Gargoyles loose in the library

A day of contributions

2008-05-08T13:08:00.007-05:00

Aliisa's contribution to the current display. Drawn free hand!

Andrew's contribution to Abe. Really spiffs up the reference area.

Fiona's and Lisa's contributions to library security. [Or, what happens when two freshmen get into the recycling box and the library tape.]

Kareem's contribution to the senior auction. [Or at least the winnings from his contribution. And the reason we need security in the library.] Natalie is impressed.

Brand loyalty

2008-05-06T10:27:00.002-05:00

Some of us find interesting ways of expressing it.

Liberries in the movies

2008-05-05T16:18:00.002-05:00

Eighteen movies that feature scenes in libraries. Though I don't think I'd go as far as Entertainment Weekly and call them "18 Sexy Trips to the Library Stacks." {via}

Guilt

2008-05-02T15:33:00.002-05:00

I think I am reaching my personal threshold as a participant in online social networks. I've started to say no to Facebook apps and groups. I'm not even tempted to try Twitter (though that may change if I ever get an iPhone). But there's one realm I've neglected that I feel loads of guilt over. I've never given a serious chance to the social networks that help you keep track of what you've read and connect you to books (and readers) you are likely to love. Is it laziness? Lack of self-reflection? In a long-ago moment of weakness, I accepted a friend's invitation to join GoodReads. So now, almost daily, I get updates of what all my GoodReads friends are reading, have read, and plan to read. In the meantime, my own profile sits there nearly empty, with only the one book I entered almost a year ago. I'm very sure that the most recent friend request I got on GoodReads was from someone who thought that I, as a librarian, would have heaps of book titles and reviews for her to browse through. But no dice.

As an alternative, I've outsourced some of this work. A group of Computer Literacy 2 students are entering our graphic novel collection into LibraryThing for their semester project (when they come close to finishing, I'll kvell about them at greater length). I don't feel this exactly lets me off the hook, but it does relieve some of the pressure.

Back yard library

2008-05-01T12:33:00.003-05:00

Running out of space for books in your house? Our new issue of ReadyMade has a feature on prefab "retreats" - tiny little buildings you can make and then escape to when the mood strikes. Here's one created by Modern Shed for an animator's vast collection of art books and as a home office away from the kids.

Don't know why I'm so obsessed with these book environments, but I am.

Final stages of research

2008-04-29T11:35:00.005-05:00

Sophomores have papers due in history and English. Second period was a little dicey around here.

Pick a citation format, any format...

Is this right? Nile experiences NoodleBib goodness.

Waiting for the printer, which generally signals the end. At least for awhile.

Every book its reader

2008-04-28T15:27:00.005-05:00

We all look for different things in our books. On today's request shelf, there's an introduction to Dakar Wolof, an urban mixture of Wolof (a language spoken in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania), French, and Arabic that is spoken in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. The book was written in 1966 to help train Peace Corp volunteers. Another student requested a book called Abracadabra! Secret Methods Magicians & Others Use to Deceive Their Audience. Author Nathaniel Schiffman reveals all, including how to pull off the amazing levitating woman trick.

Today's little shout out to Ranganathan's third law.

Go to the library to check out a ... person?

2008-04-24T11:27:00.004-05:00

That's right. At the Living Library in London, you can borrow a person for a 30-minute chat. The idea is to "take out a prejudice" and, through conversation, examine your stereotypes. The website doesn't tell us much, but an article written by David Baker, one of the human "books," does a nice job describing the process and the purpose.

"The human "books" on offer vary from event to event but always include a healthy cross-section of stereotypes. Last weekend, the small but richly diverse list included Police Officer, Vegan, Male Nanny and Lifelong Activist as well as Person with Mental Health Difficulties and Young Person Excluded from School. I was there as Gay Man.
In the catalogue we had been tagged with the kind of negative attributes that readers might expect to encounter. Male Nanny was down as "twee" and "child molester". Police Officer was filed under "corrupt". Mine included "very well dressed" and "has some sexually transmitted disease", though thankfully there was no mention of Barbra Streisand."
and...
"First out were Social Worker ("naive") and Immigrant ("wasting resources") and then Muslim ("beard") was borrowed for a quick chat, presumably about bombs and his attitude to women. The rest of us tucked into the sandwiches and pretended that we weren't at all worried about being, almost literally, left on the shelves."

Who would you check out? What stereotype would you represent if you were a human "book"? Would you be sad if you were left sitting on the shelf?

Clean reading

2008-04-22T09:37:00.003-05:00

Here's another reading "environment" I find intriguing. The bathtub with book shelves from Antonio Lupi can be all yours for a mere $17,300.

