Will Unwound

I can’t remember which of you pesky unwinders kept urging me to publish on this blog the infamous 1992 Wilson Library Bulletin sex survey, but you changed my life.

If you will recall, I was initially reluctant to publish the results because I was afraid that I would turn people away from this blog.  Here is my exact quote to all of you back in March:

• I have also received a fair number of e-mails urging me to release the survey results in this blog.  I’m not convinced, however, that running the results would do anything but bore the readers of this blog, which I definitely do not want to do. At this early point in the blog’s evolution the readership is far higher than I ever imagined it would be.  I don’t want to lose any of you.  Some of you who have mentioned that you would like me to run the results  stated that you think the new and up and coming younger generation of librarians – the movers and shakers, if you will, would be very interested since they were too young to follow the controversy at the time. These are the librarians who were in grade school in 1992. Well, let me tell you a little story about how much the young guns of the profession care about us old codgers.   I can’t remember which library conference I was at, but I was talking to a group of young librarians and I thought I would regale them of stories of the good old days of obsolete technology – typewriters, ditto machines, hand stamps, record players, 16 mm film projectors and mimeograph machines.  Half of them were nodding off within five minutes.  I learned my lesson there and then.  I don’t want a 20 year old sex survey to be the sociological equivalent of my ditto machine stories. Well…there was the time when my necktie got caught in the roller and….oh, stop it Will… you’re doing it again. Okay, here’s the deal:  if I hear from enough librarians, I’ll release the findings.  Who knows? Some of these younger librarians may be the children of the survey’s respondents!  Maybe these Net Gen librarians would be interested after all.  

Boy…was I ever wrong.  After running the survey in an April blog post, things got very, very wobbly .  Read my brand new column in American Libraries entitled “Surveying My Sex Appeal” to get the rest of the story.  From it you can draw your own conclusions.

Now, believe it or not, there are vibes of interest in this story from Hollywood.  And the question of the day, Unwinders, is who should play me in the movie version?  Check out my blog photo page before you answer that question.  Thanks.

I have learned so much from this blog.  The “bucket list” is a term I had never heard before until one of you (I can’t remember who but it might have been Wynette) used it in a comment.

Does everyone here know what a bucket list is?  FYI…the bucket list is a list of things you want to accomplish here on earth before you kick the bucket.

It’s a fascinating concept that you would enumerate a list of goals and objectives for the rest of your life.  It’s also a fairly depressing thing because every time you cross something off your bucket list you have to ask yourself what’s left and how much time do I have left to get it done?

Is life really just a live 3-D videogame in which we derive satisfaction for accomplishing certain pre-determined challenges?  Do we really have to keep a tally? Do we really define the success or failure of our time here on earth based on how far down we have whittled our bucket list?  Many of the bucket lists that I have seen include skydiving.  Does this really have metaphysical meaning?  Maybe it does.  Maybe skydiving simply defines freedom.  Maybe not.

With the full knowledge that a bucket list may not be the most psychologically sound way of giving meaning to your life, I decided to play along.  Last night I wrote out my bucket list in anticipation of Fantasy Friday.   Here we go:

• Live to see my 4 grandchildren graduate from college.
• Read all of the Great Books as listed by Mortimer Adler.
• Shoot a round of par golf at the Las Positas Municipal Golf Course.
• Publish a book of short stories.
• Stay in good enough physical shape so that I can be buried in my lime green leisure suit without alterations.

All of the other things that are important to me are journey items where you never reach the destination.  They include improving human relationships, reducing one’s ecological footprint, living the principles of the Gospels,  and advancing the cause of libraries and reading.  These are not concepts that you can check off on a bucket list unless you have an acute God complex.

So now that I have taken the lead, the bucket is in your hands, Unwinders.  On this Fantasy Friday, what are the things that you would like to accomplish before you kick the bucket?

