I usually visit the public library on Saturdays. I turn in anything I have checked out and finished, and I check out new things. I don't always read everything in the time allotted, so I often renew books. In my local public library, new items get a two-week (14 days) check out period. Older and regular items get four weeks. I tend to prefer items on the four weeks cycle to give myself more time to read them, but one in a while a 14 days item catches my eye, and I decide to read it right away rather than wait til it falls out of the "new" cycle.

 

For fun this year, I am going to try and put up my public library finds up. I may not do it every single time, but when I can, we'll have something here. It is easy to do here since once I enter the books into the shelf, linking the book covers to a post is easy. There is no need to worry about taking photos or such as I would have to do on my main blog. Anyhow, anyone else want to join on the fun, please feel free to do so and share. I am always interested in what other people read.

 

Graphic novels are a big thing for me to read, so I got three this week. The Hickman and the Lob books are new to the library, so I will be getting to those sooner. The Wolverine volume I can wait a bit.

 

My local public library keeps the staging area (where they put books that have been recently returned and waiting to be reshelved) near where the new books are kept. I often do check for books to read in that area, and that is where I found the Bad Girl Art book. I love finding books by serendipity.

 

Finally, the Jenkins book and the readers' advisory books were in the 000s Dewey call number area. That is where libraries keep books on librarianship as well as books about books and reading. This area also covers generalities, which is why you find some trivia type of books here as well. The trivia one I checked out because I enjoy that sort of thing. The RA one I checked out to help me keep up with my profession. Yes, I am a librarian. I work for the local college's library, and I am still a supporter and user of my local public library too. We do not do as much readers' advisory in an academic setting, but it is an area of librarianship I enjoy. I did take coursework and training in it in library school, and being an avid reader, I do strive to keep up. Thus I checked out the book on readers' advisory for horror.

 

As I read them, I will be reviewing them here, so stay tuned.

 

Finally, on an accuracy note. I got the data on a couple of these out of Amazon. When possible I try other options, but sometimes Amazon is the only one with the book data. However, as others have pointed out, Amazon is not always accurate. That happened here. The cover for the Wolverine volume used here is NOT the one of the book I have. The cover Amazon is using is from one of the comic issues that the volume compiles. To be honest, I wish the guys here at BookLikes would figure out a way to integrate book searching to WorldCat (the OCLC catalog). Most of the time it would mean better, more accurate date, plus, it would help you find the books in a library near you.

 

Reading this as I enter into a cataloging position made it more interesting to me. However, his long-winded overtly academic style made me skim a lot of it. Still, there were some valid points. I don't think we'll ever be able to fund the full-scale scholarly catalogers that Bade dreams of again. He makes some arguments for this, but offers no practical suggestions -- I guess compromise is not part of his plan. "Library research is, then, a fairly simple net computing system. Like most such net systems and indeed like most current optimization routines, library research relies heavily on browsing, which can be defined somewhat formally as random inspection of a local knowledge vicinty for items with a high probability of payoff, particularly in terms of taking one to productive new localities. It is crucial to recognize that this happens at many different levels in library research, not just at one: within books as one turns pages, on shelves as one searches for books, in the stacks as one walks by unknown call numbers, in bibliographic indexes and other research tools as one glances through topics,and so on. In all these cases, the power of browsing is great. Note that browsing is a constant concomitant of library research, not an occasional activity within it. Browsing is always going on and gaining knowledge from browsing is not a rare, serendipitous event but rather a constant routine one.""Once reliability is seriously questioned, trust is impossible and the entire system collapses: the database in its entirety is suspect and no longer usable."The long piece in this book is Politics and policies for database qualities. There is also a reproduction of the author's letter to Autocat concerning LC's series treatment decision, May 31, 2006, a shorter piece called Structures, standards and the people who make them meaningful, and an appendix/handout (sample marc, etc. records).

For library school students interested in this branch of the profession, this is definitely a good book. It covers the background and philosophies as well as the technical and public services aspects. It also covers administration and management for health science librarians. For practicing librarians working in this area who need a "refresher," the book works out as well. For me, more of a generalist, the book provided with a good overview of what a health sciences librarian does and what are some of their tasks and the resources they use. A good chapter on Evidence Based Practice is included, and I was interested on this given that there is much emphasis on this for our nursing students here.

