Stack 'o librarians

We were messing around with the camera yesterday, trying to get an updated picture of the library staff for our photo gallery. Sara S., who was taking our picture, had the brilliant idea of capitalizing on our various heights:



Stroke of genius, don't you think? Truth be known, Corinne was standing on her toes and I was crouching just a tad.

This is a sad day for us because it's Robin's last. He's off to student teach next semester (as if he hasn't already done enough teaching here!). This blog will also be taking a two-week break. At least part of that time, I'll be fiddling at KlezKamp. Have a great break, everyone!

Glad to be living today -

- and not a hundred, or two hundred, or more hundred years ago. That's because medicine has come a long, long way. Some diseases have pretty much disappeared from the planet. The stories of their eradication remain powerful and interesting, though, because so much cultural history is involved. We've got a nice little collection of books that do a great job of spinning these tales. Just a few I grabbed off the shelf:

In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made, by Norman F. Cantor (614.5732 C168i)
The Fever Trail: In Search of the Cure for Malaria, by Mark Honigsbaum (616.9362009 H757f2002)
Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox, by Jonathan B. Tucker (616.912009 T795s)

Check out the cover illustrations on some of these titles. Here's the one from Scourge:



And then there's this lovely depiction of the plague:

OK, as long as I'm on this kick...

What if Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, Hitler, and Hirohito had to quit fighting with each other because alien lizards landed on earth?

Find out in Harry Turtledove's WorldWar series (PB TUR):
Worldwar: In the Balance
Worldwar: Titling the Balance
Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance
Worldwar: Striking the Balance

Classic Sci-Fi

Philip Roth has a new book out called The Plot Against America, in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 election. Lindbergh, known in real life for his isolationism, publicly blames the Jews for selfishly pushing America toward "a pointless war with Nazi Germany" and negotiates an "understanding" with Adolf Hitler. The buzz about this book got me thinking about a science fiction and alternative history classic, The Man in the High Castle (PB DIC) by Philip K. Dick. Written in 1962, Vintage Books re-released it with a sparkly new cover in 1992:



In Dick's spin on World War II, the Axis powers have won the war and the United States is now occupied jointly by Nazi German and Japan. Slavery is legal again. The Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. And everyone on the west coast relies on the I Ching for making decisions. This book is perfect in every detail. Too perfect.

Where old books go out to pasture

Boy, you'd think the Daily Illini folks were reading this blog. On today's front page, there's a lovely story all about the Oak Street high-density storage facility. And an even lovelier picture.



Yes, those are shelves stretching out of sight above John's and Daleann's heads. For 40-feet. You need a forklift to shelve books up that high. As the article notes, the books are stored in boxes according to size, not call number. Come early summer, the Uni High Library staff (that's Runelle, Corinne, and me) will pitch in 164 hours of manual labor helping get 800,000 books into those boxes.

Weeding, deaccessioning, deselection

Yes, weeding is the technical term we librarians use to describe the periodic removal of obsolete, embarrassing, and otherwise inappropriate books from our collections. My friend Maurice reminded me of this delightful process in his comment on my posting about the Gallery of Regrettable Food. In a small library like ours, and to properly serve our clientele, we need to make sure our collection is up-to-date and relevant. But we don't toss books willy-nilly. Like most school libraries, we've got a policy and a procedure. A book doesn't go unless it meets (or fails to meet) several criteria.

The very idea of weeding is not without its detractors. The most famous of them is novelist William Nicholson, who has spent a considerable chunk of his own change buying up old books that would otherwise be destined for the trash heap. I'm happy to say that we've got a great fallback position here by being part of a venerable research library. We get to ship our weeded books (at least those that are not already held by the University Library) to the Main Stacks or to the new Oak Street high-density, climate-controlled storage facility. Ironically, our weeded books will be better taken care of than those that remain on our decrepit shelves. Hmmmm....

Lard crisis. Really.

I know this isn't really a book-related topic, but I couldn't resist. I read in this week's issue of Newsweek that there's a lard shortage in Great Britain. This is apparently due to the fact that when Central and East European nations joined the European Union in May, their production standards weren't up to the strict EU standards. The new EU members had to rely on old members for cheap cuts of pork for making sausage and salami. With all the cheap cuts going out of England, there wasn't much left for making lard.

So what's a British pie maker to do? Fortunately, lardcrisis.com is here! Read the complete coverage of the lard crisis as it unfolds! Check the lard locator for supply-sightings! And, best of all, now you can meet all your lard wear needs!

Feet that will never be cold again...

I shoulda put this in yesterday -