The Thin Red Line

Part of me feels guilty for posting about a second memoir by a second Los Angeles area librarian within less than three months, but Quiet Please   Dispatches from a Public Librarian was just barely too good to pass up.  Scott Douglas’ memoir of his career with the Anaheim library lacks some of the pizazz of Don Borchert’s Free For All  (reviewed here)  but the crisp writing and the creatively Dewey-numbered chapters go a long way with me, though to be perfectly honest at times I found this young man’s outlook and worldview a bit appalling.  

(more…)

Share This

Welcome!   If this is your first visit please note that you can click on any book cover to get the book from your local library or click on any book title to purchase it.    Browse recent book reviews on the front page or browse by category in the sidebar.    I welcome your comments and will try to reply as soon as possible.

One Sunday afternoon I was working at the check in desk.   One of the reference librarians handed me her return materials, including Free For All, which she heartily recommended.   ‘It’s a hoot’, she said.

(more…)

Share This

While I posted an Easy Books roundup just yesterday  I felt this Easy Non-Fiction title I stumbled upon last week rated a post of its own.    The Librarian of Basra is a true story about Alia Muhammad Baker who is the librarian in Basra, Iraq.   When war comes Alia fears that her library and its 30,000 books may be destroyed.   She begins taking the books home and storing them safely and arranges for other library staff members to do the same.    While the library does end up getting burned and destroyed Alia and her colleagues are able to save fully seventy percent of the library’s collection.

(more…)

Share This

It almost feels like a cheat to blog about a book I first read more than twenty years ago, but the fact is the past few days I have been ignoring three new novels awaiting my attention (including Water For Elephants, which I really want to read) in order to re-read for the bazzillionth time John Kennedy Toole’s comic masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces.   So rather than attempt to write what would be yet another paean to what is already a well-known and well-loved novel  OR tease out three paragraphs of  on the stories of having met Toole’s mother at a speech and reading she gave at Dominican College in New Orleans (where Toole himself had been on the faculty prior to his suicide) and the errrrr unforgettable experience of seeing the work produced as a MUSICAL at LSU in Baton Rouge.  

(more…)

Share This

Today’s post is for my blog friends who also work in libraries.   Twas’ the night before Christmas and an over-worked, under-budgeted librarian is working late into the night to mend her battered and limited collection when a bright red bookmobile descends from the sky and a portly gentleman in red and his Pages elves deliver loads of new books and other goodies.   Loaded with library terms and literary references this unique take off on Clement C. Moore’s famous poem,  Librarian’s Night Before Christmas is a brand new book and was received in our branch for the first time today.    And our head Youth Services Librarian clipped a note to it asking all branch staff to read the book and initial it.  (No way that one was going home with a patron tonight ;)   We all loved it and if you work in a library or wish you did, this one is Highly Recommended.

Tomorrow:  Clement C. Moore’s The Night Before Christmas

Monday:  Charles Dickens’  A Christmas Carol

Share This

I have long been a huge fan of Unshelved, the daily comic strip about the life of Dewey, the lazy librarian at the Mallville Public Library. The strip by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum is wildly popular with library staffs everywhere. And it’s very funny, even if you don’t happen to work in a library. So I was thrilled when shelving in book length comics collections at 741.5973 to come across a copy of Read Responsibly, the latest Unshelved collection. As always the strips are clever and thoughtful and laugh out loud funny. "Creative Problem Avoidance" is a hoot. Highly Recommended.

Share This

On Blog Catalog we are this November discussing the question

The Biggest Obstacle To Electing The Right Presidential Candidate

and the discussion has taken some interesting turns and brought us down some different paths. And one of those paths leads directly to the library, lobbing the meme hand grenade firmly into the court of this blog, where I have tried all along to promote the use of public libraries and talked from time to time about my experiences working at the library. So when Tiffany’s post argued that an ignorant vote is worse than no vote at all, I have to agree.

