Will Unwound

Just when I have internalized all the conventional wisdom that the glue and paper book is on a fast track to the thrift shop, the antique store, the museum, and the landfill, I have this ah hah moment where I simply unable to envision a world without glue and paper.

Yes, it is cheaper to produce and buy ebooks.  Yes, with an ereader, every person can have an almost limitless personal library in the cloud.  Yes,  you can enlarge the print on an ebook.  And yes, with its internally illuminated screen it is ideal for bedtime reading for people with partners.  I get all those things, and grudgingly accept them.

But yesterday there I was happily ensconced at my local public library where I am a proud trustee.  I had commandeered an entire study table and was researching exterior trim designs for a California mission style house.  As you know from various blog posts I have written, I am building a new California mission style house in the historical part of town.  I want the “look” to be right…just right.  That’s why I keep going back to the library every two weeks or so.  My approach is always the same.  I amass a stack of maybe 15 or 20 books and then I open them to the pertinent pages.  At any one time I may have as many as 12 open books spread all over the study table.  That way I can compare and contrast the text and photos in a very direct way.

Ah hah!  Can I do that with an eReader?  I don’t think so unless they’ve come up with an app I’m not aware of.

When 6 year old Connor and 4 year old Sophia accompany me on my research trips to the library, the first stop is always to the children’s room so they can have their stacks of books to look at while I’m looking at architectural details.  On any given day Connor can be into dinosaurs and Sophia can be into ballerinas.  Hmmmm….their approach is exactly the same as mine.  Spread out a bunch of dinosaur books open to the pertinent page (in this case, the formidable T Rex).  Isn’t that really what research is…get all the relevant resources together in one place at one time and decide which ones are best?

Ah hah!  Can that be done with an eReader?

Today I get home from a 5th straight frustrating round of golf.  My chipping stroke has gone wonky.  I head for my man cave (the garage) and my man cave library (35 golf instructional books).  I pull out my 54 degree wedge, spread 7 of the golf books (Palmer, Player, Boros, Nicklaus, Hogen, Miller, and Tiger) on the floor, examine the various styles, start chipping golf balls off a little Navajo rug (my wife will never know) into a bucket tipped sideways until I find a style that works.

Ah hah.  Glue and Paper trumps glass and plastic.

Just three months after he was fired from his job as head football coach for Penn State University, Joe Paterno died.  From all internet accounts, his death was treated in Pennsylvania with the respect and attention normally reserved for heads of state.

Paterno, of course, is the man Pennsylvanians affectionally call “Joe Pa” probably because he was a father figure for so long.  He coached at Penn State from 1950 to 2011 and won a zillion games.  Stubbornly refusing to retire voluntarily and even more stubbornly resisting every attempt by the Penn State administration to force him to retire, Paterno soldiered on as Head Coach through the age of 86.

Although every praiseworthy thing that can be said about a person has been said about Paterno this past week, I still feel sorry for him.  I feel especially sorry after learning that he had 17 grandchildren.

Big time college football is a meat grinding money machine.  Yes, the head coaches make millions of dollars in salary but in return they sacrifice their lives.  The average work day is around 18 hours and that doesn’t include the never ending recruiting trips that they have to take to sweet talk 18 year old high school prima donnas into going to their school.

I feel sorry for Paterno because he became a prisoner of his own success.  It’s how he defined himself.  In fact he was once quoted as saying that he didn’t want to retire because it would kill him.  He was right.

Apparently no one ever told Paterno that retirement is the time period when you can really evolve as a human being…mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.  Why?  Because you have the freedom and you have the time.  You’re no longer working for the man.  You can be the person you always wanted to be.  You can follow your bliss.

It’s even better if you’ve been blessed with grandchildren.  I see grandparents taking grandkids to the library, I see them waiting outside the door at school to pick them up and drive them home, I see them playing with them at the park, and there is always this glow of happiness.

This is not an easy world in which to raise children.  They have all kinds of influences and temptations that we never had to deal with.  It’s the kind of world where it’s good to have a grandpa and a grandma.

