Tell Someone You Care. Buy a Book (without the “e”)

Let me first say that I am a Kindle owner and a Kindle lover.  I love being able to get just about any book I want instantly, the convenience of being able to carry my entire eBook collection with me wherever I go, the size that fits so easily (and lightly!) into my purse…eBooks certainly have their place in my life.  But this weekend I was also reminded of at least one major role of books that eBooks (at least at this point) can’t replace.

This weekend I was a guest at my friend’s baby shower.  It was requested that instead of bringing cards with the gifts we bring a favorite children’s book and write a message inside the front cover.  This is a trend I’ve seen a few other times over the last year (my mom’s cousin, a friend’s sister-in-law) and I think it’s adorable.  I’ve never really been a fan of greeting cards and rarely bother with them.  They usually just end up in the trash, at best in a drawer/box that never gets looked in again.  But putting a message in a beloved book totally changes that.  The message becomes part of many memories, instead of the one brief moment before you open your gift, and remains a part of the owners life far beyond that of an ordinary greeting card with a pre-packaged messaged.

My most-valued item in my own collection is a 1921 print of Little Women that my grandmother gave me on my 10th birthday.  Inside, she wrote a short happy birthday message with the date under a similar message her grandmother wrote for her when she gave it to her on her birthday decades before.  I now plan to give the same book to my granddaughter one day with a similar message of my own.  That book represents the history and love of a family.  Similarly, this weekend a friend of mine gave me Green Eggs and Ham as an early birthday present with a message inside wishing me a fun, adventurous future.  Though that too came with a real card, I know the card will eventually disappear, but the book and its inscription will always stay with me and remind me of my friend and her thoughtfulness when I share the book with my children in the future.

eBooks are wonderful.  They are fast and convenient and make life easier in a lot of ways.  But physical books provide a human connection that eBooks can’t.  We share old favorites with one another, books that inspire feelings and memories of our own and that we hope will provide similar experiences for those we care about.  Through inscriptions, we can remind each other of how much we care and make a new set of memories in the process.  None of this can be done with eBooks.  Maybe it will be possible in the future (and I really hope it is if those who believe eBooks will kill physical books all together are right), but for now physical books fill an indispensable role in our lives and in our personal histories.

Why is Preservation Important to You?

This question was posed to my cultural heritage preservation class a few weeks ago (I’m a little behind on my blogging again).  Preservation is important to me because I believe it’s extremely important to maintain a source of history beyond the history books.  Time has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that the history books are always skewed, be it for the favor a leader, the favor of the victors, to save face for a country, etc.  But more than that it’s easy to forget that history isn’t just a story or a list of facts we need to remember for a test.  When I read letters from the Civil War, I remember that these were real people with real loved ones and real lives to get back to.  When I flip through a book from the early 1900′s I get a glimpse of what were the real norms of their every day lives, the kind of stuff that doesn’t make it to the history books.  By preserving manuscripts, artifacts, rare books, etc, we are keeping the lives of the little people in history.  And isn’t that just as, if not more, important than the leaders and politicians?

Wise Advise from Our Elders

Today I met with a 75 year old retired school librarian who has turned unpaid archivist for a local historical society in her post retirement days.  Not only was the meeting extremely entertaining as she shared her no-nonsense approach to running an archive, but she also had some extremely good advice.

1. Always ask for four times the supplies you actually believe you need, because the odds of you being able to ask for more later is slim to none.
2. Always tell those who control the budget what you need with the utmost authority.  Leave no wiggle room in your words.
3. Ask your patrons questions about their research.  Often they know more about the subjects they are researching than you do from the years they’ve dedicated to it and everyone loves to show off what they know.
4. Approach every job, even a volunteer position, like it’s the most serious job you’ve ever had.  Every boss is a reference and when a million people are applying for the same job, every good word is one more edge on the competition.  Just because it’s not your dream job doesn’t mean it’s not a part of the puzzle that will bring you your dream job.
5. Develop an intuition when it comes to research and organize accordingly.  Organize in a way that makes it easier for your patrons to find and a way that makes it easier for you to access things.
6. Don’t always expect the patron to do their own work.  More often than not, even with all the tools in the world available to them, they’ll still ask you to find the materials they need.
7. Always play innocent

There is an infinite world of knowledge available to us through those that came before us.  Don’t be afraid to ask.  Not everything will apply to you or your world view (she also had some advice, for example, of playing up my feminine innocence to get what I want), but I’m sure you’ll find something to take away from it all.  I hope you all can learn something from these tips as well

Stereotypes

In this field, we seem to be very very aware of the “librarian stereotype” and, frankly, mostly seem to be a little defensive about it.  But in all honesty, do we have any reason to be more angry about stereotypes than anybody else?  If you really think about it, don’t most fields have stereotypes?  Doctors are all arrogant, politicians all lie and cheat on their wives, football players are all a bunch of thugs, everyone in Hollywood is shallow, and executives are just heartless.  And how many of us have worked retail for a time period just to have 75% of our customers treat us like we must be total morons without a future?

I’m not saying any of these stereotypes are fair and, admittedly, I’ve had plenty of my defensive moments (especially those regarding the “crazy cat lady” image), but maybe it would help us to remember we aren’t the only ones with a target on our backs.  Instead of getting angry, prove the stereotype believers wrong.  Fight the stereotype by being the kind of librarian you really want to be instead of letting the talk turn you into the old crank so many see us as.  Stereotypes exist everywhere and millions of people have to fight to overcome them everyday.  Maybe if we remember we aren’t alone in the war, we’ll find a way to change the stereotype from the outside in.