Robert-Goldwater-Library

Call For Items: New Blog, ARLIS/NY

Announcing the new blog for the Art Libraries Society of North America, NY Chapter (ARLIS/NY): http://www.arlisny.org - see also their Flickr photos.

via their home page:

To give our blog a personal touch, we are asking for your help in sending our way art-related, newsy information about yourself. Our membership is made up of creative, fascinating, cultured and knowledgeable people. Let's find out what we are all doing and share our news.

Information can include:

art-related awards you've received, milestones, professional activities, presentations, articles you've written, announcements, staffing changes etc.

Photos are also welcome.

Send submissions to Suz Massen at [email protected] or Alexandra de Luise

at [email protected]

Thanks for your help in making the blog something we can all call our own.

Suz Massen & Alexandra de Luise

Art of Being Tuareg at the Cantor Arts Center

The exhibition, "Art of being Tuareg: Sahara nomads in a modern world," the first major exhibition in the United States about the Tuareg people, is timely, as changing conditions in the Sahara -- from global warming, uranium mining and oil production -- have raised questions about the Turaeg's future. The exhibition was organized in partnership with UCLA's Fowler Museum, but the lead author on the catalogue and primary curator is the Cantor's director, Tom Seligman, who has been communicating with and studying the Tuareg for more than 30 years.

via LA Times, {CALENDAR, Part E; Pg. 6}:

Tuareg crafts cross paths with the world
Exhibition illustrates how the nomadic people maintain their culture in modern life.

By Hugh Hart, Special to The Times

"A house is a coffin for the living."-- Tuareg proverb 

Romanticized by European colonizers as fierce, camel-riding warriors swathed in indigo veils, the semi-nomadic Tuareg people of North and West Africa for centuries coaxed a livelihood from their harsh environs in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Libya.

Thomas K. Seligman, director of the Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford University, says the Tuareg's historic distaste for permanent lodging makes perfect sense. "In their worldview, Tuareg live freely, with almost no stuff, in an environment that they know and control."

Yet in recent decades, life for the Tuareg has changed drastically, forcing an ever-growing engagement with the modern world. An exhibition at the UCLA Fowler Museum, "Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World," curated by Seligman, encompasses recent photographs and videos that reflect Tuareg society in the 21st century, complemented by 235 objects made from silver, leather, wood and fabric representing traditional craftsmanship.

Fowler Museum Director Marla Berns, who has studied indigenous Ga'anda and Yungur groups in nearby northeastern Nigeria, says the Tuareg developed their distinctive fusion of lifestyle and art as a matter of necessity: "It's the kind of aesthetic that grows up around cultures that are on the move. You can't carry a lot of superfluous material, because you're hauling it all around with you. There's a tendency to put a lot of attention on the adornment of the self, as well as the adornment of where people live and the objects they use." The material on display comes courtesy of the Tuareg's artisan class, known as inadan. Seligman and others believe the smiths, leather workers and artists most likely descended from Jewish metallurgists who migrated to North Africa after they were expelled from Spain by Christians in the 14th and 15th centuries. Their role within the Tuareg caste system is complicated.

"Historically," Seligman says, "the inadan were scorned and feared because they have a lot of unusual capacities that were seen as socially dangerous but absolutely essential. Nobody else would think of touching the material they work with, much less trying to do anything with it."

In 1971, Seligman became intrigued with the inadan when he met silversmith Saidi Oumba and his wife, Andi Ouhoulou, in Agadez, an ancient city in Niger that historically served as a caravan stop. Oumba and his family practice the "trembling hand" technique of silver smithing passed down from generation to generation.

Since then, Seligman has made more than a dozen visits to the region, including two collecting trips partly financed by the Fowler. After a four-month journey to Niger in 2001, Seligman conceived "Art of Being Tuareg." His goal: "To bring an understanding of the Tuareg people and their history as well as their dynamic engagement with the so-called modern world."

The show's older artifacts, on loan mainly from Musee d'ethnographie Neuchatel in Switzerland and Paris' Musee du quai Branly, include daggers and swords with intricately engraved hilts, camel saddles, teapots, tasseled leather bags colored in turquoise and red pigments derived from pomegranates, indigo, sorghum and minerals, along with Cross of Agadez jewelry bearing the mysterious symbol most associated with Tuareg identity.

