In the digital age, librarians are pioneers

February 10, 2010|Judy Bolton-Fasman

From the outset of “This Book Is Overdue,’’ Marilyn Johnson introduces today’s librarians as cybrarians, a “new breed of tech-savvy librarians, part cyborg, part cat’s eye reading glasses.’’ As Johnson amply shows in her romp through the brave new world of the profession, these new librarians cum information scientists are building on the work of their pioneering predecessors as they branch out in sometimes surprising directions.

A librarian, the late Henriette Avram, gave Johnson her motivation for writing “Overdue.’’ Johnson, who is also the author of “The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries,’’ came across Avram’s obituary and learned about the storied transformation of millions of dog-eared catalog cards in the Library of Congress into a searchable electronic database in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Avram’s MARC project - Machine Readable Cataloging - quickly guided librarianship into the shiny new field of information science.

Among information professionals, Johnson notes there are librarians and archivists: “Librarians were finders [of information]. Archivists were keepers.’’ But the information revolution is affecting both. She affectionately portrays archivists as magicians that deftly distinguish between detritus and artifact, capturing history before it disappears because of a broken link or outdated software. For Johnson, archivists are the unsung heroes of the library, cataloging idiosyncratic, often paper-based collections. The digital age is making possible the creation of searchable databases of archives, but it’s also making information, especially on the Internet, more ephemeral and harder to collect.

On the art of cataloging Johnson reflects, “Who knows how many people are invisible because their stories don’t fit into our categories?’’ Here is an area in which the digital revolution offers help. Some of the invisible are brought to our attention by a group of sharp, blogging librarians who are not the stereotypical shushing, cardigan-wearing guardians of the reference room. Johnson introduces these ultramodern librarians as “open, casual, approachable, dedicated to demystifying technology and networked to the eyeballs . . . the public face of the twenty-first century librarian.’’