Monday, August 03, 2009

ALA 2009: Twitter Confidential--@ALASecrets Interview

I don't post much about librarian things anymore, but I do keep up a little. I was fascinated by the reaction to the @ALASecrets Twitter mini-scandal, that "Oh no! Librarians are having fun! Unprofessional! They must be stopped!" as opposed to snickers. Check out the link in the title.

Check out these quotations from the interview:

"If people are honestly worried about how @ALAsecrets reflects on the profession, we're in bigger trouble than I thought. We have so much work to do right now to retool and reassert libraries' positions in the communities they serve that to worry about some Twitter experiment seems foolish at best."

"That said, we could stand to be a little more assertive and encourage candid criticism among our ranks."

"With six months until Midwinter, I might have time to form a committee, do some focus grouping, and see how much of the spirit I can take out of the project between now and then."

I just think it's a shame that there is no room for any sort of fun or criticism in librarianship.

To top it off, it's this hoary old chestnut that conference attendance is a) useful and b) a mark of dedication to professional skills and improvement and c) unofficially mandatory to try to attend in a lot of places, even if your job doesn't offer any sort of funding or reimbursement and you wind up burning a couple thousand dollars and vacation time to show you are such a good librarian sheep. It's bullshit really, and it makes me sad and angry.

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