Shitting your pants, The appropriateness of

The availability of free online books from Google makes it absolutely appropriate for librarians to shit their pants.

http://www.print.google.com/

Seriously. Quit your job. Move to the woods. Learn to live off the land.

Professional development, Participating in

Searching the Internet for new jobs is a perfectly reasonable way to participate in professional development while at the reference desk.

Weeding books, On the practice of

C'mon! Nobody weeds books anymore! This is another arcane library expression that should be purged (or weeded?) from your professional vocabulary. Withdrawing titles is also a little too pedestrian.

SOLUTION: You should de-select monographs instead. This subtle semantic change will validate your status as a library scientist and make you feel like the professional you truly are.

Professional journals, Reconsidering

Every once in a while, the professional literature comes through with something genuinely useful, and critics (like your beloved editor) have to eat crow. Sometimes these redeeming events come in the form of a handy bibliography, an illuminating book review, or a particularly apt and applicable study.

Or perhaps while catching up on your backlog of College & Research Libraries News (also known as C&RL News for those of us who don't have time for the extra four syllables), you happen upon the name of a particular person who has been stubbornly ignoring your emails and phone calls for the past few months. No amount of pestering has elicited a response -- which is particularly frustrating because it's really important that you talk to this person to get your professional research back on track. Well, here she is, listed in the "People in the News" section, and...

She's dead. And apparently has been for a while.

Reference Desk statistics, Logging

Don't take reference desk statistics too seriously. It's not like anyone ever looks at those tally sheets anyway.

Recording tick marks and classifying them as "Reference Transactions," "Directional Questions," or "Phone Calls" is a pitiful way to justify our self-worth as professionals. Sure, an administrator may occasionally make a staffing decision using this data, but when was the last time an administrator came to you and said, "You know... I was just looking at the reference desk statistics, and I think we should add another reference librarian to help you out during your busy Thursday evening shift"?

Ticked off with tick marks? Librarians should take a principled stand and ignore the useless act all together.

Surveys, Conducting

Q: Do you conduct surveys?

a) always
b) sometimes
b) only if I have to
c) seldom
d) never

Librarians are bred to survey. It doesn't matter if you use the data. It doesn't matter if you even have a need for a survey. You should do one. Spend a lot of time and personnel hashing out the questions, format, etc. The more hours of professionalism expended on the project, the better your survey will be.

Job descriptions, Stating the obvious in

When writing or revising an official job description, be sure to include ridiculously obvious requirements and duties. A real life example:

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; and reach with arms and hands. The employee is occassionally required to stand, talk or hear, and smell.

Do you smell? Then perhaps this job is for you!

http://kdla.ky.gov/libsupport/jobline/stclaire.htm

Raiding the lounge refrigerator, The proper way to

It is absolutely reprehensible to remove items from the pantry that do not belong to you, unless your company supplies milk/creamer for the coffee and you have to open a fresh carton of someone's Lactaid because you bought some Frosted Flakes at the deli downstairs and the only thing in the fridge is an almost-empty bottle of frigging Half-and-Half (what the hell is Half-and-Half, anyway?) so you really have no other choice. You can absolve yourself of this mortal sin by giving a homeless guy a quarter later this evening during the subway commute back home.

Extraordinary patrons, Doubting the powers of

Do not doubt the extraordinary powers of your library's patrons. For example, if a patron declines the offer of a pencil to write down a call number because he has "a photographic memory," it is not polite to ask, "Seriously?! I've never met anyone who actually has a real photographic memory."

It is also impolite to laugh wholeheartedly when -- ten minutes later -- the same patron emerges from the stacks without the book, returns to reference desk, and asks for a pencil.

Electronic books, Celebrating

Choke it up. You must become a champion for e-books, no matter how bad they suck and how much you hate them.

Google, Being threatened by

It is your professional responsibility to be threatened by Google. Worry about your job, the future of printed books, and be sure to use the word "googlization" at least once a day.

Note: Patrons will not get the joke when you pretend not to know what Google is.

