by Sarah Statz Cords
If Marilyn Johnson was looking to sell a book to librarians and collection developers who buy their libraries’ books, she couldn’t have chosen a better topic or title than This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. Whether or not the book will sell to the general public might be more difficult to say*; but I would guess that even the most flinty-hearted of information professionals melt when they see the cover image of a super librarian, complete with cape and librarian glasses, on the front cover.
Johnson clearly loves using libraries, and has respect for librarians and cybrarians of all types, whether they are providing reference help in the streets of New York during the 2008 Republican Convention or they are virtual librarians organizing libraries and collections in Second Life. Her coverage is broad: she first discusses the possibility of information overload in our modern society, and then goes on to tell stories about the divide between librarians and IT staff members, librarian bloggers, librarians who resisted the Patriot Act, long-distance master’s degree students, “anarchist” librarians, librarian stereotypes, Second Life volunteer librarians, and staff members of the New York Public Library.
Any type of librarian who has practiced for any time at all will recognize much here: the frustrations the IT staff have with the public staff (and vice versa); the struggle to remain relevant in a world where more information seems to be available than ever before (but it is surprisingly hard to find specific and helpful information); the question of the lengths to which librarians should go to reach out to patrons; even the surprisingly common challenge of finding unidentified poop in unexpected places in one’s library. To some extent Johnson’s description of the varied experiences and challenges of the profession is admirable, especially as she is a writer and not a library staffperson herself.
But that is also, for me, where the book failed. Although I would imagine that many readers who pick this book up will be library staff members, I don’t know that they are really its target audience. Reading the book as both a former academic and public librarian, my overwhelming feeling was one of “yeah, okay, so?” to most of the chapters (although I enjoyed the chapter on Second Life, which I’ve never really understood and still don’t, more than I expected to). Of course there’s a ton of librarians who blog. Yes, librarians have always been very aware of their stereotype, and many now subvert those stereotypes in varied and wonderful ways. And yes, of course, there’s poop in the public library. (What she neglected to mention was the wet butt-prints left by diaper-wearing babies plopped by their mothers on library counters and desks; vomit; used Kleenexes handed to staff; and books returned to the book drop that are saturated with cat urine.)
I wanted to love it; I ended up pretty ambivalent about it, and really only finished it because I wanted to review it here. (And I certainly preferred her earlier book, The Dead Beat, about obituaries and obituary writing.) Has anyone else read this one who wants to disagree with me? Let’s discuss!
*Although it and its author are getting some good press: As was pointed out at EarlyWord.com, Johnson has been interviewed at NPR and at Salon. It has also been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal (and this review is right on, in my opinion), the Boston Globe, Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly. Another librarian’s take on the book can be found at Ricklibrarian.
