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Created and Maintained by
A.B. Credaro
July 6, 2002
Updated July 10, 2002




LIBRARY POLITICS

FEUDALISM: You have two library support staff and 30,000 books. Your lord takes some of the clerical time, and occasionally helps himself to some of the books. In return, your lord provides protection from invasion, and a sack of grain each winter.


PURE SOCIALISM: You have two library support staff and 30,000 books. Central Library Administration takes everything, and puts them in a space with everyone else's staff and resources. You have to take responsibility for everything. Central Administration gives you as much help as you need.


BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. Decentralised Administration takes everything, and puts them in a space with everyone's staff and resources. They are administered by ex-budget analysts. You have to take care of the paperwork the Decentralised Administration took from the budget analysts. You are given as much clerical assistance as the regulations say you should need.


FASCISM: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. The Library Board takes the lot, hires you to supervise them, and sells you clerical time and charges you for book access.


PURE COMMUNISM: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. Your library users help you supervise them, and you all share the clerical time and book access.


RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. The Library Board reallocates all the clerical time, and then determines how you will administer the library without them.


DICTATORSHIP: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. The library administrator takes everything and shoots you.


SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. The library administrator fines you for having scrap paper on your desk.


PURE DEMOCRACY: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. Your library users decide who how clerical time will be used, and determines library policy.


REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. Your library users pick someone to tell you how clerical time will be used, and to determine library policy.


AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The library administrator promises to give you additional support staff and 30,000 more books if you vote for him as head of the Library Board. After the election, he is impeached for speculating in publishing futures. The press dubs the affair "Librarygate".


AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRACY: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. Your library administrator has an affair with one of the staff. The second assistant leaves and writes a book about it. The media then has saturation coverage of the past life of the second library assistant. No-one cares. The library continues to function as before.


BUREAUCRACY: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. At first the library administrator regulates what you can do in the library. After that, he closes the library and redistributes the books to other libraries. Then he requires you to fill out forms accounting for the drop in circulation.


ANARCHY: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. Either you allow the library users to help themselves to the books, or they will try to kill you and take the books anyway.


CAPITALISM: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. You open a bookshop and start selling the most popular of the library's books, and use the profits to hire another library assistant through your brother-in-law's employment agency.


TOTALITARIANISM: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. The library administrator takes everything, and denies they ever existed.


SURREALISM: You have 2 library support staff and 30,000 books. The library administrator requires you to take harmonica lessons.



Parts of the above were adapted from
Different Types of Government: Humor Archives
http://www.thehumorarchives.com/humor/0000239.html




To correctly cite this page:
Credaro,A.B.(2002). Library Politics. Warrior Librarian Weekly [online]
https://warriorlibrarian.com/LOL/dirt.html [Accessed:insert date]