I'm not sure where I first heard the term “degree snob” but it was most memorably put to me in reference to a professional librarian who would literally not lower themself to speak to non-professional staff if it could be helped!
With that as a jumping off point (and based on some of my own experiences – yes, my parents did take out the ad in the hometown paper with my blessing; no, my degree is not hanging at either my work or home), I created the following quiz.
It's hard to get perfect answers so try to pick the one that best matches your situation/experiences. (Also, I didn't go back and review the questions too closely so there are probably a few typos and the like throughout.)
I was thinking about this today – Gorman's list is one of the first things you should acquaint yourself with in Library School 101 to learn the framework for everything that will inform your role as a professional librarian.
But I was also thinking about the fact that a lot of people who work in libraries aren't trained as librarians – whether they come to libraryland as pages or clerks or library assistants or support staff in IT, HR, the Business Office, Physical Plant or whatever.
I always assume that most people who work in libraries do it, at least partly because they love books and libraries and what libraries provide to their communities. But whether people work in our world because they love libraries or it's just a paycheque, I wonder do we do enough (or anything?) to introduce them to some of the core concepts that define the culture of librarianship?
The Eight Central Values of Librarians
Stewardship: the preservation and care of the human record
Service: professional and philanthropic, dedicated to human advancement
Intellectual Freedom: resist censorship, grant materials available
– I arrived early and bumped into a young woman who looked really familiar but who I couldn't place. She did the “you look familiar…” routine with me too and it turns out she was a journalism student who did a brief placement with an organization I worked for a few years ago. Inevitable “small world” comment is followed with some catching up on each others' lives since then.
– the event started to fill up so I slipped into the private room they'd booked and grabbed a seat. Luckily I did because they ended up getting probably 3x the number of guests they expected. (I ended up helping to carry out a table with a sitting MLA doing the heavy-lifting at the other end to clear room for more chairs!)
– I'm biased but I interpret this turnout as a pretty good sign for the campaign of Ryan Meili – I think people who are involved with the NDP enough to come out for an event like this are also very curious about this new, bright young light who doesn't have much history with the party but has a buzz going. (Meili just got endorsed today by two former Cabinet Ministers and I wonder if that's an echo of the slow build that Obama saw in the States too when all the initial endorsements went to Hillary thinking she was a “safe” choice. Similarly, right now, the leader in the race, Dwain Lingenfelter has been endorsed by 10 of the 20 sitting Sask MLA's I think.)
– they drew names randomly for the order in which the candidates would speak and first up was…Dwain Lingen…I mean, Harry Van Mulligan [Edit: Mulligen – though I think he gets that all the time!]. The former Finance Minister was subbing in for Mr. Lingenfelter and I'm not sure how people will take this – I kinda got a sense that some people in attendance found it a bit insulting that all the other candidates could make the effort to attend but Mr. Lingenfelter couldn't. (To be fair, I have no idea what his reasons for not attending were – but again, there is a very sizable “anyone but Link” contingent out there and part of this is predicated on the fact that he is seen as having abandoned the party (and the province) for a plush government relations job with an oil company in Calgary when the NDP lost a previous election. Now he's coming back as if he's a knight on a white stallion but some people still think he's somebody who doesn't show up when he should and not appearing tonight doesn't help that reputation.)
– second on the list was Deb Higgins who is a sitting MLA from Moose Jaw. Her speech quite good but I almost wonder if this happens automatically when you've been in politics for awhile – both her and Mr. Van Mulligan [Mulligen] spoke like politicians instead of real people – safe platitudes while circling around issues instead of being direct. I don't know – maybe that's the reality of having to play it safe all the time so you never offend anyone. I guess that also means I'll never be a politician (er, not least because I have a blog where I post this – won't someone think of the children???)
– Next up was Yens Pedersen who's a young lawyer and former NDP party president. His speech was quite good (all were given a quote from an Allan Blakeney book about Saskatchewan's place in Canada and asked to speak to that). I'm not sure if this was intentional but he seemed to directly point out the absence of Mr. Lingenfelter in his remarks when he mentioned the other two candidates in attendance but failed to note the appearance of Mr. Van Mulligan [Mulligen], even in his substitute role.
– Ryan Meili drew the final spot which can be a blessing or a curse. Luckily, he quickly got the crowd on side with a funny joke I wish I could remember then launched into a speech that was…well, I wish I'd had my video camera there so you could be watching it on YouTube right now. He got tons of applause during his presentation and quite a few laughs as well. Of the three, he sounded the least like a politician and the most like a leader if that makes any sense.
I admit that I'm biased because I really like what Ryan Meili brings to the contest but now, having had occasion to hear all four candidates (okay, three and a proxy), I've solidified my support for Ryan Meili. Tonight, I think he stole the show and gave a big group of Regina-area NDP loyalists a lot to think about. (Afterwards, I talked to one person I knew from my undergrad days who said they didn't have a party membership but were thinking of taking one out, just to vote for Ryan!)
I also thought of another thing to add to my list of Ryan's similarities to Obama – he comes across as very cerebral and someone who puts a lot of deep thought into his opinions before speaking them.
– Shea was at home with Pace so I didn't stick around for the hob-nobbing afterwards but as I mentioned above, I did get to say 'hi' to a couple people I knew.