That’s why I feel sorry for Joe Pa.  He may have been a father figure to everyone in the state of Pennsylvania, but did that leave him enough time to be a grandpa to his own grandchildren?

An Unwinder, I think it was Linda, suggested we start putting together plans for a major library conference here in the Unwinder’s Tavern.  I’m all for it. Since the Tavern lives in the cloud, we can float anywhere and plunk it down in any city or galaxy, but no, not Dallas…I prefer Ft. Worth… and we can hold it at any time of the year.  This is going to require a tavern group think.  Listed below are my ideas for persons, places, and programs.  No doubt you have your own ideas.  So let’s have them.

Here are my preferences (but I can be overruled…get out your aluminum baseball bats):

Place: New York City (great art museums for conference downtime)

Time: Christmas time (no place better for Christmas)

Musical entertainment: Harry Connick Jr. and Diana Krall, best tavern singers alive.

Tavern Chef: Martha Stewart (her pies and tarts are  heavenly)

Tavern Mixologists: Boris and Maggie

Bar Food: spiced cashews and hot popcorn

Tavern Security: Mick

Reception, Social Event, and Party Planner:  P.C. Sweeney, J.P Porcaro, and the ALA Think Tank

Conference Correspondents: Bev Goldberg and George Eberhart from American Libraries (they’re awesome)

Keynote Speakers: Michael Gorman (The Library Profession’s Finest Mind) and Nancy Pearl (America’s Favorite Librarian)

Author Panel: Seance with John Updike and John Cheever

Top Technology Trends Speaker: Joe Schallan (Tells it like it is and makes you want to laugh and cry simultaneously)

Management Speaker: Jenica Rogers (If I’m head of a library director search committee, my search begins and ends with her.  She’s the best, and she gives great presentations)

Notable Book List Arbiters: Bill Ott and the Booklist Gang (Best book people in the business.  No one is close to them.)

YA Author: John Green (nuff said)

Children’s Author: Seance with A. A. Milne.

Debate: Safe Library Guy, Dan Kleinman vs. Intellectual Freedom Office Director, Barbara Jones

Cataloging Workshop: R.A. Stewart (the man’s a guru)

Ebooks: Jamie LaRue (he’s way far ahead of the rest of the profession)

Reference – Past, Present, and Future: Jim Rettig (the librarian for all seasons).

Comic Relief – The Annoyed Librarian

Comic Relief 2.0 – The Effing Librarian

Academic Libraries – Barbara Fister (plus she tells great mysteries)

Program Titles I would like to see:

• “Top Ten Tips For How to Get Out of the Director’s Doghouse after you’ve gotten drunk and insulted his/her spouse at the staff Christmas Party”
• Mud Wrestling Tournament – “Catalogers vs. Metadata Specialists”
• Vendor Presentation – “The Robotic Bookdrop that does Home Invasions of Chronic Delinquent Borrowers”
• “The Origin of Catalogers – Alien Invasion or the Lost Tribe of Israel?”
• “Top Ten Uses of Obsolete Reference Librarians”
• “Top Ten Uses of Deceased Catalogers”
• “A Psychiatrist’s Field Guide to Problem Patrons”
• “Top Ten Ways to Keep Patrons Away from You”
• “The Cataloging/Reference Divide: Can it be Bridged”
• “How you can tell if Your Child Will Grow Up to be a Cataloger”
• “Top Ten Signs that Your Circ Clerk may be on the Verge of a Psychotic Episode”
• “Cave Man Returns Library Book 20,000 Years Overdue:  How to Get Good Publicity for your Library”
• “Bankruptcy Advice for LIS students with 5 digit student loans”
•  ”Using the Obituaries to get a jump on Library Job Openings”
• Vendor Presentation: New iPhone App – “Angry Librarians”

The conventional wisdom about readers advisory work is that you turn around the patron interview.

If the patron asks you for some good reading material, it’s effective to find out a little something about the patron.  What authors have you enjoyed in the past? What topics are you mainly interested in? What format do you prefer?  These are all good questions to ask.

