Newsletter (March 2007)
L I B R A R I A N S O F T O D A Y
Men of Texas Libraries
Remember over a year ago when a group of Wisconsin librarians found a creative way of raising money for their libraries by producing a provocative calendar? They produced the 2006 Desperate Librarians calendar (www.focol.org/desperatelibrarians) which featured pictures of disrobed librarians appropriately posed behind books etc. Now, the Texas Library Association is trying to raise money for their Library Disaster Relief Fund with their own calendar.
The Men of Texas Libraries calendar is a color eighteen-month (January 2007- June 2008) calendar featuring real male members of the Texas Library Association. It’s a humorous celebration of the existence of the all-too-few men in the library profession. (According to the U.S. Census, only 18% of librarians in the country are male.) So forget those calendars with pictures of hot firemen and check out this calendar featuring library men! (www.txla.org/temp/TLAmen.html)
Ms. Dewey
Since we’re thinking about the image of the librarians, you have to take a look at the Ms. Dewey, Microsoft’s new search engine (www.msdewey.com). This is a search engine with a personality. It features a live action librarian (I’m presuming from her name) figure who asks you what you’re looking for, makes comments at times, and even sings, dances, and plays around depending upon your search request. Real life young and sexy Janina Garvankar is the actress who plays Ms. Dewey. You have to check out this fun search engine. After trying Ms. Dewey, it’s hard going back to using a boring old white screen search engine!
“The Librarians” TV Series
So many times I’ve wished for a comedy series about librarians. My wish has come true with news that a half-hour television comedy/drama series titled “The Librarians” is in production for the Australian Broadcasting Company. Issue 48 of Inside the ABC provides the following description: “Life unravels for The Librarians as they hurtle towards the event of the year — Book Week! It's about love, betrayal and revenge.” I can’t wait until this becomes available in the U.S.!
“Idiocracy”
While we are on the subject of librarians on the screen, I recently saw a 2006 movie now available on DVD. The movie, Idiocracy, is a satirical comedy starring Luke Wilson as a military librarian of mediocre intelligence who seems to sit around in the library and do nothing. So he’s selected to participate in a government hibernation experiment that doesn’t go as planned. He wakes up 500 years in the future where he is now the smartest man in the country.
I was uncomfortable by the constant stream of profanity used in the film. But with a librarian as the main character who ends up being the smartest man in the country, I couldn’t help but enjoy the movie. (If you’re interested, you can find out more about the movie at www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808.)
Librarians of Yesteryear
Whenever I read about many of today’s librarians, both fictitious and real, I like to think back about some of the famous librarians of the past. Sadly, most gained fame not as librarians, but for their accomplishments in other areas. The following three individuals are perfect examples of this.
Eratosthenes (circa 276 BC – circa 194)
Eratosthenes once served as librarian in the great Library of Alexandria. But he was also a great mathematician and scientist credited with calculating the circumference of the Earth. (Hmmm…I wonder if his calculation was his answer to a reference question.)
A children’s book has even been written about him. The Librarian Who Measured the Earth (Little, Brown, 1994), by Kathryn Lasky is targeted at children age 4 – 8.
Benjamin Franklin
Everyone remembers Benjamin Franklin for either flying a kit during a storm, or as one of the founding fathers that signed the Declaration of Independence. Most people don’t know he is credited with starting a private subscription library whose concept would later develop into the foundation of public libraries. Even fewer know that he actually briefly served as the librarian at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Unfortunately even back in his time librarianship was not a lucrative profession. The librarian who succeeded him was a shoemaker!
How Safe Are Those Library Books?
Despite our diligence to constantly wash our hands after handling books and other materials, there’s still a cold virus that’s making the rounds among the staff at the library where I work. So an article titled “Does Danger Lurk in the Library” that appeared in a recent issue of Public Health (#120, 2006, p. 776-777) immediately caught my eye.
According to the author, R.L. Atenstaedt, under the English Public Health Act of 1984, there’s a section that prohibits individuals with certain diseases from borrowing or using public library books. Curious as to the prevalence of disease transmitted from human to human via library books, the author conducted a literature review on the topic. He writes, “A systematic literature search using PUB Med has not revealed any evidence that library books do, in fact, transmit notifiable diseases.” Which is good news, especially for those of us who work in libraries.
However, in his article he does mention a few cases where disease was spread via a library book. For example, “…smallpox was transmitted to a person who had borrowed books from a library in a nearby town affected by a smallpox epidemic…” Or for another example, he writes “…scarlet fever was conveyed by a book in which a sufferer had put sections of his peeling skin as bookmarks…” Yuck!
Another study was done in 1993. In “Are Public Library Books Contaminated by Bacteria?” (Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, v. 47, no. 10, 1994, p. 1173-1174), authors Sara Brook and Itzhak Brook report on their study of bacteria from 15 public library books, and 15 books from a family household. Staphylococcus epidermidis was found on four of the library books and three of the family household books. They conclude their article by stating “Although this data demonstrated the lack of numerous bacteria on the surfaces of library book pages, further studies are needed to evaluate the ability of microorganisms to survive in this environment.”
So how safe are library books? You be the judge.
Favorite Pet Names
Let’s move on to a totally unscientific study of favorite names librarians give their pets. I seem to hear about a lot of librarians with cats or dogs named Dewey, or LC (pronounced Elsie, and LC being short for the Library of Congress or LC Classification System).
Even though I worked as a cataloger early in my library career, my dogs were always named Rusty, Lucky, or some other common pet name. I never thought of naming my pets after a classification system. But of course, librarianship was not my first career choice.
So now I’m curious. Do you have a pet you named after something related to libraries or librarianship? If so, email me (Casanovawasalibrarian@hotmail.com) and help satisfy my curiosity!
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