Scrappers and hustlers: just what the library needs

This is the fourth post in a series celebrating National Library Week

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of librarianship is looking towards the future. Certainly no small feat, but librarians accomplish it in a manner of ways.

The most concrete example is youth and young adult librarianship. Supporting literacy at an early age is an essential aspect of making sure that we have healthy and successful communities in the future. I tip my hats to young adult librarians - I think the work they do is phenomenal and I don't think they often receive the credit they deserve. There are certainly some great future children librarians in my MLIS cohort, you can check out their blogs here and here and here.

I think librarians also look to the future by being on the pulse of tomorrow's evolution of information technology, understanding the importance of knowing how future patrons are going to consume and disseminate knowledge. It is a messy task, and not always well implemented. In many ways librarians were at first slow to embrace technological changes - but the newest generation of librarians will be sure not to repeat the same mistake.

I think the biggest task librarians have in front of us is making sure there even are libraries in the future. The infographic over at archives.com sums up the situation nicely.

I could go off on how we need effective advocacy, marketing, campaigning, blah blah blah blah. But we talk about that enough. While we are in a dire situation in terms of funding and support, I think the industry is going to be just fine: we have a new generation of library student who are already starting things off on the right foot.

Those of us who are a bit younger have been raised with technology that laid the ground work for the changes we are seeing today (The first time I went online was the third grade). We are used to change to the point that we embrace it. I've been using my google reader for a few years now, and it is starting to feel outdated. I'm ready for whatever is next.

And we are enrolled in Library and Information Science programs now, when things seem pretty bleak. We are graduating as scrappers. Knowing that we have to fight for the services, resources and money we want in our libraries. We're even fighting pretty hard just for jobs. We know how to hustle and we'll put these skills to use as we take over the industry.

To give it a really bad and cheesy science fiction analogy - we are the Fremen of Library Science. Raised in the harsh conditions of the desert planet Arakkis, we will be the ultimate fighters. Instead of fighting for control of the spice and thus control of the universe, we'll be figthing for universal access to information. Which is kind of the same thing, now that I think about it....

...bringing this blog back to reality, here are some of the library student's blogs that have raised my hope for the future:

Reference to the Rescue

I found myself in the library

Cat Lady Librarian

Magpie Librarian

Hack Library School

...I know there are many more out there - what are the blogs/librarians you follow that are giving you hope for the future??

photo credit: New York Public Library, 1938, via The Commons

what's a snooki?

It's been a tradition that after the Newbery and Caldecott Medal Winners are announced at the American Library Associations' Midwinter meeting the award recipients are interviewed on the Today show live in New York City. That didn't happen this year. Apparently the Today Show the morning after the meeting was already booked, and Matt Lauer interviewed...

...Snooki.

For those of you who don't know who Snooki is, she's famous for getting drunk on ron ron juice and smushing in front of millions of viewers on MTV's The Jersey Shore.

Really, today show? Really? You're going to promote Snooki's new "novel" over award winning children's literature? When America is clawing itself out of a horrible recession, there was a recent national tragedy and the political arena is so vitriolic its painful to watch the news, this is what you choose to put on your show?

Classy.

For those of who are as outraged as I am - there is a facebook campaign to try and get the Medal Winners back onto the today show. Who knows how successful it will be, but if facebook got Betty White onto SNL than it might just work for this campaign too.

And for those who are interested in who actually won the award, rather than the drama surrounding them, check out the Newberry Winner by clicking here and the Caldecott by clicking here.

maybe the children really are the future...

One day, a few months ago, I was bored at work scrolling through Publishers Weekly's website (I currently work for a corporate chain bookstore, and PW is one of three websites we can access at work - the other two being oure own and NPR) when I came across an amazing study put out by the National Endowment for the Arts, announcing that the number of Americans reading has finally gone up for the first time in almost a decade.

about. damn. time.

"At a time of immense cultural pessimism, the NEA is pleased to announce some
important good news. Literary reading has risen in the U.S. for the first time
in a quarter century," said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. "This dramatic turnaround
shows that the many programs now focused on reading, including our own Big Read,
are working. Cultural decline is not inevitable."

What I find most interesting about the study is that the demographic with the biggest jump were the youngins' - those aged 18-25. At first that kind of knocked my socks off. But after thinking about it for a bit, it did make sense. Right now in the bookstore, Young Adult is the fastest growing section.


Did Harry Potter save the written word?


We are still in the depth of Meyer's post-Potter Twilight mania. Between Charlaine Harris, P.C. Cast, Melissa De La Cruz, Laurell K. Hamilton, You can't walk throughout the store without bumping into at least one tween being sucked into the vampire genre.

Even in our independent reader section (aged 12-15), we are seeing crazy growth. You still have your classics - The Giver, Wrinkle in Time, Where the Red Fern Grows - but also some epic tales joining their ranks: Christopher Paolini's prodigal Inheritance Cycle, Erin Hunter's ever-expanding Warrior Series and my personal favorite Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. This series is so amazing, I'm convinced that Mr. Riordan is coating his pages with crack and selling them to children. If he wasn't such a good writer, I'd be the first demanding he be thrown in jail....

I have to say, as I shelve in our kids department, it a pretty exciting time to be twelve years old living in today's literary world. So in the end, it's not surprising to me that the younger readers have increased the most in the past few years, and hopefully this will be a trend that will continue to head in the right direction...