Talk:List of librarians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the List of librarians article.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.	Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Be welcoming	Article policies No original research Neutral point of view Verifiability

This article was nominated for deletion on 2007-10-24. The result of the discussion was keep and cleanup.

Contents 1 Famous people 2 I have divided 3 Boole 4 Librarians in fiction 5 Self-references 6 Philip Pullman

[edit] Famous people

I would eventually like to see this be a list of people whose primary contribution in life was or is in libraries, and weed out all the famous people who spent a small part of their lives as librarians. Perhaps there could be another list of celebrities who worked as librarians, but I think that would actually be rather trivial. I'm more interested in seeing a list of people whose notability comes from their librarianship, not a list of people who are primarily notable for something else and whose work as a librarian is a matter of trivia. Rlitwin 13:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree with this. I just deleted Excene Cervinka. I hope this doesn't cause a big problem, but it seemed like a joke to me. I'd be very interested to know what Excene has to do with libraries, if she does.--Sue Maberry 17:05, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

It is interesting to the general user--and perhaps some librarians-- to see the others, and some, like Casanova, are too good to omit; the solution is to divide into two lists,

"People known primarily as ...

and "People know primarily as librarians" possibly giving the other profession, for some won't be obvious to all users (or to me);

In any case we need dates for all, and perhaps nationality for the "primarily librarians," because it is relevant, and the list covers such a wide range.

For the others, we should either ensure that their Page has info on the library part, or omit them here.

Meanwhile, I've added some info that was in the links or obvious.

If there is no objection, I will divide in a few days as a start.--DGG

J. Edgar Hoover worked at the Library of Congress early on in his career. I don't think he was an actual librarian, however.

[edit] I have divided

moving all the dual notability one into the top. I am left with:

1. a number of people notable in other fields where WP has no bio data indicating they've been a libarian. If aanyone can get some, we should add it the their bio articles, and then list them here.
2. a number of librarians with articles in WP that did not seem notable (to me). The easiest way to avoid a dispute would be to add them all, but I want to at least add them with a nore about who they are
3. a number of names where WP had no bio info; I dont know where the list came from. Anyone finds info, we should add.

1. 1. this then bring up the ones not in WP, or where the library aspect wasn't noticed. As far as I am concerned the present director of every ARL library and large city /state library qualifies for notability, and should be added to the article for their library, and to the list. We've gotten most of the eminent researchers in librarianship. If we're goingto include inf sci that are a good many more. How much of a bio we need, I dont know. I think short bio articles are fine, and wI'd like to get WP to stop marking them as stubs.
   2. previous directors of real note should be included--the distinction for academics holds--will any one outside their own school know about them.
   3. presidents of the ALA should go in if not in all already
   4. long term eds. of the major journals.
   5. and then all the library school faculty. Fortunately there are only about 500. I'd leave the out unless they've published more than the average.

As am not in the least intending to do all this. I will add people I know. I see no harm in adding a red link--it shows what we need, which will be a lot. Might make a good library school exercise: add the faculty. DGG 06:57, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Boole

Boole was not an information scientist' inf. sci. is not = computer sci. (nor do I think he was a librarian.)

DGG 06:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Librarians in fiction

Could there be interest in such a section? I can only think of one, the Librarian of the Discworld series =) /136.163.203.3 14:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

thanks for the ref, new to me. There are several dozen others to add, I hope others will help in this. DGG 06:47, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

There's already librarians in popular culture, but perhaps that should be linked to from this article? I didn't know it existed, myself, until I clicked on the Librarians category. Maria 17:12, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Self-references

This article needs heavy cleanup to avoid self-references. The list needs to be categorised by something other than the status of their Wikipedia article. Thryduulf 18:29, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

there are really only two real categories, for primarily librarians and primarily not librarians, and then the ones that were unclassifiable based on immediate information screened on the basis of info at hand. The best way of taking care of those would be to find the information. I didn't want to remove them, because some are undoubtedly notable. I've at least separated out the problems, but I have no idea where the original lists came from, and finding the rest of the bios needed is up to others.DGG 03:40, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philip Pullman

..was a librarian for a while (although not qualified) according to this article in The Guardian and the biography on his webpage. NickW 16:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

If he's not qualified, then he's not a librarian!

Chairman Mao was also NOT a librarian, he just worked in a library. Could there be some sort of distinction? It's a bit like saying that anybody who works in a hospital is a Doctor. Slightly disgruntled (qualified, professional) librarian here!

Disagree. Many people work in libraries and gain as much experience and as many skills as those with library qualifications - hence the concept of para-professional qualification etc.. Some people may already have several degrees and don't want another. I think attitudes to these distinctions vary by country though. For the record I'm a professionally qualified librarian. NickW 12:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)