What are people thinking?

Now, this is interesting.

Honestly, at first I thought this was a joke.

For instance, check out this YouTube presentation on “Motivational Deficiency”. (I believe that I may have experienced a touch of this syndrome just last Monday morning)


But it turns out that these folks are quite serious;

“…the techniques of ‘disease-mongering’, in particular the expansion of the boundaries of disorders, the medicalisation of normal life events and the portrayal of risk factors as diseases is prevalent in the medical marketing world. Conference delegates expressed the hope that the public and media would become more skeptical of such claims and that health professionals would challenge the claims and recognise the marketing interests that attempt to shape their perceptions of disease.”

The Public Library of Science (An important, open-access science resource which really deserves a ‘blog entry of its own) has a collection of articles on “Disease Mongering” here.

Perhaps all these (ahem) patients really need is a bracing dose of bibliotherapy?

Searching “Librarian and syndrome” in Google returns:

“Systems Librarian Imposter Syndrome”

“Overprotective Librarian Syndrome”

“Tidy Librarian Syndrome”

“Silent Librarian Syndrome”

Finally, there must be a market out there among librarians for this sort of thing, Haworth Press has created a cottage industry out of it.

“Martyr-Librarian Syndrome”

“University-Library Syndrome”

Urban Hang-Out vs Traditional Library

Slate has an interesting photo essay exploring the question of how to build a public library in the age of Google, Wikipedia, and Kindle. The grand old reading rooms and stacks of past civic monuments are giving way to a new library-as-urban-hangout concept, as evidenced by Seattle’s Starbucks-meets-mega-bookstore central library and Salt Lake City’s shop-lined education mall. Without some dramatic changes, The Extinction Timeline predicts libraries will R.I.P. in 2019.”

Library Work Can Make You Sick

Literally...

I have been under the weather for the past few days.

I am in the process of resting up and will be back on track next week.

The Walls Are Falling

Well, not exactly, but something like it.

In the library that I work, there are only 3 rooms, one which I work side by side with the librarian (when she decides to show up).

Last week we had a gang of contractors come and do some asbestos removal in one room. Thank the Library God that no one currently works in that room, but there is a pic from that frightful day.




If that was not enough, I came in this morning to find this in a the ceiling of a different library room.





Only one room left.

I will be wearing a raincoat from now on.