The exhibition's contemporary component addresses the ways in which this once-isolated culture has responded to the encroachments of modern life. One video piece, for example, documents a desert wedding attended by nobles on white camels while other guests arrive in trucks. The wedding band does not rely on traditional goatskin drums. Instead they dress in Western clothes and play rock music on electric guitars, although they still belt out lyrics in the Tamasheq language.

"What's happening with the Tuareg is happening all over the world," Seligman says. "The region is experiencing environmental degradation and huge stress from a variety of geopolitical and global forces -- cash economy, roads coming in -- there's this kind of blending of other cultures."

"Art of Being Tuareg" demonstrates one connection, seen as largely positive, made between ancient tradition and the global economy with a display of Tuareg-produced bracelets, earrings, necklaces and other luxury items marketed to trend-conscious consumers.

The silver wares, including several crafted by Oumba that now belong to the Fowler collection, reflect the way the Tuareg have modified tradition to satisfy a larger public. Some objects are made of gold, traditionally regarded as a taboo metal. Salt and pepper shakers cater to Western tastes. And items that would have once been anonymously produced are now signed by the artist to ensure authenticity in the face of knockoff "Tuareg-inspired" merchandise.

Says Berns, "The smith class found a way to capitalize on what they produce and haven't had any difficulty selling to an outside market. Even though they may not have the social status of the nobles, the inadan have a different kind of social status in our global society because they have a cash economy. They're now making money."

Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday and until 8 p.m. Thursday from May 30 to Sept. 2 at the Cantor Arts Center on the Stanford University Campus. Admission is free. For information, call (650) 723-4177 or visit www.museum.stanford.edu

more info:

The soul of the Sahara, brought alive in regal display
Jesse Hamlin, The San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday, May 26, 2007

images:

 

Bringing the Internet to Africa ... slowly

From The New York Times, July 22, 2007

A customer in the Bourbon coffee shop in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, uses a wireless connection. (Riccardo Gangale for The New York Times)

Africa, Offline: Waiting for the Web
By RON NIXON

ON A MUGGY DAY IN KIGALI IN 2003, some of the highest-ranking officials in the Rwandan government, including President Paul Kagame, flanked an American businessman, Greg Wyler, as he boldly described how he could help turn their small country into a hub of Internet activity.

Mr. Wyler, an executive based in Boston who made his fortune during the tech boom, said he would lace Rwanda with fiber optic cables, connecting schools, government institutions and homes with low-cost, high-speed Internet service. Until that point, Mr. Wyler, 37, had never set foot in Africa — he was invited by a Rwandan government official he had met at a wedding. Mr. Wyler never expected to start a business there; he simply wanted to try to help the war-torn country.

Even so, Mr. Wyler’s company, Terracom, was granted a contract to connect 300 schools to the Internet. Later, the company would buy 99 percent of the shares in Rwandatel, the country’s national telecommunications company, for $20 million.

But after nearly four years, most of the benefits hailed by him and his company have failed to materialize, Rwandan officials say. “The bottom line is that he promised many things and didn’t deliver,” said Albert Butare, the country’s telecommunications minister.

Mr. Wyler says he sees things quite differently, and he and Rwandan officials will probably never agree on why their joint venture has been so slow to get off the ground. But Terracom’s tale is more than a story about a business dispute in Rwanda. It is also emblematic of what can happen when good intentions run into the technical, political and business realities of Africa.

Attempts to bring affordable high-speed Internet service to the masses have made little headway on the continent. Less than 4 percent of Africa’s population is connected to the Web; most subscribers are in North African countries and the republic of South Africa.

A lack of infrastructure is the biggest problem. In many countries, communications networks were destroyed during years of civil conflict, and continuing political instability deters governments or companies from investing in new systems. E-mail messages and phone calls sent from some African countries have to be routed through Britain, or even the United States, increasing expenses and delivery times. About 75 percent of African Internet traffic is routed this way and costs African countries billions of extra dollars each year that they would not incur if their infrastructure was up to speed.

