CEF Libraries

With all the bad news in the world, it’s good to know that one problem of concern to some librarians is solved. At least I assume it’s a problem of concern to librarians, because I found the article announcing the solution at LIS News. The good news? The digital divide is no more. According to [...]

Every once in a while, people complain that library school is too easy, and that because it’s too easy, just about everyone who gets in gets through. Or maybe that’s just me. Anyway. Combine this with the likelihood that just about everyone who wants to go to library school could manage to get in somewhere. [...]

A Kind Reader sent me this blog post from the Huffington Post entitled “What’s a Library?” Like Pontius Pilate, he didn’t stay for an answer. Normally I find the Huffington Post painful to read, since it seems to be aimed at an audience of the insecure and the mentally challenged. “Is this normal? Sex questions [...]

We all know that distance education is the future because people in the business of distance education tell us so. I just wish that had been an option when I was younger, because I would have loved to get an entire degree interacting with nothing other than my computer and my cat. Not everyone thinks [...]

If you want to be on the cutting edge of librarianship circa 2008, then the ALA has some good things in store for you! A Kind Reader forwarded me last week’s American Libraries Direct, which has helpful links to three online workshops the ALA is offering. Pretty trendy stuff, too. One is on LinkedIn, and [...]

Maybe I’m just growing complacent in my old age, but this seems to be my week for not understanding what all the fuss is about. Is there something annoying going on in a library? I’ll let you decide for yourself. Let me give you the general picture before filling in the details. A Kind Reader [...]

The Annoyed Librarian is in something of a pickle. Usually when Kind Readers send me tidbits about libraryland that annoy people, I can see immediately why they’re annoyed. The persistent low level annoyance so many librarians feel drives this blog. A Kind Reader sent me an exchange from the ALA Council listserv on Friday. The [...]

Some website that seems to exist only to make lists of jobs has once again made a list of the “top 200 jobs” in the U.S. Librarian somehow made the list yet again, at #88. Here’s the profile:  88. Librarian Selects and organizes materials to make information available to the public. Overall Score: 571.00 Income: [...]

I can’t figure out precisely what crazy shenanigans are going on in Soldotna, AK, but one thing’s for sure: some people there sure love their librarian. Rather, they love their former librarian and are protesting at her being fired. It’s kind of touching to see so many people stand up for a librarian. The basic [...]

Somehow I missed The Slow Death of the American Author last week, a touching attack by Scott Turow on everything that doesn’t turn the reading experience into a cash making enterprise for authors. The problems are legion, we’re told. Pirates downloading illegal ebooks, presumably while saying “Arghhh!”; search engines that deliberately point searchers to the [...]

It’s National Library Week, which I’m naturally very excited about. Or at least I would be if the sort of library I work in was actually acknowledged in any way during the celebrations. Actually, I still probably wouldn’t be, but it’s the principle of the thing. Here’s a brief history from the NLW fact sheet: [...]

There’s a new list making the library social media rounds about libraries and social media. You can always count on a list like that getting a lot of links from librarians. I’m not going to link to it because the website seems to exist only to get people to link to it, and I hate [...]

There’s one story about librarians that you don’t see very often: the complaint that they’re being paid too much. Fortunately, we have Hawaii to thank for finally bringing us one of those stories. University of Hawaii administrators are asking the Board of Regents to approve a salary of $195,000 for the UH Manoa’s next head [...]

A kind reader sent in this somewhat ironic article about that’s supposedly about “mission creep” in public libraries and all the undesirables the author is forced to be around while working in them. There are homeless people, rowdy people, and thieves. Not all these occur at the same library, since there seems to be some [...]

This is the saddest library story I’ve ever read. The headline is bland: “For young readers, a chance to work off library debt.” We could also call it Indentured servitude @ your library. Or just the kind of thing poor kids have to do to get along in the world. The story is all about [...]

A few weeks ago I wrote about a dispute on the ALA Council list with one councilor arguing that the Council was bloated and useless or something like that. He’s back at it again, this time railing against the length of the ALA Council ballot, another sign of bloat I suppose. The ALA Council ballot [...]

There seems to be no end to pointless ways that people use to supposedly promote libraries. The latest comes from Poland of all places, according to this article. The headline asks “would more people use the library if it had a water slide?” We can turn to Betteridge’s law of headlines and safely answer no. [...]

Before we move on to muzzled Canadians, I wanted to thank a kind reader for sending in a screenshot of a library computer where the Annoyed Librarian was blocked from view because the filter considered it pornography. Kind Reader commented, “Yeah, filters work alright.” Many a librarian over the years has wanted the AL closed [...]

The strangest news in libraryland last week had to be the story of the young man in Racine, WI who was caught openly masturbating in the Racine Public Library. “As a condition of [his] bond, he was told to ‘stay out of all the libraries on the face of the earth,’ according to court records.” [...]

It’s always a little weird to see librarians acting all unlibrarianish. Last week there was the library employee in St. Louis who left a comment on this blog that notified the world of the library card holding status of a specific person named in a news article. So much for privacy! Now comes the result [...]