Category: librarian

Dumpling does a drawing #4

The “head slumped onto looseleaf binder, while carefully avoiding impaling face on spine spikes” pose is standard when looseleafing.

Looseleafing.
A word to strike fear into the heart of even the very bravest of librarians.
An activity designed to shatter any illusions a librarian previously may have held about there being order and sense in the world.
The thing we do when we want reminded of the shortness and utter futility of human life.

The phantom law librarian

*checks mirror quickly*
Yes, I’m definitely here. I exist, I have a reflection (and am therefore also not a vampire, which is reassuring), but it seems I am actually a phantom.
An invisible law librarian.
If you look for me, I am not there. Search my employers website – I don’t exist.
And I’m not alone.

Look on the websites of law firms…I know those other law librarians are out there: fee earning, creating bulletins, researching for clients…so where are they? They’re not on the online staff lists, there’s no images of law firm librarians looking dazzlingly smart and intelligent while leaning against the shelves of books that they’ve carefully sourced and selected for their Library (a favoured pose for lawyers in corporate photos: books = smart, apparently).
But we’re just as essential to the health of the firm as any other members of staff, who get a shiny profile and “look how fab and experienced our staff are” blurb on the website.

So…why are we hidden away by our employers? Do they think that by admitting that they have employed experienced professionals to deal with specialised information, that they’re weaker than their competitors in some way? Surely it’s a great selling point to clients, to be able to say that they have people dedicated purely to finding the answers needed for all the questions that could arise?

Or do we suffer from the same problem as all other librarians: once we’ve handed over the work that we’ve done, it’s immediately forgotten that it was us that did it? That case/report/book/database just magically appeared when it was needed….

The phantom law librarians, pale ghosts in the law firm machine?

Another year, another blogday

Yes, I feel all proud, because it’s coming up to birthday-time for the UK Library Bloggers Wiki...it’s toddling along nicely all by itself (with just the occasional spammer attack – it’s really quite satisfying to get to ban and block people!), with people generally seeming quite happy with the process of adding their blogs themselves.

Since I last looked in July 2010, there have continued to be additions in various categories.

                                          July 2010                                        March 2011
Institutional bloggers              135                                                     152
Individual bloggers                 90                                                       107
Chartership blogs                    5                                                         6
Information professionals         8                                                         8
Suppliers                                 8                                                         8

Total:                                      281 blogs

So, a growth in institutional/workplace bloggers, and individual/personal bloggers too, and a solitary, brave Chartership blog.

I wonder if the 2 years without any change, then last years small growth in Chartership blogs is because people are already blogging, and then decide to Charter, and incorporate that aspect of professional development into their existing blog? Or are fewer people Chartering? Or are those who are Chartering using other methods to log their progress?

I’ve also decided to remove the Yahoo Pipes combines RSS feed link for Institutional and Individual blogs from the front page of the wiki – it was initially done as an experiment, and now that people are able to add their own blogs, unless I then go in each time after I get the wiki has been edited alert”, get their RSS feed, and go edit the Yahoo Pipe, it’s never going to be current/accurate. And I’m afraid I just don’t have the time to be fiddling like that constantly!

Of course, I haven’t clicked on each of those 281 blog links, so I’m quite sure that at least some of them are now defunct – my plan to go through them, and remove the dead blogs to another section has definitely slipped to the bottom of my to-do list. Maybe I’ll be more inspired to do it if I get a prize. Can I get a prize?

Librarianing – the physical reason

There are many factors that might steer you into librarianship as a career. A love of learning and knowledge; a mind that likes to dig out the useful information hidden in a pile of nonsense; ruthless organisational skills; an ability to strip out extraneous information and get to the core of a question; a memory for random snippets of information and facts that turn out to be useful later on…

And then there’s the factor that’s beyond your control. Something that you might not realise you have until one day, all the little moments add up together into an moment of glorious, and disturbing understanding.
You have Librarian Face.
It’s the face that makes people want to ask you random questions. It’s the face that makes strangers think that you have memorised the intricacies of the local bus system, and can therefore give excellent advice on this topic. The face that implies an in-depth knowledge of the stock of local shops, and therefore exactly which ones will be able to supply the person asking with peacock feathers (tall, not short). It’s the face that means that, to tourists in Edinburgh for the Festival, you’re apparently just a walking information booth and map reading service.
And you know what? You’re stuck with it.
So, you might as well become a librarian – it is….your destiny.