“Most African governments haven’t paid much attention to their infrastructure,” said Vincent Oria, an associate professor of computer science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a native of the Ivory Coast. “In places where hunger, AIDS and poverty are rampant, they didn’t see it as critical until now.”

Africa’s only connection to the network of computers and fiber optic cables that are the Internet’s backbone is a $600 million undersea cable running from Portugal down the west coast of Africa. Built in 2002, the cable was supposed to provide cheaper and faster Web access, but so far that has not happened.

Prices remain high because the national telecommunications linked to the cable maintain a monopoly over access, squeezing out potential competitors. And plans for a fiber optic cable along the East African coast have stalled over similar access issues. Most countries in Eastern Africa, like Rwanda, depend on slower satellite technology for Internet service.

The result is that Africa remains the least connected region in the world, and the digital gap between it and the developed world is widening rapidly. “Unless you can offer Internet access that is the same as the rest of the world, Africa can’t be part of the global economy or academic environment,” said Lawrence H. Landweber, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who was also part of an early effort to bring the Web to Africa in the mid-1990s. “The benefits of the Internet age will bypass the continent.”

• Read more of the article here
  

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré @ Ikon Gallery

28 July – 16 September 2007
First Floor Galleries

Ikon Gallery
1 Oozells Square
Brindleyplace
Birmingham
B1 2HS

Tel: 0121 248 0708
Fax: 0121 248 0709

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré’s practice is encyclopedic, aspiring to the depiction of everything, a means of apprehending and communicating the way the world works. He makes thousands of postcard-sized drawings, graphic images bordered by upper-case texts that categorise and date them. They are exquisite, symbolic cartoons, drawn in
ballpoint and coloured pencils. As he explains: “I usually depict men and women. After all, the earth is humanity.” Also there are pictures of hunting traps, clouds, rocks, gold weights and kola nuts, very loaded from a West African point of view. More generally, they convey a need to know how we know the most familiar things – not just a question of communication, but how our communication determines our understanding.

By accumulation, Bouabré’s work acquires its strength and gravity. His various series involve hundreds and hundreds of pieces, drawings that are like diary entries, countless observations on everyday life. There is a modesty, of medium and subject matter, foiled by a philosophical ambition that is conveyed by the umbrella titles: Connaissance du monde (Knowledge of the World), Le Musee du Visage Africain (The Museum of African Faces), Alphabet and Vision.

In addition, Ikon presents a new series, entitled La Haute Diplomatie (High Diplomacy), comprising 193 colourful drawings that portray individuals who personify all the countries of the world. The figures, one per postcard, wear clothes that incorporate the colours and shapes of their national flags. Each has a distinct demeanour, but they all extend their right hand, in a diplomatic gesture of friendship. The consistent format belies the humorous, poignant idiosyncrasies that make subtle political references. Bouabré extends notions of connectedness with an increased internationalism. Birmingham, one of the
most multi-cultural cities in the world, could not be more appropriate for this exhibition.

A book featuring La Haute Diplomatie, published by Ikon Shop, is available for a special exhibition price of £11.95, full price £14. Texts by André Magnin, Yaya Savané, Ettore Sottsass and Jonathan Watkins.

Aztec Mexico, courtesy of BibliOdyssy

 Figura Uitzilopuchtli, idolo principal de los Mexicanos

A blog called BibliOdyssy has recently posted images and excerpts from something called the Tovar manuscript, followed by this brief explanation w/ links:

Juan de Tovar (1543-1623) was born in Mexico from conquistador stock. He trained as a Jesuit priest and was known as the Mexican Cicero because of his eloquent preaching style and mastery of several indigenous languages.

At the request of the Spanish Court, Tovar set about preparing a pre-conquest ethnographic history of the Aztec peoples. He travelled widely, interviewing native Indians, from whom he also commissioned traditional pictographic sketches.

The Tovar manuscript (also known as the Ramírez Codex¹) consists of three main sections: an historical account of "the ancient Mexicans from their first migration into the central valley of Mexico, to their conquest by the Spaniards"; an illustrated history of the Aztecs (most images above); and the Tovar Calendar - an attempt to combine the Nahuatl calendar with christian Saint days. The manuscript dates to about 1585.

