In the digital world, the librarian is increasingly becoming an endangered species. According to the American Library Association, there are currently 148, 895 librarians working in more than 121,169 libraries in America. Of those libraries, 8,951 are traditional public libraries, 3,689 are academic libraries, 99,180 are school libraries. The typical librarian, who must have at least a master’s degree, earns $54,500 per year (or about $26.20 per hour) for hushing chatty patrons (you know the type, especially the ones who pronounce library as “lie-berry”), developing collections, and helping people find information the old fashioned way — finding physical books with the assistance of the Dewey Decimal Classification (commonly known as the Dewey Decimal System) created by Melvin Dewey back in 1876. Good thing Dewey died in 1931 — if he were alive today he would be cursing Google — especially the Google Books project that not only makes his system obsolete, but turns books into relics.
There is, however, a rare breed of librarian that is not only the keeper of the Dewey Decimal System, but is gifted with the talent of being able to write poetry or prose. Bookshelf honors the books written by librarians:
Story of My Life by Giacomo Casanova
Collected Poems by Marianne Moore
The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Dr. Brodie’s Report by Jorge Luis Borges
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
Read related post: The Books that Shaped America
For further reading: www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet02
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/librarians.htm
http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2013/03/18/literature-from-librarians-great-reads-written-by-the-experts/
Atkins Bookshelf 