How to use this Page

The weeds have overtaken my garden.  The rabbits are eating my peas.  Daily, I fight creeping clutter and still, while I sleep, chaos slinks ever nearer.  AAAAAAHHHH!!!!

Gene and Bill - over at Unshelved - have a GREAT contest for libraries.  Check it out.  Send your funny or amazing or creepy library stories to the publisher and your library could win 4 iPads for circulation.  (Among the staff is what I'm thinking but....)

Tweet

This girl is reading the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act out loud. [Act of Law]

Why no smoking signs actually ENCOURAGE smokers to light up [Daily Mail]

Think there’s no point in keeping print books around? I respectfully disagree. [Unshelved]

Here are some kitties crashing into each other. [YouTube]

100,000 staples arranged over 40 hours and other awesome staple art [NextWeb]

What does your literary tote bag say about you? [Vol1Brooklyn]

QUIZ: Can you tell Arial from Helvetica? [Ironicsans]

INFOGRAPHIC: The hardest languages to learn [Column Five]

This article on “Asian-American overachievers” is certainly creating a stir. [NYMag]

Incredible photos of the Great Flood of 1927 [Buzzfeed]

Librarian Eduardo Zepeda (pictured) won $20,000 worth of graphic novels and prizes in the Great Graphic Novel Library Giveaway at the Texas Library Association’s (TLA) annual conference.

Zepeda’s library, the Weslaco Public Library, will be endowed with 700 graphic novels, fixtures, and furniture.

Here’s more from the press release: “The Great Graphic Novel Library Giveaway was open to Texas public and school librarians. Twenty semifinalists were selected on Thursday evening, and the winning librarian was chosen on Friday morning at 9:30 a.m. Central time by Gene Ambaum, librarian and cocreator of the online comic strip Unshelved.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A few folks have been buzzing about the proposal over on Stack Exchange to build a stack overflow-type site for library Q&A stuff. I was wondering about this, since we already have Unshelved Answers. A little Googling and I figured out that the software they’re using won’t be available to them after 4/11 [irony!], so they’re trying to get people together to support a hosted model. Go vote!

I’ve been working on keeping my inbox pretty well empty which has meant no linkhoarding this week. Here are a few things worth pointing out that I’ve kept around.

• Look what this library found in their bookdrop! [via unshelved]
• OPACs, Open Source and Patron Perceptions: a look at what happens (and what can happen) when open source software is a library’s public face. A student paper from Elyssa Kroski’s LIBR 287 class.
• Seeking chapters for a new edited collection entitled Beyond Article 19: Libraries and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Can you help out?
• The Effing Librarian has put together a book. Shopping season is over, but look at that sunny yellow cover!

The Unshelved Pimp My Bookcart winners are up and available for the looking. Unlike the Bookcart Drill Teams where bookcarts have to have a semblance of structural integrity, some of these fanciful creations seem to have almost no functionality at all. See all the entrants here. My faves: Food for Thought (and handsome book vendor), Jetson’s Skypad Apartments, Spookmobile, and Research Help Five Cents!

You know you have come into your own when you are featured in a comic strip!


Thanks to Unshelved for the good laugh this morning.

The Unshelved Guide to BEA (warning, it's a PDF.)

I'll be at BEA, how about you?

Unshelved, my favorite daily comic strip set in a public library is creating a READ poster for ALA.