This Book Is Overdue! by Marilyn Johnson

And the chapter on “Second Life” librarians made me, um, feel a lot better about the time I spend on Goodreads. The chapter that compassionately contrasts the desire of an aging New York librarian, who wants to preserve a unique but rarely used collection, with the push of young, hipper librarians who focus on customer service and the needs of the broader public, is well done. Should the book be a serious analysis of the manner in which libraries and librarians are changing, for better or for worse, with the rise of technology? Should it be a memoir-ish narrative of the author's experience visiting libraries (both in real and Second Life) and librarians? What about a huggy chapter on teaching potential librarians from developing cultures how to use technology to improve the lives of their patrons? These parts coalesce less into a coherent whole and more into what seems like what could have been a long magazine article stretched thin into an undersized book with large font. And I knew they wouldn't disturb me until closing time.This Book is Overdue is a quick read with an identity crisis. They were the authors of this opportunity-diversion from the economy and distraction from snow, protectors of the bubble of concentration I'd found in the maddening world. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or in this case, guardians of my peace. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. I knew the librarians would help me figure out anything I needed to know later-I was under the librarians' protection.

I'm sure it didn't matter if the book had RFID tags or a checkout card with a ladder of scrawled names, though tags were neat. Yes, exactly: I needed to be under a didn't matter who I was, or what I did, or where I paid taxes, or how long I stayed. The relief of being in someone else's hands. Not a manual: something with a narrative, a chute built by a writer and waxed until the reader fell into it and skittered right to the end without stopping. Perhaps I was suffering from a touch of information sickness? If I could weed out my thoughts.There was one reliable cure I've found, a bit of the hair of the dog-the release in reading. “I regretted my human form briefly it would be so much easier to drag and rope information into the brain as neatly as one dragged and dropped information on the computer.

This Book Is Overdue! by Marilyn Johnson