Your Host...

...The Rotten Librarian himself.

Okay, it's my blog and I oughta post

Hi, I am LibrarianRandy and I am...ahem...a rotten librarian, actually I am a professional rotten librarian. I have been working in a public library as a teen librarian for five years now.

It is my job to assist teens with finding fulfilment - no not that kind of fulfilment, the literary kind, and not that kind of literature either *sheesh* get your mind out of the gutter. Teens comprise about 25% of the usership of public libraries but receive the least service therein. Most public libraries, and fewer and fewer public schools, have librarians who work directly with teens full time. Which is really too bad since kids between twelve and twenty have been having dropping literacy rates for the last decade or two. Anyway, it is what I do and something that I enjoy talking about so you will definately hear about it here.

I have seen my share of rotten librarianship in only five years. I have made a fair number of mistakes myself and have witnessed some of the pitfalls my fellow book pushers have fallen into, not to mention a pretty varried collection of general weirdness from both the patrons and the staff. I thought it might be cool, and dare I say it, useful, to host a blog about those trips and traps as a warning to those who may follow. Beware, from this point on there may be dragons, so bring your own weenies.

Welcome to RottenLibrarian! If you have been visiting this site for a bit you will have noticed that it is as much about slamming your host, me, as anything else. So go ahead hit me with your best shot I can take it, after all sticks and stones may break my bones but groupings of pixels can never hurt me. This site is for librarians and so it stands to reason that there would be a shoe blog on it. We librarians are nothing if not fashionable, or at least well shod. Since it is my library blog it also includes a healthy amount of information about role-playing games, fantasy, science fiction and movies. So, if you have anything you wish to share about librarianship, best practice or worst, shoes,questionable pictures of gamer folk or just want to take a pixalated roundhouse at me, feel free! Post your heart out and enjoy the show.

Dust and Fear 07

We have arrived at scenic Indianapolis for GenCon!
We have liqour and swag bags. I have taken pictures. Bruce is outdoing Brian on the Fart O Meter.

Requests?

Requests, do we take 'em?

'Cause I, for one, would like to see some fabulous combinations of the varied intellectual and blogerial powers collected here.

Like, for instance, a pic of Dave's dog in those Fab orange pumps. Reading a book.

With a chicken.


C'mon....admit it. I'm not the only one.

Hooray for librarimen, a quote..

..."While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, their powerful polical connections or great wealth, who, all over this counrty, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shevles, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."...

- Kurt Vonnegut

To : Friends of Librarimen around the world

As we all know libarimen (in their own minds) live in the late 1800's, and as such, know not how to craft these technical missives we call 'blogs'. It's not their era, or area of expertise.

So if we want to see actual writings from libarimen, some kind soul will have to instruct, nay, apprentice a libariman, and school him in basic arts of 'blogging'.

Any volunteers ?

Gah! Not the shoes!

In an effort to un-shoe the blog, here is a picture, a pic of my dog: