Are you a librarian? Interested in a makeover? Better head down under.
Style queen Paula Ryan will run a workshop at the national library conference this month, offering tips on how to transform their “conservative and dated image”.
New Zealand’s Sunday Star Times reports: In an email to librarians on Wednesday, the Library and Information Association‘s communications co-ordinator Megan Mathieson said the workshop was “a not-to-be-missed opportunity to be inspired and challenged by New Zealand’s pre-eminent style guru”.
“Librarians,” she says, “have a very conservative and dated image: if we want to transform our profession then surely we must start by transforming ourselves?”
Would American librarians want someone to come to the next ALA conference and do makeovers?
F*ck no
I’d rather have my balls pounded flat with a wooden hammer than have that woman at a library conference in the States.
You know what it reminds me of? When really pretty girls think they are being humanitarians by “helping” the untouchables at her high school become more attractive, doling out make-up and tight sweaters.
I say fuck her. Don’t insult me and expect me to kiss your ass and ask for seconds.
Re:F*ck no
I associate this kind of nonsense with the week or so I spent doped up and immobile after knee surgery last fall. Could not find the remote and was physically unable to search for it, so I watched back-to-back-to-back-to-back episodes of What Not to Wear on “The Learning Channel”. Finally, I could stand it no longer, swallowed another oxycodone and drifted blissfully off to “sleep.”
Um, there are better uses for our time and resources. IMHO.
Re:F*ck no
Is it possible to have a civilized conversation? Can we talk about things without resorting to four-letter words? So you think it is a stupid idea; fine. But I am weary of reading profanity everywhere I turn. I would hope that librarians in general could work to raise our society rather than push it further into the mud.
Thank you.
— Martin
Re:F*ck no
What the fuck are you talking about?
Re:F*ck no
The use of “balls” (to mean testicles), “fuck” and “kiss my ass” are terms I wish were not common vocabulary among librarians. In private conversation you may speak however you wish, but in public discourse such as this forum, and when speaking with patrons in our work world, I expect better language.
Re:F*ck no
Dear Dad,
Can I please borrow the car tonight? And I used the “f-word” three times yesterday when I tripped and fell mowing the lawn. Am I going to hell?
Further, telling another grown man “you may speak however you wish” and “I expect better language” strikes me as, shall we say, conde-fucking-scending.
We are a profession, not a nunnery.
And yes let’s watch our mouths on the internets. Let’s try and see if we can get rid of that bullying, rough-necked, rabble-rousing image librarians have been saddled with for all these years.
Re:F*ck no
You said, “We are a profession, not a nunnery.” True. Doctors and lawyers are professionals, too, but I don’t hear doctors telling their patients to “kiss my ass” or lawyers using profanity in the courtroom. In their personal lives they speak as they wish. But in their (and our) professional lives I believe that better language is appropriate and expected.
And I was not “telling” you how to speak but merely trying to say, “Your words offend me. Could you express your thoughts without using this sort of language?” It is a reasonable request, I believe, for a colleague to respect.
It’s the Hats…
See if I had to wear one of those hats, they would find me in the stacks and then I would have to do some real work.
I thought we were already doing this ourselves…
Most librarians I know have already taken it upon themselves to shake up the traditional glasses-and-cardigans image associated with the profession…and if anything, the general trend seems to be more towards casual clothes and individual expression, not high fashion. (Librarians in jeans? Gasp!) I still think it would be fun to go to a workshop like this, though, if only for the entertainment value.
(@Chuck and Martin…honestly you two, I have to deal with posturing highschool boys all day – give me a break!)