LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

I don't know everything about librarians, but I do know that some of them are into tattoos. And by "into tattoos" I mean that they have ink work that would make Henry Rollins pause for admiration.

I can't get a tattoo (long story, it has to to with genetic bleeding problems and original sin) but if I could, I'd probably get something like those pictured in this gallery of literary tattoos. Though I wouldn't get the Vonnegut quote from Slaughterhouse Five. I'd be more inclined to get "Hi Ho" from Slapstick.

I'd like to get a tattoo over my whole body of me, but taller. ~Stephen Wright

June is when many gay and lesbian Americans celebrate their sexuality. In recognition of Gay Pride Month, Loriene Roy, President of the American Library Association tells listeners about books that highlight the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender experience. Read &/or Listen at NPR.

In the world of broadcast news, it's normally a given courtesy that, when a well known news personality dies, the station they worked for will be the first to break the news after the family has been notified. It's one of the unwritten rules of journalism.

In the case of beloved NBC newsman Tim Russert, Twitter scooped the massive network on the big story.

Turns out that a minor lackey at the station heard the news and, assuming it was public knowledge, edited Russert's Wikipedia page to reflect the death. Someone at the station caught it, which makes me wonder who they pay to watch Wikipedia, and changed it back some eleven minutes later.

Too late.

By the time they made the changes, the story was already out on Twitter.

Andrew Carnegie funded construction of 2,500 libraries in the United States, Britain and Ireland

Andrew Carnegie was a small man who wore stovepipe hats and elevating shoes to seem taller. Some made light of that, but not for long.

Carnegie became a big man in the American Industrial Revolution, building steel mills in Pittsburgh. He rolled out train tracks and girders for bridges and buildings and plate armor and barrel steel for battleships.

The little man born of impoverished parents in a Scottish knitting town was America's first titan of industry. By age 26, he was wildly rich and on his way to amassing a fortune that today would be tens of billions.

Full article at CantonRep.com

It works like a conventional library. Tables and chairs are set out for study. Librarians bustle purposefully, staffing the checkout desk.

Except these aren't books on loan. They're people.

Welcome to the Living Library. Here, you borrow individuals who represent stereotypes that often are the target of prejudice or hatred.

Full story in the Christian Science Monitor

A little history lesson for those out there in library land who don't know who Dr. Douglas Engelbart is. Engelbart gave the world a couple things that we, as library professionals, use every day. He invented a small device capable of positioning a cursor in an X-Y display environment. We call such a device a computer mouse. He also created an interesting technology that allowed the linkage of information to a given word displayed on a computer screen, in other words, hypertext.

Then there's his idea that we'd call Windows, the video conferencing idea, his notion about e-mail, and something called copy and paste.

He displayed and explained these ideas at a demonstration in 1968 which came to be called "The Mother of All Demos." Watch the video over at Google and see how our world changed forever.

From The Enquirer in Cincinnati:

"In a case that has befuddled police officials, a Columbus man has been charged with crawling under a table at a library on University of Cincinnati’s campus, spraying a substance from a syringe on a woman’s shoes and then photographing them."

Opinion piece in the NZ Herald... Tracey Barnett: Thank heavens for the book people who show the way
"The Writers and Readers Festival reminded me that I had forgotten something important. It's not enough to know that wondrous ideas are out there; it's the luck of having the right stewards to navigate. My caped crusader behind that big wooden librarian's desk was right. Maybe that's part of "the adventure you will never forget until the day you die" - the people who show you the way."

Watch this video at YouTube and try telling me that people who the believe American right wing, propagandist smear machine are not willing dupes and useful idiots.

Radio Host Kevin James Walks into a Smackdown

This babble-mouth dumbass spewing his verbal diarrhea is a prime example of the covert fanaticism that is the driving force behind the stupidly arrogant imperialism of the American right and its political tool, the Republican Party.

And that headline is imprecise, by the way. James didn't walk into any smackdown at all, he called it down upon himself of his own free will and volition. In fact he went out of his way to expose himself as the ignoramus and lying trash-bag that he is.

See a commentary on the whole ugly episode at this web journal.

Sometimes I say to myself, "Blake, why not work in a public library?" Sometimes the answer is clear... Knife-wielding man at library: man held a knife to his throat and threatened to kill himself this morning at the Batavia Branch of the Clermont County Public Library. Police subdued him without injury to anyone, a library official said.

Four employees and three other patrons – including a woman with a small child – were in the library at 180 S. Third St. at the time, said Dave Mezack, interim director of the 10-library system.