But how about age?  Do you take the age of the patron into consideration?

I bring this up because I am beginning to realize that age matters. The older I get the less I want to fritter away the time.  Time is more precious than ever so give me something substantial.  Something I can carry with me beyond the grave. Something that speaks to the soul. Something wise.

I’m embarrassed to admit it but I used all of you as guinea pigs last weekend when I asked you to respond to my post on wisdom imparting books.  You Unwinders unwittingly did a great job of giving me some wonderful suggestions for my retirement reading.  Thanks for taking the time.  If you didn’t respond, it’s not too late.  I can only read one book suggestion at a time.  The reader reactions to Post #662 are something that I will always treasure. Thanks again.

A few years ago, Pete Hamill, an author I really like, wrote  a very revealing book entitled A Drinking Life.  This book reminded me of a book by another great author, Jack London, entitled John Barleycorn.  Both books are about how alcohol drew the arc of each man’s life.  They are at the same time fascinating and terrifying true confessionals.

If I were to write a true confessional the title would be A Reading Life.  When did my addiction start?  Blame my mother who read to me constantly.  The literary character who really got me hooked was Freddy the Pig.  Mom and I pigged out on this quirky but lovable porker until we had exhausted the entire Freddy collection at the local teacher’s college library, Glassboro State, which had a fabulous children’s collection. Then I was old enough to read on my own and it was baseball all day and under the covers at night with a flashlight.   Mrs. DuBois, my legendary fifth grade teacher, introduced me to history, and at the age of  11, I had found my college major.  In high school, I worked away at all those reading lists for “college bound” students…everything from Shakespeare to Salinger, and I got high on the classics.  On to college and it was time for more heavy, hard core stuff – philosophy and theology.  Then in graduate library school I enjoyed a second childhood in Mrs. Gehres’ kiddie lit class.  I got to enjoy Freddy the Pig and Peter the Rabbit all over again.  Then I got hooked on a very grown up rabbit with very grown up problems…the Rabbit tetralogy by John Updike.  From there it was on to a third childhood with the births of my 3 boys.  When my professional career veered into management, I found myself trekking through the messy muck of “how I run my business good” management fad du jour books (many of those businesses went south after publication date).  Then four grandchildren suddenly arrived and I have been enjoying my fourth childhood ever since.

Conclusions:

• Children’s literature seems to be the one and only constant in my reading life. So all of you people who go to library school to become technogeeks, do yourself a favor and take kiddie lit. It keeps coming in handy.
• Age does make a difference…a big difference… with reading tastes.
• I don’t think I could get past page 3 of a baseball book today.
• I am still checking off titles from the “Reading List for College Bound Students” that I was given in 1964.
• Young adult literature never really existed when I was a young adult.  Did I miss something?
• I have discovered that there is a Freddy the Pig chat group on the internet.  Wow.

Questions of the Day in the Unwinders Tavern:

• In reader’s advisory work should we stop asking “what kinds of authors do you like?” and start asking “where do you want to take your reading in the future?” or better yet “where do you want to take your life in the future?”
• Are we in the library profession spending way to much time discussing format and not nearly enough time discussing content?
• Have a drink and tell us all about the arc of your reading life. I’ve got all day.

To read the funniest newspaper article I have ever read about librarians by a non-librarian please click on The Librarians of America Just About Destroyed Wild Salsa on Saturday Night.  It’s about librarian revelry (i.e. eating and drinking and partying) at the late great ALA Midwinter Conference that closed down yesterday in Dallas.

I wasn’t there but I did the next best thing: I followed the 24/7  Twitter streaming of the conference, and, yeah, there did seem to be a lot of partying going on. In fact there was one lively group of librarians ironically calling itself the ALA Think Tank that seemed to be unapologetically dedicated to the concept of partying hard.  Certainly seems to me like an alternative to sitting around, drinking coffee, and discussing linked open data.   I think this ALA Think Tank is on to something important.  Might be a good incentive to join ALA if you are so inclined.