Hmmm. Somehow it seems less practical than the book case bedroom or stairs. {via}

The music link

2008-04-17T10:06:00.003-05:00

I've just finished reading The New Policeman, by Kate Thompson (Fiction T374n), one of our recent acquisitions. Briefly, everyone in Kinvara (Ireland) is aware that time seems to be flying by at a faster and faster rate. When J.J. asks his mother what she'd like for her birthday, she asks for more time. Soon after, a neighbor shows him how to find a parallel world where time stands still -- sort of. The people there are also experiencing a leak in time. As J.J. investigates, he uncovers secrets about his family's past and, at the last moment, uncovers the identity of the new village policeman.

Music plays a huge role in this book, as characters in both worlds are musicians. At the end of each chapter, Thompson inserts transcribed traditional tunes as well as three of her own compositions. Go to her website to hear some of these tunes, as well as a short reading by the author.

Sophomores take over the library

2008-04-15T15:42:00.001-05:00

And they are way too gleeful about it.

It's National Library Week, woo-hoo!

2008-04-14T11:21:00.002-05:00

Especially because the American Library Association has created some fun (but-with-serious-punchlines) videos to celebrate. Below are a couple of my favorites. All of them star Shad Kunkle and are shot at Morton College Library in Cicero, Illinois. Do you suppose those cute little jelly creatures are his too?

Plagiarism, what? Here??

2008-04-11T09:14:00.006-05:00

English teacher Suzanne Linder has written a very thoughtful open letter to students on the recent rash of plagiarism she is seeing in her classroom. Though I usually try to keep things light here, I feel compelled to reflect on her message. Some thoughts in no particular order:

In my experience, plagiarizing (or cheating) well generally takes at least as much effort as doing the actual work in the first place. In other words, if you copy and paste directly, or even paraphrase, you are probably going to get caught. Just as the Internet has made it easy to plagiarize, the Internet has made it easy to catch plagiarizers. I guess the temptation overrules common sense.
Why don't we use one of those plagiarism detection services that are so popular in schools and universities these days? A bunch of reasons (disclaimer: my reasons). First, these services assume guilt. All papers are typically filtered through the service before the teacher sees them. I can hardly think of anything more antithetical to Uni's culture and ethos (then again, isn't plagiarism also?). Second, they require that students turn over their intellectual property and private words to a third party. Third, they cost schools lots of money that is desperately needed for real educational purposes. And when plagiarism is typically easy to identify, why pay to have it detected? I could go on.
It's true that some assignments seem to invite plagiarism. When there's no analysis component, when no true inquiry is required, when it seems like all that's being asked of a student is to parrot what they find. Some in my field have issued a call to "ban the bird units" like these. I find, however, that Uni teachers don't assign too many bird units. They do ask for thoughtful synthesis and analysis. They also have high expectations and they care about their students. So what gives?

Food fight

2008-04-09T10:43:00.003-05:00

Via Joyce, I learned about the following clever stop-action video Food Fight: An Abridged History of War, by Stefan Nadelman. Nadelman delivers his own spin on wars from World War II to the present day, using the foods of the countries in conflict to illustrate the stories.

If you get stuck figuring out all the conflicts, check his site for a breakdown of the battles and a cheat sheet connecting foods and countries.

Japanese-flavored library-ness

2008-04-07T15:18:00.005-05:00

This morning I was marveling over the upcoming debut of the Library War anime series, the action comedy drama adapted from Hiro Arikawa's novel about the struggle to preserve libraries when a new law threatens to stifle freedom of expression in the not-to-distant future. {via} Even in Japanese, the two-minute, 43-second promotional video and the 15-second commercial make sense. When I asked Emily for translation help she told me about Read or Die, a series of novels, manga, and TV anime episodes that portray an alternative British Empire whose continued existence is guaranteed by the British Library. This means the Library, besides having traditional library functions, is a political force with branches all over the world. It has agents with special powers who fight book-related crime and terrorism, and seek out rare works for the Library. Sweet.

I think both of these books-turned-anime efforts beat the heck out of the strange phenomenon that is the Japanese game show Silent Library.

Much ado indeed

2008-04-03T11:02:00.003-05:00

It's Tech Week for the play, Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Cast members are expressing their exhaustion in various ways:

Good thing opening night is tonight. You can bet I'll be there.

Baby day at the library

2008-04-01T14:03:00.003-05:00

Last Friday we had a couple of special visitors. Jenny, our graduate assistant from the last two years, brought in 7-month-old Zoe. Their visit coincided with a visit from Davian, Runelle's great-grandson.

You can see "before" pictures of Zoe here and here.

Fool me once...

2008-03-31T16:48:00.002-05:00

In anticipation of April Fool's Day, I'm taking a tip from Doug Johnson at the Blue Skunk Blog and speed-bookmarking a few hoax-checking websites, namely Snopes, Truth or Fiction, and Hoaxbusters. Even so, can't wait to see what Google pulls this year (remember the classic commode-based free in-home wireless broadband service?). National Public Radio is also good at yanking my chain every year.

