“Sad and Useless” recently posted twenty terrific library shenanigans, some of which have already appeared here. New ones include: the invisible book display (pictured), Batman Returns His Books to the Library, Books for Tall People, and more. Thanks, Bruce Bentzman!
We recently acquired a photograph album showing a large farming and ranching family in Estes Park, Colorado, ca. 1905-1915. We know the names of three brothers: Stuart, Gordon, and Charles Mace. Also pictured in the album are the wives and children of the Maces.
People from 100 years ago … they’re just like us!
They go for horsey rides!
They like cute bunnies!
When they take a bath in a bucket, they get their picture taken!
They … oh, no. Don’t do THAT…
Hat tip to Us Magazine’s Stars: They’re Just Like Us
“Museums around the world are sending each other solicited duck pics … The world may be a hellscape of pain and suffering but museums trying to outdo each other with pictures of ducks makes it a little more tolerable.” I agree. Thanks, Suzie DeGrasse!
The Gallaudet University Library Deaf Collections & Archives shared these photos on Facebook November 29, 2018, saying: “Throwback Thursday: The Library Prank. On a January morning in 1940, students and faculty discovered that pranksters had entered the library in College Hall (now the President’s Office) during the night and turned all the books around so their spines faced the wall. The stunt must have required multiple people, since there were too many books for one person to do alone. However, despite rumors over the years, no one ever came forward and admitted they were the ones behind this prank — and since it was almost 80 years ago, the original pranksters have probably taken the secret with them. The first photo shows the library as it was initially discovered, with all the books reversed and several students and faculty milling around. The second and third photos show students who were enlisted to clean up the mess and put the books back in proper order.”
Oh mah gahd, Starr Lackawanna, the librarian who appears in Daniel Pinkwater’s novels The Artsy-Smartsy Club and Looking for Bobowicz, is based on a real person, Starr LaTronica, currently of Brattleboro, Vermont! Which, come to think of it, totally sounds like a place in a Pinkwater book, alongside Hoboken and Hogboro.
Thanks, Jonathan Caws-Elwitt!
Marian Engel’s novel Bear, first published in 1976, is about a love affair between a librarian and a bear.
Yes it is.
If you would like to read it, it may be available in a library near you.
Thanks, Daniel M. Shapiro.
We invite you to enjoy a new mini-exhibition in the display case in the garden level of Tutt Library: Ten Great Reads from the Feminist Lesbian Sci-Fi Boom of the 1970s: Sandra Gail Lambert Picks Her Favorites from an Unsung Genre.
Read Lambert’s article here: https://lithub.com/10-great-reads-from-the-feminist-lesbian-sci-fi-boom-of-the-1970s/
The Colorado College library now has every book mentioned in this article. Some have truly fantastic pulp paperback covers. Here’s an example:
The Colorado College LGBT Oral History Project is now up and running in Digital CC!
The project includes audio recordings of interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and allied Colorado College faculty, staff, and alumni, along with Colorado Springs community participants. The interviews were done between January 2011 and May 2012. The founding director of the project was Andrew Wallace, CC class of 2012.
Participants in the project include, in alphabetical order, Rob Adkisson (CC class of 1992), Nate Bower (CC Chemistry faculty 1977-2017), Bruce Coriell (CC Chaplain 1988-2016), Mike Edmonds (CC Dean of Students 1991-present), Heinz Geppert (CC German faculty 1991-2013, Karl Jeffries (CC class of 1991), Bruce Loeffler (CC Geology faculty 1977-1999), Eva McGeehan (co-founder of the Colorado Springs chapter of PFLAG), Ginger Morgan (CC staff 1987-2012), and Frank Mosher (CC class of 1969; CC staff 1987-present).
Subjects including: coming out, Out and About (this Colorado College organization, founded 1985, became the LGBT Alliance), Amendment 2, homophobia, discrimination, HIV and AIDS, gay rights, same-sex marriage, and the 1991 founding of the Colorado Springs chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).
We hope eventually to offer transcriptions of the interviews. Please contact Jessy Randall (jrandall@coloradocollege.edu) if you’d like to volunteer to transcribe.
ADDENDUM, 2023: see also the LGBTQ+ Oral History Project of 2022-2023.
T-rexes invade the library of the University of Texas at Austin, May 2017.
Every year at Homecoming, Special Collections holds an open house. This year our open house yielded not one but two amazing photograph donations.
Melinda Eager Poole (CC class of 1978) donated a scrapbook belonging to her grandfather, Leonard Prentice Eager. The scrapbook covers his freshman and sophomore years at CC, 1912-1914. It’s full of photographs of CC students in outdoor areas around Colorado Springs, including this one showing a dozen or so people perched on a railroad bridge, possibly the Pikes Peak Cog Rail.
David Ford (CC class of 1972) was a photographer for the Nugget during his senior year. He donated about a hundred photos from that period, including many portraits and campus scenes. Here are just two fantastic shots from his donation:
Thank you, Melinda and David — you make my job easy and fun!