The Pink Collar

hiatus

2006-03-28T11:19:00.000-08:00

Boneless Chuck is on boneless hiatus. His boneless return will be soon and it will rock you to your bones.

I need more patrons like this

2006-02-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

"Hi, I'm going on a long ski trip with my daughter and two teenaged boys. Can you recommend a book or two to listen to in the car?"

"Sure, um, let me think for a minute ... "

"And don't worry about swearing or violence or filthiness. We love filthiness."

"God bless you, ma'am. I'll pick you a winner."

Good day for it, kiddies. Good fucking day to be a librarian.

Professional development courses that should be required for all librarians

2006-02-23T06:51:00.000-08:00

Buy New Clothes.
We will familiarize participants with easy-to-remember tricks like "New President? New Pants." We will also discuss wearing different outfits on different days.

Eye Contact.
Contrary to popular opinion looking at people will not cause rickets, cholera, dropsy, athlete's head, gout, The Wasting or scrufula.

TV: There are other channels besides Sci-Fi and PBS.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty

2006-02-17T11:49:00.000-08:00

The Director of the Newton (MA) Public Library drew heat (see below) for asking FBI agents to have a warrant to seize the library's computers.

The Washington Post gives us an excellent reminder of how librarians can keep the "law" in "law and order.

Homeland Security Porn Police. That's the line you two want to go with? Isn't there Merry-Go-Round at the mall being left unguarded right now?

Want to know why the rest of the country thinks liberals are crazy?

2006-02-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

Look no further than SUPERbold.

SB is an organization that opposes the use of RFID chips in books at the Berkeley Public Library. They have three big reasons.

1) They claim it it is "potentially unheathful."

I hope it doesn't give you grammar cancer, because that shit would be unhealthful. Not like the portobellos I grow myself in that small patch behind the commune's compost heap.

Thinking that radio waves from RFID are harmful is like thinking that the radiation from stop lights is going to make your face rot off. A) How did you come to such a conclusion and B) Ever notice that it hasn't happened to anyone?

This is the kind of thing that people who are desperate to seem smarter and more aware than other people just LOVE talking about. Like I'm going to take science advice from someone who learned their chemistry from the label on a box of gluten-free cookies.

2) It threatens privacy. They maintain that RFID can be used to find patrons who have checked out a certain book so the Patriot Act Police can come gitcha.

We already have a system that tells you who has what books. It's called THE FUCKING COMPUTER AT THE LIBRARY! And that has the old-fashioned version of RFID is which is called, I think, YOUR FUCKING ADDRESS!

It's not really feasible (yet) to track things with RFID outside of a stable enviroment like a store or library. But it could work. On the other hand, is this the biggest problem you can find to work on? This isn't even the biggest problem for libraries.

3) It's a waste of tax dollars. Berkeley is strapped for cash, as are a lot of cities. SB thinks that RFID costs too much and they may have a point. They also say that the technology might replace union workers and they may have a point.

Here's my point: Butt out. Yeah, it's your library. But the Sisters run it. We try to have as many of the items and services that you want. We try to be open hours and locations where you can use us. But you're not in charge. I'm trained to run this place, not you. Who asked you to weigh in on our planning process with your uninformed opinion? Probably the same person who asked you block up the whole aisle at the grocery store while you and your home-schooled nimrod browse for "just the right kind of spirulina."

You're in charge of putting lengthy, clumsy bumperstickers on your car. I'm in charge of the library.

FAQ: Fucking Annoying Questions

2006-02-11T14:43:00.000-08:00

Q: You're a librarian? It must be great to read books all day.

A: I'm puzzled as to why people think this. Lots of people do. Do bakers eat bread all day? Do ranchers and butchers spend their whole day wolfing down meat? We have about a quarter of a million books.

Q: You're a librarian? Oh ...

A: It's not really a question. Actually, it's not an explicit question. The implied question is "What the hell for? Did you have a closed head injury in college? Did your balls fall off?" This question often travels as "You don't look like a librarian" which means "You don't resemble the insulting stereotype I have in my mind that I saddled you with before you said it. Why don't a joke with you about it like you've never heard it."

Oh, right, the answer. "Fuck you." That's the answer.

Q: You're a librarian? Uh oh! I have overdue books!