ODDS AND ENDS

• Please congratulate unwinder Wynette on the birth of her newest granddaughter.
• Please check out this awesome photography blog of unwinder Tina.
• Absolutely great work on supporting the “Day in the Life of a Librarian Project.”  Bobbi Newman who created this major undertaking would like you to post your daily work logs (as you put them into your comments yesterday) on her wiki.  Thanks.

I have been a big fan of Bobbi Newman’s blog for several months.  She is the manager of an on-line public library branch and her blog is an insightful exploration into transliteracy and its importance to libraries.   If you like blogs, Bobbi’s “Librarian by Day”  is a good one to keep on top of.

The reason I bring it up is that Bobbi has started a project called “Library Day in the Life.”  The project is an attempt to document one day in the life of a working librarian.  I thought it would be fun, if we could participate in the project here on Will Unwound. 

One of our Unwinders, Leigh Anne Vrabel, has already participated.  You can read her account of her day by clicking on her excellent blog Library Alchemy.

When, I read Leigh Anne’s entry, my reaction was “I’m tired just reading that.  Thank God for retirement.”

So the question of the day, unwinders, is what exactly do you do all day?  Many people think all you do is sit around and read! Feel free to encapsulate your day in any format that is comfortable to you. And you retirees (that includes you…Mick and Joe) tell us about your day.  Let’s compare notes.  This is going to be fun.  What does a librarian do all day? Did you earn your pay?  How many books did you read?

As lead lab rat, I will go first:

7:15 – 9:00 – get 4 year old Connor (grandson) and 2 year old Sophia (granddaughter and RA librarian extraordinaire) fed and ready for pre-school.  Minor emergency occurs when we can’t find a key part of one of Connor’s Bionicles.  We search the house and find the part under Connor’s bedsheets. Crisis averted. All systems are now go.  Grandpa Will gets the “cool” grandpa designation from Connor.  Life is good.

9:00 – 9:15 – Drop the grands off at pre-school.  The theme of the week is beaches.  We are informed that sand painting is the planned art project.  Grandpa Will makes mental note to put plastic sheeting on car floor for pick-up.

9:15 – 11:30 – Return to home office for several tasks: a) brew a pot of Earl Grey, b) read two chapters of Colour Scheme by mystery master, Ngaio Marsh, c) check blog comments…emotions running high on kids and noise theme (my grands of course are gifted and none of these comments could possibly be directed at them), d)  listen to some Mozart, e) take mid morning nap, f) read some more Ngaio Marsh (M is for Marvelous),  and e) practice my putting on my upstairs 7 hole miniature golf course.

11:30 – Pick up grands at preschool and chauffer them over to the library where we can create havoc in the adult library (just kidding!).  Connor reports in for the completion of the summer reading game and is rewarded with his name posted on the bulletin board.  Applause for my gifted grandson! Then he gets great help from children’s librarian Miss Sandy in his quest for the perfect dinosaur  book.  Sophia heads for the Dora section.  Before leaving, Connor and Sophia prevail upon me to bring up an internet site that shows over 200 spiders crawling all over a boy’s body (it’s a new world’s record!).  Connor comments: “Too bad, Grandpa, that the internet was in black and white when you were a boy.”

12:30 – With the grandchildren safely deposited back home, I head for a two jelly donut lunch at the Donut Wheel in downtown Livermore.  Then it’s on to a 1:00 tee time with Harold the chiropractor and Ike the insurance guy.  Last week, I found the perfect golf instructional book at the library…Hank Heaney’s  No More Bad Shots…and my game has been resurrected.  I shoot an 84 (12 over par), Harold shoots an 88, and Ike, well Ike stopped keeping score after he put 4 straight drives into the water from the 5^th tee.   From Harold I learn that he has discovered on the internet that “they” have found Obama’s African birth certificate.  Now apparently the question is whether the ’08 election will be invalidated or whether Obama will be impeached.  I love Joe Biden’s earthy ways, but do we really want his finger on the nuclear button?

4:00 – 4:30 – Nap time.

