This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

Today’s post is on is This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson. It is 272 pages long and is published by Harper Collins. The cover is white with a librarian flying off the page like a superhero. The intended reader is someone interested in libraries and librarianship. There is no foul language, no sex, and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- Buried in information? Cross-eyed over technology? From the bottom of a pile of paper and discs, books, e-books, and scattered thumb drives comes a cry of hope: Make way for the librarians! They want to help. They're not selling a thing. And librarians know best how to beat a path through the googolplex sources of information available to us, writes Marilyn Johnson, whose previous book, The Dead Beat, breathed merry life into the obituary-writing profession.This Book Is Overdue! is a romp through the ranks of information professionals and a revelation for readers burned out on the clichés and stereotyping of librarians. Blunt and obscenely funny bloggers spill their stories in this book, as do a tattooed, hard-partying children's librarian; a fresh-scrubbed Catholic couple who teach missionaries to use computers; a blue-haired radical who uses her smartphone to help guide street protestors; a plethora of voluptuous avatars and cybrarians; the quiet, law-abiding librarians gagged by the FBI; and a boxing archivist. These are just a few of the visionaries Johnson captures here?pragmatic idealists who fuse the tools of the digital age with their love for the written word and the enduring values of free speech, open access, and scout-badge-quality assistance to anyone in need.Those who predicted the death of libraries forgot to consider that in the automated maze of contemporary life, none of us?neither the experts nor the hopelessly baffled?can get along without human help. And not just any help; we need librarians who won't charge us by the question or roll their eyes, no matter what we ask. Who are they? What do they know? And how quickly can they save us from being buried by the digital age?

Review- I admit that I am a librarian in my professional career and I have read Johnson’s two other books so I knew that I would enjoy this book and I was right. Johnson comes at this book as someone who loves libraries but does not understand how they work. So she wants to get it what makes a library a library, why someone would want to work at one, and what can they really do for a community. Johnson interviews some important librarians like the ones who stood against the government to protect the right to read and librarians who are making the technology of future libraries. But she also follows libraries into very different places like Second Life where reference services are available anytime day or night. Johnson does not cover much about the history of libraries but more about where they are going from here. Johnson pours all her passion into this subject and brings the reader with her into the heart of libraries. I have fun with this book and I look forward to Johnson’s next one.

I give this book a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.