“There’s Something Insidious Going on in Library Land”: The Case of Library Journal

Very strange story: apparently librarian Valerie Forrestal was informed by Library Journal that she’d been named a “Mover and a Shaker,” and then, later on, was told “Um … j/k; we found someone we like better!”

But kudos to Valerie for keeping it real and doing good work for good work’s sake. An excerpt from her piece:

What message are we sending future librarians when we push them to elevator-talk themselves into a little box? To make themselves wholly into brands, and funnel their career away from daily contributions to their employers, their communities, and their profession, in order to focus on one or two projects they can tack their name on and get noticed?

But for a long time now, I’ve followed one guiding principle: engage with things that interest you. No matter what you’re doing, latch on, with all your might, to the parts of it that you are truly curious about.

Adopting this attitude – and sharing it with students – is, as we’ve noted before, what teaching is all about.