Title Varies Slightly

and that may make my an anachronism. Or not.

It’s Wednesday, so that means an email from ALA Online with lots of fun (yet conceivably work-related) links, like this one from Web Worker Daily on “Six More Reasons to Use a Paper To-Do List.”

While I realize that pencil and paper have real limitations, and are not the ideal for people with limited vision or poor hand use, they are still my favorites. Someday I’m going to splurge on a fancy gizmo like this. I love desk accessories and newly sharpened pencils and fresh notebooks. They give me a first-day-of-school feeling of newness and infinite possibility.

Truth: You know how some kids bug their parents for candy when they go to the store? I won’t say I never did that, but I preferred to beg for little notebooks and sharp pencils and pink erasers. Now that I am an adult, I have put away childish things, and much prefer pastel legal pads, sharp pencils and white vinyl erasers.

Although I’ll admit I carry it a little far, I think love of paper is a hidden, guilty passion in our time. Sure, my colleagues, our students, even I prefer electronic journals that I can access from my desk, but once I find the article, do I read it online? Not if it’s something I want to really assimilate, react to, or cite; I print it out on paper, and mark it up with pencil or pen. Now you might argue that’s because I’m an old broad of 45, but that’s what our undergraduate students, do as well.

Campus events? Advertised on paper flyers. Student newspapers? We have half a dozen. Yes, they all have Web sites, but they still create paper copies. I just had a student entreat me to give her two pieces of blank paper.

Paper. Our secret love.