4:30 – 5:00 – Edit and post new blog entry on a day in the life.  How will it play?  Who knows.

5:05 – My work day is over and now it’s time for dinner.    Eat your heart out, all you working unwinders!

Now it’s your turn…how was your day?

The issue of librarians retiring simply will not go away. 

I continue to get e-mails from younger librarians who ask me to tout the wonderful advantages of retirement.  Here’s an excerpt from one: “Please, Will, tell everyone how great it is to have complete freedom to do whatever you want.  Tell them how much you enjoy playing golf and how much more fun it is to be a patron than to have to serve patrons.”

 I think a kind of generational war is going on in some of our libraries.  Here’s an excerpt from another e-mail: “Our administrative structure is old and aging.  These dinosaurs simply refuse to retire.  This is tragic because there is no room for upward mobility in our library for the younger librarians.  We have nowhere to go.  The job market is terrible. We want to move up.  Our turn to lead has arrived.”

Then there are the complaints that old equals inflexible and unwilling to change.  Here’s another e-mail excerpt: “Our library administration has been here forever and they are unwilling to make needed changes or to even listen to new ideas.  They create a committee system that dooms every innovative idea to delay and final death by indifference.  Don’t they know that they are killing the profession by driving all the bright young librarians to other fields?  These people need to retire and give us the same opportunities that they enjoyed at our age.”

My guess is that this kind of frustration is happening in all professions and occupations.  The Great Recession has upset the natural order of things.  Workers of retirement age can’t retire because they cannot afford to retire.  They have lost a third of their retirement savings to Wall Street, and until they qualify for Medicare, they can’t afford health insurance.  Also, it’s very unfortunate that the plan of many retirees to sell their homes and downsize to a cheaper, smaller living space has become unrealistic  because of the real estate crash.

What’s the result?  We now have library staffs that are both shrinking and fossilizing.  Retirement age librarians are hanging on longer and longer, and younger librarians are being laid off.  Professional opportunities are drying up throughout the library organizational food chain. I’m not saying that we are at a crisis stage yet, but I will say I have never seen the morale within the library profession any lower.

That’s the problem.  What’s the solution?  How do we develop younger talent even when there are no promotional opportunities?

I am a huge believer in mentoring.  While older librarians may not be able to afford to retire, they can serve as mentors to younger librarians.  Sooner or later this recession will end, the economy will rebound, and libraries will start getting their cuts restored.  Why not plan for that day by creating mentorship relationships with those who will carry the burden of taking our libraries into the brave new world of the future?

I am tired of hearing that the young tech savvy librarians have all the answers.  They have many answers, yes, but not all of the answers.  Older librarians have experience and wisdom born of experience.  For that they should be respected.  One of the ways older librarians can earn that respect is by actively imparting the wisdom of their experience on to the emerging leaders of tomorrow.  By the same token, the young movers and shakers in our profession have to be willing to listen.  If they do they will learn a great deal.

When I sense some of the generational struggles that are going on in our profession, I wonder how much cross generational mentoring is going on.  My mentor was a man named Ken McDonald.  He was 30 years older than me.  He was the city manager who hired me to be his library director in Tempe, Arizona 30 years ago.  I only worked for him for two years when health issues forced him into retirement, but in those two years he gave me a PhD. level education in city government, local politics, personnel management, and public finance.  No professor, no book, and no formal curriculum did more for me than Ken’s mentorship.

But our relationship worked only because we both wanted it to work. I needed and wanted a mentor and he wanted to help and had much to offer. 

Unwinders, the topic of discussion today is mentoring.  Here are some questions to ponder.

• Have you benefited from mentors?  If so tell us your story? 
• Have you ever been approached by someone to be a mentor? 
• Does your library have a formal mentoring program or do these relationships evolve informally in your library? 
• What makes the mentoring relationship effective or uneffective?
•  Do you think mentoring can help some of the generational struggles in our libraries?
• Any other thoughts on today’s post?

