did a talk at a convention in Detroit a few weeks ago in which I encouraged people to become librarians. I started out with this quiz. Now it’s your turn.
|
Am I Geeky enough to be a Librarian?
|
Yes | No |
| 1. I enjoy acronyms. | ||
| 2. I own a cat. | ||
| 3. When confronted with a pile of books I think "Hmm…first I would sort by author, then by title? | ||
| 4. I am obsessive enough to appreciate the difference between 345.065 and 345.605. | ||
| 5. I possess a useless undergraduate degree. | ||
| 6. Being surrounded by books makes me lather with delight. | ||
| 7. The idea of someone preventing me from reading Orwell because they don’t like it strikes me as Orwellian. | ||
| 8. I am comfortable with the Internets. | ||
| 9. If my house caught on fire, one of the things I would grab is my favorite book. | ||
| 10. I possess a useless graduate degree. | ||
| 11. I can daisy-chain a herd of Ubuntu boxes faster than you can say FreeBSD. | ||
| 12. These kids today. I swear. If they would just read a damn book once in awhile, they wouldn’t be blowing each other up so much. | ||
| 13. I could find out the middle name of your high school boyfriend with just ten minutes on the Internet. | ||
| 14. I could find out the first line of A Tale of Two Cities with just ten seconds on the Internet. | ||
| 15. I know the first line of A Tale of Two Cities. | ||
| 16. I am a disenfranchised intellectual. | ||
| 17. The idea of arming the public with knowledge appeals to me more than, say, arming them with pitchforks and torches. | ||
| 18. I would rather do something cool than get rich. | ||
| 19. I possess a useless doctoral degree. | ||
| 20. I can say "Colon classification" without laughing. |
Scoring
Under 5 = I think the “We hate libraries” meeting is down the hall.
5-10 = You are geeky, but can you HANDLE the acronyms?
10-15 = I’ve got some library school applications under my desk you big dork
15-20 = Quit your job immediately! Grab the nearest child and teach him to read! Oh, and start stocking up on acid-free paper.




March 25th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
18 — All but two. I don’t have a doctorate and I haven’t the foggiest notion what a Ubuntu box is. (But I can find out in a few seconds on the internet!)
March 25th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
Only 14. But then again, I’m only a wannabee librarian.
March 26th, 2006 at 12:28 am
8. And I just got my MSLIS. (Yeah, that’s what I got. Really.)
Not all librarians fit the stereotype.
March 26th, 2006 at 7:59 am
I guess you must HATE LIBRARIES! After all, the joke quiz that I made up at 4am is based on SCIENCE and can not be wrong. Subatomic particles were fused in the making of this quiz. Migrating groups of ducks realigned themselves along polar axes to calculate the verisimilitude of this quiz. Library-hater. Don’t come back to work until you get a cat!
March 26th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Woo-hoo, 17 points - my lack of useless graduate and doctoral degrees is keeping me down!
March 26th, 2006 at 11:53 pm
How many points do you get for wanting to put questions 5 & 6 and 19 & 20 in their appropriate spots?
March 27th, 2006 at 9:42 am
Good one! Extra points for Kane! Bugfixed. Gracias.
March 28th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Eep. Never having posted before, I felt compelled to do so when this quiz basically hit me over the head with “GO TO LIBRARY SCHOOL. BECOME A LIBRARIAN.”
But will I listen…?
Dig the site, Erica.
March 30th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
I scored a 12. Guess I am not an uberlibrarian, despite having my MIS/MLS and generally preferring books to people. :)
April 2nd, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Thirteen for me. Lousy non-useless degrees!
April 2nd, 2006 at 7:52 pm
[...] A year ago at this time I was a semester and a half into library school, and I’d been reading library blogs for several months. I went to library school because I already had two useless degrees (they call the MFA a terminal degree, as I like to say, because it leads nowhere), and librarianship seemed like a far better option than, say, law school. (I have great respect for the many good lawyers of the world, but after a friend told me that in law school they had lockers and bells, “just like high school!”, I knew it wasn’t for me.) I had a terrible time finding a part-time library support staff job, both before I started library school and after. I got one letter that said, essentially, “Sorry, we were looking for someone with an education background and customer service experience.” (”Oh,” said a friend of mine, “they wanted an education major who worked at Wal-Mart.”) Apparently my three years of college teaching and four years of teaching at a whacky alternative elementary school didn’t count for anything. [...]