But when I hear about a voter who has no idea who these people on his ballot are or what these issue questions on the ballot Really mean, I have an incredibly ingrained urge to take them by the hand and lead them straight to the nearest Reference Librarian. This is something I actually Do when people ask me about complicated issues dozens of times each week. I lead the patron over to the reference desk and say something like ‘This is Vicky, she’s a reference librarian and she can show you how to find out about that.’ I’d leave him to Vicky then and go back to shelving books.

Unless she was on the phone or helping some one else and the patron would have to wait a moment, in which case I would be sure to add that ’she would be able to provide him with sources of objective information about all of the candidates and issues on the ballot and would be able to point him towards very useful resources of information he may not be aware of at all. ‘ just so the patron would know it was worthwhile to wait a moment for her attention.

I can’t imagine ever needing to add in person, what the patron would soon discover for himself– that she is very helpful and will patiently answer or discuss all of his questions and show him how to find answers and learn more. And that her services are already paid for by his tax dollars and it never costs anything to call or come by and utilize her valuable services.

And the really neat thing about helping this voter find out what he needs to know is that I could do this in any library as easily as I do it in the one I know like the back of my hand.

I absolutely agree that ignorant and ill-informed voting is a Major obstacle to electing a good President. If you care about electing a good President, the next time you encounter such a voter will you take a moment to personally introduce him to a reference librarian? Knowledge is a great cure for ignorance. And a pretty cool ‘industry’ to work in.

Share This

Some days, I love my job. One of the really nice things about working at the library is that you work for librarians. Over the years, in other jobs I’ve inevitably asked about some aspect of the work that interested me, although beyond the scope of my own limited duties only to be told to ‘get back to the work we pay you for; that’s none of your concern.’

Putting books back on the shelves all day every day you get to know the Dewey Decimal System quite well. I can tell you off the top of my head that cookbooks can be found at 641 (a huge number at our library with an extraordinary number of decimal subsections that goes on for about 18 feet), Gardening at 635, Pets and Domesicated Animals at 636, Computers, Software and the Internet at 004, 005 and 006 and travel guides in the 910’s. Also that Bibles are at 220. I had noticed some time ago that Bibles were at 220 but it was only today that I realized that the number 220 denotes only the Judeo-Christian Bible. So I asked the head reference librarian where the sacred texts of other faiths can be found.

Keith reacted as though I’d handed him a present. He explained that 200’s–289 are all devoted to varying aspects of Judeo-Christianity and that everything about other religions can be found in the 290’s, which he led me to and showed me where the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita are shelved and agreed with my observation that this very uneven treatment of religious subjects seemed to reflect Dewey’s own prejudices. Ten minutes later Keith went back to the reference desk and I pushed my empty cart back to the work room, thinking ‘I love this job’.

All of which is in preface to introducing today’s books which stress the unusual part of the ‘interesting, unusual and noteworthy’ in my tagline. The 000’s are easily the weirdest and freakiest of the 10 Dewey ranges. Officially noted as "Generalities" this range includes everything from UFO’s, the Loch Ness Monster and alien abduction survivors, to computers, software and Internet, the Guinness Book of World Records, professional resources for librarians and a grab bag of other oddities that Melvil Dewey couldn’t fit in anywhere else. The Alien Abduction Survivors Guide is, believe it or not, an earnest support manual for abductees. The author, who claims to have been abducted by aliens numerous time and to be a spokesperson for those aliens, offers specific advice for dealing with various emotions, including ridicule. Recommended for amusement value only.

Black Belt Librarians is a no-nonsense handbook for implementing rules on library use that insure all patrons will be able to use library services in a safe and comfortable environment. Which is a very PC way of stating it is a manual for library administrators in districts where large numbers of homeless patrons use the library as a place of shelter and refuge, a purpose for which libraries were never intended. It served primarily to make me thankful that we have relatively little of those types of problems at my library. Recommended only to library administrators who have a significant homeless patron issue to address.

Share This