The Tovar manuscript, bearing the title: 'Historia de la benida de los yndios apoblar a Mexico de las partes remotas de Occidente los sucessos y perigrinaçiones del camino su gouierno, ydolos y templos dellos, ritos y cirimonias ... calandarios delos tiempos' is online among the Archive of Early American Images at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, Rhode Island.

This is an absolutely outstanding collection, with more than 4000 images of 'books, maps, and manuscripts relating to the colonial period of the Americas, North and South, from 1492 to ca. 1825'. I am amazed I had never, to my recall, seen this InsightBrowser site before. I've only had a very modest perusal of their holdings so far, but I will definitely return in the near future. It's great to see any material relating to the Caribbean and the Guyanas, but there is so much more in here. The extent of the background notes is commendable too.

• These few links give some measure of background, but I didn't find too much that seemed like a confident authority on all of this.
• Previously: MesoAmerica

1. Brown University owns the original of the Tovar manuscript and it seems like it is the only complete version in existence. Brown U refer to a single section of their manuscript as being the Ramírez Codex. But the Ramírez Codex is housed in Mexico and I assume it is the only other extant copy of the pictographic section of the Tovar manuscript, hence the names get interchanged. There is a LOT more complexity in the background to all this - a mysterious 'Chronicle X' which is said to have been an older source document for both Tovar and at least one other contemporary historian; plus, there was a significant amount of censorship and also uncredited borrowing -- how much of this either is true or has bearing on Tovar's manuscript is beyond the scope of my brief review.

Below are a few images -- for more images + excerpts, go to the original post.



Cuevas de los siete linajes que poblaron en México y alrededor dél



Xocotlhuetzi

Ydolo particular de Tlaxcala

 

David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings

via SMH:

On view: July 18-October 28, 2007

David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings

The Studio Museum in Harlem is proud to present David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings. One of Britain’s leading contemporary architects, Adjaye is known for his innovative buildings and their equal emphasis on the experience and function of architecture. Making Public Buildings focuses on his engagement with public space and the built environment, and follows the evolution of ten major buildings from design to production to completion. The exhibition includes architectural models, drawings and films of the buildings, which include the 2005 Venice Biennale pavilion and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo; photographs of Adjaye’s travels around the world, and writings by artists and architects who have impacted his work. Focused on learning, community, contemporary art and housing, Making Public Buildings reveals Adjaye’s interest in rethinking social space and redefining the urban landscape.

Born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents, Adjaye has influences that range from West African art and architecture to the work of musicians such as George Lewis and Sun Ra and artists such as David Hammons and Chris Ofili. By applying conceptual frameworks to the fundamentals of architecture, he explores space, scale, measurement, light and materials to create daring and original buildings that transform the way we think about architecture and public space. Making Public Buildings is Adjaye’s first major exhibition.

This exhibition is presented in collaboration with Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Netherlands Architecture Institute, Maastricht; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; and Arario Gallery, Beijing.

Read a recent interview with Adjaye in New York Magazine.

more via Flavorpill:

Homes for creative A-listers Ewan McGregor, Juergen Teller, and Chris Ofili have made Tanzania-born David Adjaye one of Britain's leading starchitects. The Studio Museum in Harlem traces the evolution of ten projects — all of which address public space — from initial conceit to completion. Your Black Horizon, an Adjaye-designed windowless pavilion, housed Ólafur Elíasson's light installation at the 2005 Venice Biennale. In Whitechapel, London, Adjaye designed the Idea Store, a flashy cube of blue-and-green glass that houses the local library, dance studios, and community center. Not one for tradition, Adjaye retooled a former train station in Oslo as the Nobel Peace Center, adding a sculptural aluminum canopy to the building's courtyard. (HGM)

Note: This exhibition continues through Sun 10.28 (Wed-Fri: 12-6pm / Sat: 10am-6pm / Sun: 12-6pm).

