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Underneath the Lintel

Kevin and I took in ACT's Underneath the Lintel last week, and it was an intense 90-minute monologue from an engaging David Strathairn. It is, production aside, a one-man show, and I never cease to amaze that actors can deliver a powerful performance plowing through an entire play and hundred of pages of dialog by themselves. I always like to go into ACT performances as ignorant of the play as possible and let the story unfold for me without prejudice, but I don't think it will be spoiling it for anyone to say that it is a librarian's journey into compulsive answer-seeking regarding an ancient mystery he may be witness to.

I can relate.

And the mystery he has stumbled upon is that of the Wandering Jew. Which was cool for me as I have recently re-engaged with the DC character The Phantom Stranger, who is the comic-book telling of the tortured sinner. And The Phantom Stranger was the costume I wore for my first Halloween with Kevin so many years ago.

Again, cool.

As usual there were lovely people were around for the Out with ACT reception, and our usual thanks and applause to Randy Taradash for making it happen.

shhh. and psst.

Little secret from a gay librarian: you can totally judge a book by its cover.

Especially if it's bound in leather.

Neil Gaiman on why libraries matter

Via BoingBoing, I found this excellent interview with Neil Gaiman on why librarians are needed more than ever in the 21st century. Added bonus, it turns out the interview was with BookPage, the book review magazine where I had my first job—a small outfit in Nashville, Tennessee.

Neil Gaiman is my favorite author. And as most writers do, he gets the library (emphasis mine).

Over the last decade, which is less than a blink of an eye in the history of the human race, it’s all changed. And we’ve gone from a world in which there is too little information, in which information is scarce, to a world in which there is too much information, and most of it is untrue or irrelevant. You know, the world of the Internet is the world of information that is not actually so. It’s a world of information that just isn’t actually true, or if it is true, it’s not what you needed, or it doesn’t actually apply like that, or whatever. And you suddenly move into a world in which librarians fulfill this completely different function.

We’ve gone from looking at a desert, in which a librarian had to walk into the desert for you and come back with a lump of gold, to a forest, to this huge jungle in which what you want is one apple. And at that point, the librarian can walk into the jungle and come back with the apple. So I think from that point of view, the time of librarians, and the time of libraries—they definitely haven’t gone anywhere.

your librarian is having a fit

And it's kind of fun to watch. If you are a sassy librarian too. It's no Foxy, but it's funny.

Librarian Problems, such as:

Someone tries to check out a reference book

library ink

The cliché of the timid, marm-ish librarian is such an outdated myth. Today's librarians are pretty hard core, superlatively awesome people.

And the Mental Floss Blog has put together an impressive collection of 11 Amazing Librarian Tattoos.

Hells yeah.  That's a card catalog.

And this is the dewey decimal number for her section as a Children's Librarian:

A little more searching has revealed that there is even a Tumblr blog dedicated to Tattooed Librarians and Archivists.

I particularly dig this one:

checked out

Many of you know I have a Libary Science degree but do not work in a library.  This would be my inner dialog to anyone checking out Fifty Shades of Grey.



except for the date part.

i'm more of a specialist

although most librarians are generalists, we can specialize.

Unshelved

Is this Spanish Inquisition in the History section or Religion?

In case you missed it, California districts, the Los Angeles Unified School District in particular, is firing as many librarians as they can legally get away with. Because librarians aren't essential to an educational system? This is appalling.

The disgraceful interrogation of L.A. school librarians (LA Times)
California Hands Out Scores of Pink Slips to School Librarians (School Library Journal)

On the topic, this just sent to me today by Alert First Girlfriend From Childhood Jessica:

Seth's Blog: The Future of the Library—in which he states his case that in the digital age, librarians are increasingly essential, not less so.

See other insulting library news.

For all my library peeps

Someone called this "a blond joke for intellectuals."

I am reminded of the Sesame Street sketch where Cookie Monster visits the library and keeps asking for a box of cookies, which was comedy and educational genius.

Via Alert reader Jeff Javits.

Update: Oh Goodness! The Cookie Monster bit is on YouTube! Happy dance!

MLIS GAGA

For my fellow MLIS graduates and librarians everywhere, a little nerd fun from U-Dub's I-School.



Can't use my, can't use my, can't use my catalog
(don't forget the databases)

playing by the rules

job hunting, but finding grubs

filing away

I've been doing lots of boring paperwork and filing today.

I keep thinking of an exchange between Xander and Giles on Buffy.
(Paraphrased)

Giles: How's that coming?
Xander: It would go a lot faster but I can't figure out your crazy librarian filing system.
Giles: My system? It's the alphabet.
Xander: Oh hey.

open shelves

and you thought that the late fees would kill you

Copyfight!

I haven't posted on copyright, censorship, or intellectual freedom issues here in a while, but the issue is still important to me. And I thank the good people putting up the good fight-- like the folks at BoingBoing and the EFF.

From Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, a strong yet succinct expression of why this is important:

The Internet is a system for efficiently making copies between computers. Whereas a conversation in your kitchen involves mere perturbations of air by noise, the same conversation on the net involves making thousands of copies. Every time you press a key, the keypress is copied several times on your computer, then copied into your modem, then copied onto a series of routers, thence (often) to a server, which may make hundreds of copies both ephemeral and long-term, and then to the other party(ies) to the conversation, where dozens more copies might be made.

Copyright law valorizes copying as a rare and noteworthy event. On the Internet, copying is automatic, massive, instantaneous, free, and constant. Clip a Dilbert cartoon and stick it on your office door and you're not violating copyright. Take a picture of your office door and put it on your homepage so that the same co-workers can see it, and you've violated copyright law, and since copyright law treats copying as such a rarified activity, it assesses penalties that run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars for each act of infringement.

There's a word for all the stuff we do with creative works — all the conversing, retelling, singing, acting out, drawing, and thinking: we call it culture.

Culture's old. It's older than copyright.

See his full column: Why I Copyfight.

His daughter draws good

even if he does say so himself.

Oh, but apparently he can't say so in a professional capacity.

Librarian fined and censured for saying nice things about his daughter's illustrations

Asinine in action.

Hi, My name is Darien.

And I'm here to help.

from The Comsumerist:

7 Ways Your Public Library Can Help You During A Bad Economy

viva la revolution!

We are under attack more than ever before. The United States government continues to take away more freedoms from its citizenry than any terrorist or axis of evil ever could. Soon, we'll have no civil liberties left. Privacy rights are almost gone (see also, FISA).

It's time for a revolution.

And who's leading the charge?

The American Library Association.

Another reason to flove librarians.

The "ALA's new privacy rights initiative is intended to inspire library patrons to stand with librarians as they fight to usher in privacy standards in the digital age."

ALA Privacy Initiative Concept Paper: Rallying Americans for the Right to Information Privacy (PDF)

Check out the videos too, including speakers from Wired, BoingBoing, and others.