Saturday, April 18, 2009

Library Humor!

This post will be a bit on the lighter side.


Well, one thing's for sure...if you're going to work in a library and keep your sanity, you have to maintain at least some level of humor. Luckily, the people I work with do, although this hasn't always been the case. I remember when I was still in the hotel business, there were people that would rather torture others including themselves than step back and take a less serious look at things.
OK, enough rambling and on to today's post. I don't know why there hasn't been a sitcom set in a library; I for one think there is enough material to keep it going for many seasons! Well actually, there was a short-lived series on Australian TV called "The Librarians" two years ago. Unfortunately it's unavailable on DVD here in the States. For those interested, here is a link to the website.
My first introduction to library humor was Will Manley's column in American Libraries. If you do not have a subscription to this journal, you can always go into a database, such as MasterFile Premier and do a search. He has also written quite a few books of which "Unprofessional Behavior: Confessions of a Public Librarian" is my favorite.

Hungry for more, I did a web search and came across this group from Australia (apparently they have a better sense of humor than us!) called Warrior Librarians. This is the old website but a new blog was started last year and can be found here. They also published a book which I ILL'd back in 2005. Had some humorous bits, but then I stumbled across the now almost legendary comic strip "Unshelved". This also spawned a few books. The strip was most effective when it dealt with everyday going-ons in the library, but often it got just downright silly.

Only a few days I was introduced to "Shelf Check", an online comic by a librarian in Minneapolis. Like "Dilbert" it's hit-and-miss, but when it hits home, it works beautifully. Here's a couple of frames as an example (just click on them) >>>





Here is another good resource of miscellaneous links >>> http://www.librarysupportstaff.com/libhumor.html

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Lexile Framework for Reading

Lexile is similar in approach to the accelerated reading lists we all familiar with, but includes many more selections (tens of thousands of books and tens of millions of articles according to the website) and it extends all the way to college level. I have only briefly looked over this website, but it looks like a very valuable tool. This website was brought to my attention by DeAnna Teske-Espinoza. Thank you very much for this suggestion!

http://www.lexile.com/