Unhealthy libraries

I recently read about an article added to my friend Priscilla’s website, LISCareer.com. (Btw, this site offers an excellent collection of useful articles to read, although the one article I contributed doesn’t count.) This particular article is entitled “In Search of an Emotionally Healthy Library” and is written by Nancy Cunningham. It hit home to me because frankly, I’m all too familiar with the characteristics of emotionally unhealthy libraries as outlined by the author. I wonder what it is about libraries that makes them a place where this kind of stuff persists? By the way, I have also worked for a library vendor and that experience thoroughly disabused me of the notion that the pervasive nonsense of academic libraries didn’t prevail in a for-profit environment. In some ways, the vendor environment was far worse. Anyway, this is a good article, very direct and thought-provoking.