David Goldblatt: Intersections

via Art&Education :

David Goldblatt: Intersections
July 8 through August 26, 2007

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2626 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94720
t. (510) 642-0808
f. (510) 642-4889
TDD: (510) 642-8734
Wednesday and Friday to Sunday, 11 to 5; Thursday 11 to 7.
Closed Monday and Tuesday

http://bampfa.berkeley.edu

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) presents David Goldblatt: Intersections, an exhibition of color photographs of life in post-apartheid South Africa by one of the world's leading documentary photographers. David Goldblatt's images of his native country have gained worldwide recognition for their intimate, unflinching views of a culture ravaged by prejudice and injustice. David Goldblatt: Intersections features two recent series of work, Johannesburg Intersections and Platteland Intersections, which show the changing face of contemporary South Africa. The exhibition opens at the museum on July 8 and runs through August 26, 2007.

Goldblatt, who was born in Randfontein, South Africa, in 1930, first started photographing his native country in 1948, the same year the National Party came to power and instituted the policy of apartheid. Since that time, Goldblatt has photographed the South African people, landscape, and cities, creating arresting images that follow in the tradition of the great documentary photography of the twentieth century.

The photographs featured in Johannesburg Intersections reveal the crosscurrents of values, ideas, spaces, and people that make up South Africa today. Goldblatt captures many of the significant social changes that have occurred in the past decade, including the large numbers of black low-wage workers who now live in the cities, and the white residents and businesses that have relocated from the cities to newly built suburbs and office parks. He also depicts the crude cemeteries that are evidence of the impact of HIV/AIDS in the townships, and political change in the form of the elected officials who lead municipalities created following government reforms. In Platteland Intersections, Goldblatt shows the vastness of the landscape, the damage done to the land by the mining industry, and the dignity of the people living on the land.

Goldblatt photographed exclusively in black and white until well into the 1990s; with color, he felt, he could not express his rage, revulsion, and fear of the ideology of apartheid. With the beginning of a new political and social era after the abolition of apartheid and South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, Goldblatt felt the need to expand the expressive possibilities of his work. A new generation of color films and the remarkable control of contrast and color saturation enabled by digital reproduction have made that possible for him. His more recent work, including the series featured in David Goldblatt: Intersections, uses large-format photography combined with advanced ink-jet papers to produce images that are redolent of the colors and light of the South African landscape.

Goldblatt's photographs of life in South Africa have been published in a large number of magazines and books. His major publication, South Africa: The Structure of Things Then, was released in 1998 to critical acclaim, and that same year a solo exhibition of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It wasn't until 2002 that Goldblatt gained international recognition with an exhibition of two groups of photographs at the contemporary art exhibition Documenta 11. Today his work is in major collections around the world, including the French National Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

AIDS
[via http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/goldblatt]

Goldblatt's most recent works have accented the most topical and urgent problem in South Africa: HIV-AIDS. South Africa has one of the highest percentages of HIV-AIDS victims in the world. Although there are signs of change, the government has reacted less than decisively, even to the extent of denying the problem. There are several public campaigns to heighten awareness of the disease and of safe sex, among them the "planting" of the "AIDS ribbon" in the social landscape where, as Goldblatt's photographs show, it is often submerged and seemingly forgotten.

David Goldblatt: Intersectionswas organized for the Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany, by Dr. Christoph Danelzik-Bruggemann, curator.

NG investigates the Maya collapse

Scholars have long puzzled over the Maya civilization's rise to glory and fall to ruin. The latest thinking is that a man named Fire Is Born made the Maya great. But no one person or problem caused the collapse. Simply put, everything went wrong.

The cover story of the August 2007 issue of National Geographic Magazine explores current theories on the rise and fall of the Maya. Joining the standard NG treatment ('imaginative' drawings recreating moments in Maya history) are selected art objects and dramatic photography of Maya sites. The online version of the magazine includes features such as an interactive map and interviews with the writer and photographer, and related links to other NG features, web sites and printed books and articles.

EH, we salute you!

Congratulations to goldwaterlibrary.org blogger extraordinaire Erika Hauser on her much-deserved promotion to Senior Library Associate. Woo-hoo!

