The Laughing Librarian

"Barbara Tuchman" Needs Your Vote.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:05:25 PDT

Our favorite finalist in the Gale Librareo music video contest is unfortunately getting votes of Kucinichesque proportions. But voting is open through Friday! Go, and vote for "Barbara Tuchman".

We entered the contest, but didn't make the cut. Our video is about John Scalzi's Old Man's War.

Wait ... we thought Obama was supposed to be, like, cool or something ...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:18:38 PST

From his speech in Houston last night:

"We're going to have to parent better, and turn off the television set, and put the video games away ..."

Put the video games away? So. Not. Cool.

"I'll call you a cab ..."

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:19:53 PST

The cast of Spongebob Squarepants dubs scenes from Casablanca, Singin' in the Rain, and The Godfather. They mostly stick to the scripts. Mostly.

Update 2/13: Different YouTube link.

New song in BibDitties.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 07:53:12 PST

Bad: Driving a bookmobile while drunk.

Worse: Recording a country song about a bookmobile while drunk.

New from Marc Record and the Good Ol' PACs: The Bookmobile Ran Over My Dog. (mp3) Possibly the only song ever that mentions Christopher Hitchens.

Lyric sheet. More BibDitties.

The first librarian hero of 2008.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 06:06:27 PST

This guy.

The Gift of Song.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:03:22 PST

We keep hearing that homemade gifts are the best, so jingle bells, deck the halls, and all that:

BTW, The Roches were in town this past weekend. For the encore, they invited the audience up on stage, so we were among the 50 or so folks who went up and sang "Silver Bells" and "Silent Night" with them. Fun evening.

Give a book, give a book ...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 13:00:32 PST

... give a muthafuckin' book! That's what an editorial in today's Chicago Tribune says. Though not quite in those words.

In yesterday's Trib, Internet columnist Steve Johnson critiques The Daily Show's website:

But the overall feel is, in fact, a little too library-like. ... At thedailyshow.com, you're plucking books off bookshelves - and then reading only a chapter at a time.

They played baseball in Deadwood?

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:08:54 PST

Please, please, please ... A library must buy this unmailable 1898 document about foul language used by baseball players.

Whether it be the language quoted above [Oh, yes, the document does quote language!], or some other indecent and infamous invention of depravity, the League is pledged to remove it from the ball field ...

Holiday gift guide.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 08:36:23 PST

We're all done with our Christmas shopping, but maybe you're not finished with yours. If you're having trouble picking the perfect gift, take a look at these ideas ...

Pooping Santa Candy Dispenser. One of these belongs on every youth services desk. Think of the joy it'll bring to the children. The children ... Oh, the children!

Mackris v. O'Reilly Oratorio on CD. For the classical music lover who just can't hear the word "loofa" enough, lyrics from filings in the settled sexual harassment suit against Bill O'Reilly. (Excerpt from a concert performance of the work on YouTube.) BTW, we don't see any holdings for this in WorldCat ... If a library did own it, would it go in gov docs?

Giant Plush Microbes. Give someone you love the clap for Christmas.

Rex Libris Statue. Or maybe a Jesus on a Motorcycle Statue instead. Or maybe your own custom bobble-head on a motorcycle.

USB Kitty. "Meows, hisses, and sings melodies." Has infrared sensors, but no death-beam laser eyes.

Orcish Librarian Card. We're pretty sure you know someone who'd think one of these Magic: The Gathering cards in a frame would be cool.

Jolly Roger Doormat. If sharing is stealing, librarians are pirates.

Book Rack Potty Chair. Everything to prepare a kid for a lifetime of bathroom reading. For those already potty-trained, there's alway a magazine rack/tissue holder.

Librarian's Night Before Christmas. We admit, we haven't read this, and the SLJ review isn't great. But it's hard to resist the lines: "For the book-budget cutters, Old Claus had no plan,/'Cause if they could read, they just read Ayn Rand."

Avenging Unicorn Play Set. This'll teach 'em to laugh at Charlie.

Illustrated Librarian Temporary Tattoos. Also: Geek Temp Tats.

Cumming: the Fragrance. Actor and - more important to us - novelist (Tommy's Tale) Alan Cumming has a line of products for men. The collection includes body lotion ("Cumming All Over") and soap ("Cumming in a Bar").

Dorothy Parker Martini Glasses. Or maybe Great Thinkers Shot Glasses are what your poison requires. Either way, hiding a bottle in a desk drawer at work is for amateurs; folks can use the Good Book flask instead.

Book Safe. If one needs to hide something other than a hip flask.

Shelves Made of Books. To display things which can be left out in the open. (Made from books grown in the artist's own orchard!)