A: You're a doctor? Great! Here's a stool sample I've been carrying with me since last week. I can you give it to my doctor when you see him? Where's that lawyer I met a minute ago? I'm sick of carrying around this bloody knife and roll of tape.

I'm just kidding. I know you don't have any overdue books. You don't look like you can read.

Q: Have you ever shushed people?

A: Ever had your ass kicked by a librarian? Hang on. It's coming.

god DAMMIT, grandpa!

2006-02-11T14:23:00.000-08:00

The library ecosystem has a very common pest. This pest has many names. I call him Grandpa, Uncle Walter, Ding Dong, The Mouth, Lips, Foghorn Leghorn, Mr. Bull Horn, etc.

Let me back up. The reference desk is a "talky" place. People ask questions, get them answered and as more questions. The phone rings. People stop by to chat. All libraries have regulars that the staff gets to know so we talk a bit if there is no one waiting.

The pest abuses this delicate social niceity. The short chat with a patron is predicated on you LIKING the person, or being at least slightly interested in what they have to say.

The pest does not pick up on this cue. He is probably also the last-guy-at-the-party guy, the too-into-local-politics guy and the expert-on-local-history guy.

"Hey there, Chuck!"

Mary, Mother of Christ ...

"So, they working you too hard?!"

Actually, I'm the highest ranking person out here, shitbird. I work as hard as I damn well please.

"Here, I got a question for you. I wanted to know about that dam on the river north of town."

Oh no you don't, Uncle Walter. You want to run your mouth about the dam and I can't even imagine what else. This is just your twisted little segue.

"Well, that part of town was all walnut groves and uranium mines until the mine forman got his legs blown off by a malfunctioning kerosene stove. But what is interesting is that that damn was made with concrete rebar AND flamistan grommets on the flange weasels ... "

ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod

"... so by that time I had already been to Korea ... "

Our Father, who art in Heaven ...

"I have this book here about dam construction. Have you ever read 'What's your Dam Problem' by Kent McCord?"

Oh grand, the I've-read-more-than-the-librarian contest. This will end well.

"You haven't? Well, it's a great book. Here you can borrow it."

Do you realize you just asked me for like two, solid waking days of my time? If I asked you to come to my house and sit in silence, starting at my dining room table, you'd think I was fucking crazy and you'd be right. How is this different?

"You know, I thought about going into damn construction ... "

Don't all people have an instinctive sense of discomfort when a conversation is a) 20 minutes long and b) so one sided it would capsize if it were a boat? Not you, grandpa.

I should have been a cataloger.

update -- the woodshedding of Richard Cravatt begins

2006-02-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

From today's Globe, letters to the editor:

... should he (Cravatt) himself ever need to be catalogued, I've got a spot for him on the shelf at 621.945. That would be the 620s for Engineering, 621.9 for Tools and Fabricating Equipment, and, specifically, 621.945 for Boring Tools.

ERIKA TARLIN
Somerville

bwAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Bibliowned.

If a letter to the editor could be represented by a picture it would be this:
Dunked on. Nuts to grill. Clowned on "Sportscenter." Next case.

I am Melvil Dewey's furious anger

2006-02-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

A Richard J. Cravatt published an editorial in the Boston Globe yesterday which you can read here.

Cravatt's thesis is a many-splendored thing.

First, that librarians actively protect terrorists and actively seek to prevent their arrest and prosecution.

After a credible terror threat to Brandeis University was traced to a public computer at the Newton Free Library on Jan. 18, the FBI and local police rushed to secure the computer, with the possibility of identifying the nature of the threat and the person behind it.
What law enforcement had not anticipated, however, was that their pressing search would be abruptly sidetracked when Kathy Glick-Weil, the library's director, informed them that no one was searching anything without a warrant.

Glick-Weil, like many of her counterparts who are members of the American Library Association (ALA), was well-prepared to stymie the investigative efforts of government officials.

The laws of Massachusetts state that a court order must be obtained for the disclosure of library records. If Cravatt is so hot for law and order, he can start by respecting the laws of the Commonwealth.

This is where he starts to shank them off the fairway:

The would-be terrorist who threatened Brandeis University, far from relying on an expectation of privacy and the ''right to be left alone," in fact loses those protections once he conducts his transactions in the public marketplace. As Heather Mac Donald, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, recently observed, ''Like it or not, once you've disclosed information to someone else, the Constitution no longer protects it. This diffuse-it-and-lose-it rule applies to library borrowing and Web surfing as well, however much librarians may claim otherwise.

