from the comments
I know a guy from Ohio who worked as a long-haul trucker for a good while after high school. Then he did other things and we wound up working at a library together and after a time he became a big wheel at the MacArthur Foundation.
He claims to have met Patty Hearst when she was on the lam, and he told me that she stole his drugs, but I know he was just spoofing me.
Ask a law librarian
Fuck it. I’m back.
Big black woman with enormous braless bust: “I woanna commit my daughter, she crazy. They tole me I could come up here an’ git the forms.”
[She lifts her udders and lays them on the counter. The two librarians are speechless.]
Busty: “Cuz she tryin’ t’ break me an’ my Messkin boyfriend UP.”
Librarian [to man nearby]: “May I help you?”
Hispanic man: “No, I with she.”
Busty: “Yeah, she tryin’ t’ break us up. But he would work five jobs if he gotta, an’ no black man doan woanna work one.”
[It should be noted that both librarians are black and male.]
Librarian: “You gotta go to the Mental Illness Court across the street in the Records Building.”
Busty: “Come oan, Wahn, les go.”
The Dust Library
So what can this unusual library tell us? First, there is the simple parts list. The most common component was organic material, present in 40 of the 63 particles – exactly what is unclear, but it could be anything from pollen to sloughed-off bits of researcher. Quartz, found in 34 particles, came next, followed by carbonates (17 particles) and gypsum (14). “The minerals blow in,” says Coe. “They come from all over the world.” Other ingredients included air pollutants and fertiliser chemicals.
a library for extroverts: check out a person, not a book
At a library in Canada, you can check out experts, not just books:
The library has assembled a group of volunteers with particularly interesting skills or histories, and has a system in place to put these people in touch with knowledge seekers. If you’re looking for someone to practice your German with, or to ask about their experiences during the Great Depression, or their struggle with illness, the library will put you in touch with an appropriate individual. Once in touch, you can meet in the library’s cafe, keeping the entire operation under one roof.
Ask a law librarian
Do y’all have The Hobbit?
The idea is to be able to collect one copy of every book ever published.
Brewster Kahle, 50, founded the nonprofit Internet Archive in 1996 to save a copy of every web page ever posted. Now the MIT-trained computer scientist and entrepreneur is expanding his effort to safeguard and share knowledge by trying to preserve a physical copy of every book ever published.
“There is always going to be a role for books,” said Kahle as he perched on the edge of a shipping container. Each container can hold about 40,000 volumes, the size of a branch library. “We want to see books live forever.”
So far, he’s collected about 500,000 of what Google estimates are 130 million books worldwide.
headline of the day
Naked Man Rescued from Missouri River Wanted to Float to Library of Congress
Ask a law librarian
Homely old black woman, very drunk and very crazy: “Listen very carefully. I am on a secret mission for President Obama. I have a patent that will save the U.S. economy. I need to fax it to the Treasury Department. Can you give me a dollar to do that?”
Interview with an Ubu
The mainstream art world knows nothing of Ubu. Why would they be interested? Ubu is intended for people who don’t have access to the centres of urban culture and all the riches they offer. We often receive emails from people living in rural, isolated or suburban areas whose only line to the outside world is a web connection. For them, Ubu is an open-source museum and offers a full education on a type of culture that is unavailable, say, in their local mall or library. The museum world, although claiming to be interested in education, only serves those who can afford to come to them, a privileged class. Ubu is free and embracing of everyone, regardless of their geographic location or income.
Ask a law librarian
Man: “When you file for divorce do they check I.D?”
Librarian: “I don’t think the district clerk requires your driver’s license number on the petition, if that’s what you mean.”
Man: “Can somebody file for somebody else?”
Librarian: “Do you mean can you take the petitioner’s completed forms to the district clerk for them?”
Man: “No — I wanna file for my brother because I don’t like his wife.”
START TODAY
MAKE NO DELAY
TRUTH will out!
This is Mr Curtis’s shop window in Barrack Street, Waterford, dressed for a competition. (Circa: 1930.)
Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.
Ask a law librarian
Couple enters, he like a gangsta rapper, she ghetto chic with long false eyelashes, long acrylic nails, skin-tight clothes, both with bling-bling and attitude.
Gangsta: “’Uuuuuhhhh, I been payin’ chile support but my baby mama doan woan lemme see m’kid whada I do?”
Librarian: “Do you have court orders givin’ ya visitation?”
Gangsta: “Yeah.”
Librarian: “Do ya woana enforce yer visitation?”
Gangsta: “Yeah.”
Librarian: “Here’s a motion t’ enforce an’ a order t’ enforce.”
Gangsta: “So whada I do, fill dis ‘ere out an’ take it t’ the court?”
Librarian: “Thas not a fill-in-the-blank form.”
Gangsta [shocked]: “Huh?”
Librarian: “They ain’t no blanks oan it. Ya gotta retype it.”
Gangsta: [as if jolted out of sleep]: “Huh? I doan un’erstand.”
Librarian [exactly the same as before]: “Ya gotta retype it.”
Gangsta: “Whadya mean retype?”
Librarian [air-typing on invisible typewriter]: “Re.” [air-typing] “Type.”
