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REST IN PIZZA (Memorial special boards from over the last year by Vinnie’s Pizzeria)

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GOODBYE 2016!

I think it’s safe to say this year left us feeling a little like

or maybe

but I hope this tumblr brought you a little light and laughter through the last twelve months.

This year, Librarian Problems gained more than 10,000 new followers, I posted the 1,000th problem, I met some great librarians and gave out t-shirts at PLA, and I got to share my problems in a keynote at the South Dakota Library Association Conference in September.

That’s me! (:

Thank you to everyone who’s followed, liked, shared and submitted Librarian Problems this year. There were many fantastic, hilarious submissions! 

Check out 2016’s most popular posts:

WHEN A MANGER TELLS AN ANGRY PATRON THE EXACT SAME THING I DID

A PATRON SAYS THEY HAVEN’T BEEN TO THE LIBRARY IN WEEKS BECAUSE THEY WERE IN PRISON

“THAT” PATRON WALKS IN

“I’LL HAVE IT BACK WAY BEFORE THEN”

WHEN I TELL SOMEONE AT A BAR I’M A LIBRARIAN AND THEY TOAST TO THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM

OUTREACH ON A SHOE STRING BUDGET

WHEN I’M 10 PAGES FROM FINISHING MY BOOK BUT MY BREAK IS OVER

WHEN ALL MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS IN A BOOK ARE KILLED OFF

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU CARRIE

REST IN PEACE ALAN RICKMAN

I hope you all have a fun and safe time saying good riddance to this year! Oh, and 2016…

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Briefest of Brief Summary

Think suicide pact, Turkish girl, white boy, f-ed up pasts, Einstein, Milton, & #feels.

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“I’LL HAVE IT BACK WAY BEFORE THEN.”

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WHEN IT NOTIFIES STAFF THAT PUBLIC COMPUTERS WILL BE OFFLINE FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS FOR MAINTENANCE

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💗

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Idris Elba: Speech on diversity in the media and film

I’m here to talk about diversity. Diversity in the modern world is more than just skin colour. It’s gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, social background, and - most important of all, as far as I’m concerned – diversity of thought. Because if you have genuine diversity of thought among people making TV & film, then you won’t accidentally shut out any of the groups I just mentioned.

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“Master of None” Wins Best Comedy Series | 2016 Critics’ Choice Awards

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#RIPDavidBowie

Bowie’s Top 100

The legend, David Bowie, passed away at the age of 69 after an eighteen-month battle with cancer. He will be greatly missed. To celebrate his life, listed below are his top 100 books. 

-Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester

-Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse

-Room At The Top by John Braine

-On Having No Head by Douglas Harding

-Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard

-A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

-City of Night by John Rechy

-The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

-Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

-Iliad by Homer

-As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

-Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo

-Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin

-Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell

-Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood

-Halls Dictionary of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall

-David Bomberg by Richard Cork

-Blast by Wyndham Lewis

-Passing by Nella Larson

-Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto

-The Origin of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes

-In Bluebird’s Castle by George Steiner

-Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd

-The Divided Self by R.D. Laing

-The Stranger by Albert Camus

-Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman

-The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf

-The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

-Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter

-The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

-The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

-Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

-Herzog by Saul Bellow

-Puckoon by Spike Milligan

-Black Boy by Richard Wright

-The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald

-The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima

-Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler

-The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot

-McTeague by Frank Norris

-Money by Martin Amis

-The Outsider by Colin Wilson

-Strange People by Frank Edwards

-English Journey by J.B. Priestley

-A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

-The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West

-1984 by George Orwell

-The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White

-Aopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn

-Mystery Train by Greil Marcus

-Beano (comics, 1950s)

-Raw (comics, 1980s)

-White Noise by Don DeLillo

-Sweat Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom by Peter Guralnick

-Silence: Lectures and Writing by John Cage

-Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley

-The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll by Charlie Gillete

-Octobriana and the Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky

-The Street by Ann Petry

-Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

-Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.

