Our Singular Strengths: Meditations for LibrariansMichael Gorman, one of librarianship's most accomplished and impassioned practitioners, is back. Drawing on his four decades of library experience, Gorman has written a thoughtful and humanizing book that not only reminds librarians why they chose their craft, but reinforces the importance of their work. Our Singular Strengths is a compilation of 144 comforting and uplifting thoughts about library work presented in the popular meditations format: a quotation, a short essay, and a resolution. The book is designed to present a topic, thought, or story that encapsulates some aspect of libraries and learning as an aid to understanding and reassessment, and to simply provide comfort to beleaguered librarians. Gorman takes his passion for libraries and their importance to society and offers observations rooted in experience and reason that may provide insight into libraries, librarianship, and being a librarian in today's ever-changing world. |
From inside the book
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... idea of a book of meditations , I was ignorant of the genre . I looked at many such books and found myself interested in , and engaged by , one in twenty at most . I need not dwell on what did not attract me about most of the books ...
... Ideas , comments , and advice came from many friends and colleagues ; I am grateful for their interest and friendship and hope they will find echoes and resonance in these pages . I am particularly grateful to Provost Alexander Gonzalez ...
... idea was to echo the atmosphere of a Viennese coffeehouse , it failed . The newspaper sticks and racks were just another ponderous note in the Victorian gloom . I am glad that we have swapped the solidity of that old , well - made ...
... ideas " —no matter what our own views of that expression or those ideas may be . I will avoid personal value judgments in defending free access . Starved of Content " Isn't that lovely 4 " she 14 Remote Storage.
... idea ( first advanced thirty or more years before the first LC cards ) to sell standardized sets of catalogue cards and to relieve libraries of much original cataloguing . The LC card was the force that gave us bibliographic standardiza ...
Contents
Mysteries | 103 |
The Impossibility of Classification | 104 |
Political Correctness? | 105 |
ALA Conferences | 106 |
Problem Colleagues | 107 |
The Library Great Person | 108 |
The Outsider Syndrome | 109 |
The War of AACR2 | 110 |
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Pity the Poor Administrator | 41 |
Andrew Carnegie 18351919 | 43 |
What Do You Remember from Library School? | 45 |
Melvil Dewey 18511931 | 46 |
Lonely People | 48 |
Miss Colwell | 49 |
Retirement | 50 |
Laws | 51 |
Ranganathans Five Laws | 53 |
Ranganathans Second Law | 55 |
Ranganathans Third Law | 56 |
Ranganathans Fourth Law | 57 |
Ranganathans Fifth Law | 58 |
Five New Laws of Librarianship | 59 |
First New Law | 60 |
Second New Law | 61 |
Third New Law | 63 |
Fourth New Law | 65 |
Fifth New Law | 67 |
Change Problems Realities | 69 |
Change Makes You Stupid | 71 |
Scholarly Journals | 73 |
Foreign Languages | 74 |
Modern Library Budgets | 75 |
The Newbery Medal | 76 |
Books into Films | 77 |
Burnout | 78 |
Reference Collections | 79 |
Distant Learning | 80 |
The Problem Patron | 81 |
My Ideal Library | 82 |
Present Future | 83 |
Libraries and Democracy | 85 |
The Tax Revolt | 87 |
Copyright and Electronic Documents | 88 |
The PaperFull Society | 90 |
Downsizing | 91 |
Different in Kind | 93 |
Virtual Lives | 94 |
People or Kiosks? | 95 |
Museums of Failed Technology | 96 |
Library or Pipelined | 97 |
Night Thoughts | 98 |
Librarians | 99 |
The Image of the Librarian | 101 |
Women in Libraries | 111 |
A Word for Ned Ludd | 112 |
Places | 113 |
The Library as a Public Place | 115 |
Cotleigh Road Branch Library | 117 |
Beyond the Museum | 118 |
Ssshh | 119 |
Prisons | 120 |
Home Base | 121 |
Libraries and the Mall | 122 |
California Dreams | 124 |
Art and Decoration in the Library | 125 |
The Flowering of the Imagination | 126 |
The Love of Libraries | 128 |
Reading Writing | 129 |
Electronic Books | 131 |
The Gift of Reading | 133 |
The Continuum of Literacy | 134 |
The Ladder of Learning | 135 |
Back to Basics | 137 |
Paperbacks | 138 |
Library Literature | 139 |
Collecting Books | 140 |
Jabberwocky | 141 |
The Library Hand | 143 |
Reading | 145 |
The Wider World | 147 |
The ADA | 149 |
Bookstores | 151 |
Story Time | 152 |
Multiple Identities | 153 |
International Book Sharing | 154 |
UnBooksr | 155 |
Time Machines | 156 |
Reports Statistics and All That Jazz | 157 |
Technology as Religion | 158 |
Thin Places | 159 |
84 Charing Cross Road | 160 |
Practicalities | 161 |
Bindings | 163 |
No Food No Drink | 165 |
Coral Reefs | 166 |
Circulation | 167 |
Filing | 168 |
Indexes and Indexing | 169 |
Interlibrary Loan | 170 |
Indecency Online | 171 |
Fifty Cent Technology | 172 |
Descriptive Cataloguing in 131 Words | 173 |
Central Libraries vs Branch Libraries | 174 |
Eternal Promises | 175 |
Sunrise | 177 |
Reminders of Continuity | 179 |
Where Love Begins | 180 |
Occams Management Theory | 181 |
What Is Information? | 182 |
Universal Bibliographic Control | 184 |
Illuminated Manuscripts | 186 |
The Librarianship of Love | 188 |
Manuscripts | 189 |
Singular Strengths | 190 |
Closing Libraries | 191 |
Epilogue | 193 |