MARILYN JOHNSON

Are librarians still necessary in the age of Google? I wrote This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All after chasing dozens of tech-savvy librarians who are wrestling the accumulated history and culture of the world in a variety of mutating formats while serving needy, techno-stressed patrons -- us. These librarians are leaning into the digital age while they hold firmly to old-fashioned librarian values like privacy, accuracy, open access, and free speech. Irrelevant? Hardly. In fact, we've never needed them more.

"Marilyn Johnson's marvelous book about the vital importance of librarians in the cyber-age is the very opposite of a "Shhhhh!" It's a very loud "Hooray!" ever so timely and altogether deserved. Move over, Google-- make way for the indispensable and all-knowing lady behind the desk."
-- Christopher Buckley, author of Losing Mum and Pup.

"To those who have imagined a dalliance with a librarian -- and there are millions of us -- Marilyn Johnson's new book, chocked as it is full of strange, compelling stories, offers insight into the wildness behind the orderly facade of the humans who are at the controls of our information."
--Pete Dexter, author of Spooner and Paris Trout.

"Johnson has made her way to the secret underbelly of librarianship, and the result is both amazing and delightful. Savvy, brave, hip, brilliant, these are not your childhood librarians. And who better to tell their stories than the sly, wise Marilyn Johnson."
--Mary Roach, author of Bonk and Spook.

"Johnson does for the library profession what Malcolm Gladwell did for the theory of memetics in The Tipping Point."
--Nora Rawlinson, EarlyWord.com

"...a topical, witty study of the vital ways modern librarians uphold their traditional roles as educators, archivists, and curators of a community legacy. Illuminating the state of the modern librarian with humor and authority... Johnson’s wry report is a must-read for anyone who’s used a library in the past quarter century."
--Publishers Weekly starred review

"This is a book for readers who know that words can be wild and dangerous, that uncensored access to information is a right and a privilege, and that the attempt to 'catalog the world in all its complexity' is heroic beyond compare."
--O Magazine