Posts filed under ‘academic libraries’
CC students respond to library annoyances
The “Let’s CC the World” Tumblr feed has a couple of funny visual aids for library annoyances:
When People Use the Library as a Place to Socialize (featuring a panda!)
and
When You Suddenly Lose Service in the Library (featuring Doctor Who!).
It’s nice to know that some students have the same crazy love for the library as we librarians do! Thanks, Dina Wood, for pointing these out to me.
Yale card catalog stop motion
60-second stop motion film starring Yale University’s card catalog (Sterling Memorial Library). Thanks, Emily Lloyd!
For card catalog aficionados: here’s the abstract of Nicholson Baker’s 1996 article in the New Yorker (subscribers can login and read the whole thing), later reprinted in his essay collection The Size of Thoughts. And you could make pilgrimage to the Library Company of Philadelphia, founded 1731: ask to see the card catalog in the basement — it contains handwritten cards!
Harvard Library lends dogs!
In April 2012, the Widener Library at Harvard University began a pilot project to lend dogs to students. Apparently Yale, M.I.T., and the University of Connecticut have similar projects. Thanks, Carol Dickerson!
Super Mario Brothers shenanigan
A lot of this Super Mario Brothers shenanigan takes place in Tutt Library, Colorado College. We’re glad somebody finally found a use for the little caged-in area at the bottom of our staircase. Thanks, Rebecca Harner!
Live-In for Literacy in Canada
University students in Canada set up tents in their school libraries to raise money for Room to Read in support of literacy. Thanks, Dina Wood!
Library Christmas trees made of books and bound journals
This photo comes from CSU-Pueblo in 2011. Many other libraries have done similar things, including the Aalborg Universitetsbibliotek in 2006 (they used their set of the National Union Catalog of Manuscripts), the University of British Columbia Library, and the Globe University Madison East Library. Thanks, Carol Dickerson!
Librarians act silly for no reason
When librarians act silly for no reason, those are some of my favorite kinds of library shenanigans. Well, I also like it when the students or patrons act silly for no reason, too. Here we see some librarians in animal masks at Columbia College. How long this lasted, I do not know. Thanks, Kristy Bowen!
Zombie librarian, and even scarier regular librarian!
Two excellent Halloween costumes by my old friend Joan Petit. We went to high school together and then, lo and behold, we ended up in library school together! Not on purpose! Now she’s a librarian at Portland State University. No, she doesn’t normally wear the sad pumpkin vest. I’m guessing she won any and all costume competitions at her library this year.
Sometimes the little shenanigans are the best shenanigans
This mini-shenanigan took place in the study area just outside Special Collections, where I work. One student goofing with another, presumably.
Poem about a library visualized with library books
This postcard from ripple(s), made for William Corbett’s poem “Remembering Michael Gizzi,” which is about the Woodberry Poetry Room at the library of Harvard University, seems to me to count as a library shenanigan.
Addendum, April 2014: The Dayton Metro Library in Dayton, Ohio encouraged its patrons to make poems out of spine titles. Thanks, Dina Wood, for letting me know!
Library Shenanigans 