REMEMBER …this blog is a group effort.  Thanks for your help.  We are off to a great start this week!

Over the past 40 years, I have been one of the library profession’s biggest advocates for children’s services in public libraries. 

My advocacy for making children a budgetary priority has nothing to do with children and everything to do with the library.  Quite simply children are the catalysts for getting the whole community involved in a library.  I have seen this proven over and over again.  If you want a successful library, you need to cater to children.

 It’s a very important topic.  In fact no topic is more important for public libraries right now.  As a result, I will devote more posts to it in the future.

Today, however, the topic is children, pure and simple.  Children are unruly, loud, frenetic, demanding, obstreperous, cantankerous, and cacophonous. They have not mastered or even learned the boundaries of civilized adult behavior. 

As a result, many adults prefer the Hallmark concept of children (aren’t they cute) to the Dennis the Menace reality of children (aren’t they unruly).   In certain places like a church, a hospital, or a library, the unruliness of children can be acutely problematic. 

Sometimes this unruliness requires a bit of patience and a sense of humor. This past Sunday, a toddler interrupted Father Leo’s sermon with loud wailing.  I counted five older adults who turned around and looked scornfully at the child’s mother.  Father Leo saved the day by smoothly steering his sermon toward the concept of prayer.  “Prayer takes many forms,” he intoned, “from the quiet reflective thoughts of the monastic hermit to the loud wailing of an infant.  In this case the infant in the 3^rd row is petitioning God to bring my sermon to closure.  The child’s prayer has been answered.  Now let us all thank God.”

But many adults are not nearly as tolerant as Father Leo.  Many of these adults are library users who go to the library for some peace and quiet, and here is where a clash can occur.  Children engage in several distracting activities including …wailing, whining, running, jumping, and pulling books off the shelves.  This can be very disruptive to adult patrons who are trying to read, study, write, or sleep.

As a result, some libraries have rules prohibiting children from certain parts of the adult library.  A couple of days ago when I was relating a story about my two year old granddaughter Sophia and her proclivity to make brilliant book selections for me, I casually mentioned that the two of us had been cordially asked by a librarian to leave the adult periodicals room of our local library, a library which I absolutely love.  Apparently, they have an unposted rule that pre-school children are not allowed in that sanctum sanctorum.  I was embarrassed, felt badly, and never returned to the periodicals room with a child in tow again.  I do respect and understand the reason for the rule.

In the comment section of that post, a very, very interesting issue evolved.  Unwinders went from discussing my book review  of Forbidden Fruit to discussing the issue of children in the adult area of the library.   There was an irony to this debate because I had quoted a passage from Forbidden Fruit in which it was stated that there was a time when women were prohibited from entering “male only” parts of the library because women were considered frivolous and distracting.

The unwinder debate started with this comment: 

• “Will, I am really disappointed to learn you are one of the problem modern adults who think that the library manners are not meant for YOUR granddaughter.  I may be saying good-bye to this blog as I don’t keep company with those who think that achieving quiet libraries is only done by having OTHER people’s children and grandchildren follow rules.  I compliment that library for HAVING rules and for those librarians having the chutzpah to stand up to a librarian.  Please, Will, say you won’t do this again.  Ever.”

While, this comment tends to be rather critical of me, there is much in it that I absolutely agree with, and I’m very pleased the unwinder had the courage to post it.  Parents, grandparents, and nannies should be responsible for their children. I was at fault for taking Sophia into the periodicals room but the library should have posted the rules.

That comment then led to this comment  from another unwinder:

• “Why should kids be excluded from any part of a public library? They are part of the public, and will be voting on library bills all too soon. This is a public library, not a college library where your argument might make sense. This is rank discrimination against kids. Yes, kids are noisy. So are a lot of the adult population, especially, hard of hearing adults. And I see legal issues too. Remember several years ago when a homeless guy successfully sued a public library in the east I think. New Jersey? The librarians had tried to keep him out because he looked and smelled rotten as I recall. I’ll take a little kid dressed in a decent way over a homeless guy with likely mental issues. But the law says we have to have the homeless guy. I just saw your next comment. I think one reason they don’t have the rule posted is likely they know one good lawsuit by a disgruntled adult with a kid will be the end of that rule. It is POLITE of Will to avoid the periodical room.”

