During last week, which was National Library Week, I got to thinking about a book I had read recently about libraries and librarians. It was Marilyn Johnson’s This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All.
Are Librarians Obsolete? Ms. Johnson has often been asked if librarians are obsolete in the Age of Google. Her answer is “Are you kidding? Librarians are more important than ever.” She points out that there are many people who do not have computers, do not know how to do research on the Internet, and do not know how to compose and send e-mails. When they show up at the library, they have to be taught how to do those things. Most librarians are busy keeping up with changing technologies so they can at least be a step ahead of their patrons. Some librarians are way ahead of others, thus the author’s use of the term cybrarians in the subtitle to her book.
The author shows how many of the Web sites that we use or should use when we go on the Internet are library related. WorldCat.org (www.worldcat.org) connects to more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. It tells you which libraries have which books. The New York Public Library Web site is humongous. The British Library brags that it has 10,000 pages on its Web site (www.bl.uk).
She Does Her Research. Marilyn Johnson went all over the country (and also to Rome, Italy) to research her book. She attended annual conventions of the American Library Association, interviewed directors of regional library consortiums, visited the library of the American Kennel Club, and even toured the library in Deadwood, South Dakota. On the subject of blogs by librarians, Johnson first read a number of such blogs and then interviewed some of her favorite bloggers, such as Free-Range Librarian (http://freerangelibrarian.com/). In a chapter about a virtual-reality Web site heavily populated by librarians (“Second Life”), she tells how she actually gave herself a name, became an avatar, and flew into the immersive environment, where she conducted interviews with avatar-librarians. In preparing to write her book, Johnson seemed game for anything library-related, and readers are rewarded with an entertaining, but educational work.
Too Elitist? One point that the author Marilyn Johnson makes near the end of her book is that The New York Public Library might be going in the wrong direction in making its 42nd Street main library more accessible to the masses. Administrators have shut down some of the specialists’ areas (such as the Asian and Middle East Reading Room) in order to make room for offices, general circulation, and study tables for average Joes. I know what she means, since the Slavonic Reading Room, which I haunted in my graduate student days, no longer exists. Its books (as well as those of other specialty departments) are now integrated into the regular book stacks. No more special treatment for scholars there. The New York Public Library has good reasons for making these changes to its flagship library. It has a limited amount of money, and its leaders felt that it had to shut down a large branch library just blocks away from the main library (and integrate the books and services within the main building). Don’t regular patrons have just as much right to use the beautiful building on 42nd Street as scholars do?
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