Hmm? The diffuse-it-or-lose-it rule? This isn't just overly general, it's wrong. The library is public property. It's records are not. I don't have a right to expect that a phone conversation that takes place on the street is private. But I do have the right to expect that my phone records are private.

Not only does Mr. Cravatt not understand how this area of the law works, but he appears to have not watched TV in the last 25 years.

We all have jobs to do, Mr. Cravatt. Yours is, I assume, pretending to be smarter than everyone else. This Sisterhood runs libraries. The FBI enforces the law and catches bad guys. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, specifically the legislature, writes laws. This division of labor becomes important after Cravatt says:

...why a library director could even exercise the authority to block access to vital evidence requested by the police and FBI, stalling an investigation during an ongoing crime where stakes are high. More to the point, why are librarians, whose professional training concentrates on mastering the use of the Dewey Decimal System, making any decisions that affect law enforcement?

Here's a question for you: Who cares what a English Ph.D has to saw about law enforcement or the administration of a library? Can I have the list of who died and made you boss faxed to me? Richard, I know it makes you feel all warm and tingle-y to use your outside voice and show us how brave you'd be if it was you going after those terrorists but a few minutes of thought over your point would prevent you from looking like an ass, provided you aren't already used to it.

We AREN'T making any decisions about law enforcement. The Commonwealth made the law and the library director followed it. The FBI has the right to do warrantless searches if they feel they are necessary to prevent an imminent threat. They did not feel that was the case and so they applied for a warrant.

The system worked perfectly, Mr. Cravatt. Does it tell you anything that you are the both the angriest person about this situation AND the person who knows the least about it? Does that happen to you a lot?

And thanks for the shot about the Dewey Decimal System and librarian training. My degree had more to it than that, but if facts never got in the way of you making your point, don't let them start now.

Further, I'm proud of what Dewey accomplished and of what the Sisters and I do everyday. I dare say we contribute more to society everyday than a windy, bloviating, factually-challenged English Ph.D from Punditville, USA.

This is one of the stupidest editorials I've ever read. Awful. Appalling. You can write to letter@globe.com and tell them what you think Richard Cravatt's embarrassing Andy Rooney impression.

Reasons to love the huge media conglomerate that is Google

2006-01-31T09:03:00.000-08:00

It's a hobby for librarians to bash Google. It's like construction workers visiting strip bars. It's just something we do.

Here's the rub. Librarians also like to howl furiously when the government tries to stick its nose into people's reading habits, library materials or search engine logs. And with good reason, as it seems that we are pretty out-numbered in the howling furiously for privacy department.

Google, read here for background, received a request from the Justice Department to see the records it keeps of users' searches. DOJ said the request was pursuant to enforcing the Child Online Protection Act. Google told Justice to take their subpoena and cram it where the Fourth Amendment still shines, forcing the Attorney General to move up the federal appelate ladder in order to get the records.

What we have here is a huge corporation, Google, using its clout, money and flesh-eating lawyers to rebuff the government's advances into our private lives. They are doing what ALA never could.

But librarians heap scorn on them for kowtowing to China and censoring search results. Fair enough.

But where is the praise for their defense of the freedom of Americans to read and think in peace and privacy?

Library Director of the Year

2006-01-30T18:59:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed it ALWAYS goes to someone at the top of the pay scale? Someone with a large budget, staff and building?

I think it's a lot more impressive to work-part time with a master's degree, too little support or supplies, in a dangerous building or neighborhood. I think I could learn a lot more from someone like that getting several pages in our flagship publication every year.

I know librarians with roommates. I know librarians whose lunch plans are based on the money left until the end of the week not on how they feel about the amount of cilantro in the thai place down the street. I'd like to know how they prioritize their work in only 25 hours per week.

It's possible that I am just being a prick. But I don't think that I'm bagging on boss types just to score points.

I'd like to hear about an administrator who has managed to get their staff more money. There are public libraries that are scratch-building catalog search boxes nested in web browsers. Let's have a chat with the dude that came up with that.

I'm tired of reading the same article every year. I'm tired of never reading about the things that we actually talk about.

The Sugar, Lard, Butter-fat and Whiskey Cookbook

2006-01-30T11:23:00.000-08:00

I had a patron ask if we could buy "The Cut the Sugar Cookbook."