Book Bags. Not totes for carrying books; purses made from hardcovers.

Flying Spaghetti Monster Car Emblem. Let your friends and family be touched by His Noodly Appendage guide as they drive. Lots of other FSM merch also available.

Rubber Maggots. Four dozen in a package! They glow in the dark!

I > U Shirt. You know the self esteem/image problem that librarians have? When you give one of these shirts, you're really saying I < U. ('Cuz the recipient will be wearing it, see?)

And you could always buy stuff from our Cafe Shop, too.

Speaking of cats and LOL ...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 08:19:57 PST

John Scalzi, the writer who once taped bacon to a cat, has a great photo tour of the Creation Museum on Flickr.

If you find a fave in that set, you can make it into an entry for Scalzi's LOLCreashun Contest. (If you can get it submitted before midnight tonight, that is.)

Laugh-Out-Loud Cats @ teh library.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 07:00:22 PST

O hai. Kitteh and Pip, the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, were recently spotted in the library.

(Image by Ape Lad. Creative Commons: by-nc-sa.)

Some fun notes and comments with this comic on Flickr.

They visited the stacks at least one other time, too. kthxbai.

An important public service message.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 06:30:07 PST

At work, we've been hearing complaints about libraries treating ILL items as if they owned them. So we'd like to make this important announcement, to all libraries, everywhere:

Things that suck more than OPACs, social booklist edition.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 06:17:14 PST

Shelfari: "basically social networking rapists".

Memo to SirsiDynix ...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 06:12:39 PST

Before issuing a press release, it's probably a good idea to do some fact-checking.

“Think about an individual seeking information from a library catalog on a popular topic like, say, 401(k) retirement plans, “ explains Talin Bingham, SirsiDynix chief technology officer. “Today, that search is limited by the reality that the library’s MARC data probably does not include the term ‘401(k).’ So how does the person get to 401(k) information available in the library catalog?” asks Bingham.

'Cuz we get plenty o' useful hits in our SirsiDynix iBistro catalog when we enter 401(k) as our search term. Get results for 401k or 401 k, too.

Dear Savage Chickens,

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 06:12:13 PDT

We're offended and outraged by your recent "Librarian Hell" cartoon. You're apparently unaware of the existence of Dewey Decimal classification (under which, of course, books are not shelved in alphabetical order), and that reflects more poorly on you than on librarians. Your crude portrayal of a librarian as a chicken is especially insulting, because librarians are courageous defenders of intellectual freedom. We demand that you remove this offensive cartoon from your website and issue an apology to librarians everywhere. Thank you.

p.s. The librarians who complained to the Boston Globe about a sports column last week are dipshits.

"Library 2.0 Presentation" 2.0.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:10:49 PDT

Gotta be fair. The program blurb for his talk mentioned "2.o" five times, but much applause to Michael Stephens for his excellent and - as far as we can tell - 100% bullshit-free keynote at the Illinois Library Association conference yesterday morning. Several times during the afternoon, we heard librarians say something along the lines of: "Like he said in the opening session ..."

Creed Thoughts: "Libraries of food".

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:51:03 PDT

The latest blog post (www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts) from our favorite character on The Office:

"When I get hungry – and I mean hungry – there are only five words that can satisfy me: All-You-Can-Eat Buffet. They’re like libraries of food, but instead of late fees, they’ve got soft-serve." ...

Coupla things noticed on BoingBoing ...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:36:49 PDT

1. Not a banned book, but some of the changes made between the 1963 and 1991 editions of Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever are pretty entertaining.

Uploaded to Flickr by kokogiak.

2. Author E.E. Knight has written a handy list of no-no's for sci-fi/fantasy/horror fiction writers, including:

So that's why you wrote this: I've read stories where the most precise language and evocative imagery is saved for the all-important pudenda-shaving scene as the heroine gets ready to go to the library. I'm not knocking your kink, I'm just wondering why so much word-weight is put into a personal hygiene choice in a story about tracking down Shoggoths.

And, hey, he's married to a librarian. A belly-dancing librarian!

Yeah, what Jessamyn said ...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:41:23 PDT

From librarian.net: "Banning books is bad. Challenging books is an exercise in free speech and a totally appropriate way of giving community feedback on library selection policies. Lumping challenged and banned books together confuses two different issues, to my mind."

Not to mention that a book is far more likely to be absent from a library's collection due to budget restraints or to biases in selection procedures or in librarians' minds than to removal following a challenge.

And "buried treasure"? We hadn't realized that Captain Underpants books were so difficult to find.

At the last public library where we worked, we made Banned Books Week into more of a First Amendment observance. Instead of ALA's overpriced crappy posters, we put up these posters from the Illinois First Amendment Center.