Many years ago (possibly 1972) as a young pup reference librarian working the night shift at the Hammond (IN) Public Library, just an oil slick east of Chicago, I asked my director, Mr. Hayward, for time off to attend the annual convention of the American Library Association.

“No,” he replied sternly, “but I will give you time off to go to the Annual Conference of the American Library Association.”

“Conference, convention.  I don’t get it.  What’s the difference?”

In his most magisterial voice he replied, “Plumbers go to conventions; librarians go to conferences.”

I never really understood the distinction until years later when I found myself in an Atlantic City hotel that was serving as headquarters for a large convention of plumbers.  Instantly, I knew what Mr. Hayward was talking about.  The lobby was filled with pot bellied plumbers wearing funny hats, singing rowdy songs, blowing high pitched noise makers, and being followed around by short skirted young women selling gambling chips and other human services.

What I had stumbled into was a convention, the purpose of which seemed wholly to have fun.  Further research corroborated this hypothesis.  With the objectivity of an anthropologist observing a tribe of South Sea Islanders, I discovered that indeed conventions are rowdy binges of excess characterized by ubiquitous kegs of beer, wandering brass bands, and exotic dancers popping out of 6 foot cakes.

Conferences, on the other hand, are characterized by meetings, forums, speeches, lectures, workshops, seminars, exhibits, and resolutions about world problems.  Oops, I forgot to mention the social aspects of a conference.  For fun, conference goers drink cheap wine and eat stale cheese provided by exhibitors and run two and a half miles (mostly uphill) in something ironically called a “Fun Run.”

Seems to me from reading the Dallas newspaper story that the ALA Think Tank  is doing its job well and turning ALA conferences into conventions.  Who’d have thunk it?

Question of the Day:  For you what is the true value of library conferences/conventions:

• Getting advance readers editions and other swag at exhibit booths.
• Attending Council meetings and passing resolutions about publisher ebook policies.
• Protesting SOPA.
• Attending motivational seminars by guru types.
• Sitting in the coffee shop and trading library director horror stories.
• Sitting in the Uncommons area and discussing linked open data.
• Attending speeches by Hollywood celebrities who a) tell librarians how to dress, b) wax rhapsodically about how much their library meant to them growing up, and c) scare everybody about global warming.
• Networking.
• Voting on Notable Books Lists.
• Going to author events.
• Wearing a tee shirt that proclaims “I WILL BE YOUR SLAVE” in the placement center while looking for a job.
• Eating, drinking, and reveling.
• Other

Speaking of conferences: My 2012 speaking calendar is filling up quickly, so if you want me at your conference/convention please get in touch with me asap.  You can get all my speaking info by clicking on: How to Hire Will for a Presentation.

In 1945 the big toy for Christmas was the Slinky.

In 1952 it was Mr. Potato Head.

In 1955 it was the Hula Hoop.

In 1970 it was the Nerf ball.

In 1980 it was the Rubik Cube.

In 1996 it was Tickle Me Elmo.

In 2011 it was the eReader, and now librarians everywhere are paying the price:

• · “I got this thing for Christmas and my daughter said that it would change my life because I can make the print bigger. But she didn’t show me how it works and now she’s gone back to Milwaukee. She suggested I come to the library.”
• · “I got this eReader for Christmas and the man at the bookstore said that if I wanted to get free ebooks I should come to the library. So…where are all the free ebooks? What do they look like?”
• · “I got this e Reader for Christmas. My son, who lives in Oregon, wrote to me and said it would come in handy for my business trips. Where are the discs that you put into the reader to get the books on the screen?”
• · “I got this eReader for Christmas from my son in law who was nice enough to download several books into it for me to get me started. Unfortunately I hate reading text on a screen. How can I print out the stories he downloaded?”
• · “I got this eReader for Christmaas from my grandson who said that I could do a lot more on this gadget than read books. I think he said I could watch movies on it. Do you have dvds for eReaders?”
• · “I got this eReader for Christmas from my wife who said I could download free books into it from the library’s website, but I had to get on a reserve list for the ebook I want. I don’t get why I should have to wait. Isn’t the beauty of an ebook that anyone can download it at any time? Why doesn’t your library keep up with the times?”
• · “I got this eReader for Christmas from my granddaughter. It says in the instructions that I should press any key on the touch screen to get started, but I can’t find the “any key.” Do you know where it is?
• · “I got this eReader for Christmas from my great grandson. He says you use it like a regular book, but I can’t figure out how to open it. It doesn’t seem to have any hinges.”
• · “I got this eReader for Christmas from my son. I love to read in the bath tub. If I accidentally drop it in the tub will it electrocute me?”
• · “I got this eReader for Christmas, and I love to read to my grandchildren. Can you show me where the 3-D button is for pop-up books?”

