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November 22, 2010

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Booklists & Reviews, I Swear This Happened at the Public Library

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Being a Librarian Who Hasn’t Read Harry Potter is Like Being an English Professor Who Hasn’t Read Hamlet

I was working as a Department Manger at a Barnes and Noble store in Burlington, Vermont, when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out. We held a midnight release party, and I remember children trying to stab each other with wands for several hours before they were finally allowed to buy their books and go home. Many of the parents came in full costume, and it was obvious that they were more obsessed with Harry Potter than their kids. The next morning, sales associates arrived to work crying, having stayed up since 2 a.m. reading only to learn of their beloved Dumbledore’s tragic demise.

Five years later, as a public librarian, the fact that I still haven’t read Harry Potter feels like a dirty little secret. I can’t help but recall that urban legend of academia, as told by Pierre Bayard in How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, in which an English professor reveals during a faculty cocktail party that he’s never read Hamlet, and is instantly fired.

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Rachel

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November 17, 2010

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Banana Suit Life

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Becoming an Avoider-of-Meat

I blame it all on a book. Specifically, I blame it on The Omnivore’s Dilemma by one Michael Pollan, which I read in March of 2008. I remember this clearly, because I was visiting my dad in Colorado for a little late-season skiing. We are both terrible skiers, but I do remember trying to chat my dad up about grain elevator politics during the Carter administration. It wasn’t the most lively discussion, but I guess not everyone can get excited about grain elevator politics.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan pursues three meals by getting down and dirty with “three principal food chains”: industrial (think fast food), organic (think friendly neighborhood co-op), and hunter-gatherer (think hunting wild pigs). For his hunter-gatherer meal, Pollan actually traipses into the wilderness with a shotgun to win his dinner of wild boar and chanterelles with his own two hands. He concludes that this hunter-gatherer meal is the most gratifying of the three, largely because the path from sun to energy to human is so honest and direct.

Readers, this planted a pernicious little seed in my brain.

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November 15, 2010

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Booklists & Reviews

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Booklist: DIY Redux

Although I know I already linked to them in yesterday’s thrifty post, I just can’t get over how much I love all these DIY titles at the Lawrence Public Library. I want you to gaze longingly at their beautiful covers and even drool a little bit, much like I’ve been doing for the past week. It’s time for a booklist!

	Carry Me: 20 Boutique Bags to SewHighlighting the influence Japanese craft has imparted on the world of fiber arts, this illustrated manual showcases the stylish sensibilities of eastern expertise in creating handbags. Sewers are shown how to create distinct and fashionable works of functional art, such as a wool tweed travel bag, a stylish denim bag with grommet and zipper details, a roomy tote with contrast lining and inside pockets, a wool messenger bag, and a soft luggage tote.
	I Heart Felt: 33 Eye-Popping Projects for the Inspired Knitter I Heart Felt: 33 Eye-Popping Projects for the Inspired Knitter is a follow-up to the author’s very successful first book on felting (Knit One, Felt Too), which was really meant as a beginner’s guide. I Heart Felt will also be appropriate to newcomers in felting but it pushes the creative edges on just what you can do with felting, making for a hugely imaginative and engaging collection of 33 original designs
	Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More!If you’re a fan of amigurumi, you already know that super-sweet crocheted bunnies and kitties and pandas have taken the indie craft world by storm. The dolls in Creepy Cute Crochet eat your typical amigurumi for breakfast! This unique craft book contains more than 25 patterns for zombies, ninjas, Vikings, vampires, aliens, robots, and even Death himself. Each easy-to-follow pattern is presented with step-by-step diagrams, hilarious commentary, and full-color photographs of the creatures in their natural environments.

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Rachel

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November 13, 2010

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I Swear This Happened at the Public Library

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DIY Holidays

The winter holidays are nearly upon us. At the library, we realize a lot of our patrons are trying to save a little cash this year. And because we are tuned-in to those needs like aliens to the mothership, we’ve put together a lovely display of DIY Holiday titles for their crafting pleasure. I had a hunch that this would be a popular display, but I wasn’t quite anticipating the crowd of young ladies and their mothers that formed a huddle around the felting, crocheting, knitting, quilting, beading, card-making, origami, leather-working, and basket-weaving books this afternoon, and then stayed planted there until the library finally locked its doors for the night. Readers, they would have made more formidable opponents than the KU football team.

Here in our little home, we’ve also been trying to work in more thrifty DIY projects. Going out on a limb last year, we typed into our Google browser: “what to give everyone for Christmas,” and the Internet gave us this brilliant gift: a pattern for Martha Stewart felted pigs. Amazing!! Continue reading →

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November 10, 2010

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Banana Suit Life, Booklists & Reviews

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Reading Tolstoy, Alone.

My husband and I could not be more different from each other. In a few ways, at least. Case in point: I spent my childhood hiding under the covers with a flashlight and a copy of The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, while he spent his summers at Computer Camp programming the little Logo turtle to make triangles and squares. I’m an avid reader and librarian; he’s a complete computer whiz who could program his way right into whatever industry he chooses.