We have a lot of older folks that use us and in a town of rich people who exercise, well, it's not a great galloping surprise someone would want to read it.

When I saw the request for a minute I thought it was called "The Sugar Cookbook." I thought: How rad. Finally, someone embracing the gluttony involved in cooking. None of this egg-white bullshit. No applesauce sweetened vegan chocolate cake. A cookbook with balls.

I would be pleased to buy the following cookbooks if they existed --

"You Can Totally Fry That"

"Okay, Now Wrap It In Bacon. Sweet."

"Desserts That Are Like Fucking Tar Heroin"

"Canola Oil? What Are You, A Communist?"

"Say It With Pan-Drippings"

"Lipid: The Official Cookbook of the National Association of Pastry Chefs"

patrons I can do without

2005-12-29T10:39:00.000-08:00

"Well, I'm a professor."

I used to work in an academic library and I have been a professor. So I know how little it can take to be a professor. It it didn't how did I get to be one?

I'll ignore, for the purposes of brevity, discussing whether or not academic librarians work "for" faculty or "with" them.

The public library where I work, we have a handful of pushy, impertinent, condescending patrons. They are usually frustrated with our lack of resources in a given area.

Me: I'm sorry, the only journals we have that discuss medieval architecture are in this database and some aren't full-text. We just can't afford to have more. Did you look in the datab ...

Professor Jackass: Um, YEAH! I'm a professor at (local worthless college) so I know how to do research. I've been here for five hours and you don't have what I need!

Me: OK, good. Maybe you can try (worthless college's worthless library) and see if they ...

PJ: I have to have this syllabus ready tomorrow for SOME reason and the college library is closed this week and I JUST DON'T HAVE TIME!

Alright Senor Snippypants, I'm going to stop you right there. If you were any kind of professor you'd have your syllabus ready already. And if you were any kind of post-graduate educated person you'd be better at research than what I'm seeing, which to my eye resembles a retard trying to fuck a football. Why don't you take your inferiority complex and poor career choices and bounce the fuck up on out of my library before I introduce you to Professor Knuckle and Dean Sandwich.

Personals ads perverts

The ALA's policies on Internet use and censorship make it clear that librarians, with certain fairly rare exceptions, are not to judge or assign value to any patron's choice or reading material, paper or electronic.

The upper portion of my brain realizes this. The reptilian portion of my brain holds certain patrons and their "innocuous" choices of entertainment in total revulsion.

By this I mean the personals ads pervert.

I feel for personals daters. I do. Were I not happily married to Mrs. Boneless Chuck (Boneless Charlene?) at a rather young age I'd probably use one of the services.

The guy we have is clearly not, um, dating, as you might recognize it. Isn't online libe dating supposed to be like shopping? You browse, select and then leave, right? Not our guy no sir. Four or five hours a day. Every day. E-mails, chat, profiles, pictures. Never porn, at least not that I can see. But e-mail with e-skanks for hours. He's clearly not looking for companionship, he's into the giddy thrill of a harem.

Which is cool. Far be it from me to piss in another man's pool. So why does Personals Ads Pervert make me want to Hulk Smash?

One, he's just a schmuck. I glanced at the girls he thought he was talking to. That willowy strawberry blond with the cleavage and wicked smile? That girl doesn't need to get dates on the web. She gets dates by getting up and breathing. If she bends over a pool table at a bar for 6 six seconds she'll have marriage proposals tied to Cosmopolitans delivered to her before she can straighten up.

It's a guy, my friend. Or a skank. A bus station-grade skank.

Two, Spending hours amassing a golf bag full of "girls" to chat up is the begining of bad behavior. It's like a kid setting a fire or killing the neighbor's pomeranian. Personals ads guy is getting ready to move up to big boy sex behavior, I'm pretty sure. And all it takes is one whiff of sex criminal in the library for our stock to fucking CRASH in this town. No taxpayer goodwill for us. No sir. We'll be wrestling bums for change for the new Britannica.

So that's why I hate the personals guy. Everytime I see him -- with his weak chin, pointy nose, late-20s baldness, dirty apartment reek, raccoon-in-a-trash-can grin -- I see our fragile little informational ecosphere vanish in a puff of smoke with naked pictures of "kittengurl18" in the background. And it makes me want to throw him a friggin' boot party.