I can also see the merit in this comment and am equally glad that the unwinder had the courage to post it.  This is the type of dialog that really motivates me to do this blog everyday.  Thanks, unwinders.

Question of the day:  Which side of the issue are you on?  Is there a middle ground?  Have at it. 

Dear Will,

I am the director of a very small liberal arts college library located on the east coast.  My acquisitions librarian is seven months pregnant.  Yesterday she presented me with a well thought out and very detailed proposal to work at home during the remaining two months of her pregnancy and for the first three years of her child’s life.  “Just until my child is ready to go to preschool,” is the way she put it.

Her justification for this arrangement is twofold.  First, she says with a telephone, computer and a fax machine she can be just as accessible and productive at home as she currently is at the library.  Second, she feels that this set-up is only fair since our college is not enlightened enough to have a day care program for employees’ children.

I keep reading that the home office is the wave of the future, but I am not completely sure that this is the right way to go for the library as a whole.  When I had my two children, I had to hire nannies to take care of them.  Other women on our staff also did not have the telecommuting option and they may resent this innovation.

Also, I see this as a precedent that might have unintended consequences.  Won’t other non-public services staff have the right to set up home offices also?  If this happens what will become of workplace collegiality? 

I am torn because I know the trend is toward on-line education in our library schools, and this acquisitions librarian graduated from an on-line M.L.S. program.  She is a very bright young woman, an excellent employee, and she has worked miracles in overhauling our acquisitions system.  I don’t want to lose her.  She has computer skills that no one else on the library staff has.  One other thing… she does not have any supervisory responsibilities except for a part-time undergraduate intern.

 What should I do?

Sincerely,

Undecided

Unwinders…what advice would you give Undecided?

One of my challenges as a library patron is taking my grandchildren into the adult section of the library.  They don’t want to be there, the adult patrons don’t want them there, and the adult services library staff do not want them there.  In fact once when my two year old granddaughter Sophia accompanied me (well I kind of dragged her there) to the adult periodicals room we were cordially invited to return to children’s.

But there are times when I need a good book.  Sometimes Sophie is patient, sometimes not.  About 6 weeks ago she was not so patient and we were about 5 steps into the adult library when her eye was caught by an oversized book jacket adorned with a luscious painting of a comely young woman totally absorbed in a book .  Sophie grabbed the book off the New Books display rack, stuck it in my big blue book bag and then dragged me back to children’s.  This is becoming a habit.

Sophie’s choice was simply grand.  A more beautiful book I have not seen for many months.  The title is Forbidden Fruit: A History of Women and Books in Art by Christiane Inmann.  I have been living with this book for six weeks, and I am out of renewals.  It is due back on Monday, and that makes me very sad. 

This book is two things: 1) a textual history of women and reading and 2) a series of great paintings through the ages of women reading.  Both parts are wonderful.

The text is direct and spirited.  Consider these passages:  

•  “If – as the British philosopher Francis Bacon claimed – reading is nourishment for the mind and soul, it remained a forbidden fruit for women throughout much of history.   Patriarchal societies of all ages kept the knowledge of books and reading locked away from women and safeguarded the keys to this treasure chest, afraid that, if opened, it would become a Pandora’s box.”
• “The male establishment feared women’s intellectual liberation and what it regarded as the potentially subversive effects of the written word.  A woman’s mind, it was argued, was too delicate to be exposed to outside influences; her thoughts could easily be manipulated, leading to disastrous consequences in the form of independent ideas and opinions.
• “The notion that a woman could have an innocent passion for intellectually stimulating material was so foreign that any woman reading academic and scholarly literature was suspected of having a hidden agenda.”
• “One telling example of men’s attempts to control women’s reading was their insistence on separate reading rooms in libraries that had opened their doors to women.  Women, men complained, disturbed the seriousness of such august institutions; they rustled their clothing, giggled, gossiped, and even flirted within its walls.”

