This was recommended by a few of my MLIS professors (shocker right?). I always enjoyed reading books recommended by my business professors (The World is Flat, Superfreakonomics). So I figured I might as well see what all this talk is about.
I placed myself on the somewhat long holds list, thinking that, okay, if there are this many holds, it must be a decent read right?
WRONG! After I checked this awfully disappointing book back in, I took a look at the holds list. EVERYONE on the list either was either a library employee, retiree, or a volunteer.
The whole thing read like some ALA-produced propaganda, "Libraries are great, Librarians are the best...etc." I would have been okay with it, but there was a lack of support for these statements. Not only that, but this was exclusively aimed at the public library, what about the rest of the "Superhero Librarians?" No love for Academic Librarians, or any of the various Embedded Librarians? She also has some strange fascination that there are librarians who cuss and have tattoos and who overall do not fit into the stereotype.
My number one argument about why this book completely sucks is that there is one whole chapter on Second Life. Seriously, I am sick of hearing about librarians on Second Life like it's the savior of the career. Okay, so I understand from the few MLIS classes I have taken that librarians, in general, were not the quickest to jump onto the Google ship, which is now a huge regret they have, besides the fact that librarians should have created Google. And for some reason, some librarians heard about Second Life and jumped on that bandwagon in the hopes that it would be the next biggest thing. I'm sorry, but I personally only know one person who is one Second Life and she had to join because it was required for one of her MLIS classes. She quickly deleted her account once the semester was over.
The only people saying that Second Life is the next future front for librarianship are LIBRARIANS. You cannot justify that it is relevant because the only people Second Life librarians are helping are OTHER librarians on SL.
This book is utterly disappointing, thank goodness I didn't pay for it, LIBRARIES ROCK! : \
I could not agree more. I read it out of curiosity, and because many other librarians were hyping as if it was the next best thing after sliced bread. Like you, I am glad I borrowed it rather than pay for it because the book is pretty much way overhyped. The whole tattoo thing is mostly drawing on the image of that NYT article on hipster librarians (there was another piece of overhyped tripe).
ReplyDeleteI did post my review of the book on my blog, if you want to visit. Link: http://bit.ly/cYyI7o
Best, and keep on blogging.
I was curious about this book but decided not to check it out since the other "all about the library" nonfic books I've read were disappointments. Guess it's good I skipped this one. I've never been on Second Life either, but there was a class project on it at my school too, I just luckily never had to take that class. Aside from that I've never known anyone who has been into Second Life, and certainly not using it for information services.
ReplyDelete@Angel's comment - that NYT article made me so mad when it came out. I suffered through years of frizzy hair, big dorky glasses, and real thrift store clothes to become a librarian and find out there are losers doing it on purpose to be trendy. I hate hipsters!
ANGEL -- great minds think alike, I am not surprised that we both thought this damn waste of paper was overhyped by all in the field!
ReplyDeleteSHUSHIE -- yeah, there are a lot of faux hipsters out there. It is like the kids who get all excited about 80's Night at the club even though they were born in the 90's and all they have learned about the 80's was from VH1.