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You may or may not already know that Neatorama author John Farrier is also a librarian. The two jobs aren’t as different as you may think! He wrote about the process of “content curation” in an essay on the skills librarians need and develop in the digital information age. For Neatorama, John sifts through an amazing amount of internet material in order to find the neatest items for the site, then condenses them down to bite-size while still giving just enough information for you to decide whether a link is worth exploring further.
Does all of this sound familiar? It’s what reference librarians do every day. We navigate the world of information to find the best content for our patrons in a timely manner. Have we discerned what the patron is looking for? What are the best sources for it available? Can we get to it quickly? How do we effectively present it to the patron? These are questions that reference librarians ask and answer during the reference interviewing process. They’re also what content curators do.
I’ve noticed that my mental habits and thought processes as a librarian have served me well as a content curator. Many, possibly most, curators are trained as freelance writers, so they know how to write in an amusing and witty manner. That’s important. But my ability to find content efficiently with the readers’ preferences in mind – a skill formed and honed at the reference desk – has given me an edge in the curation business. So I’m proposing that librarians look at digital content curation as a potential career.
You can read more about what goes into content curation, both in blogs and in libraries, at Library Journal. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Rob Ireton)
The Tumblr blog Library Hey Girl is some anonymous librarian’s fantasy involving actor Ryan Gosling and what are probably the best possible pick-up lines that you could use on a librarian. Flirting across the reference desk happens a lot. Well, to female librarians, at least.
Link -via The Breda Fallacy
Real librarians sometimes silently cringe at the shockingly-poor reference interviews conducted by librarians on television and in the movies. But Andy Priestner, head business librarian at Cambridge University, isn’t going to hide under the reference desk. He’s come out swinging against Jocasta Nu, the librarian over the Jedi Archives depicted in the Star Wars franchise. As the above video illustrates, Nu really doesn’t know how to discern and meet customer needs. Priestner writes at length about Nu’s dubious use of space and access policies and concludes:
Those shelves and shelves of e-books and those access restrictions still bother me though, but wait… what’s this, I’ve just found out that librarian Jocasta was eventually killed by the young Darth Vader himself for not providing the information he wanted, clearly a very dissatsified library user, and on the evidence of the approach largely taken, who can blame him?
I’d like to add that the lack of clearly-posted Internet usage and unattended child policies in the Jedi Archives is just asking for trouble.
Budget cuts make a librarian’s day more hectic than ever! This video was made by Sean Bonney and the employees of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Virginia. -Thanks, Sean!
The Texas Library Association is selling a 2010 calendar called “The Tattooed Ladies of TLA.” Twenty-one librarians show off their tats over 18 months. The calendar is a fundraiser to assist libraries that are still recovering from damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
“It was just a fun thing to do,” said Gretchen Hoffmann, 42, who turned up the heat as Miss August 2010 by posing on a row boat, a purple boa strategically draped to highlight the starfish tattoo on her upper back. “I like the idea that the calendars are stereotype-busters. You don’t usually see [librarians] as tattooed and sexy. We’re not the little old ladies who walk around with buns.”
Link to story. Link to website. -via Metafilter
The American Library Association (ALA) just finished its annual conference in Chicago. This is a video of the winners of the book cart drill team competition. These librarians from the Omaha Public Library chose a ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ theme.
Alas, I missed ALA this year. But as a faithfully married man, I shouldn’t be availing myself of its bacchanal pleasures anyway.
Via Geekologie
Previously on Neatorama: March of the Librarians
Unshelved is a webcomic by Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes about the staff of a public library. It’s a focal point of librarian subculture as it’s written from an insider point of view.
Every year for the past three years, Unshelved has hosted a contest called “Pimp My Bookcart”, wherein library staffers trick out their bookcarts in outrageous ways, such as this circus-themed cart above. Click on the link to see this past year’s winners.