The art work that compliments the text is evocative and absorbing.  Back in the days before patrons lugged laptops into the study room and lined up outside the computer room to get some on-line time, I used to love to walk through a library and watch people as they became cocooned between the covers of a book.  Out of time…out of space…out of touch, the absorbed reader is in a parallel universe, a place you can’t get near.

This book, Forbidden Fruit, is filled with masterful paintings that draw you into that parallel universe of reading.  In gazing through these pictures you become absorbed in someone else’s absorption.  For me these paintings have a hypnotic effect.  Each one is from a different time period,  features a different setting, and tells a different story, but each one focuses on a woman launching into a private voyage of literary discovery.

This is a powerful book.  You should read it and absorb it.  But beware…you won’t want to return it.

A is for the apathy I felt about this book from beginning to end.

B is for feeling blue about 4 hours wasted.

C is for colorless characters. 

D is for a detective who never captured my imagination.

E is for a book empty of literary merit.

F is for a plot that was forced from beginning to end.

G is for the glacial pace of the plot.

H is for homicides of three characters that were already lifeless.

I is for imagination – lack of.

J is for a week in July that I totally wasted.

K is for how to kill your developing taste in mysteries with one really bad book.

L is for a constant longing to have this book end.

M is for moaning at the attempts at humor.

N is for no redeeming literary, social, historical, or comedic value.

O is for overrated.

P is for putting this book into the recycle can.

Q is for fighting the urge to quit this mystery project.

R is remembering why I hated mysteries in the first place.

S is for a setting that could have been located on any freeway.

T is for reader’s torment.

U is getting caught in the undertow of a really bad book and not having the good sense to call for help.

V is for very, very, very vapid.

W is for a waste of time.

X is for don ‘t give me a Grafton mystery for Xmas.

Y is for yuck!

Z is for zero stars.

Each week there are surprises for me in this blog.  Some serious posts that I think will get intense scrutiny, don’t generate much passion, and other posts that I think are fairly whimsical generate a lot of heat.

This week the post about Mr. Shooty Hoops, the young urban library director with the nerf basket wired for applause got a lot of love on the comment board.  By the same token, his “BP”…an uptight Board President with a banking background caught a lot of heat.  Nobody had anything good to say for poor old Conflicted, even though he did show some compassion for the laid off librarians in his library.

What surprised me even more was the fact that a lot of you expressed a desire to work for a director like Shooty Hoops.  You liked the fact that he had a sense of humor, was willing to reveal his more personal side, and didn’t think that library science was heart surgery or funeral directing.  Hey, let’s have some fun, seemed to be the theme among the Unwinders.

Okay, let’s have some fun.  Your resident Will Unwound fantasy genie wants you to create your own “fantasy library director.”   What are the characteristics that would make up your ideal director?  Include personality traits, communication style, technique for dealing with toxic employees, tactics for dealing with the library powers that be (board of trustees, deans, city managers, councils, board of regents, etc.), motivational strategies, modes of evaluating staff, leadership quotient, courage to face controversies (funding crises, censorship battles, lay off situations) head on, emotional equilibrium in dealing with backstabbing disgruntled employees and micromanaging board presidents, and overall administrative demeanor.

What surprised me the most with the Shooty Hoops post was that some of you mentioned a preference for a director of a certain gender or age cohort.  Feel free to discuss these hot button issues head on.  This is a “p.c.” free zone.  Put more bluntly: do women make better directors than men?  When I was in library school (1971), the old saying was that 90% of library directors are men, and 90% of librarians are women.  I’m sure that in the last 40 years that has changed significantly, but you get my drift.  Do women directors understand women librarians better than men and vice versa?  Should be a fun discussion. 