Donation or sanitation

Did you think we would want these? This is not a rhetorical question. Did you look at these loose-leaf binders of home ec. syllabi from 1986 and think to yourself, "Self, I think the local library would LOVE to spend some of its precious staff time to lovingly process these rare jems of intellectual history"? Really? Or the yellow, basement-funk-having science fiction novels? How about the incomplete collection of magazines from the 80s? Salavating for a chance to get our hands on those were we?

Genealogists

Let me save all of you some time. There is nothing interesting about your family. Nothing. Not where they came from. Not what they did. Not what they looked like or where they lived. The only person anyone's life is interesting to is that person.

Everyone will forget about you when you are dead, just as we all forgot about Uncle Ted and Aunt Myra who was born in Cornwall, which is in England, but when she was a girl her dad caught the Wasting and his head fell off. Then they moved to Ohio and she married a guy named Alton, who might have been a Methodist minister or a serial rapist. I'm not sure. Anyway, they died. Here's a pretty yellow picture of them frowning in front of a house. I visited it once. It wasn't really yellow. I think that's just the picture.

Books I can do without

2005-12-29T10:35:00.000-08:00

There is a myth that librarians love books. We like the idea of books. The individual books themselves can make you want to vomit blood.

The “librarian” portion of my brain wants to not judge people for their reading habits. Freedom to Read, no disapproving stare or snicker. And it’s good that people read, no matter what it is. Right?

But privately ...

Romance novels: Evidence, like you needed it, that feminism hasn’t gotten anyone as far as you think. I don’t understand why people are embarrassed about renting porn, buying birth control or enema bulbs but they have no problem checking out a copy of “The Heave-ening” or “Nature’s Laborer” from the local library.

What’s more embarrassing is the tacit admission: I hate my husband. We’ve had Lucy and Ricky sleeping arrangements since the Reagan administration. I’m so ludicrously out-of-touch with actual human relationships that a whole novel about a sweaty hunk who loves children, cooks, cleans, thinks size 22 jeans are sexy and is kind to animals DOESN’T seem like science-fiction to me.

Here’s a public service announcement for you romance novel readers: The guy on the cover is gay and even if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have sex with ANYTHING with more than 5% body fat. Sorry.

New Age: This is a hard category to pin down so let’s just call it “books that have the word ‘spirit’ in the title somewhere.” We also would accept books on reincarnation, crystals, natural healing, anything involving “energy” not in the 500s (librarian joke, sistas) or psychics.

New age books are read by people who are searching for proof that their lives have a higher meaning or purpose apart from their daily routine.

It doesn’t.

The minds of new age patrons are so open that their brains slid out and rolled under the couch of a Unitarian church basement in 1981.

If you ever wondered what kind of person believes that angels speak to some gelled-haired idiot on daytime TV carrying messages from dead relatives …

… people who want to read the aforementioned idiot go on for 200 or more pages about it. That’s who.

the on-rushing irrelevance of the American Library Association

2005-12-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

I am a librarian and the ALA does nothing to make my professional life better or easier. I don't think I'm the only librarian who feels this way either.

There has been a lot of news made recently about ALA's policy toward conference presenters and speakers (read a good summary here http://freerangelibrarian.com/archives/121505/how_do_we_serve.php or Jessamyn West's at http://www.librarian.net/stax/1593) It would be nice ALA was just cheap and politically tone-deaf. Those are minor problems.

The American Library Association has serious and systemic problems that not only make it out of touch with its membership, but alienate the professional community and do nothing to advocate for librarians or librarianship.

In a post to the ALA listserv (http://lp-web.ala.org:8000/guest/archives/ALACOUN/log0512/msg00276.html) Councilor Mark Rosenzweig said: "Since I am probably not alone in not having my head well up in the self-intoxicated ether of the blogosphere, I am undoubtedly not the only one here who until this discussion had no idea who "Jenny" or "Michael" were. Imagine that! ... This discussion is ridiculous and an insult to those librarians who consider it an honor to speak to ALA at its conferences."

Rory Litwin in a post to the same list (http://lp-web.ala.org:8000/guest/archives/ALACOUN/log0512/msg00172.html) said "I don't know who Jenny Levine is, but my feeling is that she has found a rather selfish thing to be outraged about."