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:26 pm
11.
Hey, can I add one?
As a child, you sorted your Smarties (Or M&M’s, pick your candy of choice).
I think I bring anal to a whole new level.
: )
April 4th, 2006 at 10:41 am
16 for me, and I’ll have my MSI by the end of the month. I sorted my skittles (someone once bought me a three pound bag and I sorted it in one go). It’s nice to be among my kindred….
April 5th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
17, but only because I don’t have a useless doctoral degree, have no idea what an Ubuntu box… and, oh crap, I *do* know the first line to a Tale of Two Cities. That’s the one that starts with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Except, wait, I *don’t* know the entire 11-line stanza! But you know, I’m a librarian, and I can find Project Gutenberg with one arm tied behind my back… so here’s that first sentence:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct
the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present
period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree
of comparison only.
>http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=97528&pageno=3
April 5th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
Apparently, I need to quit my job.
Hi, Erica, this is frank… from back in Flint. Used to wear a long, navy-blue labcoat all the time with a computer chip glued to the lapel, awkward in all situations, probably at least a little annoying? Yep. I just wanted to say hello, and I am glad things are going well for you. Mrow…
April 7th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Erica, Hi, I don’t usually read blogs, but yours is funny. I didn’t think your quiz would score so well with me, because I don’t have a useless undergrad degree, or own a cat. But, I am a librarian, and I scored a 12.
April 7th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
Scored a 16 and I’m a librarian without a doctorate in site. I know what Ubunto boxes are but have nver been on a Linux system. If I were might be able to daisy chanin them. Interesting survey broke up my afternoon.
April 8th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Are you geeky enough to be a librarian?
A fun quiz from Librarian Avengers. Am I Geeky enough to be a Librarian? Yes No 1. I enjoy acronyms. x 2. I own a cat. x 3. When confronted with a pile of books I think…
April 10th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
15/20. I guess it’s a good thing I’m in library school!
April 10th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
[...] Librarian Avengers have posted an amusing and surprisingly excellent quiz. If you’re pondering librarianship as a career, check it out. 15/20 — I guess I’m headed down the right path. [...]
April 14th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Hmmmm. I hit 15, but I don’t know if I’m 10-15 or 15-20! Help! Help!
April 14th, 2006 at 10:28 am
And I’m sure not going near any library with that Arun person! Eight! Probably doesn’t even adhere to the Code of the Librarians! Goes to work in Bermuda shorts and wears a pocket protector! Secret subscriber to the beliefs of both Rush Limbaugh and William Pierce! Hates it when patrons remove books from shelves! Away Spawn of Satan!
April 15th, 2006 at 6:04 am
14- I’m just a Lib/Assisting student/ wannabee Children’s Librarian.
April 23rd, 2006 at 5:22 pm
i scored a 14 - no doctorate, and only half way through my MLS (which i’m hoping will be very useful compared to my BA in creative writing). also, i have a dog, not a cat, but i do on occassion read outloud to him. so do i win???
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:32 am
[...] Will you ace the quiz? [...]
May 4th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
well, I’m geeky enough to think that any online quiz that does not actually show boxes or radio buttons is totally crap. ok, not crap but really user-hostile
I had to get paper and pen to keep count of yes and no. PEN AND PAPER?!?! geeeze, maybe I should post this comment via pigeon? (see http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2001may/gee20010511005839.htm for details on CPIP, the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol)
oh, I scored a 13. ;)
May 12th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
I am a librarian but I only scored 12. Of course, I refuse to call my degrees ‘useless’.
May 18th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Yeah I got 14 as well. I too am a wannabe.
However I scored far, far higher than any of my collegues at work would…But sorry I don’t have a university edu-macation yet! (snark!)
Why do people still get this degree? Why not IM? Why is this a qualification for most lisjobs? Get a clue…Govdoc’s, indexing, classification, (hehe) a joke.
Hey let’s talk about podcasting some more!(snark)
Realize imformation science is information science..get with the program..consolidate already.
May 19th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
I scored a 15! I guess I am destined to be a librarian. I don’t need the applications any more; I was accepted to library school last week!
