HOME |
RSS | 
The Tumblr blog Library Hey Girl is some anonymous librarian’s fantasy involving actor Ryan Gosling and what are probably the best possible pick-up lines that you could use on a librarian. Flirting across the reference desk happens a lot. Well, to female librarians, at least.
Link -via The Breda Fallacy
Looking at some of the most beautiful libraries in the world, like the Wiblingen Monastery Library in Ulm, Germany seen above, is truly fascinating. But if you’re like me, it might also make you feel depressed about the sad state of your town’s library.
The industrialist Andrew Carnegie used his vast fortune to build 2,509 libraries around the world. The people of Little Free Library would like to continue that philanthropic tradition and make it accessible for people without Carnegie’s wealth. So they sell birdhouse-sized libraries that you can fill with books that people in your neighborhood can read.
Link -via Super Punch
The New York Public Library system is declaring fine immunity to over 140,000 kids who owe more than $15 in fines as long as the kids agree to participate in their summer reading program. The amnesty, known as “Read Down Your Fines,” asks the kids to log in their reading time on the library’s website. For every 15 minutes they read, the library wipes out $1 of fines.
“Kids might be afraid or ashamed because they are delinquent with the library,” said NYPL official Jack Martin. “The idea of this program is to bring them back in.
Personally, I could have worked off over $100 worth of fines over one summer when I was a kiddo, but I know most youngsters aren’t as eager as I was.
Link Via Consumerist Image Via Wonderfully Complex [Flickr]
Comments Off
The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is the public library of Derby Line, Vermont and Stanstead, Quebec. It sits right on the US-Canadian border. In fact, a black line across the floor marks the division:
You enter the lovely turn-of-the-century building in Vermont, but you check out the books — your choice of English or French — in Quebec. And, the librarian who assists you may be either a citizen of the United States or Canada, or both and, probably bilingual.[...]
The building and its facilities are governed by a seven-member board of trustees — four Americans and three Canadians — who serve without pay.
Link and Official Website -via Mark Steyn | Photo by Flickr user Kables used under Creative Commons license
In 1971, Marguerite Hart, a children’s librarian in Troy, Michigan, wrote to many celebrities and political leaders and asked them to send back inspirational messages to the children of her town. 97 wrote back, among them Vincent Price, E.B. White, Pearl Bailey, Douglas Fairbanks, Isaac Asimov, and Pearl Buck. You can read them all at the library’s website.
Link via Swiss Miss
The Conjuring Arts Resource Center on Manhattan has a 12,000-volume library of books about performance magic, including some rare items dating back to the Fifteenth Century:
The library also maintains an extensive collection of manuscripts of magic methods, some dating back to the 15th century. Included in this collection is a rare, unpublished manuscript by Marion Spielmann, the only known student of the great card master Charlier. Conjuring Arts also has an interesting collection of letters including correspondence between Hugard, Braue and Fleming, as well as a great selection of Ed Marlo letters.
For those interested in the recorded dialogues of the magic community, the library has a magic periodical collection, some published as far back as the 18th century. Complete collections of The Sphinx, Genii, MUM and other major and minor periodicals are also available.
Bill Kalush invites you to visit — if you can find it. Link ~via The Mary Sue
Judy Berman of Flavorwire rounded up photographs of luxurious libraries in the homes of celebrities, such as Diane Keaton’s, which is pictured above. Karl Lagerfeld’s is astoundingly packed from floor to ceiling (and then some) with books.
Link | Photo: Calfinder
Real librarians sometimes silently cringe at the shockingly-poor reference interviews conducted by librarians on television and in the movies. But Andy Priestner, head business librarian at Cambridge University, isn’t going to hide under the reference desk. He’s come out swinging against Jocasta Nu, the librarian over the Jedi Archives depicted in the Star Wars franchise. As the above video illustrates, Nu really doesn’t know how to discern and meet customer needs. Priestner writes at length about Nu’s dubious use of space and access policies and concludes:
Those shelves and shelves of e-books and those access restrictions still bother me though, but wait… what’s this, I’ve just found out that librarian Jocasta was eventually killed by the young Darth Vader himself for not providing the information he wanted, clearly a very dissatsified library user, and on the evidence of the approach largely taken, who can blame him?
I’d like to add that the lack of clearly-posted Internet usage and unattended child policies in the Jedi Archives is just asking for trouble.
Avi Steinberg, a former prison librarian, has written a memoir about his experience. In it, he recounted the books that were the most popular among prisoners, and why:
The prisoners’ book choices are suggestive: Anne Frank was effectively coping with incarceration in her Amsterdam attic, and Plath is an obvious choice for those less than contented with their lot. Participants in Steinberg’s women’s writing group insisted on checking out an author’s photo before they would read the book, with interesting reactions. Flannery O’Connor’s portrait got a positive verdict – “She looks kind of busted up, y’know? She ain’t too pretty. I trust her” – but the judgment on Gabriel García Márquez was blunt: “That man is a liar”.
Crime fiction was also very popular.
Link via Marginal Revolution | Author’s Website | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user jvoss used under Creative Commons license
British Telecom has been selling off public phone booths in the UK. Some have been converted to public toilets, showers, or art installations. The village of Westbury-sub-Mendip turned one into a 24-hour public library:
Users simply stock it with a book they have read, swapping it for one they have not.
