My librarianism; also a book I want

[trochee]

Some of you may know that my childhood fantasy of becoming a librarian has returned. Now I think I'd be a different kind of librarian -- I just liked books as a kid, now I think access to information is political, interesting, and complicated as heck in the new Digital Age. Besides, all the cool kids are in library school.

Of course, I'm currently working on a degree in linguistics, but that doesn't mean I'm done with school, or not able to maintain a possible future option of working as a librarian.

I want to read Anarchist in the Library; it keeps getting mentioned by copyfight and Cory Doctorow at boingboing_net.

Comments

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

Not to burst bubbles, but most libraries are pretty demanding about requiring Library Science degrees from what i hear. ibiblio, being part of the School of Information and Library Sciences, is a weird place to spend time. You learn things like that.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I know about librarians needing degrees in info science. In my fantasy, I go back to school again and get another[!] degree.

Ah well. I've spent enough time in school, I could spend a few more years.

A Simple Desultory (IS) Phillipic

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

Since you seem to have a background like mine (well, if i'd bothered to grow-up my background), let me share of my experience. Information Science people would probably drive you insane. They're the fluffiest computer-related people, and they think they know it all. They're keen on information and process (which is good), but never want to commit to data and code. They remind me a lot of the people who Just Don't Get opamps or polymorphism or excessive encapsulation. You try and try to explain what the point is, how this clever little trick makes amazing things possible, and they totally miss it.

In the end, they spend most of their time arguing about how things should be color-coded, arguing over which indexing system to use, and writing awful code. They're more irritating than research physicists.

That said, some of them are Really Freaking Good. I work with one or two of those, and they're really great to hash ideas out with. In the hands of a hacker-type, an IS background is a very sharp tool. How they put up with their classmates is beyond me.