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Marilyn Johnson QUOTES

Marilyn Johnson QUOTES

1 " Librarians are essential players in the information revolution because they level that field. They enable those without money or education to read and learn the same things as the billionaire and the PhD. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

2 " We'll always need printed books that don't mutate the way digital books do; we'll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we'll always need brick-and-mortar libraries. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

3 " We are all living history, and it’s hard to say now what will be important in the future. One thing’s certain, though: if we throw it away, it’s gone. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

4 " We were bleeding information from the nose and ears, though dazed and disoriented was not how I experienced it. Most of the time, I felt like I was three years old, high on chocolate cake and social networks, constantly wired, ingesting information and news about information, books and books about books, data and metadata—I was, in other words, overstimulated yet gluttonous for more. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

5 " Librarians consider free access to information the foundation of democracy. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

6 " Though I loved the wired world, the new-wave librarians, the avatars and activists, I turned into a dinosaur in that library. I couldn’t help it; I was an old-fashioned writer who loved the ancient books summoned via pneumatic tubes, the archives, the quiet. I had found something rare there: an inexhaustible wonder. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

7 " I was under the librarians' protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or, in this case, guardians of my peace. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

8 " Libraries have always been there for me. Of course I'll stand up for them. "

― Marilyn Johnson

9 " I became interested in librarians while researching my first book, about obituaries. With the exception of a few showy eccentrics, like the former soldier in Hitler's army who had a sex change and took up professional whistling, the most engaging obit subjects were librarians. An obituary of a librarian could be about anything under the sun, a woman with a phenomenal memory, who recalled the books her aging patrons read as children—and was also, incidentally, the best sailor on her stretch of the Maine coast—or a man obsessed with maps, who helped automate the Library of Congress's map catalog and paved the way for wonders like Google Maps. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

10 " Good librarians are natural intelligence operatives. They possess all of the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organization and analytical aptitude, and discretion. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

11 " In tough times, a librarian is a terrible thing to waste. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

12 " Bibliomancy: "Divination by jolly well Looking It Up. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

13 " Yes, librarians use punctuation marks to make little emoticons, smiley and frowny faces in their correspondence, but if there were one for an ironic wink, or a sarcastic lip curl, they'd wear it out. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

14 " In tight economic times, with libraries sliding farther and farther down the list of priorities, we risk the loss of their ideals, intelligence, and knowledge, not to mention their commitment to access for all—librarians consider free access to information the foundation of democracy, and they’re right. Librarians are essential players in the information revolution because they level that field. They enable those without money or education to read and learn the same things as the billionaire and the Ph.D…In tough times, a librarian is a terrible thing to waste. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

15 " Members of the Order take vows of literacy, obstinancy and bibliomancy. Bibliomancy? It's defined for us a little further down: "Divination by jolly well Looking It Up. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

16 " What was archaeology to him? It was the opposite of killing things. It was trying to will life back into stuff that had been forgotten and buried for thousands or millions of years. It was not about shards and pieces of bone or treasure; it was about kneeling down in the elements, paying very close attention, and trying to locate a spark of the human life that had once touched that spot there. "

― Marilyn Johnson , Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble

17 " It’s almost impossible to teach that sort of writing except by pointing students to a stack of clips and telling them, 'Inhale these. "

― Marilyn Johnson , The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries

18 " Of course. Ask your librarian. Always the right answer. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

19 " So when I hear this snarky question (and I hear it everywhere): Are librarians obsolete in the Age of Google? all I can say is, are you kidding? Librarians are more important than ever. Google and Yahoo! and Bing and WolframAlpha can help you find answers to your questions, sometimes brilliantly; but if you don't know how to phrase those questions, no search engine can help provide the answers. "

― Marilyn Johnson , This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

20 " It seems there was a custom in Ireland at this time of showing obeisance to your king by sucking his nipples. No nipples, you could not be a king. "

― Marilyn Johnson , Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble