The Librarian, Redefined

March 22, 2000 - 11:45am — Blake

David Ettinger writes:Below is the text of a letter to the editor of The New York Times I recently wrote which was published this past Sunday:

Whatever Happened to the Class of \'93?\" (Feb. 20) looked at how the Internet had defined the careers of Stanford graduates, turning some into quick millionaires. It described one graduate -- one of the first
employees of Yahoo who now heads its Web cataloging team -- as possibly the \"world\'s richest librarian.\"

I don\'t begrudge her her good fortune, but her situation contrasts markedly with that of thousands of dedicated professionals with library science degrees and extremely modest incomes who, like her, love what they do, but whose work is scarcely recognized by society, monetarily or
otherwise.

Washington, Feb. 20

David Ettinger is a librarian at the Gelman Library at George Washington University.