic librarians - often on the tenure track in ARL libraries - and the latter public librarians. I mean no disrespect here. The world needs prostrate librarians, too, and I'd be the first to say that one good storytelling librarian who can get children interested in reading is probably more important for our culture than the entire scholarly library literature, and considerably less boring. I'm just saying that different sorts of library work appeals different sorts of people.

The li...Read More

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A short one for today, because I have a big party to go to! Every year my library has a big Halloween party and all the librarians get to play dress up and walk around passing candy out to the students.Yay! Later we all attend a big bonfire and drink a lot of punch. Yay! Last year I dressed up as a librarian, but everyone complained that I just wasn't getting into the spirit of the thing. So this year I'm going as a Naughty Librarian, because it was the most cliched costume I could think of. I can't wait for the bonfire; I'm getting a bit chilly in this costume.

I hope you're all dressed up, too, and doing fun, scary library activities. Happy Halloween!

Comments (42)

It seems to be animal time in libraries the last couple of weeks. The library news is chock full of animals. This story seemed to raise the ire of some librarians who were just appalled that some poor rube objected to a book in a high school library - The Book of Bunny Suicides. I feel a bit sorry for this poor objectionable woman, just like I do for some of my critics. It must be hard going through life with no sense of humor whatsoever.

"Anderson said her son, who usually brings home books about motorcycles and dirt bikes, checked out the book because his friends told him it was funny. But after reading the entire 80-page book, Anderson disagreed.

'None of it made me laugh,' she said." QED!

I thi...Read More

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All along I've noticed that a lot of librarians resent my criticism of the lowest-common-denominator, give-'em-what-they-want, bread-and-circuses approach to public librarianship that so many librarians seem to desire. Sometimes it seems that I'm the only librarian who believes public libraries should have some sort of purpose larger and more important that subsidizing the puerile entertainment desires of the mass of people who can't afford Netfllx or videogames. Some naive people think that the masses should provide their own puerile entertainment and public institutions should contribute to the public good.

Before you start complaining, I'll come out and admit I'm old fashioned and a bit idealistic. When I think of public libraries, I think of institutions that exist to serve the public good. I really want them to have a worthwhile purpose. If I were a librari...Read More

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