#library tumblr

[shhhitscoffeetime]

i love you open access libraries i love you sci hub i love you lib gen and all your pseudo names i love you zlib i love you second hand book shop with textbook section i love you friend from other uni who has access to their library i love you internet friend with PDFs i love you well orgnaised google drive full of books i love you internet archive i love you libby i love you state library with the only physical copy of my textbook i love you tumblr mutual with book hyperfixation i love you discord library pdf horders i love you anna's archive i love you friends who never clear out your downloads folder

[yeehawpim]

[yeepof]

Local PHD student at wizard school HARRASSED!! FOR SHAME!!

[lanndscape]

[academia-lucifer]

Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

— William Faulkner.

[booksinmythorax]

I'm already seeing advice from people in the US to purchase queer books and other banned or "controversial" books on paper as a way to combat the wave of government censorship that is coming. While this is a good idea (it is! absolutely!), it's not accessible to everyone, and truly, we're not going to be able to consumerism our way out of this one.

If you can buy the books, do. Whether you can buy the books or not, borrow them from your library.

Borrow the paper versions. Borrow the ebook or audiobook versions. Request the titles you want that your library doesn't have. The more a title circulates or is requested, the better librarians are going to be able to defend keeping it if and when it's ever challenged.

Use libraries like @queerliblib too. The more members they have, the better they'll be able to fundraise.

Your community resources depend on you using them. Borrow the books before they go away.

InB4: Piracy is not the solution here. We're trying to keep community resources available, not make sure individual people can read individual books. Different problems.

The books are still available. Borrowing them from your library and returning them on time and in good condition will help keep them that way.

[lenainwonderland]

- Vladimir Nabokov

[microsff]

The patron

The alien came to the library again, shortly before closing time, and quickly found a book.

"May this entity borrow The Complete History of Knitting?"

They always return the book they borrow after five minutes, but the ritual of checking it out seems important to them. 

"Of course. Did you bring your card?"

I looked them up, after the first time I saw them for real. They first registered with us over ninety years ago. The senior librarian who first told me about them said I shouldn't stare, or pry.

"Whatever else they are, they are a patron, and should be treated as such," she said. "If they seek knowledge, it is our duty to help them find it."

There isn't an ancient and secret code of librarians, but that is definitely a core part of it. If such a code existed.

I scan the card and the book. "There you go," I say and hand them over. "Please return it within two weeks."

They tilt their head. "This entity will honour your terms."

"Oh! That reminds me, we have updated the terms since your last visit." I hand them the pamphlet we got from the printers last week. "It's mostly about internet usage, but I'll need you to read them and agree."

They study the pamphlet.

"These are terms this entity can abide by." They pause. "Is there no requirement to keep your existence secret?"

"Of course not," I say, "we always welcome new patrons."

They stand silent, long enough for me to realise the implications of what I have just said. 

"This entity had made an assumption, based on prior experiences on countless worlds, where knowledge is always closely guarded and costly to obtain" they say at last. "You will provide knowledge for free to all who seek it?"

In my mind, I weigh humanity's ignorance of those countless worlds of alien civilisations against the code.

"Yes," I say, "this is a library."

[fatimazainab]

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

[landsccape]

[shhhitscoffeetime]

Cyberpunk Librarian

hello world! I've been digging around to find a dumping ground for my accumulation of PDFs for easier access for others and I stumbled across this fine fellow. (click on him to see the website)

This fellow has not only a podcast about library tech FOR FREE (or at least a very low cost) but also some very cool guides about storing music and navigating open source projects!

(and some very hot takes on the dewey decible system lmao)

I swear this isn't an ad but it's just a very very very bibliopunk resource and I need to scream about this guy into the void.

Thanks for reading shoutout to Daniel Messer ur so cool I'm a dan fan

[wednesdaysfullofwoe]

[mahrahpalestine]

My account and the accounts of a group of my friends who organize donation campaigns to help their families have been blocked for no known reason

It is clear that the Tumblr platform is against the Palestinians’ livelihood and achieving a better future

Everyone is against the Palestinians from living

But despite this, we will try to live and achieve a better future

@freepaleatine95

@nabulsi @ibtisams @tododeku-or-bust @turian

@paper-mario-wiki @sar-soor @determinate-negation @determinate-negation @sayruq @90-ghost @dykesbat shared

@asexualfromhell @paper-mario-wiki

[lanndscape]

[bookaddict24-7]

"I like that library books have secret lives. All those hands that have held them. All those eyes that have read them."

―Same Sun Here by Neela Vaswani

[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.