I was immediately intrigued by Marilyn Johnson's new book This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. After all, I want to go to library school and when I was in high school I used to make comic books where I was the superhero. So the idea shown on the cover, a librarian with a cape off to save the world, was attractive to me. Once I started reading I was surprised to find out that Johnson isn't a librarian herself, but rather a librarian stalker like me. Except that I plan on becoming a librarian and as far as I could tell she did not. I think the book was even better (at least for me) written from the perspective of a non-librarian because it made it more interesting for an outsider. In this book Johnson talks about the changing world of libraries, the problems with digital records and the plus sides to them, the stereotype of the librarian, and what librarians do outside their jobs. And I'll admit this right away, the book made me even more positive that library school is what I want to do in two years.
The book is divided into 12 essays, really, about different aspects of libraries and librarians. One of my favorites was How to Change the World, which talked about librarians that work in other countries and with students from around the world, specifically underprivileged countries to help their nations advance in society through technology. As a blogger I really enjoyed The Blog People, which is all about librarian bloggers (several I'd never heard of even though I follow a lot of librarian blogs). She also touches on the danger of blogging for librarians, particularly young librarians. Even though many librarians know the Internet is the future of libraries and want to further that research, there is still resistance from other librarians. Follow That Tattooed Librarian was also an entertaining look at the stereotype of librarians as old, crotchety ladies when there are plenty of librarians that don't fit that stereotype one bit (Hello! Time Traveler's Wife anyone?).
I read this book at the same time as Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age, and while Scrolling Forward as insightful and certainly made me feel like I knew more about digitization, Johnson was just so much better at making things exciting! Her descriptions alone deserve an A++; "This is the greatest and most fraught romance of modern society, the marriage between the IT staff and those who depend on them" (39). That is just great. This didn't feel like a how to guide on librarianship, it felt like a documentary in which the most exciting possibilities of the career were explored. I've seen a lot of reviews that complain about her extended discussion of the game Second Life. Apparently this game is pretty popular within some groups of librarians and Johnson was obviously a little obsessed with the game when she was writing this, but I just didn't care. Everything else was just so awesome, so perfect, that John could have ranted on about Second Life for another 25 pages and I would have listened to her. Because she completely captured my sentiments about libraries by the end of the book; "We'll always need printed books that don't mutate the way digital books do; we'll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we'll always need brick-and-mortor libraries. But another library, the ninetieth in the system, is growing explosively in cyberspace" (187).
This book deserves an A.
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