A drawing of the head and shoulders of a fluffy tuxedo cat done in red marker on a whiteboard. He is looking at the viewer and has a heart floating above his head
When my teenager visits the library where I work, she draws tiny pictures of our cat on the whiteboards for the undergraduates to find
Can verify
A hailstone the size of a lemon behind held by a white hand. There is a green lawn covered in hailstones in the background.
I have lived in the upper Midwest my whole life. I have never seen hail like we got last night
Tabby stands on hind legs with one paw outstretched toward a TV displaying a capsule above water.
NASA failed to predict the real splashdown risk.
The book “The Five Laws of Library Science” by S.R. Ranganathan sitting on a green couch. A pencil is sticking out of the top and red tabs on the side.
Prepping for a keynote in June. It’s everything.
I am genuinely not sold on the idea that making large data sets out of previously only available physically items and then setting it free into the world counts as a positive, transformative act for the good of the world.
Where, how, and why people encounter information matters.
Text of "Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)" by Muriel Rukeyser. Text is online at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/poem-i-lived-in-the-first-century-of-world-wars
Muriel Rukeyser, always but especially today. Full text at www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/...
Rolled the big screen out into the library’s first floor common area because we are going to watch people fly around the moon, everyone! #ArtemisII
I am now picturing an arena full of BTAA librarians. There’s a single microphone at mid-court. The line for that microphone is orderly and epic. ESPN cannot believe the viewership
Miss Page, the bunny librarian from Richard scary books, hides behind three enormous stacks of books, only her ears can be seen.
The fox librarian screams and throws her books.
The two types of librarian conflict management as illustrated by Richard Scarry. Which are you?
There is a lot of writing about AI psychosis and how hard it is to witness or experience significant delusions. Today, I’m thinking much smaller - librarians now have to walk patrons back out of confusion caused by generative AI as a regular part of our work. It’s labor-intensive and disturbing
My kid went really, really hard this time
The back side of a protest sign. It looks like the Burn Book from Mean Girls - it is folded like it has a spine, is painted pink, covered in lipstick kisses, and says “Burn Book” in black and white paint
The front of the Burn Book protest sign. In Sharpie, it reads “DONALD TRUMP IS TOO FASCIST TO FUNCTION” on the left and “stop trying to make MAGA happen it’s not going to happen!!!” on the right with an alarmingly accurate cartoon drawing of the president
My 13-year-old went SUPER hard on her No Kings sign
Those suburban book club members will never be the same!
Someone should give you a “beach reads” feature
So what we’re saying is it’s very effective at what it does (stressing you out so badly you either must or can’t stop)!
(By which I mean to say - 💯 to calling it a horror memoir)
I couldn’t get past the incident from her childhood that begins the book. It was so protracted, disturbing, and unexpected that I had to stop reading
Knowing who to be mad at is praxis.
Agreed. The deployment of credentials + the “librarianship is dead because IT” trope + unsubstantiated assertions about advanced search features on a famously black box product = many yikes. The giddy speed with which the post is circulating just put me over the top
Neat. My use of the word “dissolved” was in response to the first two paragraphs under the header “The Skill Nobody Told You You’d Need.” Your take is more nuanced than what I was reacting to
Well said! Most of these “tips” are just shortcuts to advanced search features. Those that aren’t? Who knows!
So we don’t know that these actually work, as most aren’t in Google’s documentation. Also the way this person writes about librarianship is inaccurate. As a reference librarian, I’m surprised this is circulating as fast as it is
Good thread (and not just because the good professor links to Anna’s and my article), but this bit is the whole game. Never take your eye off this particular ball when talking about any corporation who makes money by selling information or any form of access to it
Google is a hammer. The OPAC is a saw. Reference librarians are carpenters who can’t be replaced by our tools, despite how popular the claim that we have been might be 4/
Search engines didn’t replace the card catalog. That’s like saying “the bandsaw replaced the screwdriver.” OPACs replaced card catalogs. While the metadata from some of them is discoverable in Google, their contents are not. All the unsubstantiated search tips in the world won’t change that 3/
Quite surprising to wake up on a Sunday morning to discover that my profession was “dissolved” at some unspecified point in the past. It must have been a recent development, as I could swear I spent 12 hours last week answering reference questions 2/
Okay so a few things here, but first and foremost: we have no way to substantiate that these suggestions work, except for the ones that Google describes in their own documentation. And if they’re already in Google’s documentation, then we don’t need this post. But also - 1/
I want to ask a whole host of follow-up questions of these students to learn what being failed by “library systems” means. I assume that the answers would average out to precisely what you’ve said here - they hit a point of frustration or effort and backed off, rather than seeking assistance