Sometimes patrons in a library don’t think they need “help” per se but they could use some assistance finding a particularly well-hidden book. The Lipstick Librarian — responding to an ongoing PUBLIB thread — offers some suggestions.
Month: February 2004
hi – 17feb
Hi. It’s been a weekend of e-housecleaning here at librarian.net. Some updates: links are now in bold to facilitate useful scanning and differentiation. Search box now searches using Google, which I think is an improvement. Date-based archives are now linked down the lefthand side of all monthly archives. Category archives have both date and category links in them. Special bonus for all you non-RSS folks… category archive pages will show you the RSS titles I’ve been adding to all these posts.
BUY THESE NOW
I have often prided myself on having a weblog unsullied with “I want” links… That is all changing today. Please buy these card catalogs, some of which were used by me personally a decade ago. If you’d like to get one and hold on to it for me for a while, that would be fine too. [thanks bill]
hi – 16feb
Hi. Someone wrote in response to my ALA-APA article that Vermont can’t have much of a “staunch commitment to libraries” if it will pay its librarians $8/hour. And isn’t this the rub, then? I know Vermont loves its libraries, and yet, I also know that in many cases Vermonters would love rooms filled with books and free Internet and no librarians if it would lower their taxes. I’m not sure if you can say that a desperately poor parent isn’t committed to nutrition if they can’t feed their kids better food. Can you always feed kids well for cheap? Can you always find the money to pay your librarians well? And, as is often the real choice: if you can’t do both, what has to give?
the salary thing, and a nice obit
At some level we as librarians have to be committed to our libraries as well. I firmly believe that this should be at a good – or at least equitable – pay rate. But would I take less to live in a place I loved, or with a person I loved? In a second. People used to try to get their foot in the door for good library work by working in libraries for free. My union forbids this sort of thing entirely. But Mary Jane Blackwell might not have turned out as the librarian she did if she had to wait for a paying job to come her way. Pay is important to our profession, but so is passion. [thanks beth]