Artist Bill Domonkos uses archival images in the public domain to make seriously spooky animated gifs.
Thanks, Dina Wood!
Happy Halloween, everybody!
archival shenanigans
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Monthly Archives: October 2016
self-checkout and more
BookBub provides a nice gathering-up of library shenanigans by librarians, saying “Anyone who has spent a lot of time in libraries knows that the books aren’t the only reason to keep going back. Librarians are some of the most unique, intelligent, and clever people you’ll meet.”
My personal favorite is the self-checkout mirror. Thanks, Amy Shuffelton!
Charlie Jane Anders in our reading room
Last month, science fiction author and io9 founder Charlie Jane Anders visited Colorado College as part of our Visiting Writers series. Writers usually meet with students in CC fiction and poetry classes, and Anders was no exception. This time, though, we held the student session in Special Collections, so that we could look at rare and valuable science fiction publications with her.
It was a blast. I put out an 1869 edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a first edition of George Orwell’s 1984, an Arion Press edition of H.G. Wells’s Tono-Bungay, issues of SF zines such as Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Pandora, pulp paperbacks of Slaughterhouse-Five and Doctor Who, a 17th century history of monsters, and more. We spent a happy hour or so talking about reading and writing science fiction, and as I said goodbye and gathered up the books from the tables I realized it was the first time I’d ever had all my department’s science fiction stuff in front of me at the same time. Glorious!
(Anders is standing in front of a humongous painting by Sandy Kinnee, on loan to the library for one year while we renovate.)
John Latham’s “Art and Culture”
My colleague Diane Westerfield found a library shenanigan in a scholarly article!
“The Library in Art’s Crosshairs” by Henry Pisciotta. Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, v. 35 no. 1, Spring 2016.
“British artist John Latham, while teaching at St. Martin’s School of Art in 1966, checked out a copy of Greenberg’s respected book [Art and Culture] from his school’s library and took it to an evening gathering of friends and students, where the book’s pages were removed and chewed, by a number of participants, and spat into a jar. Later Latham, keenly interested in science, performed a series of chemical transformations on the remains, slowly reducing them to a goo, which he sealed into a glass vial. Overdue notices were received from the library, so Latham eventually attempted to return the book to the librarian in its modified state. This offer was refused. Latham’s teaching contract was not renewed. A few years later, Latham fashioned a carrying case for the vial, some of the lab apparatus, and the library notices, and today the assemblage is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.”
The resulting artwork, titled, like the original book, “Art and Culture,” is not currently on view at MoMA, but you can see more information about it here.