Library News: Won't You be My Neighbor?

Oh, Hi.  It's nice to see you again.  (change out of button-up and into worn-out Megadeath t-shirt)  You know, our libraries are fascinating and wondrous places where all kinds of things can happen. (takes off shoes for more comfortable shoelessness)  Every day, something special is happening in your library, like someone looking for a job or finding a book they read as a kid. (fixes a mixed drink of whiskey, red wine and orange power drink in a goldfish bowl) Let's see what happened in our libraries this week so far, shall we? (lights the porch on fire)


The Newcastle library and art gallery have been closed down indefinitely after local officials widened security from protesters over the removal of some fig trees and other growth.  The fig trees responded by screaming silently as they were fed into a wood chipper. Silly trees. abc.net.au

Lewis Black, comedian, has been named to the honorary board of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis.  Black plans to help the library by fundraising through performances and such, as well as dressing in shiny boots and time traveling.  ibj.com

Governor Jerry Brown of California signed in a bill this week that will restrict public library privatization.  The bill will force companies to show they are saving the taxpayers money if they take over public services.  Taxpayers could give less of a crap as long as the paper is there in the morning and the new Nicholas Sparks book is on the shelf. mercurynews

The Folger Shakespeare Library is celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, one of the more influential books in history.  King James was not around to comment on the widespread craziness like those weirdos in Westboro. washingtonpost

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is in the process of moving a 340 ton boulder for an art instillation. They should hire out a company to do this, if they can prove they can do it cheaper than a bunch of museum folk, that is.  nytimes

Alec Baldwin donated around $10,000 to the Central Falls library to keep it afloat in these hard economic times.  This is a long way to go to use a library out of state. whdh

Back in the Saddle, All the News I Missed in One Go

PhotoshopEssentials

So the Banned Library took a little vacation and look at what you folks did.  Calendars, ebook crap, Amazon and that damn Kindle, even Harry ma-fuckin Potter got in on the action.  Well, here we go with the best random sentences I could cobble together in my one non-alcohol infused hallucination.  So hit the jump and follow the pink elephant into the marshmallow pool!

Because it works so well with firemen, the men of the library started a little calendar to show off their cataloging butts for charity.  Nothing like living out that Full Monty fantasy, right fellas?  LATimes

Pottermore, the Harry Potter site, announced that they will not be releasing Harry Potter ebooks until early 2012.  I guess I will have to go back to the pdf scans a 14 year old made and torrented two years ago.  ABCNews

The Amazon ebook "Reamde" by Neal Stephenson came under fire when first it was said to be full of typos and errors, and upon re-release Amazon labeled the ebook as having corrected "missing content."  Amazon had no comment when we pretended to call them on our hand because of our next story.  ChristianScienceMonitor

Amazon officially announced their color Kindle, the "Amazon Fire."  Hilariously, you could equate this to the burning of the amazon jungle to allow for grazing land for cattle.  In this joke, cattle are people.  Amazon via Geekologie

President Obama has set forth legislation that will allow states to opt out of the controversial "No Child Left Behind" program.  I do not have a joke, I just wanted you all to know.  CNN

This article was titled "Books on the Banned Wagon."  That is the single best article title in Banned Books week ever.  hindustantimes

New York librarians can rest easy again knowing that the nightmare book thief has been caught and prosecuted.  With this one problem gone, the library can concentrate on who keeps leaving stinky in the men's restroom.  New York Post

Two, count them, two libraries were infested with bedbugs this week.  The Vancouver area library found bedbugs in their shelves and furniture, as did an Arizona library.  VancouverSun and AZCentral

The Lowell City Council in Massachusetts has voted to ban sex offenders from being at the library during times when children are present.  So remember, get arrested for a sex related crime and you are not allowed into Summer Reading.  BostonHerald

Freaked out, the California State University library was evacuated searched after a patron indicated he had a gun.  The man was found and slapped around like the stupid red-headed stepchild he was.  WashingtonPost