Take heart librarians. This madness can’t last can it? How many Christmas toys endure the test of time? When’s the last time you’ve seen anyone play with a Slinky, put together a Mr. Potato Head, swivel a hula hoop, scream at a Rubik Cube, shoot a Nerf ball, or tickle an Elmo doll?

Maybe you’d better not answer that question.

I sheepishly have to admit to devoting a half hour this past weekend (ironically after writing a blog post entitled “Wisdom”) to watching the steady stream of tweets that American Libraries magazine has been running since ALA’s Midwinter Conference in Dallas began last Friday.  You’re probably thinking: is there any more frivolous way to fritter away the declining moments of one’s life than to read ALA’s Twitter stream?

The only answer I can give you are that these twitters were curiously quirky: an odd blend of the ordinary (squee…they’re playing a Taylor Swift song in my taxi), the funny (“the ALA tote bags can hold exactly 12 cans of beer and 2 cats), the commercial (“come to our exhibit booth for free pieces of chocolate”), the predictable (“wish you were here to experience the best steak dinner in Dallas”), the sad (“it’s 9PM and I’m in my jammies reading a book in bed”), the very sad (“I’m all alone in the hotel cocktail lounge drinking a whiskey sour and reading a depressing book”), and the very, very sad (“I’m reading a book in the bathroom so as not to wake up my wife.”).

Are these tweets: a) cries for help, b) calls for attention, or c) just one more manifestation of a narcissistic culture? That’s question #1.

After a half hour of these tweets, to be honest with you I felt maybe not dirty but certainly voyeuristic…as though I was peeking into someone’s bathroom window watching a man sitting on a toilet reading a book while his wife slept soundly in the adjoining bedroom.  But is it really voyeurism if the man opens the bathroom window and actively invites you to take a peek?  That’s question #2.

Question #3 is why is Twitter so incredibly popular especially with librarians at conferences?  I have never understood Twitter, and I routinely call it Fritter in hopes that someone will be motivated to explain its time consuming value to me.

I think I understand Facebook…it’s all about getting in touch with long lost friends.  I think I understand Friend Feed …it’s all about starting an on-going conversation among friends and colleagues.  I think I get Flickr…post your photos of the grandkids on line for Aunt Elma and Uncle Burt in Dubuque to see.  I know I get blogging … write an essay or express a concern in order to get instant reader response.  These things I get and have absolutely no problem with.  In fact, I think all 4 forms of social media have great potential value to move forward the human race in the name of world peace and international friendship.

But I honestly don’t get Twitter.  One librarian told me he likes it because he said it’s like sitting in the middle of a public park and listening to 7 different conversations all at once.

I can’t think of anything more horrid.

Your turn.

Before librarians went down the twin rabbit holes of information and entertainment, there was a traditional school of thought in American librarianship (it had died out completely by the end of the 1960s) that libraries were repositories of wisdom.  To take it a step further, libraries had the potential not just to inform, entertain, and educate, but to build character.  Indeed, children’s collections were often oriented around the notion of moral formation. That’s why you could find a difficult classic like Pilgrim’s Progress not only in the adult stacks but in the children’s collection as well.  In fact, if you read enough biographies of 18th, 19th, and early 20th century “great” men (eg. Washington, Lincoln, Carnegie) you will discover they they have one thing in common – Pilgrim’s Progress was part of their boyhood reading.