– I think I've also volunteered to help out with the online aspects of Ryan's campaign which I'm quite looking forward to. I watched what Obama did with the online aspects of his campaign very closely and would love to try to model some stuff for the Meili campaign in Saskatchewan.
In other Freedom of Expression news, Skittles, in an attempt to be hip 'n' happenin', basically allowed anyone to post to their home page via Twitter. This was the inevitable result (check out result four – and I've seen a lot worse come across the site as well…)
So, on somewhat short notice, Shea and I have decided to head for Sin City (except that we'll have Pace in tow so “sin” will be restricted to too much sugar and staying up later than 8pm.)
How this came about is that my parents called last weekend that they'd won a free flight to Vegas through their travel agent (having just gotten back from another trip.) They told us the date and coincidentally, it happened to be a week that Shea and I had already booked off…with the full intention of taking the time to do a bunch of work around the house, begin spring cleaning, stuff like that.
It didn't take us long to decide that “Vegas with a couple extra sets of hands” > “Scrubbing toilets so we called my folks back to see if they wanted company on their trip.
Cue mad scramble to renew passports (we had no plans to go anywhere further than Moose Jaw in the near future when they expired last year), book flights and hotel rooms and read everything we could on Vegas. I went when I was 21 but haven't been back since, Shea's never been so it's going to probably be pretty overwhelming for both of us. If anybody has tips, suggestions, “must do's” or anything else, feel free to post a comment or e-mail me directly. We're staying at the Excalibur which is family-themed and fairly inexpensive, we're planning to hit one (or possibly two) shows – likely Cirque's “Love” by the Beatles or possibly Penn and Teller, the best way to get rid of the time share salesmen is to say you're “leaving that day”.
I also think that for the first time in three years, I'm going to take a blog holiday and not post for the whole week. Our hotel (The Excalibur) charges $15/day for Internet or something, I don't think there's any public library on the Strip and there is free WiFi in the hotel's food court but it's apparently near a Krispy Kreme so that's the last place I should be hanging out. So if things fall silent from next Monday to Friday, you'll know why.
Until then, here's a little mood music (I was going to be all cool and alternative and link to the Dead Kennedys version but really, why would I do that when there's this clip on YouTube?)
It's a a great one that I go back to with some regularity, and especially now that I have a child of my own.
A few months back, I was contacted by the person who posted the original question. He was choosing some of his favourite answers that were submitted with the intent of producing a book based on the thread.
I just got word today that the book's now a reality as both an e-book and in hardcover. A version of the answer I provided made the cut so that's another publishing credit for the old resume, even if it's only a short piece in a self-published book!
I started the week talking about a discussion the librarians at RPL were having about the issue of patrons viewing pornography on the public access computers. Although this is an important philosophical discussion, I'm happy to report that (at least as far as I know), patrons' viewing isn't being monitored or censored and no policy changes, either at the library or at other levels, are being contemplated.
Libraries in Ontario may not be so lucky. A retired police officer in Cambridge Ontario saw someone looking at porn in the library and began a campaign to get filters on the library's computers. That's typical enough and happens with some degree of regularity in all public libraries I suspect.
But this situation has escalated. A local MPP in Cambridge took up the cause and has introduced a private members' bill that would legally require all school and public libraries in the province to install internet filters. It has gone through a first reading, and even though the OLA website points out that Private Members' bills rarely get passed, this is still cause for great concern, especially since it was introduced as an addendum to an existing private member's bill which the Cambridge MPP, Gerry Martiniuk has been trying to pass for awhile. The main thrust of the existing bill is to make public the list of sexual offenders. In other words, Martiniuk is lumping access to library computers with pedophiles and other sex offenders (And unfortunately, I'm sure he's not the only one who sees this as a connection – both in the wider world and in the library community itself.)
Many observers point out that Cambridge is “the only library system in the Region that doesn't use filters.” (which means that Kitchener, Waterloo, and the Region of Waterloo all filter at least the computers in their children's areas). The big difference is that Cambridge, with the full support of its board, is actively choosing not to filter. If this law passed, they could be legally required to filter as could every other public library in Ontario as well.
There has been some local media coverage of this story and many letters to the editor. But they've been fairly one-sided because (and I speak from personal experience here), it's pretty hard to come out in favour of porn – although there are some who are very articulate in the attempt.
Whether this bill has any impact remains to be seen but if there's any further developments, I'll post an update.
There's some pretty disturbing material here and if you doubt the power of the written word to affect people just as much as the visuals of pornography or the sound of foul language, look no further than this thread. It's sort of like a bunch of mini-me versions of the Aristocrats joke.
I was looking for a tamer joke to copy here as an example but I honestly couldn't find one. (That should be sufficient warning for anyone debating whether to click through to Reddit or not – or perhaps incentive for some!)
Here's an article about FTRW that appeared in Xtra.ca (“Where Queers Conspire”). They asked various Canadian literary types and free speech proponents to give their thoughts on some common and/or recently challenged books.
From the article's introduction:
Canada is a censorious country. Our nanny state bans most hate speech
(not the religious-based homophobic kind), stops erotica at the border
and may soon allow police to monitor all communication on the internet
— all to “protect” Canadians from reading, seeing and hearing material
that, somehow, will harm us. (Apparently the country's watchful agents
are able to view all this dangerous stuff without a problem.)
