This book is overdue!

This is a comment on the audio book version only. It is terrible; the narrator sounds like a computer and may have ruined another audio book for me. At this point, I cannot comment on the content.

The first half was interesting and gave some insight into the life of a librarian, but the second half was repetitive and seemed to lend to the modern stereotypes of the field. I was hoping for this to be much more informative than it was.

I enjoyed this book but it was just a little too long. It got a bit boring at the end, though I really enjoyed many of the stories about librarians. I'm obsessed with libraries so I found a lot the things in this book really interesting but I didn't really like the writing that much. I also felt like I was reading it forever since I kept picking up other books to read at the same time.

I think I was a little confused as to what This Book is Overdue! was really going to contain when I first picked it up. My expectation was that I would learn a little more about what librarians do for us, hear some funny stories, and maybe giggle a little bit. Instead I was ultimately a little lost, because there is a lot of very dense, albeit interesting, technical information in this book. I ultimately ended up skimming a lot of those parts. Too much information overload for one day I think.

However as a source for a comprehensive view of the librarian world today, this is a great book. I did find a lot to love. The book covers everything from community librarians and their experiences with ever changing circulation systems, to research librarians and the way that the web has influenced them. The reader is introduced to influential librarians over the course of history as well. If you are a librarian fan, or perhaps a librarian yourself, I'm sure that you'll really find some of these chapters interesting. Actually, the chapter that caught my eye the most was all about cyber librarians. There are librarians on Second Life? Who knew!


As a person who is not herself a librarian (although I'd love to be!) I found this book to be a little information heavy for my taste. It is one that I will definitely keep for later, and likely pass around, but at the moment it didn't speak to me as much as I would have liked it to. As I said before if you are a librarian, you might find more to love in this book. I do recommend you give it a read and find out for yourself!

You can't write a book like this with a title like this without knowing it will be a shoe-in for every library collection in the world...and that is...well, how many books? A lot, anyway.

So, is that what inspired this book? Or was it heartfelt? Does Johnson really believe that librarians are going to save the planet?

Certainly a satisfying read for this librarian. Johnson gets librarians, for starters. Most don't. Most have this impression of us, faithfully stamping the books and retreating to the shelves for a quick chapter between the occasional patron in the library. Johnson takes the time to see where the cutting edge librarians are going. Yes, where no man has gone before. We need someone leading us into this new unexplored world. Who better than librarians?

Fascinating introduction to the varied aspects of librarianship and technology today. Especially interesting: librarians in virtual worlds. A must-read for lovers of libraries, librarians, information (esp. freedom of), literacy and technology.