Room for Thought: Reading and the Long View of Librarianship

Abstract

            This article is a brief informal essay about working from home during the coronavirus closures of spring 2020. In the absence of full reliable internet access, I rearranged my desk and chose some appropriately inspiring books of history, philosophy, and librarianship. This essay analyzes and illustrates the value of reading books not immediately related to the regular routine of library work. The books on my desk, and discussed in this essay, offer some different ways of thinking about the nature of libraries in the service of knowledge: Crash Course in Contemporary Reference, The Intellectual Life, You Must Change Your Life, The Information, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, Guilty Aesthetic Pleasures, Ill Fares the Land, and The Politics of Theory and the Practice of Critical Librarianship.

            The essay uses conceptual analysis to connect the authors' ideas into an argument for a more thoughtful approach to the work of librarianship. "In reality, we only build on what we have" (Judt, 2010, p. 233). Its purpose is to encourage librarians to remember or rediscover the pleasures of reading as an integral part of their work.