Let me respond to Rosenzweig's points first. We, as a profession, have been asked to get by on thanks, goodwill, good intentions, honor and warm fuzzies for decades. The attitude ALA displays toward presenters is one that we internalize and it infects every area of our professional world. Don't ask for more money, don't pressure the mayor / dean / library board for more money for staff. We're just librarians. We don't want to make a fuss. It's thanks enough just to work here. Can I buy some more pens out of my own money, please?

As long as ALA members and especially Councilors have this attitude we will always be at the bottom of the economic and professional food chain.

I don't really care if presenters have to pay a registration fee or what Mark Rosenzweig thinks of it. What I do care about our cumulative professional timidity, the damage it causes and our leadership's desire to perpetuate it.

And as far as Litwin's perspective, I have a question:

Why does ALA have to be a polyglot of every leftist cause, viewpoint and political issue? I say this as a lifelong liberal Democrat. I oppose the Patriot Act. I believe laws requiring Internet filters are unconstitutional. I taste bile when I think about the prospect of interlibrary loan transaction being monitored by federal law enforcement, even though it turns out they probably aren't.

I also oppose the designated hitter rule, the NBA dress code and the breakup of the Fugees. But none of that means that the ALA has to do something about it.

We have the lowest wages of nearly any professional line of work. The APA arm of ALA, that was supposed to advocate for the rank and file, has been invisible since its inception.

ALA's strength is in its numbers and its national status. They could choose to speak for us but instead they speak for causes. Worried about censorship and the freedom to read? Me too. That's why I belong to the ACLU. ALA is squandering its resources doing the work that other organizations do better.

I can think of five organizations that exist to protect the free exchange of ideas. I can't think of a single other one that is supposed to advocate for me and my profession.

"Wow. A 15 second clip on NPR about the Patriot Act. Those were membership dues well spent."

ALA speaks for honor and sacrifice for the good of the Sisterhood. They speak for free expression, Cuban librarians and the anti-war movement.

Who will speak for us?

Oooooh, Library Director of the Year

2005-12-23T07:05:00.000-08:00

if I hear one more word about Google

2005-12-22T12:48:00.000-08:00

We, as a profession, need to shut up about Google.

Librarians talk endlessly about Google.

"Well, most of the students I see think they can just Google it."

" ... or they just run to Google."

Can we please cut the fucking shit?

What the hell is the matter with us?

One more frumpy, mousy, cat-obsessed, jumper-wearing, "Buffy"-rerun-watching librarian sniffing derisively about patrons whoring on Google for term papers and I'm going Bruce Banner on that ass. I'm bursting out of my purple pants, turning green and Hulk is going to smash. HULK SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Enough. Enough already. Let's just move on. It's a tool. It finds stuff. You won't be out of a job. They're not going to shutter the Bodleian because "The Da Vinci Code" is on the Internet.

The truth is no one has any idea what Google is going to do to the Sisterhood. We still don't know what the full effect of the Internet itself is on the profession and we've been living in a live-fire exercise for the last fifteen years.

Shut up. Sack up. Cowboy up. The Sisters have been around since before electricity. Before Columbus. Before paper for Christ's sake. Stop worrying. Shut up and play.

and this one's for ... tha ladies

2005-12-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

If you are a male librarian (manbrarian) then you are used to being, if not the only dude in the room, certainly one of a very few.

This is not a big deal. I don't get to geek on basketball at work. No one to geek with.

You must remember, however, that this is female turf and you are a guest, no matter how long you've been there or how "non-traditionally male" you think you are. Keep these guidelines in mind.

Women will not ask you to help set up for birthday parties, events, holiday parties, potlucks, etc. They will just do it. THIS DOES NOT ABSOLVE YOU FROM HELPING OUT. Don't stand there and say "How can I help?" like your dad on Thanksgiving. Finding something for someone to do is one more fucking thing to do. Don't just let "the girls" handle it and hide in your office until it's time to eat. Don't bring in food that your wife or special ladyfriend made, or for fuck's sake don't tell anyone. Make it yourself, big boy.

If you talk all the time in groups, it's not because you are a genius. Women tend to be collaborative and deferential. Talk less. Listen more. This applies doubly if you are the boss.

Don't assume that your man-status confers upon you expert knowledge of cars, electronics, politics, money or home repair. They're women, not 7th graders. Respond if asked.

Remember, men are relative newcomers to librarianship. The flame was kept burning for decades by the women who had our jobs before us. Better recognize.

testing

2005-12-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

First post. Will be pithy shortly.