Redefining ‘meaningless’
A small chunk of yesterday was spent examining the pronunciation of “Eoin” (as in Eoin Colfer, the critically and commercially successful children’s author). An informal survey of a teacher librarian listserv found multiple votes for “Owen” and “Ian”, plus one each for “Wayne” and “Yoan”(to rhyme with Joan). I guess as the group was largely Australian, it was lucky that no-one suggested “Bruce”, which would have really skewed the results.
But possibly the strangest part of the exercise was the accusation that the whole thing was a waste of time. My reply to this was, in part:
“… have you never heard it said that “the journey is the reward”? Actually, since embarking on this quest ‘of no real importance’, I’ve dipped my toes into linguistic profiling, examined the latest ‘trends’ in children’s author websites (Colfer’s is a real beauty!), found out about the upcoming Artemis Fowl movie, and re-established contact with many colleagues where contact had been lost.I figure this wasn’t a bad effort; the achievement of so many non-scheduled outcomes for a relatively small investment of my time and energy. Incidentally, I also emailed on of Colfer’s publishers and asked how Mr Colfer himself prefers his name to be pronounced. So hopefully I will have a definitive answer in due course …”
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:47 am
One of my favourite aspects of being a librarian is going off on quests like this with my colleagues. So many little things which suddenly become all-important to discover. I think this is what makes reference work my favourite aspect, the obscure questions people ask you and the things you find out along the way. I think of the defining characteristic of a good reference librarian as being an endless, undirected curiosity about all things. And it’s amazing how much little tidbits you pick up during these searches can be useful for later questions, even if just showing where to look for things.