#✦ the librarian ✦

[stellas-starry-stories13]

Somone help im actually so mad at sega rn😭 i friggin minrolled on the "guaranteed four star" free pull and now im mad. I wish i would screen recorded it or smth so i could send it to the help desk but like wth?? It literally said. Guaranteed. False advertising??? Like ik its prolly a mistake but STILL. Is anyone else suffering with this problem??

[lakecountylibrary]

We don’t have a uniform, why do you ask?

Inspired by our friends at Rapid City Public Library (link goes to TikTok). Music only - sound not needed.

[Video Description: A librarian with glasses wearing a polo shirt and shelving books answers an unheard question from someone offscreen. His words are inaudible but the caption reads "The librarian wearing the cardigan and glasses will be able to help you." Video cuts to an information desk where four librarians wearing cardigans and glasses are working. They all turn and wave as four more librarians wearing cardigans and glasses pop out from behind the desk and wave. The librarian from the beginning walks on screen and puts on his own cardigan. And waves.]

Music credit: George Street Shuffle Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

[icarus-suraki]

So Fox News ran a story about how they think libraries are turning into drug-infested sex dens and I am shocked, shocked that I was never offered any drugs during my 15+ years working in libraries.

[nando161mando]

oops! it seems i tripped and dropped several million free books, papers, and other resources

https://annas-archive.org

https://sci-hub.se

https://z-lib.is

https://libgen.is

https://libgen.rs

https://www.pdfdrive.com

https://library.memoryoftheworld.org

https://monoskop.org/Monoskop

https://libcom.org

https://libretexts.org

http://classics.mit.edu

https://librivox.org

https://standardebooks.org

https://www.gutenberg.org

https://core.ac.uk

[booksinmythorax]

"Don't use Libby because it costs libraries too much, pirate instead" is such a weird, anti-patron, anti-author take that somehow manages to also be anti-library, in my professional librarian-ass opinion.

It's well documented that pirating books negatively affects authors directly* in a way that pirating movies or TV shows doesn't affect actors or writers, so I will likely always be anti-book piracy unless there's absolutely, positively no other option (i.e. the book simply doesn't exist outside of online archives at all, or in a particular language).

Also, yeah, Libby and Hoopla licenses are really expensive, but libraries buy them SO THAT PATRONS CAN USE THEM. If you're gonna be pissed at anybody about this shitty state of affairs, be pissed at publishing companies and continue to use Libby or Hoopla at your library so we can continue to justify having it to our funding bodies.

One of the best ways to support your library having services you like is to USE THOSE SERVICES. Yes, even if they are expensive.

*Yes, this is a blog post, but it's a blog post filled with links to news articles. If you can click one link, you can click another.

[californiastatelibrary]

[camelidae]

Listen, you’ll be fine. Just don’t forget your library card and DON’T dog-ear the pages.

[secondbeatsongs]

you will never truly know the effect you have on other people's lives

this is both a blessing and a curse

[zilmart]

"My Lord, you are coming back, aren't you?"

Insta | Twitter

[stellas-starry-stories13]

me:

[lesbxdyke]

I would like to again big up libraries as safe spaces for people of all types!

I had a psychotic episode in my local library while I was in there working and had convinced myself that I was in a bubble dimension and if I left the library I would die, and that being what had happened to the librarian because I hadn't seen them in an hour (it's a small, local library. You can see the librarians desk from where I sit to work)

Now obviously they weren't dead, they were just in the little office that I couldn't see into.

I'm also lucky enough to be a very self aware psychotic, so I reached out to my support network to make sure I got home safely. But none of them could actually get me OUT of the library and I was still absolutely certain that if I stepped off the carpet and onto the tile, I would die.

So I got up, I made my way to the desk, I found the librarian and I said "I need your help. I'm having a psychotic episode and this is what I currently believe. Could you please come out from behind your desk and stand on the tiles so I can see it won't kill me?"

And they did. They didn't shame me, or laugh, or tell me it wasn't real. They said "Yeah, that must be scary." And thanked me when I admitted I'd thought them dead and been really upset about that because I liked them.

