Traits of Catalogers...

-compiled from a recent listserv (UNscientific survey)

(Love of) team sports
Card games
Forest ranger/lumber jack
Create order out of chaos
Diagram sentences
Puzzle solver (all kinds) (in ink)
Large personal library
Service oriented
Dog lover
Orderly desk
Interest in preservation
Law enforcement officer
Word games
Sort M&M’s by color (or Skittles)
Sort out mixed nuts
Create own mazes or puzzles
Cat lover
Eat food in certain order
Messy desks
Separate food, so it doesn’t touch
Rule-based games (not strategy)
Paper arts
Needle work (e.g. counted cross stitch)
Beading? – No, just bead sorting!
Read encyclopedia, dictionaries and atlases for fun
List maker
Familiar with a foreign language
Learning about something new every day
Alter sewing patterns
Buy less fabric then required for above patterns
Creative
Visual
Oh yeah, and a love for books


PS: someone once said - When Hinkley tried to assassinate President Reagan, a news broadcaster interviewed a psychiatrist who described Hinkley as having a mental disorder that was "common to" librarians and forest rangers. Honest.

Original source unknown: They can test for that now (the above mentioned disorder). During a tour of a local mental hospital that acted as a library, a visitor asked what the criteria were which defined whether an applicant should be institutionalized and which duties they should be assigned.

"Well", said the tour-guide, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a fork, a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to each applicant and ask that they empty the bathtub."

"Oh, I understand," said the visitor. "A normal person would ignore the fork and use the bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup."

"No," said the tour-guide, "a normal person would pull the plug and get out of here."

"As for qualified applicants, patrons demand everything in a bucket, reference librarians want to serve in a cup, catalogers would analyze every spoonful, and administrators are puzzled as to why so much falls through the tines."

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I am off again next week as I will be attending the ACL annual conference, this year in Grand Rapids, MI then spending the weekend at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN (a genealogist's dream).