June 20, 2008
A Social-Networking Site for Librarians Makes Its Debut
A new social-networking site for librarians and those who manage information was started this month by Library Associates Companies, a recruiting and consulting company. Called LibGig, the site includes job listings, a list of library schools accredited by the American Library Association, blogs, and profiles of community leaders.
Among the LibGig bloggers are Tawny Sverdlin, a library student at San Jose State University, and Chris Zammarelli, a graduate student at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies. —Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Friday June 20, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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This is not a social network, its a community of blogs and a forum, at best (that’s when the site isn’t throwing error messages). This doesn’t even deserve coverage, its’ more like a grad student project that deserves a C+ for effort.
— Jeff McNeill Jun 20, 05:46 PM #
Has anyone, anywhere seen a library offer patrons a connection to useful information implemented with social networking tools? These has been touted as the wave of the future for several years, but I have yet to see a useful application of the software.
— David A. McCullough, academic librarian Jun 21, 12:29 PM #
Library Associates is like a temp agency, no? I wonder if you can network with a career counselor here.
— ed Jun 21, 09:07 PM #
These are LIBRARIANS. It’s as good as it gets. :)
— Bobby Winters Jun 22, 05:10 PM #
And this is considered newsworthy because…? All of that info is readily available at the ALA site.
— Christine Jun 23, 09:11 AM #
Slow news day.
— Robert Jun 23, 09:52 AM #
Re #5: Yes, but the ALA site hurts the eyes.
— Jackie Jun 23, 01:53 PM #
Lots of libraries have useful and well connected social networking local sites. Many others are starting. I think this could be a great addition to all the connecting librarians already do. Now, getting to patrons is a little harder but on the way. Give the new guys a break – they are trying!
— Karen Chobot Jun 23, 02:50 PM #
Sheesh. Another unusable, cluttered and totally clueless site created by librarians who should know better. But I’m sure there will be a huge pile on. Librarians are crazy about being test-sheep for this kind of thing which they’ll then abandon in six months or so. Yawn. Somebody please come up with something unique and useful please?
— tuesday Jun 23, 02:55 PM #
What is the big whoop about this site? there are a plethora of real social networking sites for and by librarians
— Brian Jun 23, 03:56 PM #
When they have successfully trained, then served the nation that gives them freedom,then, and only then, should anyone related to “academics” be offered congrats for anything.
Our soldiers are far more of a role model and/or hero than anything waddling down the halls of academic departments these days.
Congrats to those who have and are serving the greatest nation (USA) in the history of human civilization.
— John Jun 24, 12:47 AM #
If characters from “The Hills” were to emote about race, I imagine it would sound like B. Hussein Obama’s autobiography, “Dreams From My Father.”
Has anybody read this book? Inasmuch as the book reveals Obama to be a flabbergasting lunatic, I gather the answer is no. Obama is about to be our next president: You might want to take a peek. If only people had read “Mein Kampf” …
Nearly every page — save the ones dedicated to cataloguing the mundane details of his life — is bristling with anger at some imputed racist incident. The last time I heard this much race-baiting invective I was … in my usual front-row pew, as I am every Sunday morning, at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Obama tells a story about taking two white friends from the high school basketball team to a “black party.” Despite their deep-seated, unconscious hatred of blacks, the friends readily accepted. At the party, they managed not to scream the N-word, but instead “made some small talk, took a couple of the girls out on the dance floor.”
But with his racial hair-trigger, Obama sensed the whites were not comfortable because “they kept smiling a lot.” And then, in an incident reminiscent of the darkest days of the Jim Crow South … they asked to leave after spending only about an hour at the party! It was practically an etiquette lynching!
So either they hated black people with the hot, hot hate of a thousand suns, or they were athletes who had come to a party late, after a Saturday night basketball game.
In the car on the way home, one of the friends empathizes with Obama, saying: “You know, man, that really taught me something. I mean, I can see how it must be tough for you and Ray sometimes, at school parties … being the only black guys and all.”
And thus Obama felt the cruel lash of racism! He actually writes that his response to his friend’s perfectly lovely remark was: “A part of me wanted to punch him right there.”
Listen, I don’t want anybody telling Obama about Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain” line.
Wanting to punch his white friend in the stomach was the introductory anecdote to a full-page psychotic rant about living by “the white man’s rules.” (One rule he missed was: “Never punch out your empathetic white friend after dragging him to a crappy all-black party.”)
Obama’s gaseous disquisition on the “white man’s rules” leads to this charming crescendo: “Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger.”
For those of you in the “When is Obama gonna play the ‘N-word’ card?” pool, the winner is … Page 85! Congratulations!
When his mother expresses concern about Obama’s high school friend being busted for drugs, Obama says he patted his mother’s hand and told her not to worry.
This, too, prompted Obama to share with his readers a life lesson on how to handle white people: “It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved — such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.”
First of all, I note that this technique seems to be the basis of Obama’s entire presidential campaign. But moreover — he was talking about his own mother! As Obama says: “Any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning.” Say, do you think a white person who said that about blacks would be a leading presidential candidate?
The man is stark bonkersville.
He says the reason black people keep to themselves is that it’s “easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you.”
Here’s a little inside scoop about white people: We’re not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it.
In college, Obama explains to a girl why he was reading Joseph Conrad’s 1902 classic, “Heart of Darkness”: “I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. Their demons. The way ideas get twisted around. I helps me understand how people learn to hate.”
By contrast, Malcolm X’s autobiography “spoke” to Obama. One line in particular “stayed with me,” he says. “He spoke of a wish he’d once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged.”
Forget Rev. Jeremiah Wright — Wright is Booker T. Washington compared to this guy.
— Jefferson Jun 24, 01:10 AM #
Comments #11 and 12 showing up on a page dealing with librarians and social networking seem a bit out of place. They are reminiscent of some of the lunatic ravings that appeared earlier by a “Dr” Tim Harris who was pretending to be a medical doctor who had allegedly switched from librarianship to medicine. He had complained about being discriminated against and not being hired for an academic librarian position. The article where this appeared wasn’t about him, he just was trolling in the comments area before some people who had interviewed him for a position outed him as a pathetic parasite who couldn’t make it in either history or libraries. This appears to be more of his trolling and attention getting behavior. If you really want the sordid details, do a blog search for “a librarian in the closet” in the Chronicle of Higher Ed and peruse the comments section.
— Peter W Jun 24, 06:36 PM #