Relentless

A few months ago, the director of our local library put up an apparently experimental blog. (I say apparently experimental because he hasn’t kept up posting, the dilettante . . .) But one of the phrases he used has stuck with me. In one post he writes:

Both YouTube and Podcasting can be of great value for public libraries. That is especially true when one is trying to promote or extend access to Library programs, give tours to the public of new facilities and make public announcements. It could represent the future of PR for Public Libraries.

Yet, there is one value I have recently discovered with YouTube Community for those of us who are relentless reference librarians -- fancy ourselves "Library Detectives". You can sometimes find bits of information that otherwise would not be accessible.

jimsblog -- YouTube and Podcasting

It’s good to be relentless.


And it’s worth noting in passing that ‘relentless’ pops up in or near library rhetoric now and then. For instance:

      “Thoughtful. Deliberate. Contemplative. Respectful.
      These are good words to describe a librarian.
      Agressive. Relentless. Fierce. Fearless.
      These are good words to describe a hockey player.”

      - Jonathan Bombulie
      Scranton (Pa.) Times Tribune
      May 22, 2001
      [quoted here]

And a library journal once complimented a woman on her ‘nicely relentless’ attitude toward her work.


I’m not sure what’s up with that. I’m guessing it’s kind of an auxesis thing but if I said that only a relentless word buff would know what I was saying.


*


I’ve always been a relentless writer.

In fact, I used to make a point of asking people who seem friendly if they’ve ever read “Sombrero Fallout,” by Richard Brautigan, to kind of prepare them for knowing me. But recently I’ve given up on that. Even when people have read that book carefully it’s never really occurred to them that such people might exist in real life. Nothing prepares people for knowing me.


*


At the hospital, the doctors have found some complications with my Mom. She remains in great spirits, though. My Mom’s parents came from that area of Europe called Serbo-Croatia, where everybody has been fighting everybody for thousands of years. My Mom’s got tough genes.