I’ve figured it out, and it’s not as spectacular as you might think…. The difference between librarians and web programmers is that librarians keep their office lights on while web programmers prefer to type away in comparative darkness.
This insight struck me as I was doing some hunting in the stacks today and spent a few minutes in the ML section, which happens to be right next to the offices of the college’s web services group (who are either privileged or cursed to be the only non-library-related people to have offices in the library). There they sat, bathed in the luminescence of their computer monitors, working busily away.
Emerging from my stack hunting into the brightness of the reference area, I walked past the offices of my fellow reference librarians, each of whom worked under overhead florescent lights that keep at bay all those mysterious shadows in corners.
I haven’t yet worked out what this all means, but I wonder… If I turn out my lights, will I get the urge to build wonderful web applications? If I sneak down and turn on the overhead lights in the web team’s offices, would they suddenly ask me if I needed help finding something?
Iris, I’ve tried turning out the lights – and it made me feel like taking a nap (which kind of sounds like a wonderful idea right not).
Iris, I’m the Systems Librarian and I definitely enjoy living in Systems with other “cave dwellers” (I used to be in public services and hated all the light). The other librarians (in different departments) call me the vampire bat. ;)
Mmmmmm, naps. I never take those, but I often want to. Yeah, I’d really better not turn out the lights today…
Hi Geekchic, nice to “meet” you. The true test of vampire-ness is this: do you fantasize about biting and/or sucking forces of any kind from your ILS? :)