Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Leadership lessons from Star Trek: the Next Generation

I'm "shelf-reading" our adult nonfiction collection, which means checking that the books are in call number order and pulling anything that is in horrible condition or is simply horrible. The librarians are doing a big project to withdraw a lot of titles so I've been passing on the worst of my finds to my friend who has the Dewey 000s-500s under her power. The Dewey 300s (Social Sciences) are particularly fertile ground for horrors. Some of today's highlights (high in humor, high in professional embarrasment for our institution):

-Make it So: Leadership Lessons from Star Trek: The Next Generation, by "Wess Roberts, Ph.D. and Bill Ross" (1995)

-Focus on the Family's Boomers, Xers, and Other Strangers: Understanding the Generational Differences that Divide Us (1999). Features a list of icons of the "Net Generation" including Brandy, Macauley Culkin (of "Home Alone" fame), and Mary Kate and Ashley Olson.

-Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age by Bill McKibben. Opening sentence: "As this book goes to press in January 2003, the world is still waiting to find out if the Raelian UFO cult has produced Earth's first cloned child or if that prize will go to one of the other teams of rogue scientists racing toward the goal."

-Aftermath: A Guide to Preparing for and Surviving Apocalypse 2012

-A whole set of woefully-outdated "Opposing Viewpoints" books (Did you know there is an "Opposing Viewpoints: Africa"? I shudder to think what that table of contents looks like.)

4 comments:

  1. I want all these books for Xmas. Please make it so.

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  2. So, your library buys books from "Focus on the Family"? As Don Martin of Mad fame would say, "Yeeeeeeeesh."

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    1. Well, 14 years ago someone apparently bought one. I checked the catalog and we seem to have stopped soon after. But this is a pretty religious community and I bet the ones we do have circulate!

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