You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'librarianship' tag.
I have a better idea about this (will not be specific with this indexical) site that I will probably see again at the beginning of November. (I use “probably” because a type of social action may cause a cancellation of my visit.)
On another front, it seems that I caused a stir on a listserv with my comments on businessese as the “newspeak.” The outside world, or the most potent part of it, defines librarians or information professionals in its own terms, but that is not unexpected. What is, then, unexpected? Hmm, I think it’s our willingness to adopt that language, and make it part of our own, as if we should replace our preexistent language. Somehow, this phenomenon reminds me of entire ethnic groups who were forced to adopt a dominant group’s language as a way to survive. That must be it: we, information professionals, should we wish to survive, will have to forget out identity, since we cannot use our language, so to speak, and adopt a new one, which is defined by the faculty, business world, and others.
We will reformulate identity which is not ours anymore, but that becomes ours since we will speak the language of those who define us. Does this make sense?
I’m reading an article on “genres” in LIS: it is so abstruse right now because it does not seem to clarify what a genre is (will re-read it several times, though). Would need to write a few words about that. Soon.
The more I read scholarly papers, especially those written by professors of humanities, the more I realize that people such as myself, that is, people coming from another linguistic and cultural background, will never be able to catch up, no matter what, with well-educated native English writers. It is an insurmountable handicap, no matter how hard some psychologists would try to find some sort of feel-good theoretical frame.
It looks like it paid off to spend a whole term on sweating a cultural essay about the Romanian alphabet; but the news only reopened a window through which I could see some hard work ahead: rephrasing ideas, smithing words, giving birth to more elaborate sentences (what other metaphor can one think of when writing is such a painstaking effort?) and rechecking bibliographic references (mostly, citations). I’ll see.
What I found scary was when a word, or group of words, was used to comprise the notion of “one year;” whoever will have read this message, and is in the business of librarianship, will understand quite well what I mean.
Pretending that I’m busy, I haven’t written an entry for quite a few days.
I would have liked to be a little bit more open here, but, understandably, various reasons prevent me from jotting down some of my thoughts (another attempt to get away from writing).
As if I have never moved, it felt overwhelming to race against time to fill boxes—filling with vengeance, as someone put it. Not surprisingly, the boxes with books are the heaviest of all. Having the librarian streak, I’ve attempted to group the books by categories, not necessarily connected to an easily definable category, or perhaps to the ones that my own mind invented on the spot, as I almost desperately rushed to impose some sort of categorial order to finish off a daunting job. At the end, I simply gave in to our eternal, invisible master—the Time. In other words, categories that would have, or had, existed at the beginning of my packing simply merged into a huge, bookish Babylon. Up to me to figure out how I will re-place them on the shelves.
Simply put, it’s madness: packing, preparing for interviews (and they just keep coming), then having to answer questions either face to face or by phone, and dealing with other, more personal affairs—unquestionably, the latter one is not a subject to depict in this blog.
In the rest of the time, in addition to reading articles of philosophy, psychology, education, and—of course—writing, I continue to look at lib lit. As for the last one, there is a plethora of research that– as my chance to discuss with several kinds of librarians that I would like to meet on a regular basis is currently slim– substitutes for an understandably, more desirable professional contact. And all of a sudden I realize that the time seems to have compressed to the point that I live now with the perception that there is no time for anything else: one task continues with another, without my having any restful intermezzo.
It’s funny how some people undermine themselves by displaying behaviours of greed when they see that you could give them some business somewhat regularly. Specifically, I used the services of a print shop for some personal business (I will leave other details aside), the last time charging me $0.06 per copy, although it was clearly specified in their ad that for more than a thousand copies one is charged $0.04 per copy. When I made this observation in my second to the last use of their services, they have changed the figures, and I gladly gave them the benefit of the doubt. This time, though, I didn’t– justifiably so, and, since I do not believe that being too assertive is always the best approach to solve problems, I paid the full amount, promising myself that I really do not have a reason to go to that printshop anymore (as I’m leaving the city sooner rather than later).
I found Charles Taylor’s article, “The dynamics of democratic exclusion,” interesting in the sense that he sees that people (whether majorities or minorities) in simultaneously democratic and multicultural societies operate politically on two not-so-mutually-exclusive models: the procedural one (we look at each other from the most basic perspective, as humans, but we ignore what really makes us individuals) and the Herderian model (we are complementary to each other precisely because our differences). First, he describes patterns of exclusion of minorities in different Western societies (Germany, Canada), before he proposes his two-prong model. He goes on to say that the two models share linguistically some elements with the “postmodernist” discourse (namely, some of its terms seem to be semantically close to those used by procedural liberals—seemingly ideological enemies of the “postmodernists,” but it would have been interesting if Taylor had come up with some examples to better support his assertion. What Charles Taylor actually does is to clearly define terms, propose an ideological model of how a Western democracy should work, admit that the matters can get worse before they might get better, but he ends up with some gracious generalities (e.g. “we must fight free of some of the powerful philosophical illusions of our age,” pag. 156).
Under the stress of finding a temporary storage place for books, since the departure is now within sight, I am navigating back and forth to my computer to check my emails, as if I am corresponding with an army of librarians, or with my relatives. In fact, I don’t, because I pretend to keep myself busy all day long.
Young and educated abroad, coming from an Eastern land, she’s really one of a kind. Her bright black eyes, so full of life, were in fact deceiving, as my friend said a bit later. He argued that one does not sign a contract in faith and, thereafter, is told a fundamental detail that, if known, would have made a difference before signing. Yes, I’m still learning here. One could say that learning business skills would never be on my list of priorities, unless I have a wrong perception of how a business person should behave (more likely—but there is less and less time to learn that too).
I enjoyed a small talk with professors and colleagues who were present at the reception. Almost inexplicably, I had an outburst, especially when I was just about to converse with one instructor whom I owe the perception of becoming a self-learner. She was the one who helped me to cross that imaginary bridge—oh yes, an imperfect and cheap metaphor, but still a metaphor.
In a conversation with another teacher, I mentioned that I know of one of my colleagues who accepted to work as a library technician. The teacher said something predictable, but I still wanted to confirm it– unless you’re really desperate, you should avoid being sidetracked and accept having your professional status lowered. Actually, this is more complicated, considering that colleague’s particular situation (immigrant with less than near-native speaking skills).
I cannot believe how cool it is in Montreal these days: the maximum for today in my part of the island is 16C, although it is sunny.
