Subject/Object

Steven Chabot

Between Books and Bytes

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Many of my posts have been about this tension in me, between my love of books and my love of computers and the Internet.

On the one hand, I am a child of the computer generation through and through. I was on [Bulletin Board Systems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_Board_Systems) when I was 12. From there I upgraded to the text based [Hamilton Freenet](http://www.hwcn.org/) when the Internet first became accessible to a wider public. In elementary school I always followed around that one teacher who ran the network, and in high school I seriously considered studying computers in university.

But a few good teachers at the end of high school and I feel in love with academic subjects like English and History. Slowly over [OAC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Academic_Credit) and five years of a degree in Philosophy I became a reader and writer.

I always loved the reading more, and I now read much more widely than I every did, from Rousseau’s *[Confessions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_(Jean-Jacques_Rousseau))* to Milton Friedman’s *[A Monetary History of the United States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Monetary_History_of_the_United_States)*. But I never really have had a subject to write about that took up as much as my interest as hacking on a computer does. In many respects I think communication on the Internet can be shallow, pointless, and a waste of my mental energy, and I would much prefer being in a book. But I admit I am an Internet addict.

I think if I could help people—particularly those in academia—help one another find what they consider good and interesting, that would make me happy.

So I think I am seriously considering moving my focus to becoming something of a web or technology librarian. But not exactly. I think I have been progressing that way. [Copyright](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright), [Information Literacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_literacy), [Media Ecology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology), for me these all point to something: what is the Internet doing to those things that have been dominated by the success of printing technology, those being scholarship and learning.

The end. Right now I am touching up my CSS and HTML skills. And I am planning to write a paper on adapting this particular open source networking site in academia. Expect some design changes here soon.

[Please reply and spread widely] Question for Men (and Women too) in the Library Field: How did you get here?

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On the day of my elementary school graduation I was given the Library Award in front of the entire class. At the time I felt really insulted. Awards were given to those with the highest marks in each class: French, Gym, Social and Environmental Studies (SES) etc. And my award felt like a default prize to the student who was really good at a lot of subjects but the best at none of them. In retrospect I would love to thank Mrs. Wilson for realizing that I spent every hour of my free time browsing those stacks. Taking out children’s novels while other kids were still struggling through picture books. Pulling down random books of non-fiction (a hobby which follows me to this day). And playing with the newfangled computers.

That was the last time I thought of libraries in relation to my own self-identity. That is, until my abortive attempt to study Philosophy forever and my decision to go to library school.

Attending the recent National Summit on Library Human Resources, when we reached demographics and future recruitment we all discussed the importance of recruiting visible minorities and attracting Aboriginal Canadians to the profession. But, as usual, when it was mentioned that 75% (or whatever) of those working in libraries were women, you could hear the crickets in the room. Even granted that the majority of administrators are still men, people don’t really want to discuss the gender imbalance in front-line and middle management staff.

Discounting immediately the possibility of discrimination, the question then becomes why do men not choose libraries and librarianship as a profession? And how do we focus our recruitment efforts towards men so they see librarianship as the noble profession it is?

So I’ve decided to look into strategies involved in encouraging men to become librarians and library workers. But before I do research into the literature about why men choose professions in general, I would love to hear from people on why they chose to work in the library.

Please feel free to leave a comment to my informal survey. If you don’t feel comfortable making your comments public you can email me at s[here is a single dot]chabot[this is that symbol that you use]gmail[another one]com. And I welcome replies from women too because I would love to look at the different motivations between the two sexes.

And please post this on your own blog if you are so inclined. I would love to have this spread far and wide so I get a really good idea on why people choose librarianship.