Welcome to the first on-topic entry of this new blog, “Buns & Shushings”. (I’m going to leave the original “Hello World” entry to record the precise day I created this account/blog.)

“Buns & Shushings” will be a source of information and discussion concerning the perceptions the general public and society as a whole have about libraries, librarians, and the “Library and Information Science” field. I’ve always been interested and concerned about how non-librarians view our world, what the stereotypes are, what this means for our effectiveness (and existence), and what can be (or is being) done about it.

The title comes from a comment made on the Information Wants To Be Free blog by Dorothea Salo, in which she says, regarding an article about something library-related in Wired Magazine, that they “managed not to mess it up with lots of bun-and-shushing stuff”. (Here’s the link to the post.)  I was inspired. Thank you, Dorothea.

My goal here is to post regularly (at least weekly) on news items, research, images, concepts, etc., that pertain to the various aspects of the reputation or LIS (I will probably be using this acronym a lot.  It stands for “Library and Information Science”, and I use it to denote the field of librarianship, libraries, librarians, and maybe even archivists, and other information science specialists.)

Comments and suggestions (positive, neutral or negative) are welcomed and desired.  Hopefully we can solve the world’s (or at least the library world’s) problems with this humble blog.

Thank you…  Matthew J. Thomas, MLIS