10.04.2007

"Anal retentive"? Me?


My daily Shelf Awareness email was particularly fun this morning. It talked about a website I was previously unfamiliar with: Urban Dictionary. It works kind of like a wiki (at least my novice understanding of a wiki): people can log in and define the word any way they want. So Shelf Awareness mentioned Urban Dictionary’s definitions of “librarian”. They range from complimentary: “aspire to make a difference in a constantly changing world, are some of the most interesting individuals you will ever meet, are more excited about technology then you think.” Some are just outrageous: “an overly anal retentive bitch that glares over your shoulder while you’re typing on the computer making sure the little 10 year old next to you doesn’t see the porn you’re watching.”* And then there’s the ambiguous: “A chick who seems really sweet and nice and shy when out. But, once you get her alone turns into a raging sexual freak.”** It depends on whether or not you think being a “sexual freak” is a good thing…

But I think this one was my favorite: “A person who is so anal that they have sought a job to define their compulsive tendencies. As librarians, these 'overly enthusiastic' individuals can not only revel in their compulvieness, they can force it on other people too.” Some people may find this one mean too…but in my experience, what this man speaks is absolutely true.

* and ** I fixed the spelling and grammatical errors in the entries. I couldn’t keep them there and let you all think they were mistakes I had made. So these quotes have been altered from the original works.

1 comment:

Anali said...

So true! I also like the second part of that definition: Some libaries have been known to assign numbers to CDs in the order they purchase them and then organize them by number, effectively hindering any person from finding the CD that they want.

Doesn't he know we call that cataloging by accession? It IS very effective.