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Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Library Week

Library week is coming up. It is the time to honor your library and librarians. (except the Aussie ones. I hear that they are not always a helpful bunch). So get out there to your local library, check out a few books and make a librarian happy.

Librarians are almost always very helpful and often almost absurdly knowledgeable. Their skills are probably very underestimated and largely underemployed. ~Charles Medawar
(I would like to add traditionally underpaid.)

Way back in July I did a whole post on things that have been said about librarians. Here are a few of my favorites.

[Librarians] are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them.
-Michael Moore
(I've always said that we were subtly subversive. It is best never to mess with us. I firmly believe that Dewey made up that stupid classification system just to screw with people's heads. I mean really folks, it makes no sense.)


"Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books."

--Guy Browning
(The Guardian column, 18 October 2003. Submitted by Lynette in Queensland)
(I pimp books. I love it. Except I'm not your typical librarian. I put historic stuff up on the internet. I guess that means that I pimp old stuff. I'm a purveyor of history. I like that better. Pimping old stuff sort of sounds like I pimp the elderly. The image in my head of elderly ladies turning tricks just creeps me out. Not to mention toothless old guys. Ewwwww.... Explaining to an octogenarian that no tongue kissing is allowed......well, uncomfortable.)

"For a well-rounded education, you could try curling up with good books and bad librarians". --Richard Needham
(JR is getting a t-shirt with this saying on it because there is nothing he likes better. )


"Perhaps the two most valuable and satisfactory products of American civilization are the librarian on the one hand and the cocktail in the other". --Louis Stanley Jast
(JR agrees whole heartedly with this sentiment. Most evenings he has a librarian on one hand and a cocktail in the other. The Boy tends to spend a lot of time telling us to "get a room").


"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read".
— Groucho MARX

Heard any good comments about libraries or librarians?


Love,

M

11 comments:

  1. I hear remarks about the library almost every Thursday night, when it's time for me to take The Young One to his Teen Council meeting, or his book club meeting, or his Creative Writers meeting, or his Anime/Manga meeting.

    "Moooooooom, c'mon - I want to be early so I can hang out."

    My 14-year-old son likes to hang out at the library. It could be the girls there, but who cares? He's hanging out at the public library.

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  2. Mousie: "Hey mum! D'ya know what? I really like the library lady at our school, mum. D'ya know what, mum? She lets us read the books."

    Ducky: "Going to the library is great fun. There's heaps of books in there and you don't even have to read them." (literary osmosis, perhaps?)

    Dragon: "I like going to the town library except that strange librarian chick weirds me out. She smiles at me funny when I borrow 15 books at once."

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  3. Library comments? The Groucho Marx one is the funniest I've heard!

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  4. I love the library!

    It is definitley my happy place.

    Happy Library week!

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  5. Don't forget the library staff (ie clerks) that have to do all the unpleasant work: Shifting the stacks of dusty old books, sorting mail, being everyone's pee-on, etc.

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  6. Sorry Val but I couldn't find any pithy comments about library clerks. It doesn't mean you aren't an important part of the library.

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  7. I don't have any librarian quotes for you. But I will say that you have my dream job. Well, that WAS my dream job until I volunteered at a library and found out you have to actually WORK, and not read all day.

    There is still that secret librarian living inside of me.

    I linked over to you through some complicated system of connecting through SITS and I am glad I did. (only complicated to me)

    Wishing you a very happy library week!

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  8. Going to the library use to be a weekly night out when the kids were younger. Now the kids stop on their own. :) Without me :(
    Daryl has listened to most of the audio books the local libraries have.

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  9. Oh, I forgot all about story time at the library. We may have to give it another try sometime soon. We quit going since the lady was MEAN. I know it's not all librarians, don't worry. This one just shouldn't be around kids.

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  10. My wife's dream job is to be a librarian. I'm going to go show her my appreciation.

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  11. That comment by Needham is classic! I would love to work at a library, but I would never get anything done. I would be reading constantly!

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