"Edward Gorey took quite a while before he saw any clear direction to his life's work. In 1998, he told the Boston Globe: 'I wanted to have my own bookstore until I worked in one. Then I thought I'd be a librarian until I met some crazy ones.'" - Salon search me 2000 jan : feb 1999 apr : may : june jul : aug : sep oct/nov : dec

31mar00 I am moving this weekend. Thanks to this miracle we call The Internet, this move will be transparent to you except that I will be away from librarian.net [and my whole computer in fact] for the duration. When I return, it will be via the wonders of my 56K modem and not the previous insanely luxuriously megafast DSL. Expect links to be lower bandwidth. Expect me to be crosser as I wait tirelessly for downloading megapages to feed your instatiable lust for new and better librarian lore. Expect the unexpected, as I know you always do. See you in April. 30mar00 All in favor of correcting the stupid way we find information, say "Aye!" [thanks Sara!] Need a bookmobile? Sell some pigs [bear with me here]... [lisnews] 29mar00 Oh those blankety blank hackers! No one really wants to be the one who puts a librarian in jail. Want to build a bomb? Go to a library. Harry Potter, meet Larry Potter. 28mar00 The best books of 1899. Speaking of hype, I've been keeping an eye on Nupedia for a while now and it still looks the same. Could this become the world's largest encyclopedia? More hubub over the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. UPenn tries to answer the question "what is a digital book?" Presidential library humor. Woman works at library, gets one free meal every year in recompense. A whole new reason to be freaked out by Harry Potter: he's going to start discovering girls. [is there anyone who did not see this foreshadowed in the last book?] 24mar00 Brilliant. Send out press release for crazy-sounding new ."...proprietary combination of technology and online revenue producing capabilities" and then not have your site live when it hits the news. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Wearable Books! [perhaps finally live by the time you read this...] [studiobbuzz] 23mar00 Twelve year old boy views porn on internet with father & does not go straight to hell.... [obscure store] Cop writes book, gets suspended. [obscure store] Sunnyvale's funky patent library is being put out of business by internet competition. Do you agree or disagree with this pullquote: "The Net's usefulness lies in its seemingly boundless capacity for holding and retrieving information -- which, after all, is the primary purpose of a library." ? 22mar00 Looking for porn, found this: Librarian's guide to Anime and Manga. I do not understand the link they are trying to make here between sex crimes and internet porn in the library. In the more-things-that-don't-make-sense category: what does "rainbows and sunshine" mean in this case? LOC bicentennial stamp unveiled next month. Get your library in as a second-day issue site. [what's gnu] 21mar00 Indian Wars Library Backed -- before you check the story, visualize what you think this headline might be about.... It's not the porn that I mind in the libraries, it's all the griping librarians. Quick quiz: what is the first state in the US with a pornography czar? Beaver State almuni can read their web site again ... maybe. Cyberpatrol hacked & bypass software widely distributed. Which writers rule and which writers suck? An examination of writers' popularity and metrics for evaluating it from the oh-so-literary folks at Salon. 20mar00 Stop the madness! Beaver College web site inaccessible to many alumns because of filtering. These people are living my dream: they bought the library and now they get to live in it! metanote: librarian.net hit 100,000 hits just about the same time the old thecounter.com became part of the internet.com family and now [lately] sucks. Anyone got a good free counter they like that tracks referrers and has a simple format? Email me. 18mar00 Stupid but funny: Last Case of Encyclopedia Brown. [cardhouse] "Do you want fries with Gone with the Wind?" The drive-through window at the library. This library brought to you by the letter R. 17mar00 The online-only anarchist resource the Spunk Library has undergone a makeover. Google the search engine, meet Google the directory. Amazon experiences "mysterious Webout". Ha ha ha ha ha. Like magazines? While you should still be reading the indomitable Rain Barrel Maglog, also check out Mr Magazine. [researchbuzz] Are you still unemployed? Check out Library Juice's job supplement. Looks like someone hired a PR firm.... The WLA conference -- with snappy theme r/evolution -- has a kick ass web site that is not for the slow-modemed [or the visually disabled, how about some ALT tags guys?]. 16mar00 Some new stuff over at Progressive Librarian including Agnes Inglis: Anarchist Librarian. From the Journal of Mundane Behavior comes the densely packed article remarks on the social organisation of space and place with a special section on searching in the library. "We are teaching debauchery" one more library in a snit over Catcher in the Rye. People still like books! A four day book discussion group in the UK stays popular. Mild mannered parlimentary librarian gets peeved at filtering of Parliament's web access. 10mar00 I will be at SXSW in Austin, getting some sun for the next few days. Updates sporadic, if at all. Get on over to lisnews and contribute a little. 09mar00 At librarian.net we are all about books. So here are two book links. They have nothing to do with libraries, per se.... When I am looking for extra volumes for my Ninth Edition Encyclopedia Britannica, I generally have to go trolling through precious antiquarian book sites, or deal with the paucity of info given with entries at abebooks.com. No longer. A nifty new site at 21northmain.com [which I have no financial stake in] lets you hunt for rare & out of print books and read long descriptions which are guaranteed by the nice folks there.... You say you don't have time for reading anymore? Try minute books. The folks at Greenman Design are bad spellers, but very very f unny. Speaking of books, here's a new game show where you can win some books. 08mar00 I read this article about a NJ library firing their director and hiring a private company to run the library and I mainly thought "library directors only make $59K a year???" [lisnews] Photos of Alaskan libraries and Alaskan librarians. Dear Matt Wilcox: Please marry me. You are hilarious, and I like the way you goof with the library's web space.[juice] 07mar00 Sexy librarian dress for sale on Ebay. "Perfect attire for shushing those unruly troublemakers in the reference section!" Librarians lose appeal. Feds can destroy all the email they like. Snappy new public library opens in London & provokes wistful piece about libraries. In fact, what persuaded the Tories in 1850 that public libraries were a good thing was their promoters' belief that they would act as "cheap police force" in much the same way as Association Football was meant to when established 50 years later: it kept the masses off the street. Instead of drinking, forming mobs and rioting, they would sit and read. 06mar00 What is it about libraries? man arrested for "allegedly asking young girls to perform gymnastics exercises inside area libraries" Another special library bites the dust: Universal Studios Research Library closes. 04mar00 Harry Potter and the Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius The pros and cons of DVD textbooks. Don't bother going to this dental school if you don't have a high-tech computer... Note very scary graphic. [NYT reg required] Book buying along the salt trade routes. [more NYT] 03mar00 "Reading-eye dogs" and other space-age contraptions inhabit the future of reading according to one museum display. [thanks Barbara!] Leave it to a Canadian to come up with a great metaphor for filtering in libraries: Closing off portions of the world to a library would be like banning the Wave at football stadiums. Sure, the wave might be dangerous for inebriated fans. Some of them might topple over and hurt themselves. Others might perform their wave action too quickly, and dump a Coke on the head of the guy in front of them. And, of course, the wave interferes with the view for those fans that waive the opportunity to wave along with everyone else. But it's a way to show enthusiasm for the game, and that's what being a fan is all about. Unfiltered access to the Internet gives access to inappropriate content, but it also ensures that all content is available. And access to information is what going to the library is all about. 02mar00 Teens finding banned books disappointing. [thanks Michael!] Also, books you shouldn't show to children, courtesy of Roz Chast. I have read most of these. [lisabird] 01mar00 Wendi's house is saved! Sorry, library.

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