-A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

-The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby

-Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz

-The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard

-The Bridge by Hart Crane

-All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd

-Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

-Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess

-The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos

-Tales of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders

-The Bird Artist by Howard Norman

-Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey

-Before the Deluge by Otto Friedrich

-Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia

-The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford

-In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

-Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

-Teenage by Jon Savage

-Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

-The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard

-The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

-Viz (comics, early 1980s)

-Private Eye (satirical magazine, 1960s-1980s)

-Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara

-The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens

-Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes

-Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont

-On The Road by Jack Kerouac

-Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler

-Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

-Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi

-The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

-The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa

-Inferno by Dante Alighieri

-A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno

-The Insult by Rupert Thomson

-In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan

-A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes

-Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

“The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.” -David Bowie

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@angel-princess-anna 😂

WHEN PATRONS STEAL ROLLS OF TOILET PAPER FROM THE BATHROOMS

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Awesome.

Books about Girls who Rescue Themselves

May B by Caroline Rose

Pennyroyal Academy by M.A. Larson

Nooks & Crannies by Jessica Lawson

Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

The Dark Hills Divide by Patrick Carman

The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell

Night on Fire by Ronald Kidd

Stella by Starlight by Sharon M. Draper

Umbrella Summer by Lisa Graff

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

Wildwood by Colin Meloy, illustrated by Carson Ellis

The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

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Man, wish I was in NY. This so my board. 🙌🏽

Leeloo Dallas Multipass!

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2016 YA Reads by Authors of Color

*more titles will be added once more covers are revealed*

American Ace by Marilyn Nelson - Connor’s grandmother leaves his dad a letter when she dies, and the letter’s confession shakes their tight-knit Italian-American family: The man who raised Dad is not his birth father.But the only clues to this birth father’s identity are a class ring and a pair of pilot’s wings. And so Connor takes it upon himself to investigate.

Black Disc by David Ramirez - On the surface, 17-year-old Susan King is a normal girl with normal problems - but Susan has a secret online life as a hacktivist, using the internet to bring down corrupt corporations around the world. Until the day a black disc appears from nowhere and begins to orbit the earth. That same day, Susan - and millions of people around the globe - receive an incoherent chain email, full of lunatic predictions claiming to foretell the end of the world. Susan, and everyone else, ignores the email. And then the predictions start coming true. But what can one girl do to stop the apocalypse?

Bookishly Ever After by Isabel Bandeira - In a perfect world, sixteen-year-old Phoebe Martins’ life would be a book. Preferably a YA novel with magic and a hot paranormal love interest. Unfortunately, her life probably wouldn’t even qualify for a quiet contemporary. But when Phoebe finds out that Dev, the hottest guy in the clarinet section, might actually have a crush on her, she turns to her favorite books for advice. Phoebe overhauls her personality to become as awesome as her favorite heroines and win Dev’s heart. But if her plan fails, can she go back to her happy world of fictional boys after falling for the real thing?

Burn Baby Burn by Med Medina - Nora Lopez is 17 during the infamous New York summer of 1977, when the city is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named Son of Sam is on the loose. All Nora wants is to turn eighteen and be on her own. And while there is a cute new guy who started working with her at the deli, is dating even worth the risk when the killer likes picking off couples who stay out too late?  

Consider by Kristy Acevedo - As if Alexandra Lucas’ anxiety disorder isn’t enough, mysterious holograms suddenly appear from the sky, heralding the end of the world. They bring an ultimatum: heed the warning and step through a portal-like vertex to safety, or stay and be destroyed by a comet they say is on a collision course with earth. How’s that for senior year stress?The holograms, claiming to be humans from the future, bring the promise of safety. But without the ability to verify their story, Alex is forced to consider what is best for her friends, her family, and herself.To stay or to go. A decision must be made.

