There's something about . . . Librarians

I like librarians. There. I've said it.

When I was a kid I was terrorized by cranky women whom I presumed to be such at the Monmouth County Library (then entirely contained in a very old house in Freehold). They were not, of course, but merely clerks paid to sit at the front desk and stamp the cards in the back of the books. It was many years before I got up the courage to approach one of those clerks and ask to speak to . . . . The Librarian.

He turned out to be a rather happy (if somewhat distracted) fellow who seemed overjoyed at the prospect of helping me; particularly as I wanted more help than direction to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Only much later did I realize that my request might have been his only opportunity that month to be a real librarian.

Real librarians know the difference between facts and information -- between data and knowledge -- between being told and learning. And (here's the secret) they'll help you figure it out for free. No, they really will! The rise of the internet and the explosion of information does not mean that we need fewer librarians (although we may need fewer libraries), it means instead that we need many more.

It happens that I have in mind a particular librarian, the proprietress of Mary's Library. She is an honest-to-God librarian, living among her own mountain of books. Did she live in a less geologically stable locale than Spokane, burial beneath a pile would be a daily hazard. The blog is about whatever she fancies but, being (at the end of the day) a Librarian, it can't help but be mostly about books. Go take a look.