Information Playlist For National Library Week

Did you know that this is National Library Week? In celebration I’ve created a playlist of songs about information: finding it, not finding it, and being overwhelmed by too much of it. We live in a time when more information is created and consumed than ever before, and no one is more aware of it or more affected by it than your old friend the librarian. It has always been the job of librarians to find, organize, and share good information while weeding out the bad information, a job that grows more daunting all the time.

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I’ve been thinking about making this playlist for a long time, ever since I went to library school. That’s right, I’m a librarian. Well, I have a MSLIS, but I don’t actually work in a library anymore, which means I’ve spent a lot less time with books and a lot more time trying to manage information than I originally thought. Surprising as it might seem, most traditional librarians out there would probably say the same thing.

In this age of increased internet access and e-books many assume that no one uses the library anymore, but in fact library circulation in 2010 was the highest ever reported, and use of public libraries has actually increased over the past decade. The need for people to make sense of the excess information in the world has increased, while the actual number of librarians has, by most accounts, dramatically decreased.

So with that in mind, please show some love to the librarians in your life! And I hope you enjoy this playlist, whatever your association with the ever expanding world of information may be.