Book Review: In the Digital Age, Librarians are Pioneers
On Sunday, we linked to an interview of Marilyn Johnson, author of This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. Audiobook and Kindle editions are also available.
Today, the book is reviewed in the Boston Globe by Judy Bolton-Fasman.
Among information professionals, Johnson notes there are librarians and archivists: “Librarians were finders [of information]. Archivists were keepers.’’ But the information revolution is affecting both. She affectionately portrays archivists as magicians that deftly distinguish between detritus and artifact, capturing history before it disappears because of a broken link or outdated software. For Johnson, archivists are the unsung heroes of the library, cataloging idiosyncratic, often paper-based collections. The digital age is making possible the creation of searchable databases of archives, but it’s also making information, especially on the Internet, more ephemeral and harder to collect.
On the art of cataloging Johnson reflects, “Who knows how many people are invisible because their stories don’t fit into our categories?’’ Here is an area in which the digital revolution offers help. Some of the invisible are brought to our attention by a group of sharp, blogging librarians who are not the stereotypical shushing, cardigan-wearing guardians of the reference room. Johnson introduces these ultramodern librarians as “open, casual, approachable, dedicated to demystifying technology and networked to the eyeballs . . . the public face of the twenty-first century librarian.’’
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