Tag: libraries
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Refer Madness: The Terminator of Ghent
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. A gentleman called the desk with a pretty simple question: What was the release date of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines? Because of my prodigious ability to remember useless trivia (film-related especially), I knew it was 2003. But he wanted the specific release date,…
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DDC 450-499: A grossly unfair linguistic ellipses
A Teach Me How To Dewey production This Is How We Dewey: 450 Italian, Romanian & related languages 460 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician 470 Latin & Italic languages 480 Classical & modern Greek languages 490 Other languages Here’s the deal: I started trying to find books in each of the above 10-spots but was having trouble…
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Each’s Owned
Pictured is the haul ($8 total) from a recent afternoon browsing used bookstores, which I do once in a while, when my time is open and therefore my self-discipline is weak. But I didn’t feel bad about getting more Stuff this time, because I’m coming to something approaching terms with it. I love books, movies,…
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Man Bookers
This New York Times story about all-male book clubs was not as inflammatory as I knew it would be taken in certain spheres. It turns out (wait for it…) some men are in book clubs just for men. The reaction from one of the groups to the NYT story is worth reading for important context that didn’t get into…
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Refer Madness: A Name that Named Names
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. A patron who calls regularly — usually looking for the value of an old book or baseball card — had a pretty direct question for me today: “Was Lee J. Cobb blacklisted?” Nope, but just barely. Born Leo Jacoby (get it? Lee J. Cobb[y]?), Cobb…
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Been Reviewing
Happy to report that two of my most recent reviews for Library Journal are now online. I wrote about Edward Lengel’s First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity and Charles Rappleye’s Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency. The former is already out, and the Herbert Hoover biography, which I gave a “starred” review, comes…
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Refer Madness: England Murder Bicycle Chemistry
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. During an otherwise quiet evening on the desk, someone messaged my co-librarian on our library’s chat service with a specific, but not quite specific enough, request. She wanted the title and author of a book in a murder mystery series, published post-2000. She then…
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Not Fine: On Library Amnesty
Chicago Public Library is embarking on a fine amnesty drive this month. The last one seemed to work really well for everyone: The library reported receiving 101,301 overdue items, valued at about $2 million, and waived $641,820 worth of fines. The late materials ranged from items only a few weeks overdue to one book that…
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Refer Madness: The Library Lives of Others
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. Earlier this year I started keeping a list of things people have asked me at the library information desk. It’s not totally comprehensive: some questions either aren’t noteworthy (“Where’s the bathroom?”) or slipped my mind during a busy rush. But even as a scattershot…
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Alternate names for Roving Reference
Itinerant Info Ambulatory Assistance Hovering Help Strolling Support Stack Stalking
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The Meaning of the Library
A few interesting tidbits from The Meaning of the Library: A Cultural History (ed. Alice Crawford)… In “The Renaissance Library and the Challenge of Print” by Andrew Pettegree, we learn the library was not always a hushed, solemn place: The Renaissance library was a noisy place—a place for conversation and display, rather than for study and contemplation.…
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Refer Madness: Librarians Advisory
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. If you’re a librarian, it’s likely you’re expected to provide readers advisory. (Or is it reader’s?) Every librarian has his or her own area of expertise and blind spots, but whether through direct knowledge or other resources, you’re supposed to be able to give patrons who ask…
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Refer Madness: Pole Stars
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. Summer is finally (almost, sorta) here. “Bees they’ll buzz / Kids’ll blow dandelion fuzz…” The AC is on at the library, but at the ref desk it’s still a bit muggy. The perfect time for this patron question: Do you have…
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Refer Madness: Let Your Free Flag Fly
Refer Madness is a new feature that spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. The patron is a regular. He usually asks for pictures of movie stars or the address of a celebrity he can send a picture to for an autograph. (The V.I.P. Address Book makes that pretty easy.) One time we…
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Please Bother Me: On Asking Questions at the Library
“Sorry to bother you…” I’ve heard patrons say this to me or other librarians at the information desk so many times. And every time, I want to respond: “That’s what we’re here for!” Maybe we at the desk were talking to each other, or typing on the computer, or reading a trade journal, or even…
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Every Book Its Clean Reader
I was ready to scoff at the makers of Clean Reader, an app that blocks swear words from being seen on ebooks. Jared and Kirsten Maughan offered rationale for their app in the FAQ: The number one argument against Clean Reader is essentially that an author is an artist and they put specific words in…
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How I Got to Now: A Librarian Year
This week I celebrated my one-year anniversary of librarianship. In my application essay for library school I wrote that I’d been a frequent library user for most of my life, yet had never considered working in one until recent epiphanies changed my outlook. Perhaps I thought of it like working at a movie theater—another regular…