“It’s really taken off. The books are constantly changing,” said parish councillor Bob Dolby.
He added: “It is completely full at the moment with books. Anyone is free to come and take a book and leave one that you have already read.
Link via DudeCraft | Photo: BBC
Perfumer Christopher Brosius has produced a perfume that’s supposed to make you smell like a library. It’s called “In the Library.”
This library reference desk at the University of Delft (Netherlands) is made of recycled books. There are three more pictures at the link.
Link via The Presurfer | Photo: Recyclart
This is a photograph of what is alleged to be the first American bookmobile. It was built in 1905 by the public library of Washington County, Maryland. Mary Titcomb, the librarian responsible for its creation, described its importance:
Would not a Library Wagon, the outward and visible signs of the service for which the Library stood, do much more in cementing friendship? Would the upkeep of the wagon after the first cost be much more than the present method? Is not Washington County with its good roads especially well adapted for testing an experiment of this kind, for the geography of the County is such that it could be comfortably covered by well planned routes? These and other aspects of the plan were laid before the Board of Trustees – who approved of the idea, and forthwith the librarian began interviewing wagon makers and trying to elucidate her ideas with pen and pencil. The first wagon, when finished with shelves on the outside and a place for storage of cases in the center resembled somewhat a cross between a grocer’s delivery wagon and the tin peddlers cart of by gone New England days. Filled with an attractive collection of books and drawn by two horses, with Mr. Thomas the janitor both holding the reins and dispensing the books, it started on its travels in April 1905.
No better method has ever been devised for reaching the dweller in the country. The book goes to the man, not waiting for the man to come to the book. Psychologically too the wagon is the thing. As well try to resist the pack of a peddler from the Orient as the shelf full of books when the doors of the wagon are opened by Miss Chrissinger at one’s gateway.
The original wagon was hit and destroyed by a train in 1910, and replaced with a motorized version two years later.
Link via Jessamyn West | Photo: Washington County Free Library
First, men covered with sheets, one by one, entered the reading room at the New York Public Library and engaged in normal library patron activities. People noticed, and the dramatic tension began to build. Then our four heroes appeared to deliver the library from this paranormal menace.
For our latest mission, we brought the movie Ghostbusters to life in the reading room of the main branch of the New York Public Library. The 1984 movie begins with a scene in the very same room, so we figured it was time for the Ghostbusters to make an encore appearance.
via CrunchGear
One of the duties of the Library of Congress (US) is to archive published works. In order to carry out this task in the Web 2.0 world, the agency will begin archiving every tweet ever publicly published on Twitter:
Twitter is donating its archives of tweets to the Library of Congress, going back to the first one posted by co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006. It wasn’t a profound moment, and Dorsey didn’t come close to Twitter’s 140-character limit for messages. He simply posted “Jack,” according to the Library of Congress’ archives.
Twitter and the Library of Congress announced their partnership Wednesday.
The Library of Congress wants to store tweets to give researchers a better way to revisit discussions of significant events, including the tweets that occurred after President Obama’s election in 2008, during the protests in Iran last year and the earthquakes in Haiti and elsewhere this year.
Link via DVICE | Image: Twitter
University libraries are sometimes the beneficiary of someone’s collect works, or collected obsessions. After all, when a relative doesn’t have use for 400-year-old glass eyeballs, wouldn’t the local college take them? Mental_floss takes a look at eleven such strange “special collections” you can read or see at our institutions of higher learning.
Yearning to learn more about your kidneys? Head to the University of North Carolina’s Carl W. Gottschalk Collection. The 12,400-item collection houses legendary medical professor Gottschalk’s passion: historical items related to the study of kidneys. Gottschalk’s medical research focused on the kidneys, and throughout his life he managed to collect texts, engravings, woodcuts, and other relics on the subject that dated back to the 16th century.
Shown is Dr. Gottschalk’s kidney-shaped desk. Other collections focus on bloodletting, witchcraft, puppets, and more. Link
Way back in the day when I was in library school in Ohio, there was a slowly dying tradition in rural libraries of hosting “library cats.” These were cats that lived full-time in libraries, most public. Well, Gary Roma of Iron Frog Productions has created a worldwide historical archive of library cats and organized them around an interactive map, giving the names, locations, and dates of residents for individual cats. It’s a work in progress, so if you know of a cat that isn’t mentioned, be sure to let him know.
Image via flickr user TVLshac
Many university and public libraries house special collections, often donated by wealthy patrons or accumulated over decades. This list takes a look at 15 of the most unique special collections from around the world, with such entries as Michigan State’s massive comic art collection.
Michigan State has one of the biggest comic art collections in the world, with more than 150,000 comic books published in the US since 1935 indexed. They don’t stop with comic books however, they also have an exhaustive comic strip collection, including every known book collection of comic strips, as well as over 500,000 hand clipped daily strips filed away in hand made scrapbooks.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by redsfaithful.
Unshelved is a webcomic by Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes about the staff of a public library. It’s a focal point of librarian subculture as it’s written from an insider point of view.
Every year for the past three years, Unshelved has hosted a contest called “Pimp My Bookcart”, wherein library staffers trick out their bookcarts in outrageous ways, such as this circus-themed cart above. Click on the link to see this past year’s winners.
