Okay, so I was a little slow with the blogging this week, but I am taking the advice from my nonfiction professor in undergrad, no apologies. So, even though we were told that we did not have to post about 511, I think this week’s class was just too good to not talk about, and not just because of bacon cheeseburgers.

            I know what you are probably thinking, “Bacon cheeseburgers? I thought you were in Library School not McDonalds College.” It is in relation to my groups blog thread pertaining to our professor, David Lankes’ book, The Atlas of New Librarianship. (Our thread is over, but feel free to join into the conversation on the next groups post at http://www.newlibrarianship.org/wordpress/?p=2348) One of the issues that was brought up during the conversation was the issue of Librarians improving society, one poster said it was wrong for librarians to tell society what to do (or at least that is the gist of what I got). So, for some strange reason I decided to be politically correct and say that we were merely facilitating the addition of knowledge to society through, if I may so myself, a brilliant analogy to a bacon cheeseburger, the bacon obviously being the added knowledge because obviously bacon is awesome (can you tell I have been craving bacon all week?). I basically said you can choose to add the bacon (knowledge) or not.

            In class we started talking about the thread and obviously this issue came up again and Professor Lankes went on probably the most inspiring rant I have heard. He said that we do tell society what to think because we are part of society and we have just as much a stake in it as anyone else and to say that we do not for whatever reason is an insult (paraphrasing I don’t think he actually said that in those words). I think one of my favorite parts is he called me “Burger” in order to get my attention (I was writing down another of his quotes but obviously it got cut off and it is incomplete in my notebook which kind of bothers me) and said “We add the bacon!” Meaning we add the knowledge, we tell society what should happen. Though, I think the most inspiring thing he said was “No one changed the world by standing around and waiting to be asked.”

       That bacon cheeseburger looks fantastic, why do I do this to myself?