Dumpling in a Hanky

And for the Bad…

So, we’ve seen the Good – often quite pretty or kinda-cool ladies (nobody had tagged solo male images as “librarian”, they only seem to turn up within groups or as part of a couple), doing things to do with books, reading, relaxing…that’s fine, I can go with that.

Now, we move on to the Bad (or Sexy Girls). There are two main librarian representation stereotype categories – there’s the nice girl, and then there’s these: the librarians who are obviously repressed, and are secretly just itching to rip their clothes off/show you their cleavage/stand over a handy airvent to flash their pants/ wear short, high-split skirts and stilettos, stockings and garter belts to work.

You know, the standard stuff that us librarians think about doing while trapped behind those big, nasty issue desks…

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What librarians look like…according to Etsy artists

Etsy is quite a treasure trove of. handcrafted items, in all sorts of materials. Some are great, some are good, and some are….erm….different. You can find all sorts of things when you search on there. I wondered what this random selection of creative types considered to be a librarian, or to look like one.

As a form of mild amusement, I will present here the results of a recent search I did on Etsy using the word “librarian”, which brought up results including this word in their description or tag.. Therefore, the choice of whether this is what a librarian looks like is the makers, not mine. Believe me, I would really prefer that some of this stuff wasn’t tagged as being a librarian – I got a reputation to uphold here!

They can be perhaps regarded as being in three categories: The Good (or Cute), The Bad (or Sexy), and The….WTF.
Today, I shall begin with…The Good.

The Good

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Thing 10 – how to get where you’re going

Onwards and upwards: to the how, why, and where of my career so far.

Well, the background of this little library fairytale can be found here and here, as originally written for the Library Routes project. It’s a sordid tale of intrigue, smuggling, dark deeds, derring do, and a disturbingly accurate dot matrix printout.*

So that’s where I’ve been…where am I now? Well, I’m still in the law firm library I’ve been in for the last six years, still enjoying what I do, and gradually accepting that perhaps I am actually a proper professional after all. I have no great and glorious career plans – I think I’m pretty lucky just to be in a role I enjoy (despite my occasional muttered swear words on bad/stressful days), and am happy to continue doing what I do, for as long as I’m allowed to do it.

I’m not a thought leader, profession inspirer, groundbreaking researcher, or any of the exciting things that other people seem to be, or want to be, but I’m content and enjoy my job, and try my best to help others in their work, where I can. Which is, in itself, a pretty good achievement I think.

*At least one of those claims is true.

Thing 9 – Evernote (or Nevernote)

Now, I have to start by saying that I don’t think Evernote’s going to have much appeal for me – I’m not a heavy bookmarker of sites for personal use, and my work ones are already organised into folders or subscribed to with RSS feeds. I don’t have to use images for my work, and if I see images I like/that inspire me for crafting, I’ll do a sketch of what I would make based on that image, but I don’t usually need to go back to that image again. I’m not altogether sure that the IT restrictions in my workplace will allow me to download and install it on my pc either, but I’ll give it a shot….

Ohhh, it’s a big download! 55.7MB, which took over 5 minutes to complete. Now, I don’t know if it’s just that my pc was playing silly buggers this morning, but that’s a looooooong time, and makes me worry that IT are going to tell me off for downloading big stuff!

Ok, it’s downloaded….and has spent the last 5 minutes making my computer hang because I asked it to open. I am not feeling very kindly disposed towards this so far!

Right: it opened. And spent 10 minutes “preparing to install” and slowing my computer down to a snails pace before I gave up and tried to cancel it…and which point it panicked and actually started doing stuff.

And….10 minutes later, it seems to have finally finished its messing about, and installed itself! That’s 30 mins of my life I’m not going to get back…but at least it did install on my work pc, so if it is useful, then I can access it in the place where I spend a lot of my time.

Now, I need to register myself…ok. Done…time to look around….

Right, I’ve had a poke around, and I have to say, I really don’t see a need for Evernote in my life. I just don’t “live” online enough for me to have a need for any of the tools it’s offering. I have a notepad of paper and a pen for when I want a note or to-do list (and scoring off an item on a paper list is so much more satisfying than ticking off an online box, or editing text), I don’t need to share notes/to-do’s/images with anyone else, or be able to access work-related lists when I’m at home, or vice versa. It may well suit others perfectly, but for someone who prefers paper over virtual for most things, it’s a non-starter.

Now…how long will it take to un-install?

Update: 5 mins to uninstall. And, the Evernote help screen doesn’t work if you search for the word “uninstall”, “delete account” or “close account” in the Support Information search. You just get this page. Nice and helpful. So, if anyone does figure out how to close an Evernote account, can you let me know please? I found this on deactivating an account, but that’s not the same as deleting it, and I refer to wipe out unused accounts rather than just put them into hibernation.