Three libraries in the ImagineIF library system in Montana are now offering patrons the opportunity to try weaving on a loom. As Helen Carter Bergner put it on Facebook, “libraries are getting 3D printers … why not looms?” I agree! If we’re going to offer maker spaces and technologies, let’s offer all kinds!
I love that this happened. It’s not exactly a library shenanigan, but it’s library-related. Well done, David Mazières and Eddie Kohler! They submitted a sham paper (full of swears!) to a sham journal in 2005 to make a point (and make a lot of people laugh).
Recently, another scholar, Peter Vamplew, sent the same sham paper to a different sham journal and received an acceptance (contingent on receipt of $150). The journal even sent a sham “reviewer report,” re-posted in full at Scholarly Open Access. Apparently, the sham paper is “excellent”!
Thanks, Steve Lawson and io9 (from whom I stole the headline).
Special Collections recently purchased an “indestructible” 19th century edition of Mother Goose, Mother Goose’s Melodies: containing all that have ever come to light of her memorable writings. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1879. What makes it indestructible, you ask? It’s printed on coated linen, so the book is chewable, droolable-on, and unrippable. (If you click the image on the right, you’ll see that the page is made of cloth.)
This isn’t the first “indestructible” edition ever published. The London firm Addey & Co. advertised its “Indestructible Books for Children” printed on “cloth expressly prepared” as early as 1856 (see the ads in the back of George Measom’s Light from the East). American firms also published “indestructible” books around this same period.
While some might argue that all books should be indestructible, it seems particularly useful in a book for young children. Most students at Colorado College are familiar with cloth or plastic books from their own childhoods, so we’re guessing it won’t take them long to figure out why a publisher might print Mother Goose this way. If they can’t figure it out, I guess the curator could give them a hint by nibbling on the front cover.
“Bobby Lucelee: A Very Silly Play for Kids” is available in PDF format here from author, playwright, and cartoonist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt. It calls for six actors and is, indeed, quite silly.
Sample dialog:
BARRY: Who’s Bobby Lucelee?
LIBRARIAN A-M: Well, duh, that’s what we’re all trying to find out!
LIBRARIAN N-Z: Psst . . . librarians aren’t supposed to say “duh”.
(Librarian A-M shushes Librarian N-Z.)
LIBRARIAN N-Z (To the audience): Who can think of some ways to find out who Bobby Lucelee is?
(Ad lib as audience members make suggestions.)
BARRY (To Librarians): Where are the books on stamp collecting? I need to get started on my homework.
CHRIS: Stamp collecting? I thought the assignment was on Italian cooking.
LIBRARIAN A-M: I thought it was on Bobby Lucelee.
TERRY, CHRIS, BARRY: Shh!
Thanks, Jonathan Caws-Elwitt, and I hope anyone who performs the play will send a video to Library Shenanigans!
(p.s., I know the cartoon illustration has nothing to do with libraries or the play, but I loved it so much I couldn’t resist using it.)
Staff of the Nashville Public Library recorded a library-centered version of the Meghan Trainor earworm. Thanks, Steve Lawson!