The e-reader app Kobo now allows your friends to see what you are reading and when you are reading it by posting automatic notices.  Your mother wants to know why you would read all that smut.  Your best friend thinks you are gay for Percy Jackson.  Your girlfriend wants to know who "Jane Eyre" is and if she is prettier.  Thanks, Kobo.  USAToday

The Dead Sea Scrolls are gonna be online.  We can get 2000 year old parchment online, but not fucking Harry Potter?  Youtube via BoingBoing

Newspaper Company Developing Electronic Newspaper Tablet, or eFail

Pictured: Not Real Paper

Newspaper giant Tribune Co. is developing a tablet device dedicated to reading newspapers.  The company owns some of the largest newspapers in the nation, including the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, and the Delaware WhyTheHellAmIinDelaware, all of which would like to stay in business and not become crunched underfoot by the slowly rolling electronic behemoth that is the Internet. 


In the news article I read online on my phone, a person familiar with the matter had this to say:  "They're having to reinvent many wheels... If it turns out to be a failure, it'll be a fantastically interesting failure."


Well, that sounds optimistic as hell.

Swift Action by Georgia Police Takes Down Lemonade Stand

Dramatic Reenactment

A sunny day in the deep south town of Midway, GA.  Heat rises off the pavement.  The humidity makes walking akin to swimming.  Enter the criminals and a new street drug to prey on the weakness that such a boil brings.

Officers located three deviants setting up an illegal sidewalk speakeasy of the drug locally known as "lemonade."  After asking for their business  and food licences, the boys in blue forced the scum of society to take their yellow poison elsewhere despite pleas that they were just raising money for the a trip to the"water park" an obvious code word for "black tar heroin den."  As the criminals were minors and the drug itself is so new it is still under investigation by the FDA, they were released and their wares confiscated by officers.

"Lemonade" is a dangerous new chemical that leaves the drinker with a puckered yet satisfying taste in the mouth and a lessening of thirst.  Derived from average lemons, the secrets of its manufacture are hidden by higher up criminals called "grandmas."  Sold from locations known as "stands" by child labor, the drug can be found in every community.  Even police are baffled at this new street drug:

"Midway Police Chief Kelly Morningstar says police also didn't know how the lemonade was made, who made it or what was in it."  [Associated Press via USAToday]

While no one has yet died from overdosing on "lemonade" in its processed, concentrated "frozen" form it can cause the debilitating effect known in the medical community as "brain freeze."

N is for News

Often, I do top news stories from around the world of libraries, librarians, books, ebooks, electronics, and whatever else catches my eye.  These are some news stories that appeared this week and the reasons I rejected them or reasons I reject these stories in general.  Here we go!

Ebook sales triple!  Quite frankly, I am tired of hearing about eBooks.  Sure, fascinating reinvention of the way society blah, blah, blah. I am running out of jokes on this.

The Weird World of Straight to DVD Christian film.  This article did not need me throwing jokes at it to make it funny.

Man banned from library allegedly pushed guard through glass window.  While this may be "How to Get Banned From a Library" worthy, I honestly try not to do too much about crazy people going crazy in the library unless it is out of the norm.  If he had assaulted him with a 1st edition of Mark Twain or a red herring, I would have more to run with.

Endless stories about people retiring or changing jobs. I have nothing against celebrating a community leader's career, but I try to stay kinda national or global on this site.  So, unless you develop the cure for book cancer during your cataloging career, you will probably not show up on here unless I start a "Crazy Librarian of the Week" and even then, you would have to be crazy.

Bibliophiles, casual readers get fix at spring book sale Much like the above story, book sales are more of a local thing. Now, again, if there is something spectacular about the book sale, like Nicholas Cage's Superman comic showing up in it, boom, it goes up on this site.

Nicholas Cage's comic book is found, but the thief is still at large. I honestly did not give one poop about a rich guy getting his fancy prize found. Not enough to write about, anyway.

If you see a story you think I might find interesting, send me an email at evan@bannedlibrary.com or @bannedlibrary on Twitter.

