libraries

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  1. Ask a Ph.D. student when his/her dissertation will be done*
  2. Tell someone they look tired, then suggest they get some sleep
  3. Ask a woman who has not directly told you that she is currently pregnant when she is due**
  4. Make enemies with the IT Department
  5. Make a pretty woman your wife
  6. Ask any student what his/her plans are after graduation
  7. Start any sentence with “Well, in today’s economy”
  8. Park over the line that clearly marks where one space ends and another begins
  9. Mess around with Slim
  10. Take libraries and librarians for granted

*It is also inadvisable to ask a Master’s student when he/she will graduate.  Basically, you shouldn’t ask graduate students any questions at all, except: 1) would you like free beer? 2) can I return those to the library for you? or 3) tell me about your work – but ONLY do this last one if they are CLEARLY FISHING for you to ask them about their work – otherwise you may face wrath, tears, or a complete nervous breakdown.

**It is also unacceptable to say “maybe you’re pregnant” to any female exhibiting flu-like symptoms.  Sometimes the flu is just the flu.


**BONUS – Don’t be this guy**

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I’m not sure if everyone feels the need, at some point, to justify their career. Not their career choice, but their career. Not – “Why on Earth did you want to be a DOCTOR?!” but more “Why on Earth do we even HAVE doctors?!” or “Hospitals are obsolete, everyone can just use WebMD and their 24-hour CVS.” Yeah, you don’t really hear much of that, but what I DO hear is “libraries are obsolete,” and once during an instruction session I was conducting and from the instructor that had requested the session – AND in front of a room full of his/her students. Gee, thanks. Just wait until the day I pop into the back of your classroom and tell your students that literary criticism is USELESS in real life.*

I have read so many of these – “Why librarians are important” pieces – and it makes me frustrated that there are people that think we aren’t. I matter, darn it!

Here’s one from the L.A. Times written by a school librarian whose job has been eliminated.

Go ahead. Read it, then we can discuss in the comments.

<3LL

*This is not really what I think, it's just a fitting parallel. Plus, I would never do this. We educators need to support each other. Woo nerd solidarity!

Saving the Google students: For the Google generation, closing school libraries could be disastrous. Not teaching kids how to sift through sources is like sending them into the world without knowing how to read.

Opinion | March 21, 2010 | By Sara Scribner

(excerpt below – full article available here)

The current generation of kindergartners to 12th graders — those born between 1991 and 2004 — has no memory of a time before Google. But although these students are far more tech savvy than their parents and are perpetually connected to the Internet, they know a lot less than they think. And worse, they don’t know what they don’t know.

As a librarian in the Pasadena Unified School District, I teach students research skills. But I’ve just been pink-slipped, along with five other middle school and high school librarians, and only a parcel tax on the city’s May ballot can save the district’s libraries. Closing libraries is always a bad idea, but for the Google generation, it could be disastrous. In a time when information literacy is increasingly crucial to life and work, not teaching kids how to search for information is like sending them out into the world without knowing how to read.

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