short post about religion in the library

A few days ago a woman came to the reference desk to complain. Why is it, she asked, that we have tons of books about Islam and Buddhism, but few about Christianity?

I tried to point out how many books we do have about all religions, but she was not satisfied. Where were books by Billy Graham, she asked. So I showed her that we had books by him. She was still not satisfied. Then she asked who was responsible for ordering books. I told her that it was centralized ordering, not in the hands of the individual branch. She did not seem to believe me. She asked me why it was that they would order so many books on Buddhism and Islam and not enough on Christianity. (Her words.) I made the mistake of conjecturing that maybe they ordered books according to the demographics of the neighborhood, and that this neighborhood is heavily Asian and Pakistani. At this (pure guess) she raised her eyebrows. Then she looked me up and down. And asked me if I was Muslim.

I am not Muslim, but I really wish I had told her, yes, I am. Or that I had asked her, How does it matter?

Yesterday at the library

Yesterday was quite stressful at the library. I came home soul-exhausted. There were some incorrigible customers who seemed to relish putting the librarian through her paces. But on second thought, there were some thought-provoking and delightful encounters that made the day well worth living. Here are some highlights.

Two Pakistani-American girls befriended me at the children’s desk. One of them shadowed me all day and even helped with reference transactions. I think it made her feel grown-up and responsible. The best part was when we were talking about how bad my spoken Hindi/Urdu is. I explained to them that Hindi isn’t my mother tongue. Then they asked me where I come from. India, I replied. We silently digested the fact that “our countries” are having some “problems” at the moment. One of them said,

Introducing a blog all about Libraries and Social Networking!

… which I discovered while surfing the web today to take the temperature of Libraryland!

 The name of the blog is as specific as it gets:

Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services

And the description is: Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services is devoted to the use of online social networking sites for any and all types of library-related programs or services.

Upon a quick preliminary perusal, this site appears to me quite packed with useful information with library students –or new librarians– eager and willing to learn exactly how social networking could be used in creative ways to enhance library services. It’s great to read at this time, because I was just starting to feel somewhat cynical about “all the technology” out there, wondering whether or not this was just more stuff to surf and have fun with, or if there really is some use which librarians –and users– can make of it, besides the “isn’t it so cool I found my friend from ten years ago on Facebook” feature. I’ll definitely be adding this blog to my library blogroll!

Here is the blog entry which caught my eye today… http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/10/sharing-privacy-and-trust-in-our.html