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So, I'll post more about this once I've got all of my 'i's dotted and 't's crossed, but...

...HERE'S A SNEAK PEEK AT MY LIBRARY'S FIRST BIG SUMMER READING PROGRAM!:

Reddit thread: Does anyone else get patrons who try to censor the library?

...I found these two gems.

This one, which looks like it should actually be titled VAMPIRES ON ICE #3: HI-CUT OR GO HOME:

And this one, which made me laugh so hard that I cried. (Literally. I couldn't even talk, I was laughing so hard. Rather than try to explain myself, I just threw it across the room to the woman who was sorting books with me. Happily, she's already WELL AWARE of my crazy, so it didn't even faze her.)

I don't even know why I find it so hilarious. I think it's the look on his face:

So that's what's going on here today.

UNICORN BARF.

Josh has just informed me that he wants to make Pegasus Airlines barf bags to package it in.

Good times.

From Smithsonian's Air & Space Magazine:

This paper airplane—the Tumblewing—is a type a walkalong glider. The authors note that it’s designed to fall steadily forward and down, in a spiral. If you walk too fast, the Tumblewing will fly over your shoulder; if you walk too slowly, it will fall to the ground. So flying it takes a bit of practice. Would Orville and Wilbur have headed back to the bicycle shack if their first attempt failed?!? No!

VERDICT: It took us a couple of practice sessions to get the hang of the Tumblewing. Our first attempt fizzled because we used the wrong size cardboard. (Also, our boss told us to get back to work.) With the correct size cardboard, it was much easier to keep the Tumblewing aloft, and keeping it in sustained flight was just a matter of practicing. 

From the YALSA blog:

In conjunction with National Library Legislative Day, YALSA has created an online campaign to raise awareness of the important role libraries play in helping teens succeed in school and prepare for careers.  We need your help in getting the word out about it!  We are using a platform called Thunderclap to flood Twitter and Facebook with our ‘take action to support teen literacy & libraries’ message.  The Thunderclap allows people to pledge a Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook message that is unleashed at the same time.  It’s completely safe and will automatically post exactly one message on your behalf at 11am, eastern, on May 6th.

Click on through for more info.

A young artist forgot to take this home, and as it is pretty much THE MOST AMAZING PICTURE EVER, I feel the need to share:

She drew horseshoes, even!

Later in the day, the picture spawned a debate about whether the winged horses were "horse angels" or pegasi. (I'm in the pegasi contingent, NATURALLY.)

OBVIOUSLY, IT NOW HAS A PLACE OF HONOR ON THE LIBRARY'S ARTWORK BULLETIN BOARD.

(Yes, OF COURSE we have an artwork bulletin board.)

Since I was super-popular in high school*, I spent a lot of time hanging out at the Maine State Library.

I did a lot of browsing and reading and so on, but because of this story—which broke when I was a freshman—I also spent a good amount of time just staring at the ceiling:

In the fall of 1991, employees at the Maine State Library in Augusta wondered if there was a ghost among the aisles.  Odd things, like flashlights, extension cords, and food from the break room refrigerator (mainly pudding cups), were disappearing on a daily basis. At first, security thought the culprits could be some of the workers hired to remove asbestos from the building. But their suspicions changed when, overnight, two refrigerators and a candy machine were nearly cleaned out, and a handwritten note of apology was left behind. As the thefts continued without any signs of a break-in, it became clear that someone was living in the library. 

It's so appealing to the Claudia Kincaid in me.

_________________________________

*AHAHAHAHAHAHA, just kidding.

Quiz: Which Dewey Decimal Category Are You?

I got the 000's, which is pretty dead on the money: Generalities! You have a passion for general knowledge and information. You love locating information in books, reference works, and on the computer. You also enjoy keeping up to date with current events. Let's face it, information is your life! And you love it!

You?

From the Guardian:

Together with the American Library Association, he is therefore setting up a new $3,000 (£1,800) award, The Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced With Adversity. "The Snicket prize will remind readers everywhere of the joyous importance of librarians and the trouble that is all too frequently unleashed upon them," said Snicket, who is funding the prize from his own "disreputable gains".

"This seems like a better way to channel money to librarians than my previous strategy, which was incurring exorbitant late fees," said the author. The winner will also receive "an odd, symbolic object" from Snicket's "private stash", he said, "as well as a certificate, which may or may not be suitable for framing".

Heh.

As I do really enjoy Daniel Handler's shenanigans, I really should give the Series of Unfortunate Events another chance.

SIGGGGGGGGGGGGH. And also GAAAG. I'm not going to go into the whole boy books/girl books/let's please stop assigning genders to books because HOLY COW and also YEESH:

But, as I'm sure you know, it's not all that unusual to find books marketed like that NOW, let alone in the early '90s, so no, that's not the weird aspect of this find.

Here's the back cover:

AND NOW, THE FRONT COVER (AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, THE AUTHOR REVEAL):

I wonder if this is where his horror career began. I mean, this premise kind of already has him halfway there, right? Just turn Ernie into a soul-sucking demon or make those twins into evil replicants or make the couch carnivorous, and BAM: instant Goosebumps title.

Anyway, I'm fascinated. So I'll take it home and let you know how it goes.

Sadly, no.

But happily, I'm:

• Wearing my pajamas
• On my couch
• Drinking a cup of tea
• With a cat on my lap
• Waiting for the 2014 ALA Youth Media Awards to start streaming

OOO! Five minute warning!