Not your grandma's craft magazine

2008-03-28T10:18:00.004-05:00

On the heels of our first issue of Make magazine, our first issue of its counterpart - Craft: Transforming Traditional Crafts - has arrived. And what a treasure trove of the unexpected! Check out this wearable architecture:

A taste of other offerings: LED hula hoop, duct tape iPod case, T-shirt wedding dress, pantyhose petals, and "hyperbolic baby pants" which demonstrate the clear connection between needlework and mathematics. Come and get it.

Some professions just aren't properly appreciated

2008-03-27T12:33:00.002-05:00

Did you hear about the Novelists Guild of America strike? No? You're not alone. Sources report that four months into the strike, it has had no effect on the American public whatsoever.

"While the strike has been joined by an estimated 250,000 novelists - 225,000 of whom have reportedly stopped in the middle of their first novel - it has done no damage to any measurable sector of the economy, including bookstore chains, newspapers, magazines, all major media, overseas markets, independent film studios, major film studios, actors, editors, animators, carpenters, those in finance or banking, the day-to-day lives of average Americans, or anything else anyone can think of as of press time."

Thanks to the Booklist Blog for reminding me how much I love the Onion.

Too many cooks?

2008-03-26T10:33:00.005-05:00

Not in the case of Click, written by an all-star cast of ten award-winning authors (David Almond, Eoin Colfer, Roddy Doyle, Deborah Ellis, Nick Hornby, Margo Lanagan, Gregory Maguire, Ruth Ozeki, Linda Sue Park and Tim Wynne-Jones) who each contributed a chapter. Here's a blurb from the review on Teenreads.com:

The novel begins with Maggie and Jason, teenage siblings whose grandfather, world-renowned photographer George "Gee" Keane, has just passed away. To Jason, Gee has bequeathed a cache of photographs, a nearly living library of history that spans Gee's global career. Maggie receives a puzzle box with seven sea shells, one collected from each continent Gee visited, and the message, "Throw them all back." Their inheritances send Maggie and Jason on separate but determined quests that will lead them to discover more of who their grandfather was and who they themselves have yet to become.

I thought this book really worked, despite the different styles and approaches of the various authors (and in contrast to what the Teenreads reviewer thought). An additional bonus: proceeds from the book are being donated to Amnesty International.

Gee's camera reminded me of the fun I used to have with my father's old twin lens reflex camera. Since you are always looking down when you shoot the photo, people don't quite realize you are taking the picture. Makes it easier to get candids.

DIY perpetual burning book

2008-03-24T13:26:00.004-05:00

Back from break to more (more, and more!) new books. But just as exciting, our first issue of Make: Technology on Your Time arrived. The theme of volume 13 is magic, featuring "more than a dozen fiendishly ingenious illusions you can build to prove your powers of prestidigitation." Want to make a floating head? A telekinetic pen? An Orpheus fireball shooter? I was taken by Uncle Bill's burning book, which spews flames every time it's opened.

In addition to the magic stuff, find out how to make a backyard graywater (used household water) system, a music control system, a lost screw finder, an internal combustion engine (using Home Depot parts), or Zippy, the recycled marionette (out of old zip drives). You can even learn how to transistorize your iPod. Though, I must say I personally feel very little nostalgia for my old transistor radio.

The only bad thing about this magazine is that it just comes out four times a year. On the other hand, there are 200 packed pages to work through.

Spring break, none too soon

2008-03-14T14:42:00.005-05:00

Michelle and Chelsea captured in a chair buddy moment

See you in a week!

Finally!

2008-03-13T14:46:00.004-05:00

We've ordered all sorts of books and, finally, a small avalanche arrived today.

You'll be hearing more about these (most likely, starting with my personal favorite-on-account-of-its title, Dominitrix: Whip Your Knitting Into Shape).

Meet a Hero @ Your Library

2008-03-12T10:55:00.003-05:00

I was excited to see Elaine's article in the Online Gargoyle about wizard rock coming to the Champaign Public Library as part of its Get Inspired! Meet a Hero @ Your Library initiative. This grant-funded reading project is benefiting a number of area libraries, including the Urbana Free Library, the Champaign and Urbana school libraries, the Parkland College library, and the University of Illinois Library. As a unit of the University Library, the Uni High Library is also getting in on the action. We were already able to purchase a number of books and videos to support the new English class called The Hero's Journey, I'm also going to be able to really flesh out our superhero offerings in the graphic novel collection.

Two videos for the Hero's Journey class

So what comes after the wizard rock event on Friday? Why, the University Library's Edible Book Festival, of course! Personally, I think I have a better chance competing for the culinary prize than the artistic one, but maybe I could get some help there (hint, hint - you know who you are).