Posts filed under ‘perpetrated by staff’
Indonesian upcycled library building
The Taman Bima Microlibrary in Bandung, Indonesia was built using upcycled plastic ice cream containers, possibly LuVe Litee brand, though I’m not sure. Thanks, Terry Kennedy!
Pokémon Go in libraries
I’m not playing this [see below] and I don’t really understand how it works except that I hear Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End has a similar kind of game in it it.
Apparently, Pokémon Go players are finding creatures and other stuff in libraries all over the United States. I wonder if I could lure one into my office? I will find out.
Pokémon GO: What Do Librarians Need To Know? (School Library Journal)
‘Pokémon Go’ sends swarms of players to bookstores and libraries. But will they remember the books? (Los Angeles Times)
Everything Librarians Need To Know About Pokemon Go! (Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Shelves)
Why Pokemon Go and The Library is a perfect partnership (ALSC blog)
Local library goes viral thanks to Pokemon plans (The Island Packet)
Addendum, July 21: Change “I’m not playing this” to “I wish I could play this but my phone doesn’t have a gyroscope. My kids are playing it and so is practically everybody I know.”
A colleague was able to capture two creatures in the Special Collections area:
librarian bad-assery
I ordered Joshua Hammer’s book for my library when I first read a review of it, months ago. Today a friend suggested the story of these “bad-ass” librarians as a shenanigan, and I have to agree. Smuggling controversial manuscripts to safety is the kind of dangerous and non-goofy shenanigan librarians were kinda born to do.
Thanks, Daniel M. Shapiro!
Welcome to the Toilet
Sarah Katherine Stengle snapped this photograph and put it on Facebook with the note “The sign on the door of the WC at the Art Museum in Jyväskylä Finland. The bathroom contained a library: loved it.”
Thanks, Emily Lloyd!
architectural model shenanigans
Tutt Library at Colorado College is undergoing a major renovation right now (in fact, I’m listening to the sounds of slams and crashes as I type this). Workmen cleaned out our sub-basement and found an old architectural model of our building, probably made in 1980 when the South addition was built.
As soon as we installed the model in our display case, my colleague Sarah Bogard began taking close-up photographs. I think these are lovely, and strangely poetic.
We found ourselves placing the little people in various arrangements and playing with the model like a dollhouse. Other colleagues stopped by to see what we were doing and got involved. Someone said this set-up looked like the whomping willow in the Harry Potter books:
An hour or so later, a small Pegasus appeared.
What will happen next?
Addendum, May 26, 2016:
Addenda, May 31, 2016:
towel-related literature
I love when libraries put together oddball mini-exhibitions on obscure topics. (I guess that’s no surprise coming from the person who brought you mini-exhibitions on 19th Century Beards, Different Kinds of Paperclips, and Composition Books.) The Cambridge University Library currently has a display of their towel-related holdings in honor of Towel Day, May 25, celebrating Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Possibly my favorite sentence in the article: “The bibliography of towels is, in fact, remarkably limited.” Thanks, Lynne M. Thomas!
librarian poets
Being a librarian and poet, I’m always on the alert for other such, so, herewith, lists of poet-librarians, gathered using the lazyweb and from a post on the topic at In the Library with the Lead Pipe (a blog with the tagline “The murder victim? Your library assumptions. Suspects? It could have been any of us”).
Please let me know of any others who should be on this list — it’ll be an ongoing project. If you’re on the list but would prefer a different link, let me know that, too (jessyrandall@yahoo.com).
(English language)
Anne Haines(languages other than English — thank you, Amadeu Pons i Serra and the Catalan Library Association for providing most of these names)
Manuel Machado
Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo
Addendum, December 9, 2016: Patrick Williams informs me that Josh Honn has a list of librarian poets here.
library fashion show
The New Hanover County Public Library in North Carolina held a contest in 2015 for clothing and accessories made from discarded library books and cassette tapes. You can view the runway show above and the full details here. You’re too late to sign up for the 2016 contest, but perhaps they’ll do it again next year. Thanks, Tom Lovell!
The Psychic Sasquatch and Their UFO Connection
Library weeding isn’t a shenanigan — it’s an important part of collection development and a common activity in academic and public libraries. Pulling out awful / super-fantastic weeded books and drawing attention to them, though — that’s a shenanigan for sure.
The New Yorker has a piece on the Awful Library Books blog today. (Here at Library Shenanigans, of course, we’ve known about the blog since 2010.)
(Also, you gotta love that for Jack “Kewaunee” Lapserities, M.S., and others, the plural of sasquatch is sasquatch. Not everyone agrees — but then, Merriam-Webster claims the plural of bigfoot is bigfeet. So, whatever.)
Thanks, Inge-Marie Eigsti!
it’s bigger on the inside
TARDIS-style public library outpost on 32nd Avenue and Stark Street, Portland, Oregon. More information here Thanks, David Kay!
Library Shenanigans 