About This Book Is Overdue! and other library poop (literally)

Title: This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All
Author: Marilyn Johnson
Publication Year: 2010
Pages: 288
Genre: Nonfiction
Count for Year: 2 (Sad but true)

How I discovered

Perhaps not surprisingly, I discovered this one on the new book shelf at our local library, where I’ve been working part-time.

The setup

This Book Is Overdue! is a romp through the ranks of information professionals and a revelation for readers burned out on the clichés and stereotyping of librarians. Blunt and obscenely funny bloggers spill their stories in these pages, as do a tattooed, hard-partying children’s librarian; a fresh-scrubbed Catholic couple who teach missionaries to use computers; a blue-haired radical who uses her smartphone to help guide street protestors; a plethora of voluptuous avatars and cybrarians; the quiet-law abiding librarians gagged by the FBI; and a boxing archivist. These are just a few of the visionaries Johnson captures here, pragmatic idealists who fuse the tools of the digital age with their love for the written word and the enduring values of free speech, open access and scout-badge-quality assistance to anyone in need.

– from the jacket of the book

The review

First, let me start by saying that this book isn’t a romp as described above. That said, it still is worth reading, yes, even checking out of your local library, especially for the first seven of 12 chapters in the book, and most especially, in my opinion, for Chapter 4 titled “The Blog People.”

In this chapter, Johnson, a former staff writer for Life, focuses on these blogging librarians, who as she describes them have taken “to blogging with a vengeance.” This chapter caught my attention in particular because recently I started an intermittent series on my other blog, Unfinished Rambler (the posts from which in the next month to two months will be consolidated into this blog) called “Things You Didn’t Know About Your Local Library,”

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI

and I thought what I was doing was a novelty. Lo and behold, and, alas, it isn’t as, according to, as cited by Johnson, librarian Rory Litwin wrote in 2002 over the proliferation of what he called “Wild Librarian” websites, “They are multiplying like rabbits.”

However, I am pleased to learn that the genesis of my blogging about our local library was not dissimilar to the genesis of a blog called Happyville Library, according to Johnson, by a blogger who calls herself “The Happy Villain.”

I remember a long, lovingly written  post about checking in a DVD with go in its slipcase. “What’s worse? White goo or brown goo?” she mused. “I’m struggling right now with that question. ” Finally, she decided, “Goo is never good.”

Agreed.

I began my series about our local library, based off a comment by one of the librarians about how one terrible two-year-old pulled down his diaper and pooped in a vent one day, unknown to his mother, and I am only beginning to learn firsthand about white goo and the smells that linger on DVD slipcases from a man who has cats and who doesn’t take regular baths. I have yet to encounter brown goo, but I expect by this summer, that I will find “rogue turds” as the Happy Villain calls them:

“Yes,” she told me, “people have left poop in the most unbelievable places. Mostly down in the youth department, but we have found what I have dubbed ‘rogue turds’ all over the library. What amazes me is that other librarians e-mail me routinely and say they too find them and are somewhat comforted to know it’s not just their patrons doing this, but everyone’s…People from faraway places like England, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia let me know that it happens there as well. People are strange creatures.”

Again, agreed.

This morning, I saw a couple reviews on Good Reads where the reviewers didn’t think Johnson should talk about poop for six pages as she did and also thought she was a little too unfocused with the book and inserted herself into the book too much. Personally, I disagree with them about the poop as poop is a part of life and, I guess, libraries too, but I agree that the book overall wasn’t focused, she could have left herself out more and not lost anything, and I think that the book’s subtitle didn’t live up to its promise.  Where she particularly got bogged down was during a 33-page chapter called “Wizards of Odd” in which she recounted her own personal experiences with interacting with librarians in a virtual world called Second Life. From that point on, I just felt like I was chugging through the book to finish it.

All this said, bottom line, I give the book a 3 out of 5 because of those redeeming chapters, including one in which she interviewed a group of librarians who fought the FBI over accessing their library’s records in Connecticut, under my rating system:

5- Classic, must read
4- Worth owning a copy
3- Worth picking up at library
2- Worth skimming at the bookstore
1- Worth being a doorstop

For a list of the top 50 librarian blogs as determined by the folks at Get Degrees, which include many that Johnson mentioned in her book, click here. Not that I need any more blogs to add to my reader, but I probably will add more than a few from the list.