![]() ![]() In her admirable desire to discard the Marian-the-Librarian stereotype, however, Johnson seems bent on creating another: the librarian as ironic, radical, sexy and, above all, edgy. graduate programs have dropped the word “library” from degree names, preferring cutting-edge locutions such as “information science.” Johnson provides worthwhile profiles of a variety of librarians/archivists, including a Catholic “cyber-missionary” who trains students from developing nations to fight injustice at home using the Internet an archivist of boxing and a children’s librarian known to her Facebook group as the “Tattooed Librarian.” These professionals stay ahead of trends, challenge the FBI for using the Patriot Act as a pretext to examine patron records, battle vigorously in the blogosphere and indulge their creativity and fantasies through digital avatars on sites such as Second Life. A spirited exploration of libraries’ evolution from fusty brick-and-mortar institutions to fluid virtual environments.įormer Redbook and Outside editor Johnson ( The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries, 2006) writes that a librarian attempts to create “order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future.” General readers will be surprised by most of her tidbits of information-e.g., about a third of all the profession’s U.S. ![]()
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