And then stood there on the tile, while I stood on the carpet, for ten minutes while I chatted shit and tried to build up my courage to step on the tile, just in case. Including telling me that if this happened again and I needed to call someone, to disregard the usual 'don't call people in the library' rule and just do so after I promised I was going to be calling my husband the second I was on the tile so he could safely walk me home.

(& so no one worries: my husband got me home safe, and a friend came to check on me a little while later and brought me food and I'm fully Cognizant and out of it now)

I cannot imagine another place where I could approach someone and say that and not get the police or an ambulance called on me. Neither of which I needed or would have been helpful.

I cannot imagine another place where a member of staff would stand somewhere for ten minutes to make sure I felt safe enough leaving.

I cannot imagine another place where I would not only be explicitly welcomed back, but be told "If this happens again here, disregard our normal rules to take care of yourself."

I cannot imagine another place on this earth that I would feel safe enough returning to, 3 days later, after an episode like that.

Libraries are a fucking Godssend and should be protected at all costs!

[icarus-suraki]

I don't like wading into Ao3 debates, but I want to give my professional opinion on Ao3 with regard to archives vs. libraries.

I am a professional librarian (MSLS) and I have worked in both archives and public libraries and a lot of the confusion and concern I see surrounding Ao3 is a fundamental misunderstanding of How Archives Work.

An archive is a collection related to a subject. That subject is often a person but sometimes a field or concept or project. And the purpose of an archive is to keep everything. And I mean everything. I was going to say "short of biohazards" but since I know there's a sealed R. Crumb Devil Gal chocolate bar in the UNC Chapel Hill archives, we really do mean everything.

When a collection of materials--which are usually unique and original and can be photos, manuscripts, letters, recordings (audio and/or visual), notes and notebooks, objects, published books, whatever--on and/or from the subject arrive at the archive, they are examined, preserved for longevity, accessioned and cataloged (added to the archive's records), and added to the archive. You measure collections in linear feet. As in, once it's all preserved and boxed and secure, you note how many feet of shelf space it takes up. And some of y'all on Ao3 have a lot of linear feet to your name (and I'm proud of you).

This is an archive: it is designed to preserve the original materials related to a subject. That is its purpose. Archives are how we have the original scroll manuscript of On the Road, for example, or the Lomax recordings of American folksongs, or Tijuana Bibles, or James Joyce's loveletters to Nora.

Now you, a member of the public, can access some archives. Some are easier to access than others. The one I worked in was open to the public; good luck getting into the British Archives without a good reason.

So now apply this to Ao3--which is an archive both in name and in purpose. It is intended to preserve fan-created content long term. And this means everything, whether you personally like the materials or not. It is a repository for as much as possible.

And the "whether you personally like the materials or not" is important, hence why I mentioned Jim's loveletters and Tijuana Bibles in particular. (RIP Jim, you would have loved pegging.)

If it's made by fans and it exists, we should keep it to document the history and progression of fandom. That is the point. We have lost enough materials related to the subject of fans of media and we don't need to lose any more.

The fact of the matter is that Ao3 is only one facet of the OTW, which preserves other fan-related materials (convention booklets and zines, for example). Somehow Ao3, an archive on the subject of fanfiction, has been divorced from the rest of the project, mostly by way of "purity culture" and panic over "dangerous" fiction.

The fact that you can go through an archive and find interesting information is the other side of archives. No, they shouldn't be like the banker's box of old letters stuffed in my closet. Yes, they should be organized and as accessible as is appropriate for the state of the materials.

It's really, really cool to find stuff in an archive, I'm not even going to lie. I have done it before and I will do it again. And yet there are other items in an archive that I might not want or need or be interested in at all--but they're still there. That's the cataloging and accessioning: to keep up with what's there, to stay "on topic" with collecting, and to be able to find things in that archive. Bless the tag wranglers who are doing the cataloging at Ao3.

The pearl clutching seems to come from 1. the creation of "dangerous" fanworks and 2. public access to those "dangerous" fanworks. These are issues of "purity culture" and opinions on censorship and should not involve Ao3.

Ao3, under the umbrella of the OTW, is a documentation and preservation project first and foremost.