Same with the age issue.  Some of you voiced a preference for a “younger” director like Shooty Hoops (35).  The theory is that younger directors are more in tune with the “modern world.”  Maybe…maybe not.  How much does experience count in a director?  Has Shooty Hoops really proven his mettle under pressure?

I am expecting a free wheeling, no holds barred discussion.  What are the traits of your fantasy library director?

It’s fantasy Friday.  Have fun with this.

Today’s post is one of those confessionals where I finally work up the courage to admit to doing something that is professionally incorrect. 

My subject today is book reviews.  Unwinder Jeanne made the startling statement a month or two ago that we are living in the golden age of books.  It was one of those comments that I dismissed right away because everyone knows that this is not the golden age of books.  Everyone knows that this is the golden age of movie animation, high definition videogames, and  social networking.  Books are passé; books are over; books are obsolete.  Book reading is declining.  It takes too long, requires too much effort, and doesn’t provide instant gratification.

But then over time it became clearer and clearer to me that Jeanne is right.  I read Booklist magazine religiously because editor Bill Ott has put together an incredibly skilled team of full time reviewers and supplemented it with a corps of experienced and talented part timers.  Booklist is far superior to any other reviewing source and that includes The New York Times Book Review.  The magazine is filled every two weeks with books on all subjects  that these experienced and expert reviewers present with great enthusiasm and erudition. 

Jeanne is right.  We are in a golden age. How many times in the comment section of this blog have unwinders lamented the fact that their “Mount Bookmore” keeps climbing higher and higher.  Too many books; too little time.  If I read all the books I check off in Booklist, I would have to move to a parallel universe where days are 124 hours long. 

But here’s my embarrassing little secret: I’m becoming quietly addicted to Amazon book reviews.  This is heresy because book reviews are supposed to be written by experienced experts.  In library school we were taught that a book should not be ordered unless its purchase could be supported by two positive “professional “ reviews.  We were taught that the universe of acceptable professional reviewing sources were Booklist, Library Journal, School Library Journal, Wilson Library Bulletin, Virginia Kirkus, Horn Book, Choice,and The Center for Children’s Books.  In those days, Publisher’s Weekly was not considered as a reputable source because it was controlled by the publishing industry.

So…you can understand why I’m somewhat shy about admitting my affinity for Amazon book reviews.  Plus I had a built in prejudice with Amazon to begin with.  When I clicked on Amazon to check on the reviews of my own books, I was at first elated to find that someone named Stephen was calling me the Robert Fulghum of library science.  Then I discovered that this Stephen was my son, Stephen.  How reliable can a book reviewing source be if your own family members can use it to tout your books?

But over time curiosity got the better of me and I started checking out Amazon reviews for books I was interested in and I had a threefold revelation: 1) 90% of them are well written, 2) 90% of them reflect a passion for books by the reviewer, and 3) collectively they constitute a wonderful on-going debate and dialog about the merits of any one title.  I usually start with the one star reviews and work my way up.  I have to admit it.  I love the give and take.

My conclusion to all of this is that Jeanne is absolutely right.  We are in a golden age of books.  Wonderful books are being written and ordinary readers are having fun reviewing them.  Could it be that the computer, far from hurting books, is actually advancing them?

Unwinders: here are some questions to think about when you comment today:

• Do you agree with Unwinder Jeanne…are we in the golden age of books?
• Do your libraries acquire books by the old fashioned library school method of consulting “reputable” professional reviewing sources?
• What are your favorite book reviewing sources?
• What’s your assessment of the Amazon book reviews on a whole?  Does your library use them?
• There are hundreds of book review blogs.  What are your favorites?
• Any other comments on books, readers, or book reviews?

REMEMBER…THIS BLOG IS A GROUP EFFORT.  THANKS FOR YOUR HELP.  If I WERE REVIEWING YOUR COMMENTS THIS WEEK FOR AMAZON, I WOULD GIVE THEM 5 STARS.