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9/15/2006

Filed under ... [shakes head]

This stumbled into my Bloglines this evening and although I hesitate to even highlight these archaic rantings I did laugh out loud after hearing my husband’s response to this passage ..

I heard lots of talk about how we need to do things to entertain kids, but, the question is "what is a public library?" Is it really a community meeting place? No, the town hall is.

Should it be a place to enjoy a book and a coffee? God no, do that at Barnes and Nobles.

A library is a place that the government provides to store media and information for public use.


“No. That’s what Google is!”

Anyway, as I said before I hestitated with great reservations in even posting this here since the writer obviously ... (rest of comment editted for censors). But it is sad to think that libraries have staff that actually do still think this way. No wonder some libraries continually fight an uphill battle.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good one Helene! Let's call this Unemployed 2.0.

Curtis Rogers said...

Too funny! "Unemployed 2.0" :-) I would much rather walk into a library like the new one in Bishopville, SC ( http://curtisrogers.blogspot.com/2006/09/enjoy-library.html ) that is warm and inviting to sit down and find a good book or use the Internet. The really interesting thing is about that person's posting is that it's on a blog! How very 2.0! :-) I think that person needs to attend more and more training to understand what libraries are more about: http://curtisrogers.blogspot.com/2006/09/libraries-building-community-through.html

Anonymous said...

surely this guy's kidding...

Anonymous said...

I'll happily provide the 300 people if he'd like to stand up and talk about what's important to him and then let people blog about his lousy performance.

Anonymous said...

"What if a library spends much of thier precious money on a product that in the next five years becomes obsolete?"

I agree wholeheartedly with the writer's reasoning. Let's also stop investing in things like any non-fiction that includes time-sensitive information (on taxes or medical topics, for example), computers for the public, multiple copies of bestsellers (we'll only need a couple of copies in five years!), the list goes on and on.

MissKat said...

I just keep asking myself who he thinks is paying his salary and who will be paying his salary five or ten years down the line...?

And if we aren't here to serve the public in the way they wish, why do we exist at all?

I would ask why he bothers going to work with his attitude?

Anonymous said...

Sheesh, what a dweeb! So if we want to figure out who he is, we look for a young male public librarian, probably in public service (a scary thought, but I think so with the comments in re PSP and cell phones), and possibly collecting or working in AV, particularly DVD.