1. I’m 62. I don’t consider myself a “senior citizen.” I doubt that I’ll consider myself a “senior citizen” at 65, or 66 for that matter. Nor do I plan to go away and hide when I become a “senior citizen.” But I promise not to go take a librarian job away from some young person scolding people for not retiring when they should.
2. I’m not a professional librarian–both because I lack the degree and because I don’t work as a professional librarian. (I haven’t worked in a library since 1979, and even then I was in a systems office functioning as a programmer/analyst.) On the other hand, call me a “paralibrarian” or “paraprofessional” or “support staff” or “sublibrarian” and I might get snarky about it… Oh, and suggest that awards for service to the library field should be limited to those with the proper degree (which, I suppose, means I should turn mine in–not M&S, which I’ll probably never have, but some others), and I might sneer a little.
3. On the other hand, I’m a little astonished to find non-librarians scolding libraries for failing to run out and buy books that don’t have ISBNs, that apparently haven’t been reviewed in print media, that aren’t available through distributors, and that have titles that more than a hundred other books have. Oh, and that were free downloads before they became print books, and are still free downloads… Maybe I underestimate the omniscience that good librarians should have, and maybe I underestimate the extent to which libraries are funded for and expected to handle universal digital preservation.
I think I’ll leave the links out of this post. I’ll probably get in enough trouble as is…
Not enough trouble:
http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2008/03/getting-real-libraries-are-missing.php
is what you’re alluding to, no?
Well, that and a post at Liminal and a long-running conversation at Publib.
“On the other hand, I’m a little astonished to find non-librarians scolding libraries for failing to run out and buy books that…” Ah, but he has more experience with the publishing world than most librarians and has gained significant knowledge about libraries due to his current project, or so he claims. Explanations as to why librarians might not agree with his assertions will be met with defensiveness and blind resistance to enlightenment.
I still think that if he had any idea of what academic library collection development is like, he’d change his tune and take my suggestion to provide us with better tools a little bit more seriously.