Category Archives: shenanigans

shenanigan involving Nabokov’s galoshes

Marcia was at Cornell University in the late 1950s, when Vladimir Nabokov was teaching there. In the video below, she relates a story involving his galoshes. Visuals by Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.

Why does this count as a library shenanigan? Jonathan and I are glad you asked. As this Google Books screen-grab shows, Goldwin Smith Hall contained a small reference library in 1920.

That takes care of the “library” part. How is it a shenanigan? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a sort of accidental shenanigan? Don’t quibble.

Illusion of nudity

Or maybe real nudity. The crazy kids in at Thornton Community College in Harvey, Illinois included this photograph in their yearbook for 1970. A nude or scantily-clad young lady protects her modesty by posing behind library shelves with carefully-placed books. I certainly hope you put all the books back where they were supposed to be, yearbook people!

caldron1970sscy_0091

Thanks, Craig Conley!

CC students build the library in Minecraft!

Colorado College students, sent home at Spring Break to help stop the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), are recreating the whole campus virtually in Minecraft! Yes! They are! And Tutt Library is already built!

Eliza Merrall, Katie Wang, Arity Sherwood, Patrick McGinnis, and Daniel Turevski are the freaking AWESOME ARTIST-GENIUSES who started up the project:

thumbnail_Minecraft

They soon learned that incoming first year students, members of the class of 2024, had a similar idea:

thumbnail_Minecraft 1

The Merrall et. al. version of Tutt Library is amazingly detailed and accurate. Here’s the south entrance, with the statue of Chas, in real life:

Tutt-Library-entrance

and in Minecraft:

chas

Even the interiors are detailed and accurate. At least one librarian — we’re not saying who — has made sure his office has correct signage.

steveoffice

Thank you, CC minecrafters, for brightening up all of our quarantines and making us miss each other even more than before!

 

ADDITION, April 6: two draft images from the project:

 

(Papercut is the unfortunately-named print service the CC library uses)

Screen Shot 2020-04-03 at 6.30.21 PM

 

a torch! and a bat!

Screen Shot 2020-04-03 at 6.28.31 PM