[foldingfittedsheets]

My paternal grandmother was a librarian. I only got to see that set of grandparents once a year as they lived out of state. I fondly remember summers spent at their house watching That Darn Cat and The King and I on loop, hunting for water skippers in the back creek, and reading the entirety of the Peanuts comics.

Because my grandma was a librarian she was delighted to foster my love of reading. We made trips to the library every week. One summer when I was seven or so I got really into this kids series about princesses all named after gemstones, each had a unique magic power.

At the end of each book was a puzzle or some extra bit of lore to decode. All of them were easily copied down in some way. Until I got to Sapphire’s book. At the end of the story Princess Sapphire was in peril! She needed a hero to come save her from a terrible fate. And there, on the last page, was a decoder device. It needed to be cut out and assembled.

I had to help save the Princess!!! In the iron grip of a fever of imagination I immediately found scissors and started carefully cutting the page. The page warned only to use scissors with an adult present and I scoffed to think I needed supervision just for scissors! I was a hero!Her plight called to me from the pages, imaginings of how I would daringly rescue the beautiful sweet Princess Sapphire ran through my little brain-

And about halfway up the page toward my goal I froze. This was a library book. I couldn’t cut a library book! What was I doing?! Even now in my memory it stands as a glaring example of the first time I mastered impulse control. Tragically, too late.

I was distraught. My grandma had a sacred duty to books and I, villain that I was, had defiled a precious tome! I wallowed for some time in abject misery, experiencing the greatest amount of guilt my tiny body had ever previously held. I’d probably go to jail. For a crime as monumental as wielding scissors against a book I wouldn’t even get dessert in jail.

Gradually, I processed my way through the grief of my vile deeds. I couldn’t have the decoder, I slowly accepted. That might be punishment enough. And I had only cut the page halfway. So it was only half a crime... It wasn’t illegal to lie when you’d aborted an evil act, right?

I didn’t know but I didn’t want to face my grandma’s potential wrath. I have no memory of my grandma ever yelling at me. I waited until the next day to approach her.

“Grandma? I finished my book and when I got to the end I saw someone had cut the page! They probably wanted the decoder because I also want that but it was very bad to cut a book, wasn’t it?”

My grandma regarded me benignly. She carefully took the book to observe it and nodded. “It’s good to see that they stopped before they cut it all the way out. Let’s go tape this together, and then I can photocopy the page and we can make you a decoder.”

I was ecstatic. Rewarded for my honesty! I created and cracked codes for the rest of summer with the flimsy paper creation we’d made. I genuinely doubt my grandma believed that I wasn’t the perpetrator, but I loved that she acknowledged that the person responsible stopped.

[booksinmythorax]

Ok, real quick, speaking as a librarian, you absolutely cannot despair about the adult literacy crisis and shame adults for reading fiction books you do not personally care for or think are "challenging" at the same time. It doesn't work with kids, and it doesn't work with adults.

Here's how to increase someone's reading level:

1) Let them read whatever they choose without shame or judgment. Maybe get them talking about it using open-ended, non-leading questions to encourage critical thinking and comprehension.

2) Let them get bored after a while and seek out different books.

3) Repeat.

[charcoaldustonmyfingers]

Language! Part 1

[1 - 2]

This comic is older, but clean enough that I didn’t feel the need to redraw! Darn perfectionism lol

So the ways that different animals communicate varies vastly between them. For example, rats hear things on a spectrum slightly above human hearing, and there are recent studies touching on how with special microphones, scientists have discovered that rats squeak a lot to one another in high pitches to communicate between them like their own little secret language! While there are significantly less studies on turtle behavior the same can be said for them, as baby turtles will make low noises that signal when the others of their nest are hatching, and in general they hear much lower frequencies on account of their scale covered eardrums and need for underwater listening.

So with that, how do the animal traits of Splinter and his kids line up?

They probably have a base hearing range similar to a humans, but the turtles can probably hear and speak lower sounds than Splinter and vice versa. What shenanigans could they get up to?

Cue cussing in a frequency range that Splinter shouldn’t be able to hear…