Legal Research

Internet Librarian

I'm at Internet Librarian in Monterey - it's a hard life but someone has to be here!

Tom Hogan did his usual superb job of opening this favourite conference by recalling last year?s challenge to find a name for a librarian who wasn't on the Internet. He remarked that I had quipped last year that the word was "Unemployed Librarian". The competition was to for the best "retronym" (a term for an old object needing clarification). Think that TV only became B&W TV when colour TV arrived or that no one called it an acoustic guitar before electric guitars became popular.

The top retronym terms that were submitted for a non-Internet librarian were:

Shelf-pointer librarian
Analog librarian
Librarian unplugged
3×5 Librarian
Internot Librarian
Retrobrarian
[insert supervisor's name] Librarian
Wallenda Librarian (flying high without a 'net)
Librarian 1.0

Tom gave a prize for "Librarian 1.0" Fun stuff.

Favourite question at the conference so far: "Does a digital branch need a janitor?" (The answer was yes.)

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on October 20, 2008 (boomark / email).