The Crown’s Game by Evelyn Skye - Vika Andreyeva can summon the snow and turn ash into gold. Nikolai Karimov can see through walls and conjure bridges out of thin air. They are enchanters—the only two in Russia—and with the Ottoman Empire and the Kazakhs threatening, the Tsar needs a powerful enchanter by his side.And so he initiates the Crown’s Game, an ancient duel of magical skill—the greatest test an enchanter will ever know. The victor becomes the Imperial Enchanter and the Tsar’s most respected adviser. The defeated is sentenced to death. When Pasha, Nikolai’s best friend and heir to the throne, also starts to fall for Vika, Nikolai must defeat the girl they both love…or be killed himself. As long-buried secrets emerge, threatening the future of the empire, it becomes dangerously clear … the Crown’s Game is not one to lose.

The Darkest Hour by Caroline Tung Richmond - After the Nazis killed her brother on the North African front, 16-year-old Lucie Blaise volunteered at the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, DC, to do my part for the war effort. Only instead of a desk job at the OSS, Lucie is tapped to join the Clandestine Operations – a secret espionage and sabotage organization of girls, and employed to German-occupied France to gather intelligence and eliminate Nazi targets. Her current mission: Track down and interrogate a Nazi traitor about a weapon that threatens to wipe out all of Western Europe. 

Dove Exiled (Dove Chronicles #2) by Karen Bao - Phaet Theta fled the Moon and has been hiding on Earth with her friend Wes and his family. But Phaet’s past catches up with her when the Lunar Bases attack the community and reveal that Phaet is a fugitive. She’s torn between staying on Earth with Wes—whom she’s just discovered her feelings for—and stowing away on a Moon-bound ship to rescue her siblings.

Enter Title Here by Rahul Kanakia -  Reshma Kapoor is a college counselor’s dream, but if Reshma wants to get into Stanford, and into med school after that, she needs the hook to beat them all. What’s a habitual over-achiever to do? Land herself a literary agent, of course. Which is exactly what Reshma does. Her agent wants to represent Reshma, and with scoring a book deal, Reshma knows she’ll finally have the key to Stanford. But she’s convinced no one would want to read a novel about a study machine like her. Of course, even with a mastermind like Reshma in charge, things can’t always go as planned. And when the valedictorian spot begins to slip, she’ll have to decide just how far she’ll go for that satisfying ending. (Note: It’s pretty far.)

Even If The Sky Falls by Mia Garcia - Julie is desperate for a change. So she heads to New Orleans with her youth group to rebuild houses and pretend her life isn’t a total mess. In a moment of daring, she ditches her work and heads straight into the heart of Mid-Summer Mardi Gras, where she locks eyes with Miles, an utterly irresistible guy with a complicated story of his own. She jumps at the chance to see the real New Orleans, and in one surreal night, they fall in love. But their adventure takes an unexpected turn when an oncoming hurricane changes course. As the storm gains power and Julie is pulled back into chaos she finds pretending everything is fine is no longer an option.

Keep reading

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People of Color on YA Book Covers in 2015

We’ve been tracking new releases all year, and as the year comes to a close it’s interesting take a look back and see how people of color have been represented on book covers.

In putting together this collection, I focused on covers that feature photos or illustrations of people who appear to represent the book’s main character(s) of color. I omitted images that were silhouettes that did not seem to speak to race, and images of people from the back or the distance that effectively obscured all their characteristics. I may have accidentally omitted some covers because there were quite a few of them! It’s also important to remember that not featuring a person of color on a book about a character of color is not automatically a negative. There are many evocative covers out there that don’t have any people on them. But if you’re interested in covers that do feature people of color, here is 2015’s batch. (For larger images where you can click through to the individual covers, go to this post on our website.)

You may also be interested in a similar roundup from 2014 and 2013.

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Heh heh heh. 😎 Aziz #ftw

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This is true, but a year and a half into my Master's program in Library and Information Science, I got me a man. Oh, SNAP!

WHAT MY FRIENDS/FAMILY HEARD WHEN I SAID I WANTED TO BE A LIBRARIAN