books for aspiring librarians?

[Jeff]

Revolting Librarians Redux is a good one, one of my favorites. http://www.librarian.net/revolting/

[Steve]

Hi Molly. In the spirit of librarians' "readers advisory," allow me to recommend a few books that I haven't actually read very much of "Library: An Unquiet History" is a readable history of libraries going back to the earliest times. Alberto Manguel's "The Library At Night" is a more personal account of the meaning of books, reading, and libraries. The recent "This Book is Overdue!" seems to be a bit "gosh, librarians are nifty" but the author does have the good sense to mention the Library Society of the World.

If you are interested in participating in a social network with other library types (including people in library school) try the current main group for the Library Society of the World on FriendFeed, http://friendfeed.com/lsw

[Marianne]

Molly, I agree with Steve's suggestions above, and have added Revolting Librarians Redux to my own 'to-read' list.

Other suggestions: I think The Archivist by Martha Cooley is my favorite of the many novels-about-librarians, and The Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen is probably my favorite children's book on the subject... and if you truly are looking to out and out *wallow*, there is no better place to do it than between the covers of The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World.

David Weinberger's Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder does not *purport* to be about libraries, but it mostly is, and I really like it too.

[Laura]

Seconding (thirding? fourthing?) Revolting Librarians Redux (and I also loved The Archivist). And even though it's generally sacrilege to mention him in the presence of librarians, I actually really loved Nicholson Baker's essay "Discards" from The Size of Thoughts.

[Jeff]

Yes Nicholas Baker is a bad word is some library circles for doublefold. He turned out to be a bit of a hypocrite on that recently.

[Agathafrye]

"The Giant's House." Not much to do with libraries, but one of the main characters is a librarian and it is a really beautifully written book.

It was pretty hokey, but "Free For All" by Don Borchert paints a pretty good picture of the every day machinations in a public library.

For kids books, I really loved Sarah Stewart's "The Library." Very quiet and sweet.

[Jeff]

On that theme you can try Speak Quietly by Scott Douglas. although it shows the grittier side of libraries, advanced users suggested :)