Job interviews, Avoiding answering hard questions during

During interviews, make sure you have a plan for answering questions that are waaaay above your head. In these bold new times, library jargon has hit critical mass and it is not uncommon to be confronted by terms such as "taxonomy" "semantic design" or "ontology" during an interview for a part-time circ desk job. The studious librarian should prepare for these situations by either A) updating their professional skills and knowledge of new trends via seminars, conferences and one-day courses or by B) distracting the interviewer with a funny anecdote. Note: while option 'A' is preferable, option 'B' is by far a funnier story to tell while drunk. Librarians desperately need to learn how to tell funny stories at cocktail parties, so your should always go with the funny anecdote.

Scholarly article, Choosing a title for your

Since there is so much dreadful stuff published in professional journals and presented at professional meetings, it's important to come up with a snazzy title for your scholarly endeavors. Below are some general guidelines, presented as potential article titles:

• The colonization of library literature: using punctuation to spice up your article titles.
• Proprefixualization: Using prefixes and suffixes to create new buzz words.
• Misutilization of the word utilize: Mangling the English language in the name of librarianship.
• Bland, boring, and banal: Alliteration as an alleviator for sub-par scholarship.

Salary, On Accepting A Really Low One Because You're Too Wussy To Ask For What You're Really Worth

Do everybody in the field a huge disservice by accepting an MLS-level position for 10- , hell 20-, thousand dollars less than what you should be getting. Do not negotiate with the prospective employer after an initial offering is made. This will ensure that the median salary for librarians stays somewhere between the 'secretary' and 'garbage man' levels. And don't ask for raises or bonuses, either.

Recruiting new librarians

It is your responsibility to recruit people to the profession of librarianship. Evangelical librarians can accomplish this task by inflating the inherent coolness of librarianship ("We are defenders of freedom!"), pretending to enjoy professional reading and meetings ("ALA is like Lollapalooza!"), and by lying about how much they enjoy their work (I just read novels all day!").

After all, if we don't see to it that the job market is supersaturated, who will accept those jobs that offer insultingly low salaries?

Minutes, Working mundane things into the

A fun exercise for your work meetings is to see who can work the most mundane item into the official minutes of the meeting. Some examples:

• Periodicals will be purchasing a new pencil sharpener for public use.
• Interlibrary Loan reported adding a second address line to the ILL forms.
• Bathroom lights should be turned off each night at closing.
• The Reference Department staff should turn off computer monitors each evening, but leave the PCs on for virus software updates.
• All library staff were reminded to refill ice trays in the staff lounge.

This game will not only increase your appreciation of library minutiae, but also make people read the minutes.

Management Via E-Mail

Make sure that your underqualified, promoted-once-too-often manager ass avoids direct communication with staff by sending out pissy e-mails regarding triffling, unimportant issues, instead of making an effort to communicate directly and verbally. This will give you an air of importance; it will make you seem like you're too important to talk to your loser staff. Don't worry about sinking the morale of your staff by being a non-verbal e-mailer. Instead, worry that maybe your staffers think you've become a useless coward.

Power struggles, Participating in public

Workplace power struggles can be publicly manifested in a number of ways: personal interactions, mass email, physical posture, etc. Want to get involved?

Ways to challenge the authority of your committee chair...

• Call a meeting and set the primary agenda items
• Arrive early and sit at the head of the table -- normally occupied by the Chair
• Conduct the business of the meeting (give handouts, ask for departmental reports, etc.)
  
• Rephrase what the Chair says in your own words (for everyone else's benefit)
  
• Be aggressive and doggedly defend your ideas, regardless of relevance
• Re-send (to the committee) mass email messages the Chair has already sent to the committee members.
  

This is just a start. Be creative and seize the power.

Meetings, Scheduling

Do not schedule committee meetings (that are not "lunch meetings") during the traditional lunch hour (12:00-1:00). If you are not paying for or preparing lunch for everyone, you should schedule the meeting in the morning or the afternoon. It is also courteous to allow a 30-minute buffer on either side of the traditional lunch hour because not everyone eats at exactly the same time you do.

J

PowerPoint, Reading aloud from

Before you read the content of your PowerPoint slides aloud to a captive audience, be sure to promise them that you won't read the slides.

And just for the record, it doesn't make it any less painful if you have pre-recorded yourself reading the slides and you play the MIDI file instead of reading it live. People who do this are begging to be physically assaulted.

J