Card catalog to opac

I'll be in Bristol NH this weekend, so I thought I'd check out the library website. It took quite a bit of searching, but I finally found it. It looks like they have a single librarian and are open 5 days a week. One of the advertised features, however, was "3 computers now with access to high speed internet." I wasn't sure if I should chuckle or shoot myself, I've never gone 3 days without internet access since I was probably 12.

Obviously this is a small town public library, not an academic library at a college, but still, how much longer can small public libraries continue to be useful? With amazon.com and shrinking budgets, surely small public libraries cannot cater to the new book interests of everyone.

Are librarians faculty?

I had brunch with some tenured Enligsh professors today, somehow we got to talking about whether or not librarians should be considered faculty (in an academic/college library).

Their feeling was that, if there is no library degree being offered, they are not really teaching. They didn't consider the brief classroom instruction performed by the librarians to be sufficient. They said they have no problem with librarians being entitled to equal pay/tenure typed stuff, but that the title of faculty was not appropriate for the profession.

No more pencils, no more books

So, as a student supervisor in the library and graduate student in library science with a BA in music I've landed a job as an analyst in what I'll lossely call the insurance field. It is true then, that a degree in music is the fast-track to being a used car salesman or insurance broker. In two short (albeit they will feel quite the opposite I'm sure) years I can return to the library, but there will be no shelving of books or shelf-reading of the juvenile collection. Hopefully I'll be answering reference questions and asking student workers to go gather some books for me (I do realize there is a lot more involved, I'm just pretending there isn't)

happy birthday to me

So I have the luxury of this post because I pissed of my boss and rather then suffering a you need to set an example for your subordinates blah blah blah, I was like yeah, you're right, it's my birthday so I'm going home. Don't worry, I wouldn't play that card if I wasn't leaving the library forrrrreeeeevvvvveeeerrrr (as in the way the kids say it in the Sandlot) in a few short weeks

I hate to admit it, but I kind of enjoyed the Kuhn, once I got going. At first it didn't make any sense at all. I asked one of the librarians at work about it, and he said yeah, it's dry, but you should definitely read it, and then read it again because it does do a good job describing scientific discovery.

I guess I haven't thought this through very well; everyone at work convinced me to go to grad school for library science, sure, I like the idea,no problem. I still haven't received my diploma for my BA, I'm changing jobs, and I'm pretty much drowning in all this blackboard.

I'm still a little wary of blogs, the one faculty member I know started one, and got herself into hot water over the content because she was making waves in a place that didn't like them.

First blog

Really not a fan at all of blogs, but if that's what takes, I'll do it. Don't read it expecting to feel better when you're done!