I was not impressed with this book. The short essays were pretty much a blend of an old time librarian sort of longing for the old days and sort of wishing he could go to library school again so he can be hip now. I detected a small sense of self-pity. Much of the content in the essays are things I have seen expressed in various parts of the librarian blogosphere at one time or another. As for the RefGrunt's diary entries, some were amusing, and some were very mundane. Actually, that part was good until about halfway through the book when you honestly get tired of seeing entries listing "copier advice." While the diary entries do convey the fact that often library reference work can be mundane and boring at times, it also conveys, pure and simple, that a lot of idiots do visit public libraries (they do visit the academic libraries too, trust me on that). And I do say idiots because after a while, no amount of charitable view of life redeems some people. Anyhow, if you basically scan the book, you get the gist of it. If you must, borrow it, but do not buy it.

Anyone interested in the state of libraries -- and desiring nonstop chuckles -- must read Will Manley's The Manley Art of Librarianship despite the fact that it has no dust jacket, nor a photo of the author. As Manley points out, dust jackets are an essential part of the book that most academic librarians discard with haste in what may be the most egregious form of library censorship. Those who do leave the covers on make every effort to obliterate, with stickers, property stamps, etc., anything that might possibly provide justification for a phone call from an irate octogenarian. You can search in vain for even a hint of buttock or breast on dust jackets that hasn't been mutilated in some form or another. I particularly enjoyed his chapter on the reference interview, and the summary of Professor Starke’s book entitled Why Patrons Lie published by Whitely Press, who maintains that "the reference patron is often a deeply disturbed individual crying out for attention and understanding." For example, the patron asking for information on dogs may really just want a date with the librarian, or nutritional information on wieners, or information about how to poison a neighbor's pesky barker, or what the outcome might be of breeding his cocker spaniel to a Siamese cat.

There is a right and wrong way to respond to the patron about to undergo a root canal and asking for information on how they are performed. It is not considered politic to reply: "What do you need to know? I had one done last summer and it was the most pain I've ever been in. It's even worse than having a baby. They stick these long sharp files right into the nerve of your tooth. It’s like scraping the back of your eyeball with a piece of rough sandpaper. But look at it this way -- it's a good way to lose weight and you look like you can stand to lose twenty pounds.”

Of course, reference librarians suffer from all sorts of job-related maladies. One of the more serious Manley describes as "intellect retardation." It occurs when a librarian with numerous degrees is asked to answer only the most trivial of questions, e.g,. "Where is the latest Steven King book?" or "Will there ever be a sequel to Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend?" The reference librarian suffering from this disorder will tend to respond to a question on cats by suggesting the patron really wants a book on the "Symbolic role of cats in the Egyptian Book of the Dead from the second millennium, BC". They also suffer nightmares: the worst, after spending days researching data on institutional funding and finally calling with the answer only to be told by the patron that it wasn't needed any more. Or, it's corollary: “Oh thanks, but the librarian at X library found the answer for me in fifteen minutes days ago.” Burnout may be the inevitable result. Signs to watch for: "A patron asks for the latest diet book and you hand him/her a refrigerator lock. "You stop bathing and using deodorant so that patrons will respect your space needs "You start laughing hysterically when someone asks for the book Do It Yourself Plumbing. "You respond in a very loud voice in front of a lot of people, 'what specific sexual problem do you have,' in response to a patron who asks where he can find the book Human Sexual Inadequacy."

Generally, vacations are not a good idea to reduce this stress. What's required is a part-time job that is more stressful than doing reference. For example, trying to keep teenagers out of jail. Manley has several suggestions gleaned from the scholarly library literature: Cleaning out the cars of contract killers, giving retirement seminars to prisoners on death row, promoting natural childbirth at a retirement home, collecting overdue bills for a loan shark, or working as a circulation clerk at a public library. I should note that this last suggestion of Manley's is perhaps not fair, as circulation clerks have to take a great deal of training in how to be as rude as possible. It's not a skill that comes without a great deal of preparation.

This book is a stitch. But Manley also has some very important comments to make about librarians' attitudes toward themselves and their profession. Librarians must learn to laugh at themselves. We don't do that enough; let's face it, a lot of us are anal-retentive. Manley also makes a case for changing the way we regard censorship and intellectual freedom. He suggests the profession needs to regard censorship as a political battle rather than a moral contest. Pick your battles, he argues, rather than risk losing the war over trivial works. The problem is that without a high criterion -- perhaps even an unattainable one -- the profession will tend to opt for a lower standard in each case. The question for me is, "should a library reflect the parochial community it is part of and funded by, or the larger community that all of us belong to, wit the hope that perhaps education and exposure may lead to understanding and cooperation."

Manley lists twenty questions that should be asked of anyone seeking to eliminate a book from the library prevent its acquisition. They are excellent and should be part of every library school curriculum for they painlessly reveal to the erstwhile censor that if he or she can remove a book, then so can someone else remove a book they might wish to defend.