Emily Lloyd, librarian and poet (and all around nice person), made this rockin’ gif. It won’t start rockin’ until you click it. Thanks, Emily!

The Library Card Project at the American Craft Council has yielded some lovely things, but I had to take down the image I linked to them because they don’t allow re-posting of images. They do allow me to link, so I’ve linked from their name.

This isn’t the first time artists have used library materials, of course — Giselle Restrepo has worked with library check-out cards (see image at left), and Alice Walsh uses library cards in her book work, to name just a couple of other practitioners. Thanks, Kathleen Kirk!

Scary AND hilarious video and event at Lane Library, Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin. I wonder if we should do this at Tutt Library. Thanks, David Graham!

In the spring of 2013, Special Collections purchased two 16th century German books: Johann Schradin’s Expostulation (Augsburg, 1546) and David Chytraeus’s Historia der Augspurgischen Confession (Rostock, 1576).

According to Blackwell Books in London (the dealer who sold us these books), the Expostulation is a poem about Ariovistus, Arminius, Barbarossa, and Georg von Frundsberg visiting the author in a dream. Perhaps of interest to book studies folks, two of its pages didn’t print properly and someone added the missing text in manuscript. This image shows the manuscript text on the verso of leaf 9.

The Chytraeus has a contemporary pigskin binding with working clasps. A history of the Augsburg Confession, the text was translated into many languages and frequently reprinted after it first appeared in 1576. Our copy has marginalia from at least one previous owner and a rebacked spine.

The Skokie Public Library in Skokie, Illinois is currently using this image as its cover photo on Facebook. The image is part of the superhuman energy attacks photo trend. Thanks, Steve Lawson!

If you’re on Facebook, you may see a lot of red squares with equal signs on ’em today. As you probably know, they symbolize support of gay marriage. Of course, several variations have appeared, including one with matzah crackers and a Mark Rothko version. Emily Lloyd has created two library card versions. Thanks, Emily Lloyd and Kathleen Kirk!

Here’s an excellent short piece on the library and librarian in Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones, with a link to a ridiculously detailed video about the Jocasta Nu action figure. (Sample quote: “This [light saber hilt] does have the little hook on the end of it where it could have possibly attached to a belt, but she doesn’t have the little hole in the side so she can’t attach it to her belt…”)

Jennifer, author of the piece, rightly complains about the poor quality of the reference interview between Jocasta Nu and Obi-Wan.  She holds herself back from making a fuss about the fact that the library shelves appear to be filled with bands of light, sooo futuristic except that, apparently, you have to go to the library in order to access these digital texts.

Thanks, Daniel M. Shapiro!

A bit late for Valentine’s Day, but here are two library shenaniganish valentines making the rounds on Facebook. The Meow Kapow shop on Etsy is behind at least one of these, possibly both.

Mama Scout has some fantastic ideas here. I especially like the idea of the Kind Bomb in the library. Some of these ideas are more shenaniganish than others, of course. “Take a present to the librarians” is a nice one! Thanks, Heather McHale, for this one.

Man, I wish I could have seen this. It took place on Tuesday, February 12, at 8:30 p.m., and lasted 3 minutes and 16 seconds, the duration of the song “The Harlem Shake” by Baauer (2013, more information here).

The UT-Austin library also took part in this meme:

Thanks, Steve Lawson and Joan Petit!