I would have scored one point higher but I worked too hard going for my Bachelor’s in History part-time while working full-time to call my degree useless.
And I have more than one cat (maybe there should be one point for each cat).
May 22nd, 2006 at 8:10 pm
this is hilarious and shows that librarians do have personalities and a sense of humour (contrary to public opinion) … i only scored a 5 - which goes to show i’m in the perfect job (holding a law degree, an MBA and studying a Masters in Public Infrastructure) … but i do own a cat (but i’ve never read a Tale of Two Cities)
May 22nd, 2006 at 8:10 pm
I am in the borders coming in at 14. I would be at 15 if question two was worded correctly: “Have you been owned by a cat or numbered amongst its staff”
May 23rd, 2006 at 3:01 am
I scored 16. I’m not telling which were my no answers. Will read a book in preference to watching TV any day.
Problem is if I became a librarian I would probably spend more time reading the books than putting them away!
May 23rd, 2006 at 1:15 pm
I scored 15…which group does that put me in? I’m finally going to be a real librarian this summer…the (paid!) summer intern position I’ve been dying to have over the past 5 years I’ve been volunteering is finally mine! I start next Tuesday and I’ll get to be around books and the best coworkers in the world all day…I’m VERY excited! Someday I’ll get those useless library degrees…:-)
May 24th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
Too many, Lord, too many. Somebody just shoot me now.
May 26th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
I scored 16! Yea! I’m already a librarian (high school) and taking a class at UIUC this summer. Very excited about that. Fun quiz and great site.
June 5th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
I only got ten and I was a public librarian for almost 39 years. Now I’m retired and I don’t know what a Ubuntu box is, and frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn. My theatre undergrad major was not useless; it came in handy for doing story hours and book talks. And my husband and I have two cats sharing our household, so I get two points. My cats say so, and they’re always right.
June 12th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
I got 12:( man, I hate librarians:)
September 23rd, 2006 at 10:05 am
I want to see the quiz…Am I Geeky Enough to be a Librarian?…..but can’t get it from your website.
Any remedy?
Thanks!
October 8th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
[...] Librarian Avengers posted this fab quiz a little while back, intended to help you discover if you are geeky enough have what it takes to become a librarian. Unpredictably my score is pretty high. [...]
October 11th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
I just discovered this website yesterday (while working at the reference desk, thank you) and had to stop myself from snorting laughter in a very unladylike fashion several times. I love this site!! This quiz cracked me up. I’m between 15-17 (a few “maybes”, I just graduated with an MLIS in August, but my undergrad was pretty useless). I also sort my M&Ms and Skittles. I know the first line of Tale of Two Cities, though I’ve never actually read it. However, reading this post made me want to very badly. If I wander over to the 800’s and pick me up a copy, I wonder if anyone will notice I’m gone…
October 11th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
Just discovered this website today (through my weekly ALA mailer). My score is 17/20. That figures… I spent most of my undergrad years trying to figure out what to get my undergrad degree in. Just like high school, it was a somewhat pointless experience of occasional information gathering and frequent boredom, all of which was intended to prep me for graduate school. Fortunately, majoring in English requires spending many hours digging through piles of books.
October 16th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
13/20 (I’m a library technician). One additional question could be “You find the MARC record page easier to read than the standard public-view page”.
November 10th, 2006 at 6:47 am
From an extensive first hand information on cialis to its superb efficacy against male impotency, everything is available at the website http://www.buy-cialis-online-now.com
November 28th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
I had posted a comment back in May when I was first accepted to library school and decided to revisit this site on the spur of the moment tonight while taking a break from my assigned reading :)
Librarianship will be a second career for me and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
November 29th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Ooh I got 17! Just been accepted to library school so very excited! Have been a library assistant for 8 months and am keen now to enter the secret portals of librarian knowledge and begin my initiation.
Is anyone else in the UK?
March 4th, 2007 at 6:04 am
Ok, after that quiz I know I’ve made the right decision to go to Library school!
July 8th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
[...] If you are interested in becoming a librarian, you might want to take this quiz. [...]
July 9th, 2007 at 1:06 am
Wahhh…I only scored 13…but my undergrad degree is a really geeky one, Classical Languages–can I have an extra point for that? (And, yeah, I already knew the first two lines of A Tale of Two Cities.)
