Posts filed under ‘academic libraries’
so many shenanigans
I went on a road trip with my family and a whole bunch of library shenanigans (and one museum shenanigan) piled up.
The Hermitage Museum keeps 74 cats on site to protect its treasures from rodents!
Gloria Gaynor disco party at the Library of Congress in May, yes, this is for real. You know you wish you could go.
“Quirky photo project” by Elise Schimke at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
The Folger Shakespeare Library apparently gets pretty cold, but researchers can borrow hand-knit shawls while on site. Thanks, Lynne M. Thomas!
And speaking of library-themed clothing, library book leggings are available from Kickin Leggings (this ad showed up in my Facebook feed, so Facebook isn’t totally useless I guess).
Valentine’s Day shenanigans
Libraries and librarians never let me down at Valentine’s Day. The Ramsey County Library posted this excellent valentine on their Facebook page:
And the Loyola University Library in Chicago, following the lead of several other libraries, put together a Valentine’s Day display of “blind date” books wrapped in brown paper:
(Thanks, Amy Shuffelton!)
See also this post.
alternative facts section of the library
Check out this sign at the library of the Howard University School of Law.
Thanks, Maryann Corbett!
Addendum (same day): Here’s a related image, from the Facebook page of The Bookloft in Massachusetts. Thanks, Lisa Lister!
shushing already-quiet people
Um … I’m sorry, everybody. But I had to include this as a library shenanigan. It’s actually like twelve different shenanigans piled together.
Thanks, Marianne Aldrich!
ISBN shenanigan
As Curator of Colorado College Special Collections, I recently ordered a copy of Woody Leslie’s book Understanding Molecular Typography. There appeared to be a snag in the cataloging, and the following email conversation ensued:
Cataloger Amy: Hello, Jon (and Jessy), If this link is behaving as it was for me just now, then you will see the image, with a link, to a Dr. Seuss book to the right of the title I just cataloged, “Understanding Molecular Typography.” Hmmmmmmm…….. 
Systems Specialist Jon: That bib record contains the ISBN for the Dr. Seuss title so it’s pulling the Dr. Seuss book cover image… Correcting or removing that ISBN should fix the problem. I also noticed that a subject heading of Humor is shown on that bib-is that correct?
Amy: I figured it had to do with the ISBN. The ISBN in the record is indeed the ISBN on the title page, so, I’m not sure how one might handle that. About humor, yes, that is correct, despite the rawther serious-sounding title.
Jon: Interesting-so it’s a humor book and they put the ISBN for a Dr. Seuss book on the title page? That’s kinda funny. WorldCat seems to have the same problem: http://www.worldcat.org/title/understanding-molecular-typography/oclc/920580763 –as do the catalogs of all of the other libraries WorldCat shows as holding this title… This is now actually hilarious.
Curator Jessy: Wow. This is fantastic actually! I wonder if they did it on purpose. Maybe I’ll try to contact the author or publisher and see.
Amy: I’d love to know what he says. It’s kind of like a library shenanigan. I mean, why “On Beyond Zebra”?? This is a first, for me.
Jessy: Dear Woody Leslie, As you can see from the email chain, your book is causing some confusion and hilarity at the Colorado College library. We think you did it on purpose. Are we right?
Artist Woody Leslie: Hi Jessy, This really made my day! Thanks for contacting me. Yes, I intentionally appropriated that ISBN number. Understanding Molecular Typography is a fictional textbook by a fictional author about a fictional science — the science of molecular typography, which is based on the premise that all letters are in fact molecules, composed of atomic shape units known as typtoms. One of the ideas of the book is the concept of genetically modified, or invented letters. I used that ISBN number as a tribute to Dr. Seuss’ book On Beyond Zebra, because it’s all about invented letters. I didn’t account for library cataloging of ISBNs when I used it, figuring it would mostly be ignored. I too have noticed the World Cat auto picture selecting based on the ISBN. Glad you were able to sort it all out. There’s more about the book and project here.
John Latham’s “Art and Culture”
My colleague Diane Westerfield found a library shenanigan in a scholarly article!
“The Library in Art’s Crosshairs” by Henry Pisciotta. Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, v. 35 no. 1, Spring 2016.
“British artist John Latham, while teaching at St. Martin’s School of Art in 1966, checked out a copy of Greenberg’s respected book [Art and Culture] from his school’s library and took it to an evening gathering of friends and students, where the book’s pages were removed and chewed, by a number of participants, and spat into a jar. Later Latham, keenly interested in science, performed a series of chemical transformations on the remains, slowly reducing them to a goo, which he sealed into a glass vial. Overdue notices were received from the library, so Latham eventually attempted to return the book to the librarian in its modified state. This offer was refused. Latham’s teaching contract was not renewed. A few years later, Latham fashioned a carrying case for the vial, some of the lab apparatus, and the library notices, and today the assemblage is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.”
The resulting artwork, titled, like the original book, “Art and Culture,” is not currently on view at MoMA, but you can see more information about it here.
art made from digitized non-circulating books
Craig Conley makes visual art from digitized “non-circulating” library books. As he explains in his artist’s statement:
Some library books, for a variety of reasons, become “non-circulating.” … It’s a precious status, indicative of value, rarity, and refererence-worthiness. Yet there’s a tinge of sadness, too — a hint of decrepitude and dormancy. We asked a book-whisperer and learned that books do wish to circulate, to be worldly, to mingle, to be at large. … Then, through a painstaking process involving collaged elements from non-circulating volumes of old magazines, we add some talisman-like flowing imagery to break the stagnation …
I’ve got a golden ticket…
…I’ve got a golden twinkle in my eye…
Colorado College’s Tutt Library is currently undergoing a major renovation, and most of our books are off-site until the fall of 2017. During this school year, as we retrieve and drop off materials multiple times a day, we are placing golden tickets into random books:
And thus, I have this song in my head almost all the time now.
library olympics
The library of the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio held its first-ever Library Olympics in August of 2016. Events included book-truck maneuvering, speed-sorting, and journal-Jenga.
Thanks, Ross Gresham!
library workers on roller skates
My friend David Weinstock was skeptical when his mother mentioned she wore roller skates as a page at New York University in the early 1940s. He did a little research and discovered this!
That’ll teach him to doubt his mother.
I haven’t been able to find any photographs of the NYU pages, but according to this article in Noticing New York, the film You’re a Big Boy Now features a roller-skating library worker:
I suppose we don’t need pages on roller skates any more, since digitization puts so much information at our fingertips. Why, we hardly even need to get up from our computer chairs any more. Alas. I suppose we could try skating at our treadmill desks, kind of like this guy:
Library Shenanigans 