Library comix guys here!

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, the creators of Unshelved, will be stopping in our fair city TOMORROW (on their way to the ALA Conference) to give a talk and hawk their marvelous merchandise. Think I'll have to wear my "What would Dewey do?" tank top for the occasion.

I am proud to note that our home page sports a new Unshelved installment every day.

Whew, back to my own beloved job

There's nothing like a week or two of manual labor to make one appreciate the many pleasures of school and library life. I have the scrapes, cuts, and bruises to show for the tiny dent I made in installing 800,000 volumes at the University Library's Oak Street high density storage facility. I did my share of wiping, vacuuming, sizing, and accessioning the most obscure tomes ever. We had a big rush of chemistry-related titles - old volumes of Chem Abstracts, of the Egyptian (Israeli, Indian, European, you name it) Journal of something-something Chemistry, and so on. There was an endless run of gigantic things in (I think) Dutch that appeared to be logs of colonial imports and exports. And then there was a spate of Italian and French literature. One day I found myself looking at a book of Italian poetry that had been translated into Spanish. Looking at the photos of those earnest-looking authors on the back covers, I kept thinking how sad they would be to see their work relegated to remote storage (loving and tender as it is). I'm well aware that my own treasured opus is doomed to suffer the same fate.

This blog will slow down now that I'm away from students and into my regular summer schedule of writing projects, keeping up with various library things, traveling, and gardening. Next up is the annual ALA conference, this time in Chicago.

My new job

For a couple of weeks, anyway. Now that school is out, I'm putting in my share of hours at the University Library's Oak Street high density storage facility. This morning, John gave Corinne and me a tour of the book vault itself, home of the reknowned 40-foot-high bookshelves. I'd forgotten that they keep the temperature at 50 degrees in there. Brrr. Last Friday I spent four hours constructing trays, specially designed acid-free boxes that effectively make short rows of books. Today I was promoted to accessioning, which involved scanning the bar codes of trays and then the books within them. The whole process has numerous checks and balances built into it so that every book has its secured place and can be retrieved without a spot of trouble. A real live patron actually came in today, providing me with solid proof that the system works.

I think Lisa has the best job, though. She's the one who gets to drive the forklift up and down the stacks, hoisting my trays up to those shelves and then back down again.

Yes, reading CAN harm you

Courtesy LISNews.com, I have learned about the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Selected by a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders, The Communist Manifesto tops the list, followed by Mein Kampf. Here's the critique of John Dewey's Democracy and Education, which comes in at Number 5:

John Dewey, who lived from 1859 until 1952, was a "progressive" philosopher and leading advocate for secular humanism in American life, who taught at the University of Chicago and at Columbia. He signed the Humanist Manifesto and rejected traditional religion and moral absolutes. In Democracy and Education, in pompous and opaque prose, he disparaged schooling that focused on traditional character development and endowing children with hard knowledge, and encouraged the teaching of thinking "skills" instead. His views had great influence on the direction of American education--particularly in public schools--and helped nurture the Clinton generation.

Sheesh, so that's what's wrong with me.