Andy Hickner

But it's obvious that the median program is a diploma mill churning out graduates who have no business working in libraries; will never work in one; and who seem astonished & perplexed when they realize their degree is worthless!

We keep clinging to the ALA-accredited master's degree as our gatekeeping credential...

Maybe it's selection bias of the kind of person who posts questions on Reddit, but the kinds of posts I see suggest that the library schools are admitting a lot of people who seem, to be frank, either not very bright or who lack the basic interpersonal traits needed to succeed in the field.

It baffles me how many library school students/prospective LIS students/early career librarians use library Reddit to ask questions they could easily find answers to much more quickly using Google. You're a librarian! Knowing how to do research efficiently is the most basic aspect of our work!

Ross Barkan is writing about writing/editorial/media jobs, but he could just as easily be describing similar patterns in libraries and archives that result from too many candidates chasing too few jobs:
rosselliotbarkan.com/p/the-matter...

Yo chill out, we are on the same team. All I did was point out there's a more effective way to achieve your goal. I have called my legislators many times over the years. Being an effective activist means being open to learning what works as well as learning from what doesn't.

That way you 1. Substitute an ineffective tactic (petition) with an effective one (phone call) and 2. Target the people who currently hold the power (Republicans) instead of wasting time on people who don't (Democrats). (2/2)

Thanks! With a little tweaking, I think you could achieve your goal. Encourage people represented by a Republican in the House and/or Senate to call their legislator, express their opinion, and ask for a written response. (1/2)

If you do happen to be represented by a Republican in the House and/or Senate, by all means, pick up the phone and express your opinion to whoever answers, and ask for a written response. That’s the way to do it.

I mean people represented by Republicans should definitely call their Republican legislators. Emails are very easy for Hill staff to ignore. Calls much less so.

*46 senators, not 27, sorry!

i appreciate your explaining. What, then, are the reasons? Because people seem to be under the impression that signing the petition is going to be useful in some way.

If you are represented by one of the 212 House Democrats or 27 Democratic-caucusing Senators, it's a waste of their time and yours to email them about the CDC Library because there's literally nothing they can do about it. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news! (2/2)

While I share everyone's distress about Trump administration's layoffs of the CDC librarians, I don't love EveryLibrary's astroturf-based approach. Signing online petitions to Congress doesn't work. It only provides you with the illusion that you're doing something effective. (1/2)

The evidence synthesis part of this is what Campbell Collaboration does: www.campbellcollaboration.org. Checking to see if they already have a review on the topic is a good starting point: www.campbellcollaboration.org/evidence. For health interventions, Cochrane does the same thing.

@npr.org newscasters, this is your friendly reminder that Grand Blanc in Michigan is pronounced “Grand BLANK.” This is true of pretty much every French place name in MI btw - think of how a 7-year-old native English speaker would pronounce it the first time she encountered it on the page

Hear hear! Thank you for standing firm on the rezoning. It has so much potential to improve our neighborhood and to help restrain the upward rent spiral our community is facing.

The Bluesky-ization of the American left Progressives discovered a seemingly invincible weapon. One day it stopped working.

"Instead of ostracizing the people they hate, Bluesky’s progressives are only isolating themselves... Within this little hothouse world that American progressives have created for themselves, there’s not much to do except try to cancel each other."

question, why do we need to send a copy to Alder Martin? It was my understanding that he supports the rezoning. Has that changed?

... And in many cases because they may have been taught incorrectly - sometimes by librarians! - that it's wrong to Google things. (2/2)

I should rephrase - "crazy" isn't the best word to describe nurse questions. They are looking for evidence to inform their decisionmaking. Unfortunately that evidence often doesn't exist because research funding priorities are generally set by physicians, not bedside nurses... (1/2)

I always feel weird starting with Google because that's what the requester would already have done, right? I'm finding these types of requests are the perfect use case for AI tools like Perplexity.

As a librarian, I think nursing reference/lit searches are MUCH harder than medical ones. Nurses come to us with the craziest questions, most of which aren't answerable with conventional bibliographic database searches.

Welp that’s the last time I use the Lyft bikeshare option

Thank Betty Who!

Conscientious SUV Shopper Just Wants Something That Will Kill Family In Other Car In Case Of Accident

Conscientious SUV Shopper Just Wants Something That Will Kill Family In Other Car In Case Of Accident theonion.com/conscie...

Also it's going to get much, much worse now that NIH/other federal research funding is drying up and our libraries stop hiring. There's going to be a pool of experienced medical librarians who will have no choice but to take the first job they/we are lucky enough to get.

Yup, and it pervades the entire profession, not just health sciences. Too many ALA-accredited diploma mills churning out too many LIS grads chasing too few jobs. Unless we do what physicians did and restrict entry to the profession, it will never change.

According to Google, Chicago (specifically Chicago Turabian). I checked the Chicago Manual of Style to confirm.

“Homophobic” is the appropriate adjective in this case!