-- Her fellow bloggers Ross & Joy

Too Cool for Their Shush-shirts

EAT, DRINK, BE LITERARY From left, Jessica Pigza, Maria Falgoust, Jeff Buckley and Sarah Murphy at a social event for librarians where the author Robert Sullivan, far right, spoke. photo: Michael Nagle for The New York Times

via NYTimes:

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers
By KARA JESELLA
Published: July 8, 2007
ON a Sunday night last month at Daddy’s, a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, more than a dozen people in their 20s and 30s gathered at a professional soiree, drinking frozen margaritas and nibbling store-bought cookies. With their thrift-store inspired clothes and abundant tattoos, they looked as if they could be filmmakers, Web designers, coffee shop purveyors or artists.

SOCIAL BOOKWORMS Maria Falgoust helped start Desk Set to meet like-minded librarians. Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

“Maria Falgoust, 31, is also a founder of Desk Set, which took its name from the 1957 Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy romantic comedy. A student who works part time at the library at Saint Ann’s School, she was inspired to become a librarian by a friend, a public librarian who works with teenagers and goes to rock shows regularly.

Since matriculating to Palmer, Ms. Falgoust has met plenty of other like-minded librarians at places such as Brooklyn Label, a restaurant, and at Punk Rope, an exercise class. “They’re everywhere you go,” she said.”

When talk turned to a dance party the group had recently given at a nearby restaurant, their profession became clearer.

“Did you try the special drinks?” Sarah Gentile, 29, asked Jennifer Yao, 31, referring to the colorfully named cocktails.

“I got the Joy of Sex,” Ms. Yao replied. “I thought for sure it was French Women Don’t Get Fat.”

Ms. Yao could be forgiven for being confused: the drink was numbered and the guests had to guess the name. “613.96 C,” said Ms. Yao, cryptically, then apologized: “Sorry if I talk in Dewey.”

That would be the Dewey Decimal System. The groups’ members were librarians. Or, in some cases, guybrarians.

“He hates being called that,” said Sarah Murphy, one of the evening’s organizers and a founder of the Desk Set, a social group for librarians and library students.

Ms. Murphy was speaking of Jeff Buckley, a reference librarian at a law firm, who had a tattoo of the logo from the Federal Depository Library Program peeking out of his black T-shirt sleeve.

Librarians? Aren’t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons — the ultimate humorless shushers?

Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging — the kind that, according to the Web site Librarian Avengers, is “looking to put the ‘hep cat’ in cataloguing.”

When the cult film “Party Girl” appeared in 1995, with Parker Posey as a night life impresario who finds happiness in the stacks, the idea that a librarian could be cool was a joke.

Now, there is a public librarian who writes dispatches for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, a favored magazine of the young literati. “Unshelved,” a comic about librarians — yes, there is a comic about librarians — features a hipster librarian character. And, in real life, there are an increasing number of librarians who are notable not just for their pink-streaked hair but also for their passion for pop culture, activism and technology.

“We’re not the typical librarians anymore,” said Rick Block, an adjunct professor at the Long Island University Palmer School and at the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science, both graduate schools for librarians, in New York City.

“When I was in library school in the early ’80s, the students weren’t as interesting,” Mr. Block said. 

Since then, however, library organizations have been trying to recruit a more diverse group of students and to mentor younger members of the profession.

“I think we’re getting more progressive and hipper,” said Carrie Ansell, a 28-year-old law librarian in Washington.

In the last few years, articles have decried the graying of the profession, noting a large percentage of librarians that would soon be retiring and a seemingly insurmountable demand for replacements. But worries about a mass exodus appear to have been unfounded.

Michele Besant, the librarian at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the Association of Library and Information Science statistics show a steady increase in library information science enrollments over the last 10 years. Further, at hers and other schools there is a trend for students to be entering masters programs at a younger age.

The myth prevails that librarians are becoming obsolete. “There’s Google, no one needs us,” Ms. Gentile said, mockingly, over a drink at Daddy’s.

Still, these are high-tech times. Why are people getting into this profession when libraries seem as retro as the granny glasses so many of the members of the Desk Set wear?

“Because it’s cool,” said Ms. Gentile, who works at the Brooklyn Museum.

read on...