All the career aptitude tests say I should be a librarian; but so far, I’ve only been a library assistant. That, and I started and maintained a tiny library for a nonprofit group.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Well, I don’t fit many of the stereotypes as posited in the Quiz. I dislike acronyms and classification schemes. I can’t organize my own record collection. Some are spot on, however: the disenfranchised intellectual, so I would like to believe; the useless undergraduate and graduate degree including a useless MLS, “cough” ALA accredited. (Hey Kids, don’t waste your time in Library School. Go study information systems or computer science or engineering or a hard science and become a librarian anyway.) I prefer Kerouac and Vonnegut to Dickens. I read a lot, but almost no fiction. Fiction is over. Mostly, I read on business strategy, and about information, technology, and culture. I collect guitars not books. I have them organized by wood type.
I tried to get away from being a librarian, I went out and got an MBA (not useless) and I tried to go corporate, but corporate never accepted me, must be an attitudinal thing. And then with the beginning of this new millennium, I looked around and things started to get ugly in America. Having some desire to lead us back in the right (lower-case “r”) direction, the librarian in me has resurfaced. We are the carriers of the culture. That’s how I view it.
Robert Forman
New Mexico State Library
My blog: http://webjunctionworks.org/nm/blog/
July 17th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I just found this reading ALDirect. I got 18–have no idea what a Ubuntu box, but used to have obento all the time in Japan; owned 2 cats that made it to 19 yrs each named Nefertiti and Sappho. Nefer used to read Virginia Woolf–what I wrote my diss on. Have 4 graduate degrees, but proving not to be too useless. I am not obsessive about the cataloging but can find you anything you want–and more because I often think outside boxes. Degrees in Comedy, cinema, popular culture–you got it–all over the place. I taught in college but got caught in the ugly politics; wish I’d gone to library school earlier in my career. And I’m getting at least one new cat soon from my sister who has seven(I’ve tried to encourage her to go librarian but she’s not buying it yet–and her degrees are more useless than mine). Jacques was a Katrina rescue and needs some loving since two of the others beat up on him. And I color code my M$Ms, AND eat them in that pattern–oh have to have the same number of each as well. Yeah a librarian’s life for me.
July 31st, 2007 at 9:34 am
Oh frabjous joy! I am not alone! I scored 18 of 20 - no useless degrees, just useful ones!
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Oh, dang! I scored 19 out of 20 (no PhD). I do have a BA & MA and have been teaching English at the community college level for the last 20 years. I want to change careers! Me, a librarian? I hadn’t thought about it that much, but I do like looking for answers and teaching the students how to use databases.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:17 am
I am a freakin library aid in school! It’s so boring! They brag on me and say I do such a great job. Belive me it ain’t easy from cards getting lost, kids not putting the book where they got, so many books being out of order, cards getting lost, and having to put nonfiction books up! ~omg~ It’s what i get for being smart~ p.s They asked me to be a libary aid I did not sign up!!! WOW!! I know!Yeah best bet don’t be a libraian unless you really like books. I am in there everyday and aint readbut like three flippin books. Well thanx for reading this boring commment!
December 5th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
15 and in MLIS school.
Do you get more points if you own more than one cat?
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
15/20… Not yet old enough to have a degree of any sort, and no idea what Ubuntu boxes are. But still, my word I wish there was library school in England (is there?)
January 11th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Yes, I sorted M&Ms by color as a child. Do I get points for continuing to do so into adulthood? I got 16 points and would have scored 17 if I thought of English as a useless undergraduate degree as some poor fools do. And I should get extra points for multiple cats.
As a point of pride, I would add that I have never dressed in separates that are kind of all the same color (like, say, purples that don’t match). Unless the mismatch was meant to be chic.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Scored 11. I work at a rural libray and have something called a Community Librarian Certificate - no useless degrees here! As for sorting Smarties - two of my now adult children are obsessive in that way. My daughter spent a ridiculous amount of time on her holiday a few years ago organising 200 songs into a play list for her MP3 player. But, go figure, they are both chefs.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Sorry to post twice - missed Hannah’s question. There are several library schools in England - Manchester, Newcastle and others. You could be really exotic and go to Edinburgh.