As a librarian, it's no surprise that one of my most anticipated books to read of 2010 is This Books is Overdue by Marilyn Johnson. Of course, librarians were keen on a book that took on the topic of our profession and sing our praises and show the profession in a positive light.
Improving the image of librarians have long been a PR challenge for the profession, after all, positive media image is a great way to show the world the value you can bring. This book is likely the first in recent years to try to portrait librarians much like we are. Multi-dimensional people who are many are not the stereotypical Hollywood portrayal as a spinster cat lover. Some of us have dogs even if we wear glasses and cardigans. 
But a whole book devoted to librarians, seriously, who wouldn't want to see how the author tackles the subject.
My rating: 3.5 stars out of 5. Recommended reading.
Why?
I did really enjoy the book and believe that it has a place in libraries and hopefully in libraries of career counselors in schools. I also hope that it gets a nice placement in bookstores and non libraries so that non library users can get exposed to the value we bring to the public.
I loved many of the profiles of librarians and the work that they do. In particular, I really enjoyed reading about the Connecticut Four and the Patriot Act, a much discussed lawsuit that I didn't know much about until I read Chapter 5. Chapter 10 focused on librarians in NY, and the NYPL, a system that I wish I had more chance to use when I was actually living in NY. But alas, I did not and regret it now.
This book was easy to read and entertaining, however, it suffers a few problems for me. While on the one hand, it highlights many bloggers and new social media savvy librarians, anyone who is a new librarian will likely find it old news. After all, we all read the blogs she's mentioned and more. We are blogging librarians and don't think of it as news-worthy. But I can see how this may be an eye-opening view for those who perceived this as a boring, old fuddy duddy profession.
Secondly, the book is dated. I know it takes a long time for authors to write and books to be edited and prepared for publication... however, given the amount of real estate given to the topic of second life librarians and Second Life in general, sadly, it is too 2008 when you are reading it in 2010. (Not saying that Second Life doesn't currently have it's devotees, but it's not nearly as popular as it was back in 2007-2008).
Part of the problem is the style of the book reads like a news magazine for tv. I have nothing against this style, I for one, found that it was very readable and entertaining because of this presentation. However, there's a reason why news magazine/tv shows are presented in the manner and medium that they are, that is... weekly, as close to the events happening as possible. Due to the time to publication, the news worthy aspects of the segments are a little lost. It probably would have helped if the book was written more as history/snapshot in time format with more explicit dates. At least then, my complains about currency of material would be a nonstarter.
While there is nothing wrong with the snapshot in time this book represents, the author's tone and diction leads one to believe all is au courant when it is not. On the one hand, for web 2.0 folks, some of these hip librarians come off as out of date. As well, the US economy, being what it is (and book is US centric) the challenges presented in the book pale in comparison to the library crisis in the US today.
And to be expected, I would have liked to see more ... I do believe that many librarians have interesting jobs and many of their work and lives should be profiled.
This book mainly covered the topic of public librarians and thankfully also included archivist and digital preservation librarians, but there are many other interesting librarian roles that should be introduced to the world, I hope Ms. Johnson, and other writers will continue to write about librarians as a profession for the joe public reader.