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A Rare Book of Cunning Device

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Ben Aaronovitch
Ben Aaronovitch

Ben Aaronovitch, born in 1964, is a renowned British author known for his unique blend of fantasy and crime novels. His works have gained popularity among readers worldwide. more

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“The truth is out there, but the truth also seems to be very subjective. With access to so many types of information, there is bound to be some miscommunication that goes on in libraries. "Some" could be an understatement. Okay, there is a lot of miscommunication happening. To combat this, librarians strive to develop excellent listening skills, impeccable library instruction, and good follow-up questions. And a killer poker face hidden by a fashionable pair of glasses never hurts.”

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Book:I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories from the Stacks
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“It was this idea that books contained secrets. Important information that would be lost if someone didn't preserve it. And then I studied history and got really into that and I realized that was true not just about sex but lots of things. If someone doesn't care about books, shit gets lost. And then I became a librarian. And archivist.”

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Book:The Book of the Most Precious Substance
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“Ultimately, the imperative to be practical in our field hinges on a deep (if somewhat paradoxical) individualism. In spite of overtones of inclusivity, it treats critical work as self-contained, suggesting that truly ethical work in the library world requires each of us to come up with complete sets of questions and complete sets of answers, to individually balance what is understood to be theory with what is understood to be practice, to ensure that our language is always going to be intelligible to everyone. We in the library world ought to understand that this is neither possible nor desirable, as so much of what we do points to the fact that all work is both necessarily incomplete and necessarily interdependent--the citation, the bibliography and its community of complicated absences, the shelf with more than one item, the marginalia and corporeal micro-residues (visible and invisible) left on magazines pulled through circulation, the reference interaction in which knowledge reveals itself to be created between subjects rather than springing forth ex nihilo as the stuff of individual genius. But the individualist myth of exhaustiveness is pervasive, even if it is persistently exhausting. Such tiresome individualism is, of course, profoundly entangled with whiteness, serving as an animating force in well-worn colonial narratives of race: the unhinged white loner as mass shooter, as contrasted with the terrorist motivated by collective cultural allegiance; the intrepid white explorer 'discovering' the land through economic enterprise; the dark masses of migrants threatening to flood the white nation's border, containable only through mass detention, expulsion, or assimilation; the dispossession of a black single mother read as black cultural pathology. More specifically, it aligns epistemologically with the individualism of liberal racial politics: racism as an attribute of individuals, anti-racism as self-work, the problem and solution collocated and self-contained”

RaceRacismIndividualismWhitenessPracticalityLibrarianship
Author:David James Hudson
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“For me, the heart of librarianship is learning. It's a cyclical process of support, engagement, and discovery with deep roots in the concepts of service, access, and freedom to pursue interests of all kinds. No matter what type of institution, someone is gaining knowledge, finding information, or creating something new based on our facilitation.”

LibrariansLibrarianship
Book:The Heart of Librarianship: Attentive, Positive, and Purposeful Change
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“Let your actions speak louder than words, however: professionalism matters, while popularity is illusory, fleeting, and short-lived. Your contributions to the field, by enhancing service, creating new models to replace outdated practice, and quietly working to improve communities, matter most.”

Librarianship
Book:The Heart of Librarianship: Attentive, Positive, and Purposeful Change
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