Why Weeders Have Nightmares

"A good book can wait for a reader hundreds of years. Once lodged in the Library, it is unexpensive & harmless while it waits."--Ralph Waldo Emerson (Emerson in His Journals, p. 553)

Pity the poor librarian whose duty it is to weed. Then (wouldn't you know it) along comes a reader who asks for the title that the librarian has just, after much delay and procrastination, sent to that library in the sky. If there is an afterlife, maybe this is one of the punishments for librarians who were too zealous in their duties.

Gotcha

CAPTCHA: a program with the unerring ability to make letters and numbers unrecognizable to the human eye. On the other hand, its thwarting of internet bots is debatable.

If the legend of Sisyphus were updated, instead of futilely rolling a stone, the task of the victim would be to submit successfully a single CAPTCHA.

Definition from The Librarian's Weird Hoard (2012- )

Brarians

Since the neologism "cybrarian" combines "cyber" with "librarian" to mean a librarian who organizes cyber information, let's consider other combinations that would define aspects of the profession. Here are a few possibilities:

A crybrarian finds release in romance novels
A drybrarian is in charge of collections about deserts
A flybrarian knows a lot about entomology
A frybrarian gives answers in short order
A guybrarian champions brawny books with buckskin binding and rugged prose
A highbrarian works in airplane libraries
A mybrarian delivers personal service
An oybrarian is in a continuous state of exasperation
A prybrarian is constitutionally nosy
A shybrarian is difficult to locate
A slybrarian is on an administrative path
A stybrarian is messy
A sprybrarian acts younger than she or he is
A wrybrarian sees things as they are--but wishes they weren't

Words for Your Strategic Plan

I've been looking at six university library strategic plans and analyzing the frequency of their words through Word Frequency Counter. Through looking at the nouns that have appeared in the top ten of each, I've discovered:

The winning words for frequency were "library" and "libraries", which were tied as #1 on two separate lists; however,"library" was on all six lists, "libraries" reduced to four.
"Users" was #1 on one list, and appeared on one other down a way; the variants "user" and "use" appeared on one or two lists.
"Objectives" was #1 on one list, #6 (as "objective") on another.

Other words appeared in the top ten:

• In 6 of 6 lists: "services"; "research"

• In 5 of 6 lists: "resources"; "information"; "university"; "support" 

• In 4 of 6 lists: "digital"; "staff"; "learning"

• In 3 of 6 lists: "collections" (although "collection" was in 1 of 6); "strategic"

• In 2 of 6 lists: "goal" and "goals" (both in 2 of 6); "plan"; "campus"; "state"

One word only appeared in the top ten of one list but in none other, nor in any variant form--and that was "needs".

Now that you know which words to use in your strategic plan, you are welcome to mix them in the document. Follow the advice of author Timothy Dexter, whose book lacked periods, commas, etc., and so ended it with lines of punctuation marks in order that dissatisfied readers "may peper and solt it as they plese."

Fast [In(fo]od)

With messaging services such as Meebo now used to answer reference inquiries, patrons are encouraged into a fast food mentality. In this instance, fast info.

This way of doing business makes for the Creation of False Expectations--getting something immediate and reliable and without effort.

(At a fast info counter)
"What'll you have, sir/madam?"
"I want a complete-answer with a side order of right-away and, to drink, an easy-to-understand."
(A millisecond later) "Here it is--and it's free."

Library workers cannot compete with Google and company when it comes to speed, but may when it comes to relevance. They can personalize interaction and through an interview get a feeling for what the user wants and maybe what the user ought to have. Ironically, one of the attractions of Google, and perhaps Meebo, is its impersonalization. The user is free from being judged by the intelligence or type of a question.

Pig Win

"Penguin halts e-books sales to libraries" is a recent sample newspaper headline concerning the discontinuation by the publisher Penguin Group (USA) of selling e-books to libraries. Yet these headlines could be much more invigorating. Here are some possibilities.

"Penguin Gives Libraries the Bird"

"Penguin Cold Shoulders Libraries"

"'Let Them Eat (Fish) Cake' Penguin Tells Libraries"

"Question: What Do Penguins and Libraries Have in Common? Answer: Nothing"
"Penguin Wings Away from Libraries"
"March of the Penguins--and They're Carrying Away E-Books with Them"
"What's Black and White and Red All Over? It's No Longer a Penguin in a Library"
"'So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish'"--Penguin Leaves Libraries in Lurch

Weed This

“A library is not just a building full of books. It is a garden to cultivate individuals” —Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon (quoted in American Libraries Direct).

With this quote in mind, consider how some terms associated with the library relate to the garden and horticulture:

• annual

• arChives

• browsing

• carr(ot)els

• currant periodicals

• dew date

• I pea address

• jour(mi)nal

• kaleword searching

• microfarm

• newspepper

• on vine database

• peariodical

• refe-reed

• serial

And would those who dig into text, but remain uncultivated, be "weeders"?