This month's theme was SPACE!

Even though I suspect that this patron's creations were unrelated, I love the possibility that she might have been imagining a 'bridge' on a space ship as a 'bridge' between land masses. So awesome. And, MAN, I am going to have to keep an eye out for more Lego flames, because HOLY COW THEY ARE POPULAR:

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. I love that the astronaut is already floating off of his seat:

I can't wait for next month. SO MUCH FUN, GUYS.

Today, I held the library's first Lego Club.

HUGE SUCCESS.

Also, a patron brought me chocolate-covered bacon.

CHOCOLATE-COVERED BACON.

And finally, somehow the bathroom door got locked from the inside with no one in it, and like a boss, I figured out how to open it.

LIKE A BOSS.

Now, Josh is making me a grilled cheese.

GRILLED CHEESE.

And I'm going to eat it while drinking a Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye.

RUTHLESS RYE.

While watching an Archer rerun.

ARCHER.

I may have posted this link before, but it's a good one, so I don't mind repeating myself.

From the collection description:

What if the #savelibraries campaign had taken place between 1914-18? Then I expanded that out to World War 2 posters as well.

These are my two favorites, but there are loads more at flickr!

(Via Book Patrol)

From Diamond Bookshelf:

There are a couple of options for libraries who would like to hand out comics for Free Comic Book Day:

The first option is to partner with a local comic shop. If you don’t have a shop in mind or aren't sure which shops are in your area, see the Comic Shop Partners page on this site, which will direct you to the Diamond Comics' Comic Shop Locator Service and explain our School & Library Partner icon.

For detailed tips on finding or approaching a shop for potential partnership, see our How to Work with Your Local Comic Shop article which was published in the BookShelf print magazine issue #14.

If you're looking to order Free Comic Book Day comics from a shop, it's important to keep in mind that retailers order their FCBD issues and promotional items in January, so the sooner you can contact them and let them know what you’re looking for, the better.

(via Joe)

...and, among other things, I found THIS TREASURE:

"Jennifer, 12, was not getting along well with her parents. She felt that they were too strict. In order to be free of their rules, Jennifer turned to drugs."

From the British Library's Digital Scholarship blog:

We have released over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsoft who then generously gifted the scanned images to us, allowing us to release them back into the Public Domain.

From the Des Moines Register:

Clive [Iowa] is merging its parks and recreation and library operations into a single department called leisure services.

...

The decision to merge the departments coincides with the retirement of library director Vicki Hibbert in January and the pending retirement next month of Kelly Canfield, the city’s first and only parks and recreation director. Canfield was hired in 1984.

...

The position does not require exhaustive knowledge or experience in library and parks and recreation activities, although Seaman possesses plenty in the realm of recreation, city staff said.

Am I being a HUGE fuddy-duddy, or does that sound like a TERRIBLE idea? I mean, the idea that a library is purely for leisure makes me cringe, and then the idea of the head honcho not being required to, you know, have library experience... it just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. But we'll see, I guess.

And then, from The Atlantic (via Chrissy):

The National Library of Norway is planning to digitize all the books by the mid 2020s. 

Yes. All. The. Books. In Norwegian, at least. Hundreds of thousands of them. Every book in the library's holdings.

By law, "all published content, in all media, [must] be deposited with the National Library of Norway," so when the library is finished scanning, the entire record of a people's language and literature will be machine-readable and sitting in whatever we call the cloud in 15 years.

Just... WOW.

At Pew's Internet & American Life Project:

Despite the fact that libraries are easily available to most, there are large numbers of Americans who say they are not sure about all the services libraries offer. Echoing the findings of our 2012 survey, 23% of those who have ever used a public library said they feel like they know all or most of the service and programs their library offers, while a plurality (47%) said that they know some of what it offers. About one in five (20%) say they don’t know very much about what is offered, and 10% say they know “nothing at all.”

I haven't read the whole thing yet, but wanted to pass along the link anyway!

Okay, so I found this Disney Babies series.

It's mostly comprised of titles like this:

Colors, ABCs, 123s, etc., etc.

You get the idea, right?

Wrong:

SUCH A STRANGE CHOICE, TITLE-WISE.

For a split-second, I thought that a library school had teamed up with Disney to create some sort of massively nerdy pamphlet. But, no. It's just a four-page book about putting things in order. For babies. CALLED SEQUENCING & CLASSIFYING.

If the other books had had adult-ish titles, I probably wouldn't have even noticed.

The Book to Art Club launched this September, and is an extension of the Library as Incubator Project. Its aim is "to explore literature through discussion and hands-on creative projects".

So far, they've covered The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Art Forger, The Language of Flowers, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, and this month, they're working with John Green's Paper Towns. 

It's a really cool concept, not just connecting art to books, but CREATING art that's inspired by books. Anyway, it's a cool website & a good resource, and a lot of the basic ideas could be easily incorporated into book groups (or classrooms), regardless of age level.

(I mean, I think a lot of storytimes already incorporate themed crafts, as do book groups for younger readers. And way back when, I always did a craft with my high school book group, too, but somewhere along the way, I stopped. I'll have to Bring It Back when I get a high school book group up and running at my new library.)

This video is about a specific situation in Toronto, but much of what it says could be applied to pretty much any other public library, anywhere:

(via Book Patrol)