Cleveland librarian John Harris is providing books outside of the Republican National Convention this week.

Thanks, Lynne Thomas!

Addendum from later the same day: here’s an image Janis Winn sent to the ALA Think Tank Facebook page, saying “Prepare to see a lot of this one, my library friends.” Thanks, Dina Wood !

The Taman Bima Microlibrary in Bandung, Indonesia was built using upcycled plastic ice cream containers, possibly LuVe Litee brand, though I’m not sure. Thanks, Terry Kennedy!

I’m not playing this [see below] and I don’t really understand how it works except that I hear Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End has a similar kind of game in it it.

Apparently, Pokémon Go players are finding creatures and other stuff in libraries all over the United States. I wonder if I could lure one into my office? I will find out.

Pokémon GO: What Do Librarians Need To Know? (School Library Journal)

‘Pokémon Go’ sends swarms of players to bookstores and libraries. But will they remember the books? (Los Angeles Times)

Everything Librarians Need To Know About Pokemon Go! (Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Shelves)

Why Pokemon Go and The Library is a perfect partnership (ALSC blog)

Local library goes viral thanks to Pokemon plans (The Island Packet)

Addendum, July 21: Change “I’m not playing this” to “I wish I could play this but my phone doesn’t have a gyroscope. My kids are playing it and so is practically everybody I know.”

A colleague was able to capture two creatures in the Special Collections area:

I ordered Joshua Hammer’s book for my library when I first read a review of it, months ago. Today a friend suggested the story of these “bad-ass” librarians as a shenanigan, and I have to agree.  Smuggling controversial manuscripts to safety is the kind of dangerous and non-goofy shenanigan librarians were kinda born to do.

Thanks, Daniel M. Shapiro!

Sarah Katherine Stengle snapped this photograph and put it on Facebook with the note “The sign on the door of the WC at the Art Museum in Jyväskylä Finland. The bathroom contained a library: loved it.”

Thanks, Emily Lloyd!

Tutt Library at Colorado College is undergoing a major renovation right now (in fact, I’m listening to the sounds of slams and crashes as I type this). Workmen cleaned out our sub-basement and found an old architectural model of our building, probably made in 1980 when the South addition was built.

As soon as we installed the model in our display case, my colleague Sarah Bogard began taking close-up photographs. I think these are lovely, and strangely poetic.

We found ourselves placing the little people in various arrangements and playing with the model like a dollhouse. Other colleagues stopped by to see what we were doing and got involved. Someone said this set-up looked like the whomping willow in the Harry Potter books:

An hour or so later, a small Pegasus appeared.

What will happen next?

Addendum, May 26, 2016:

Addenda, May 31, 2016:

I love when libraries put together oddball mini-exhibitions on obscure topics. (I guess that’s no surprise coming from the person who brought you mini-exhibitions on 19th Century Beards, Different Kinds of Paperclips, and Composition Books.) The Cambridge University Library currently has a display of their towel-related holdings in honor of Towel Day, May 25, celebrating Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Possibly my favorite sentence in the article: “The bibliography of towels is, in fact, remarkably limited.” Thanks, Lynne M. Thomas!

Being a librarian and poet, I’m always on the alert for other such, so, herewith, lists of poet-librarians, gathered using the lazyweb and from a post on the topic at In the Library with the Lead Pipe (a blog with the tagline “The murder victim? Your library assumptions. Suspects? It could have been any of us”).

Please let me know of any others who should be on this list — it’ll be an ongoing project. If you’re on the list but would prefer a different link, let me know that, too (jessyrandall@yahoo.com).

(English language)

Erinn Batykefer

Kristy Bowen

Sommer Browning

Melissa Elefthyrion Carr

Christina Davis

Erin Dorney

Sam Walter Foss

Kira Joy Frederick

Michalle Gould

Anne Haines

Josh Honn

Philip Larkin

Emily Lloyd

Michael Nicoloff

Jessy Randall

Michelle Messina Reale

Jessica Smith

Patrick Williams

(languages other than English — thank you, Amadeu Pons i Serra and the Catalan Library Association for providing most of these names)

Marià Aguiló

Nuria Amat

Apollonius of Rhodes

Zoraida Burgos

Daniel Busquets

Callimachus

Ramon Dachs

Rubén Darío

Gloria Fuertes

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Glòria Gómez de la Tia

Rosa Leveroni

Manuel Machado

Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo

Pep Molist

Leandro Fernández de Moratín

Vinyet Panyella

Joana Raspall

Martí Rosselló

Joan Salvat-Papasseit

Isabel Solsona

Antònia Torrent

Maria Verger

Addendum, December 9, 2016: Patrick Williams informs me that Josh Honn has a list of librarian poets here.

The New Hanover County Public Library in North Carolina held a contest in 2015 for clothing and accessories made from discarded library books and cassette tapes. You can view the runway show above and the full details here. You’re too late to sign up for the 2016 contest, but perhaps they’ll do it again next year. Thanks, Tom Lovell!