The theme of wisdom was certainly built into the architecture of many 19th and early 20th century libraries.  In fact many resembled Gothic cathedrals.  Their high ceilings, ornate trim work, and grandiose designs spoke to a higher purpose. These institutions were dedicated to the notion that wisdom was transferrable from author to reader.

Today such a notion is not only scoffed at but openly attacked as being at best elitist and at worst oppressive.  Whose wisdom the modern librarian wants to know are you trying to purvey in your library?  The Judeo-Christian tradition?  If so you are not only violating the separation of church and state but you are disrespecting every other religious tradition from Wiccan to Islam.  How about Homer, Shakespeare, and Dickens?  Aha, now you are dredging up the Western canon of dead, white males…the very books that worked to enslave women and people of color.  Maybe you’d like to offer up Darwin, Einstein, and Hawking as your models of scientific wisdom, but beware the evangelicals who will tell you there is more to human existence than mere molecules.

Wisdom like beauty and morality is now in the eye of the beholder.  We live in an age of relativism. There are no absolutes.  There is no set of central truths.  Everyone is the center of his or her own universe.  If you don’t believe that click on Fritter, I’m sorry…I mean Twitter.  Is there a God?  Only if the concept works for you.  If not, don’t worry about it.  It’s how you feel and how you think that is important.  Go with what works for you, not with what someone says should work for you.

Relativism gets very interesting when it comes to library collection development.  Are certain books superior to other books?  The prevailing answer seems to be no.   Thus Tom Sawyer is no better or worse than Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  And spending your time watching Hamlet is no better or worse than watching the latest episode of The Khardashians. The patron determines value.  Use determines value.  Popularity determines value. Balance and quality are all subjective to the tastes of the individual.

Okay, I get all that.  I don’t buy it, but I get it and I respect it as a legitimate point of view.  What I wonder, though, is if the word “wisdom” still means something…anything …or is it one of those elitist, old fashioned terms, that has become completely irrelevant today.

Question of the day:  Name a book that has imparted wisdom to you.

For me the answer is twofold.  The Gospel of John is the “wisest” book I have ever read, and Siddhartha is the wisest non scriptural book I have ever read.  One book speaks directly to the celestial soul; the other speaks directly to the earthbound soul.

Your turn.

Things on the internet I’d like to black out permanently with indelible virtual ink:

• all pornography (it enslaves the actors and the watchers).
• the Kardashians (all of them) and all of their ex spouses.
• Newt, his current wife, and his ex-wives (all of them).
• Flickr photos that show only a portion of the person’s face (this used to be called bad photography; now it is called “art.”)
• Fritter (all Fritter all the time forever!!!)
• Flickr photos of meals from expensive restaurants that attendees at ALA Midwinter 2012 will inevitably take and send back to their envious friends and colleagues back home.
• Any comments on golf sites from the guy who uses the moniker “duffer in plaid pants”
• All library powerpoints featuring waterfalls, mountains, kitties, and puppies.
• Sorry, let’s make that all library power points period!
• Tim Tebow (that means you, Will).
• Smiley faces.
• Sorry, let’s make that all emoticons.
• The term “Libraryland” (Biblioterra sounds much better)
• All death of the library predictions by librarians
• L J’s  ”Movers and Shakers” (if you’re really a mover and shaker do you really need the extra recognition?)
• ALA’s “Emerging Leaders” (dude, you’ve either emerged or you haven’t)
• The Annoyed Librarian (her weekly (weakly?) tirades against ALA have become incredibly tiresome and sadly ironic in view of the fact that she seems to be an avid ALA conference goer).
• LOL
• Sorry, LOL, and every other cute internet acronym.
• Meh (what is “meh?”)
• George Clooney’s steady stream of new girlfriends.
• Viral videos of snowboarding crows and snake eating honey badgers.
• Anything that starts out with “top ten tips for…..”
• “Trending” lists (they encourage bottom feeding)
• Anonymous comments that use the terms morons or idiots.
• Books with dummies and idiots in the title.
• Articles about a returned library book that is 49 years overdue.
• “Image busting” articles about tattooed and pierced librarians who wear combat boots
• The following terms: transparency, core values, and organizational vision.

