Ballad in Plain E

The May issue of InsuranceWest magazine has a cover story on the portrayal of insurance industry folks on the big screen and in fiction. We’ve all heard stereotypes about librarians, obviously. We law library people have heard many a lawyer joke and cliche, too (who could forget last year’s “Lawyers Are Rats”-Gate?). But I’d never given much thought to the image of insurance adjusters. The authors of the InsuranceWest article analyse the way that agents, claims managers, adjusters, company reps, and brokers are portrayed in several movies and books. And it turns out, we’re not the only ones with bad stereotypes. Apparently, people in the insurance industry are “right up there with used-car salesmen, shady lawyers, and corrupt cops.”

It reminded me of an item I’d recently seen on Library Link of the Day called “Old Maids, Policeman, and Social Rejects: Mass Media Representations and Public Perceptions of Librarians” in the Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship. This short paper surveys the literature and identifies five broad categories of stereotypes. Guess what? Only one of them (The Hero/ine Librarian) offers a remotely positive image of our profession. (Incidentally, one they seem to have overlooked is the sexy/dominatrix librarian–not to say that that’s any better than the ones they do identify. It’s just a lot more entertaining and on the surface, anyway, appealing.)

Just as I sat down to write this post, my witty and observant friend and colleague Christina Tribe e-mailed a few of us to ask if we’d seen the insurance article (great minds think alike?). She thinks insurance types still get a better deal: “At least their characters are main characters, and more interesting. Their stereotypes seem grander, and not paltry or trifling!” She’s got a point. As the InsuranceWest article concludes, “It also helps that in most movies, even Bad Guys are played by good-looking people. And they always dress well.”
I think, in the end, most professions have a stereotype, and stereotypes, for the most part, comprise unflattering, generalised views. But I think knowing just one person who doesn’t fit a preconceived notion of a given line of work can do wonders for all members of that field. Just as getting to know a lot of lawyers personally has shown me that the “lawyers are evil” notion simply isn’t true, I think library techs and librarians have a great opportunity to be that one person who’s an information superhero, and not just embody a cookie-cutter, generic idea of a profession. So what if we’re sometimes nerdy? Being nerdy [read: detail-oriented, persistent, attentive] is a huge part of what makes us good at what we do.

I get asked, all the time, things like, “Gee, you’re a librarian…you must have a secret wild side. Do you drive a Corvette or something?” Um, no. But I do play the mandolin!

Go ahead - be the exception to what others think is the rule.

There’s an incredible story on page 2 of the latest issue of TechNique (the Australian Library and Information Association’s library tech newsletter) about how lib techs in Australia and NZ raised more than $4000 for Oxfam’s “Mobile Donkey Library” program — in just over a month. Amazing and inspiring.

Will you be in town for the CLA conference?

LTAIG is excited to be co-hosting, next Thursday, May 22nd, a networking & social supper at Relish Restaurant, with CLA’s Library Technicians’ Interest Group (LTIG). All the details are here.

We* hope to see lots of our fellow technicians there!

*the LTAIG Committee, not the royal we ;)

The BCCLS has just rolled out another couple of screencasts; this time, on researching the history, judicial treatment, and intent of legislation. What makes them extra-cool is the example they use to illustrate these tasks: the illegality of “crime comics” in Canada. Kudos!

University College of the Fraser Valley’s Library & Information Technology program has just put some videos on its website. Four short videos feature grads (and students?) talking about the program - check them out!

Rex Turgano, one of the good folks at Andornot, has developed a neat site called LibraryDevCamp.ca, dubbed “a web playground for the library community”. It’s a place where people can try out open source software that might be of use to them in their jobs. Lately they’ve been adding links to libraries and other websites that are using particular software so that you can see it in action. Some recent posts have been on PBWiki, Scriblio, and Blogger.

A great idea, Rex. Keep up the good work!

From Stray Questions for Douglas Coupland, in the New York Times Papercuts blog:

“Without hesitation the Web is a blessing, but you know what I miss? Reference librarians. I used to live in the reference library but it’s now been over a year since I’ve visited one. They must be doing a lot of sudoku puzzles at their desks these days.”

Check out the comments from librarians, and a response from ol’ Doug himself, looks like.

As noted on Slaw, Google’s introduced “teleportation” - the poor man’s site: syntax shortcut.

Best of all, it works for the Government of BC website, which is notoriously hard to search using its own site search engine.

Just type “gov bc” into Google and you’ll see the little site search box below the first hit’s URL, intro text, and “refine your search” options. You get the same results whether you use the teleportation box or just do a straight up site: syntax search with a search term.

If you have a moment, please answer the following question in the latest LTAIG Snapshot Survey:

Throughout our training and careers, library staff cultivate many additional skills beyond traditional ones such as cataloguing, conducting reference interviews, and online searching. These transferable skills can be extremely useful in our personal lives, as well as in future jobs or volunteer positions.

What skill (library-related or otherwise) have you developed through education or work experience that you are most proud of and/or find most valuable?

Look for your answer in the next issue of LTAIG News!

At last week’s VALL luncheon, Catherine Best & Teresa Gleave gave a presentation comparing Quicklaw and LawSource (WestlaweCarswell).

Catherine, a research lawyer, covered scope and functionality; Teresa, a law librarian, discussed the practical aspects: pricing, administration, training considerations, cost recovery, etc. Not surprisingly, the session was well-attended and well-received. They did a fantastic job of giving an impartial review of the two tools and made an effort to compare apples to apples, which isn’t always easy to do.

Catherine’s presentation, entitled “Electronic Legal Research: A Moving Target” is available on the VALL website.

What was nice is that Catherine included some tips on when CanLII is a good alternative to the pay sources. I admit it: when the new CanLII interface was unveiled, I really didn’t like it. But it just gets better and better all the time. Now I use CanLII almost daily.

You can use it to search by citation and in many cases, parallel cites are provided. It provides a gorgeous, clean PDF of each case. RSS feeds for each court and tribunal. So I’m glad that Catherine could point out some of CanLII’s newest enhancements: stemming, proximity searching, etc. I wasn’t aware of the proximity searching capability until her presentation, and had occasion to try it out today–it works well.

We all have our favourite tools that we tend to be faithful to, but this presentation gave some great reasons for why we should always be aware of what the “other guys” can do.