End of year thoughts

In another forum, I was asked:

You have a less "books=sacred objects" view than many of the people we know in common. Would you say your view is common among librarians of tour acquaintance, or are you an outlier there (too)? Have you always felt that way about books or did you come to it along the way?

Excellent question. To be clear, I believe that individual books can be sacred objects - important/rare editions, religious texts, original manuscripts, individual inscriptions, etc. - but that the format of any physical manifestation of ideas isn't sacred in and of itself. Books are ultimately just collections of glue and paper and cloth; it's the concepts they hold or the meaning we imbue them with that can make them sacred.

In particular, I believe that everyday books are meant to be engaged with, interacted with and responded to. For someone who's a tactile and kinetic learner, this means that I have to write out my thoughts and responses for that engagement to happen; the most convenient, immediate and relevant place to do that is in the text itself. I write in books all the time, and prefer to own the books that really speak to me so I can do so without guilt. I've always worked this way, back into middle school; in college, I preferred to buy the most written-in, highlighted books I could find to continue the conversation the previous owner(s) had started. Marginalia fascinates me, and its place in history is vital. Writing in library books does have historical precedent, too, but I'm less okay with that due a strong "if it doesn't belong to you, you don't get to permanently change it" ethic.

Amongst librarians, there are far more folks in the "books are just paper" camp than you'd think. I'm certainly not an outlier there. Not everyone is as enthusiastic about it as I am, but most of us have to recognize that fact for the very practical reason that we cannot house all of the books in the world forever. Libraries are not warehouses and not all libraries are even archives or research collections. Each individual title that comes onto our shelves gets chosen for its relevance and usefulness to our patrons. Periodically, we review the evidence of that continued relevance and usefulness - number of total check-outs, most recent check-out, date of publication, wear and tear - and when it's become obvious that something's no longer useful, it needs to go, to make room for something that is. Even archivists don't keep everything (ask my friend at the Congregational Library Archive); librarians of all stripes use their best judgment to determine what stays and what goes as a collection changes over time.

When librarians choose to get rid of an item, we do try and see if it can be useful to someone else somewhere, either by relocating the item to another location or by selling it. Then, when it's falling apart beyond repair, or when mold or bugs or water or scratches have damaged it beyond use, the item gets recycled or trashed. Like any other object in our lives, books and DVDs and CDs can carry more negative weight than positive weight; when that happens, it's time for them to go in the most environmentally sound way possible.

All that said, it's occasionally fun for me to watch patrons squirm when I suggest that the paperbacks they've carefully stored in a New England fieldstone basement for the past 30 years are best off destined for the recycling box or trash barrel. Sure, some collector somewhere might want them and they might have some historical value....but they could also give everyone who touches them an upper respiratory illness or contact dermititis. People are more important than books, always. Not necessarily ideas (V for Vendetta and Farenheit 451), but always more important than the physical paper object.

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After writing all this, I found a deeply practical (if occasionally defensive) article on What Books You Could Live Without in the NY Times. Read through it all, and the comments below, for some specific criteria in what might stay and what might go as you weed your own collections.

Wow...nearly six months, huh?

If you've been reading this blog since the beginning, you know that the busier my offline life is, the less likely I am to post here. Since April 2nd, I've coordinated blogging at the Massachusetts Library Association annual conference (May), put up and taken down the 2008 Allston-Brighton Art Exposition (June/July), presented another workshop for the Boston Region, Technical Directed a real-life comedy of errors for my local community theater company (April through August), traveled, hosted, and helped keep a branch operating far below optimal staffing levels running smoothly.

So, no, I haven't really had the time or energy to post here.

However, I am going to be coordinating a 10-week online program for the Boston Region -- 26.2 Things in Boston -- and I thought I should update my own blog before asking others to create theirs.

I do hope to be posting more here as a part of that effort, working my own way through the program, and my reflections on leading that program. We'll see, though. I've stopped promising more substantial posts, both elsewhere and here. Life is as it will be, you know?

For now, thank you for bearing with my absence. All is well, and life proceeds apace.

Enjoy!

As promised...it's August and I'm back

Hi, all. My thanks for your patience for the radio silence. But now, the show is over and I'm refocusing my attention on my blog.

To ease myself back in, I'll start off with a couple of links from Bloglines:

Headlines and hotspots in a just a Couple of Minutes. via LibraryStuff

Using LinkedIn productively via the Librarian In Black

You can find me on LinkedIn, by the way ------>

I've also added a couple of titles to the Squidoo list ---->

Ah, productivity. I'm so glad to find it again...

One post a week in July

Good evening, all. In a perfect world, I'd be filling this blog with poignant and useful tidbits of information and insight. Alas, this is not a perfect world, and my offline commitments have been eating all of my awake time (with a recent incursion by Desktop Tower Defence). I've barely been keeping up with my Bloglines feeds, let alone being able to post here.

Fortunately, the most intensive of my other roles will be over as of the end of July. I'm technical director for Theatre@First -- a local theater company -- and the show goes up in three weeks. Most of my non-work time is spent at the theater, in rehearsals or construction. I'm also attending a library leadership institute here in my home state, though that only lasts a mere three days.

So, for the month of July, I'm going to aim to have a post a week on something, even if it's just an interesting link. Come August, I'll go back to a more comprehensive writing schedule.

Thank you for your patience and tolerance of the low volume over here. I hope to bring up the relevance factor of this blog next month. Meanwhile, enjoy your summer!