Your turn.

Dear Wikipedia,

How do I put this?  It’s hard.  Here goes.

For several years I’ve used you as a punch line in some of my library jokes: I’d say things like “I never really understood the theory of relativity until Wikipedia came around.”  That was always effective because it never failed to get a few nervous laughs from my librarian audiences.  I was shamelessly playing on their innate fears that they were being made obsolete by you and your BFF Google.

Then I would say, “Besides explaining the theory of relativity, Wikipedia is really good for determining who is dead and who is alive.  Wikipedia does death really well.  When you die, bang…your Wikipedia entry is updated immediately. With Wikipedia you don’t have to wait for the new edition to come out.” Then I would give my audience a list of names and ask them who was dead or alive….people like Phyllis Diller, Mrs. Bob Hope, Dick Cavett, John Updike, Ed McMahon, and Gerald Ford.  Inevitably someone in the audience would pull out an iPad and click on you for the right answers.

It was fun making fun of you. You were the encyclopedia living in the trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks. You covered topics and people that the encyclopedias from the right side of town would not deign to cover.  Some of them I can’t even talk about because this is a family oriented blog.  But worse than that, is the fact that you were put together by a bunch of  academic lowlifes with no credentials and posers with a particular ax to grind.  You are exactly the kind of encyclopedia Dr. Stokes (my Library School “Resources in Reference” professor)warned me about.  ”Credentials and quality go hand in hand.  Don’t succumb to shortcuts and convenience.  Don’t go slumming no matter how much you are tempted by the easy way out.  Always adhere to your values and resist the allure of the easy and the sleazy.”

As a result, even in these dark days of instant gratification in the library profession, I have stayed faithful to my two virtuous BFFs.  For a quickie (in the old days we called it “ready reference”) there was always Madame Columbia, the perky and petite one volume desk encyclopedia.  We first met in college.  She made me the envy of my dorm.  My room became very popular because Madame Columbia was always sitting on my desk.  I can’t tell you the number of guys who in the heat of finishing up a term paper came down to my room to pay her a quick visit.

Then in graduate library school, Professor Stokes introduced me to Britannica.  Where Columbia was short and sassy, Brittanica was positively stacked from volume one to volume thirty!  She was the encyclopedia that had it all –  looks, style, pedigree, and intelligence.  How I love to run my hands across her collectors leather binding.  How I love to take her to bed and just open her up randomly and read at will.  She’s more than a mere encyclopedia, she’s a work of literature…elegant, exquisite, refined.  But then again, she can get complicated and boring.  Sometimes (sorry Dr. Stokes) I don’t want all the intellectual foreplay…I just want to get to that one thing I need.

Oh, and there’s one more thing about Britannica.  She’s proud, maybe even snobby.  She’s not into pop culture.  It’s all Masterpiece Theater with her…all night, every night.  No Seinfeld or South Park for her. No variety to spice up our nights.

Which brings me back to you Wikipedia.  Yes, I make fun of you in public but secretly I do value you.  I’ve actually been in denial about you even to myself.  But our little encounter last night changed everything.  There I was finishing up a magazine column at the last minute and I desperately needed the dates when the 6 major video game systems were first introduced.  Brittanica just looked at me with scorn.  So I turned to you Wiki (can I call you that?) and you were all draped in black…stunning I must admit but opaque.  I needed you desperately and you were hidden…lying lifelessly in a black shroud. Like I said above…you do death really well.

You know what they say….you don’t really value someone until they are gone. Well, I tossed and turned all night and when I woke up this morning the first thing I did was turn you on and you were back in full glory with your gothic black hair, neck tattoos and nose piercings. I was overjoyed.

I shall never make fun of you again.

Love,

Will