ResourceBlog Article: The New York Times Reviews Marilyn Johnson's Book About Libraries and Librarians

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Monday, 15th March 2010

The New York Times Reviews Marilyn Johnson's Book About Libraries and Librarians

It's hard to think of another book of late about libraries, the importance of librarians, and related topics that have received as much attention as Marilyn Johnson's, "This Book is Overdue. How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All." We've posted comments/reviews from NPR, USA Today, Salon.com, and an interview from the Newark Star-Ledger.

Recently, Pagan Kennedy from The New York Times reviewed Johnson's book.

In “This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All,” she offers a lively parade of people and places, all related to library science, or sort of related. Johnson ushers us into the American Kennel Club Library and introduces us to the inevitable graying librarian in a boiled-wool jacket with a Scotty pin. She also teleports over to a Las Vegas “gentlemen’s club” called the Library, where ladies wearing spectacles (and not much more) slide their way down stripper poles.

[Snip]

Johnson begins by recounting the impulse that led her to libraryland. While researching her previous book, “The Dead Beat” (about obituary writers), she noticed something peculiar: Dead librarians are more interesting than any other type of dead person. Johnson was particularly beguiled by a woman named Henriette Avram, who “beckoned from the obits page, with her mysterious, knowing smile, the chain-smoking systems analyst who automated the library records of the Library of Congress and wrote the first code for computerized catalogs.”

[Snip]

Johnson writes best when she’s meandering and browsing, in the manner of a woozy reader exploring the stacks. In her most absorbing passages, I felt as if I were back in the children’s library, scrutinizing a volume of the World Book Encyclopedia, where the entry on “pachyderm” sat near the disquisition on “pachysandra,” a kind of ground cover. Johnson’s book carries the same kind of associative magic.

Source: New York Times

Don't Forget: You can browse and search (up to a limited determined by the publisher) the full text of "The Book is Overdue" using Amazon's "Look Inside the Book" program. Simply cursor over the cover (left side of page) and you should be ready to go.

BTW, this is a good example of something we come across regularly regarding new titles on Amazon and Google Books. The searchable full text is available from one service but not from the other.

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