When Aaron was just a little boy, his dad brought home the Commodore 64 that would seal his fate as a hot computer nerd. As a mere seventh grader, he self-taught his way through a book of how to code in C. While I was auditioning for high school plays, my husband was teaching himself database architecture via a little homegrown website called “Synthetic” that he’d built in his basement. When he first wooed me, he wrote me a little program called “arrow_kill” to destroy all those nasty little carrots — “>>>>” — that show up in email trails. I hate those things! It totally worked. Now Aaron predicts chemical / protein interactions using computer simulations. This is cutting-edge, sought-after, super sexy stuff in the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry.

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Rachel

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November 8, 2010

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Research & Scholarship

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Hip-Hop, Foucault, and Learning Between Borders

I really like hip-hop. A few months ago, as I was finishing my two years of Library School, I was taking a seminar called “Analysis of Scholarly Domains.” We were contemplating the structure of knowledge in University settings, and I was spending a lot of time thinking about which voices get included in the Academy, which become excluded, and why that happens. We’re talking nights spent awake until 2 and 3 a.m., reading Michel Foucault and banging my head against the desk until finally having the “a-ha” moment — so it’s that sort of “a lot of time thinking”! The result of all that thinking was a twenty page term paper called “Learning Between Borders,” a personal narrative of my own journey through the Academy, including my love of both MLA and hip-hop, and why I think they go smashingly together.

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November 3, 2010

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I Swear This Happened at the Public Library

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Yes. We Are Getting a New Library. Yes!!

Last night I chugged a beer at the Dynamite Saloon on Mass. St., because we did it — the Lawrence Public Library is really really getting an $18 mil. renovation & expansion! We’re finally getting things like kid-sized shelving in the children’s room, public meeting spaces, and a 300% increase in the number of public access computers. I’m especially excited about the guy who will finally be able to watch his horror movies on YouTube without complaining that the computer monitor doesn’t work.

But really more than anything else, I’m so proud of my community for voting for this project even though the general political climate is one of extreme fiscal conservativism. It really speaks to how much Lawrence values its public library and understands that it’s time to reinvest in and modernize an outdated structure that has ceased to adequately serve a growing demand. Thanks Lawrence!!!

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Rachel

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October 31, 2010

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I Swear This Happened at the Public Library

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Haunted Lawrence Archives

Lawrence Journal World, Oct. 1995

One of the things I really like about my library is that my boss is really flexible and open to ideas, which means that my coworkers and I are free to sort-of “invent” our own jobs. It makes for a really creative and energetic work environment, because everyone is doing pretty much what they love — as long as they’ve been willing to take the initiative to make that happen.

So I’ve been carving out this little niche for myself in social media, technology, and instruction. Last week we started this experiment with our Twitter feed to tweet once a day about #thisdayinhistory. This means I get to trawl the Google News Archive of the Lawrence Journal World for tweet-worthy happenings. Continue reading →

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October 28, 2010

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Booklists & Reviews

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Booklist: Love Your Library

In an effort to subtly promote the “Vote Yes for the Library” campaign while not crossing any ethical lines, I decided to create a small display called “Love Your Library” that lives at the reference desk of the Lawrence Public Library. It was fun to see what we had in our collection that could count; here’s what ended up on the display (As always, pix and synopses are adapted from WorldCat, Goodreads, & Amazon):

America’s Library: The Story of the Library of Congress, 1800-2000
The American Library of Congress holds over 110 million items — many of them unique and priceless — and this charts the history of the Library and its holdings, from its initial 740-book collection begun in 1800 to its miles of bookshelves today. Vintage photos and illustrations pack a presentation which is a must for anyone who digs American book history.

Book by Book
Drawing on sources as diverse as Dr. Seuss and Simone Weil, P. G. Wodehouse and Isaiah Berlin, Pulitzer Prizewinning critic Michael Dirda shows how the wit, wisdom, and enchantment of the written word informs and enriches nearly every aspect of life, from education and work to love and death. Organized by significant life events and abounding with quotations from great writers and thinkers, Book by Book showcases Dirda’s capacious love for and understanding of books.

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October 26, 2010

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I Swear This Happened at the Public Library

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Advocacy, Public Dollars, & Librarian Alter-Egos

On November 2, members of our community will vote on whether the Lawrence Public Library is going to receive an $18 mil. facelift. As the community responds to news articles in the Lawrence Journal World, as well as other local news outlets, it’s pretty fascinating to see the many remaining perceptions about what a public library actually does. Many commenters feel that it’s a waste to spend money on anything other than books, and on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, others feel that books are becoming obsolete and we should be investing in server storage rather than bricks and mortar renovations. “What about the public access computers, children’s room, and community meeting spaces?” I want to yell! But yelling probably isn’t a good idea.