Happy Free Advertising for Publishers and Booksellers Week!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:09:50 PDT

Classic piece from The Onion: Nation's Teens Disappointed by Banned Books.

BTW, BBW is also the stock symbol for Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Eat fudge, banana swirl.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 07:28:33 PDT

One day when I was surfin' on the Internets
I saw a picture there that caused some bloggers stress
Mud Flap Girl!
Are you good P.R.?
Mud Flap Girl!
Will you become a star?
Like the doll of Nancy Pearl
Oh, Wyoming Mud Flap Girl ...

(Apologies to the Dead Milkmen.)

P.S. Thank you, I, Asshole, for making us spit Coke on our laptop!

Update: Just had a thought ... Shouldn't they be marketing audiobooks to truckers?

Can't fool Sexytime Sofiya!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:22:36 PDT

At around the 2:15 mark (update: around 2:53 on the reverse timer), Sofiya starts talking about her local library's fiendish ways.

"I know what you're doing, Santa Monica Library. I've got tabs on you."

Oh, there's a good Vonnegut reference later in the vlog.

Worse than a librarian who doesn't play video games ...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 05:40:23 PDT

The head of the U.S. Copyright Office describes herself as a Luddite and does not have a computer at home. Which could help explain why she thinks the DCMA is just fine and dandy.

In the Year 2000 ...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:14:28 PDT

Check out these French trading cards from 1910, showing the artist's interpretation of life en l'An 2000. We're probably not the only librarian who takes a special liking to this one.

Library 2.0 and library science.

noreply@blogger.com (Brian Smith brian@librarism.com) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:19:32 PDT

Coupla weeks ago, in response to someone else's old blog post which was printed up in American Libraries, Annoyed Librarian wrote "A Librarian's Anti-2.0 Manifesto".

And last week, AL (Annoyed Librarian, not American Libraries) posted one, two, three follow-ups about "twopointopia".

We had a revelation of sorts: Annoyed Librarian's twopointopian cultists would be well represented by the pink and blue unicorns harassing Charlie (if someone else can see the cartoon as a warning against liberalism, then we get to read it as a Library 2.0 parable) - "You silly sleepyhead, wake up!" "You have to come with us to Candy Mountain!" "Shun the non-believer! Shu-u-u-u-u-u-nuh!" "But you have to enter the Candy Mountain magic cave, Charlie!"

We're familiar with the fanaticism that Annoyed Librarian describes (we once heard a 2.0 evangelist say to an audience, "You have to do this!"), but we're not sure we like the term "twopointopian". We think "twodotnaughty" is better. We haven't paid much attention to Library 2.0 talk in the last year and a half, though, since shortly after we wrote our "Library 2.0 is evil" post. Maybe things have changed, but back then, the real problem with at least some twodotnaughties is they sometimes spewed bullshit.

We don't mean bullshit in the sense of "ideas we don't agree with". We mean bullshit in the sense of bullshit. Example: We heard two different speakers at two different events mislead (one of them outright lying to) their audiences about the number of user comments that Ann Arbor District Library was getting on its website. That's bullshit, deceptive bullshit. We sincerely hope that twodotnaughties aren't still talking about opening up a blog for comments as a way to build community. At least not without also mentioning that the average number of comments made on a public library blog item is, when rounded to the nearest whole number, zero. This is even true of Ann Arbor if you don't count the articles about video games.

At least, that's our hypothesis, based on a quick glance at things. Great project for a library school student: Examine library blogs with dedicated rigor - to hell with anecdotal evidence - and test our hypothesis. How much "community" is being built? Put a little actual science into library science. The data's just sitting there like a big, dead toad of data, waiting to be resuscitated through the amphibian CPR of reasoned analysis.

Here's another avenue for research: Look at all the libraries you can find on MySpace and answer these questions: How many of their friends are libraries, librarians, or authors? How many are actually the people the libraries supposedly went onto MySpace to serve? When most of a library's MySpace friends are librarians, isn't that just the saddest thing in the world? Sad enough to make a bunny cry? Maybe the Library MySpace Study students could undertake this project.

A third: Exactly what are the minimum technical requirements for Second Life to be any fun? Are those specs different for a librarian than for a patron? How many non-librarians visit the Information Archipelago, are any of them pissed about the intrusion of real-world shit into SL, and can any of them recommend a source for those virtual penises that Annoyed Librarian's anonymous commenter is talking about? And where's the best place on the Info Archipelago for interspecies avatar sex?

Maybe someone's been dutifully reporting on all this, but we haven't seen it. Hopefully, this kind of research will produce sufficient results to enable David King to draw up a model of Library 2.0 that makes sense to us. Or maybe an MLS student can work one up.