New York Times Top Story: "News Ain't Free"

Top Story: "News Ain't Free!"

The New York Times, in an increasing bid to lose readership, has announced that starting March 28th their website will be a subscription-based service.  The company has already started the initiative in Canada to iron out the wrinkles on their new bid to be read less.  Hell, they even let the story go to the world, such as the site The Guardian, where you too can read about it for free.

I guess it is pretty obvious that I think this is a dumb idea.  The basic plan is any schmo can look at 20 articles a month for free.  The top stories will still be available on the iPhone and iPad apps, but that's about it.  Otherwise you have to pay at least $15 per month.  Paper subscribers get an unlimited access plan, but if you already have the paper... Eh, whatever.  Did I mention I got this story from a Google News stream?

Reach Out and Google a Library

Like most people, I use the Google search engine for just about all of my web searching.  This has gotten so dumb, I found myself typing my own website address into the google search bar to get to it.  That is not even how I log in.

Shit, how do I spell my own name?

 Well, I got to thinking, how does Google, and by extension the world, view libraries? Why is it important to look at Google's results from the "library" search term?  Because Google's results are the popular results, the collection of human interest and knowledge.  The results reflect what people think about a word by presenting the most popular choice.  In essence, what the collective choose as the idea becomes the what the word means.  Or the rich pay to be at the top.  However cynical you choose to be.  At least I did not use Yahoo.

The following is my totally non-scientific, non-bibliographic, and nearly non-pornographic findings about what happens when you type "library" into the search bar.

1. Web

The first 10 findings under the web search are your basic hits.  There are physical addresses for local libraries, internet addresses for Internet Public Library and publiclibraries.com as well as large library websites, such as the New York Public Library.  Two things here bother me. First, no porn sites.  There was a time when a Google search on "paper clips" would get you at least three hits on the porn site whitehouse.com.

History for that joke:  whitehouse.com was once a porn site.  whitehouse.gov has always been the real site.

 The second is one of the highest hits on any Google search:  Wikipedia.  I will spend more time on Wikipedia later, but for now I will say it saddens me that one of the top three sites on a search about an information institution is an untrustworthy information site.  That is... well, that is what whitehouse.com was to whitehouse.gov:  a mockery of the institution.

2.  Images
Google image search of "library" fills me with pride, sadness, and a little regret.  Here's the first image I found:

I do not want to get to serious on this site, Banned Library takes no real stance on any subject.  We make dick jokes about most library subjects, in fact.  Looking at all these pictures, though, I am seeing the public perception of the library while I live in the crappy reality.  Take a look at these pictures.   Count how many computers you see.  I saw about 5 images with computers within the first 5 pages.  Out of around 125 images from across the Internet, most showed shelves and books and people reading to shelves and books.  For the most part, these images were of stately manner libraries, with columns and shit.  Look around your library and listen to your patrons.  Hell, I am doing this whole thing about a Google search.  Computers, ebooks, all that crap, are libraries now.  These grand institutions have already given away to Internet cafes, yet the public at large seems to have an alternate image in their minds.  And yes, I know people like pretty things and that there are gorgeous libraries out there.  There are also 15,000 item collections in fucking mobile homes and the patrons still demand wifi access.  But I digress.

3. Videos
Here's Mr. Bean in a library:



4.  News
Google News search is actually a pretty good source of news.  I have gotten several of the articles on this site from there.  However, library news is often pretty boring and repetitive.  No, I do not think the library director who stole all that money is interesting.  If she worked in a bank it would not hit the library radar.  The same goes for the book sales, hirings, firings and budget crisis.  I am not saying that those are not worthwhile and meaningful topics, especially when taken in scope and context, but they make for boring news individually.  Of course, right in the middle of writing this, I find the Mysterious Case of the Urine.

5.  Shopping
Why include shopping?  It tickles me.  Check out this great deal on a book case!

3 Shelf Storage Shelves Cabinet Bookcase Bookshelf Bookshelves- Light Cherry Finish