Legal Research

Much Ado about Librarians

By scott

Thanks to the Notes about Libraries blog for bringing my attention to this early April fool from Edinburgh council reported in the Torygraph. If the story is to be believed then the powers that be in the capital of Scotlandia think the term ‘Librarian’ is a bit out dated, and needs jazzing up a bit. As a result they are planning to re-brand the city’s library staff as “audience development officers”, or ADO’s.

I do hope this is just a load of old tosh and not a serious proposal. I mean, WTF does “audience development officer” mean. Is that not someone who stands with a board, saying ‘laugh’ or some such, in front of a studio audience at the filming of TV shows? I hear the city’s doctors are also facing a name change to “human repair and healing technicians” as part of the plan to re-define jobs and job titles in these troubled times.

I’m not in any way anti-change, after all my own job title is that of ‘information officer’ - itself a rather daft title - as opposed to ‘librarian’. However, at least the inclusion of the word ‘information’ gives some hint as to what I might do. And some of our Libraries have become ‘Idea Stores’ , which would I guess make those Librarians, Idea Storage Mangers? No?

So what should we be called? [apart from o’ great one, obviously]

Full post as published by Information Overload on January 14, 2009 (boomark / email).