1. Make List; 2. Do Stuff
This is a flaming brilliant concept for an exhibition. (It’s based on a recently published book.) At the Morgan Library & Museum through October 2, 2011. Drawn from the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art.
The more you study the Morgan exhibition, the more you realize that lists are everywhere, and that list making is an essential human activity — a way not just of keeping track but also of imposing order on what would otherwise be chaos. Your address book, a restaurant menu, the instructions on the MetroCard machine, prescription-drug ads spelling out possible side effects: they’re all lists. So are those annoying thoughts at the back of your head reminding you that you have books overdue at the library and still haven’t sent a thank-you note to Aunt Gert. Artists are no different, no less preoccupied with keeping track, though most of them have better handwriting than the rest of us, and their lists tend to be a little neater.
“Not recommended”
by the Bulletin of the Children’s Book Center, The University of Chicago Library (December 1954):
Dixon, Ruth. Scalawag the Monkey; photographs by Rie Gaddis. Rand McNally,1953. 30p. (A Book-Elf Book). 25¢. Scalawag, the monkey, runs away from his organ-grinder boss Murdstone Mastiff and has various adventures at a play school for puppies and kittens. The coy text is painfully contrived to go with the pictures which are color photographs of animals dressed like people, and looking hunted and uncomfortable. (Pre-school)
See also: “No animals were harmed . . . “
Ask a law librarian
Big woman with imposing bosom: “My husband tole me he had done the divorce, but I ain’t seen ‘m in years, an’ I didn’ ever git no papers.”
Librarian: “So what is your question?”
Big bosom: “Well I been remarried. If the divorce ain’t been done, would the compooter see that I’s already married?”
Librarian: “No, it’s not automatic like that.”
Big bosom: “Uh-oh. Aw well. I guess I’m a bigamist.”
How Archivists Helped Video Game Designers Recreate the City’s Dark Side for ‘L.A. Noire’
Earlier this week, video game enthusiasts and fans of L.A. history cheered the release of Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire, a police procedural game noted for its faithful reproduction of Los Angeles circa 1947. To recreate a city now hidden beneath 64 years of redevelopment projects and transformed by age and expansion, production designers with the game’s developer, Team Bondi, consulted several Los Angeles area archives.
Ask a law librarian
Caller: “I wanna know how my son can get outta a marriage. Somebody tole me annulment.”
Librarian [robotically]: “I will read to you from the Texas Family Code section 6.001. There are seven grounds for annulment. One: underage. Two: under influence of alcohol or narcotics. Three: impotency. Four: fraud, duress, or force. Five: mental incapacity. Six: concealed divorce. Seven: marriage less than 72 hours after issuance of license.”
Caller: “They were married for 3 months.”
Librarian: “And?”
Caller: “The time.”
Librarian: “What about it?”
Caller: “The last one. Number seven.”
Librarian: “Is three months less than 72 hours?”
Caller: “What about the age thing?”
Librarian: “Number one: underage.”
Caller: “What about concealed age?”
Librarian: “No, thas six: concealed divorce.”
Caller: “What about concealed age?”
Librarian: “Naw, naw, yer confusin’ two differnt thangs. One is underage; six is concealed divorce.”
Caller: “What does underage mean?”
Librarian: “Under eighteen.”
Caller: “No, she was over eighteen. Way over. She concealed her age.”
Librarian: “So.”
Caller: [in a scandalous tone]: “She was a lot older.”
Librarian: “Bein’ older ain’t one of the categories.”
Ask a law librarian
Caller: “How much does it cost to file the petition for a name change?”
Librarian: “About two hundred twenty.”
Caller: “Per name? If I change my middle name too do I have to pay two twenty more?”
Also, women were the first computers
The Crimean War was the first major conflict experienced nearly in real-time by an audience scattered across the globe, because of the telegraph. But first, fast reports, especially those bearing sensational stories, often had to be corrected later. News style was changing, too. Because telegraph operators charged by the word, reporters’ writing became terse, abrupt, factual, economical. Telegraph style became a signal of the writers’ modernity, to be enshrined in style guides like Strunk & White’s.
From Tim Carmody’s excellent review, and parsing, of James Gleick’s The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. The book is available on Amazon. I think I’ll probably read it after I finish The Singularity Is Near.
National Jukebox
The National Jukebox debuts, featuring more than 10,000 78rpm disc sides issued by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1900 and 1925.
What’s on the menu?
From project staff at the NYPL:
With approximately 40,000 menus dating from the 1840s to the present, The New York Public Library’s restaurant menu collection is one of the largest in the world, used by historians, chefs, novelists and everyday food enthusiasts. Trouble is, the menus are very difficult to search for the greatest treasures they contain: specific information about dishes, prices, the organization of meals, and all the stories these things tell us about the history of food and culture.
To solve this, we’re working to improve the collection by transcribing the menus, dish by dish. Doing this will allow us to dramatically expand the ways in which the collection can be researched and accessed, opening the door to new kinds of discoveries. We’ve built a simple tool that makes the transcribing pretty easy to do, but it’s a big job, so we need your help.
Rearranging The Bookshelf
Bravo.
from the comments
I hope that the midget who was into conspiracy theories is still at that one library where I worked for a while.
Ask a law librarian
Tall, blond man walks out of an L.L. Bean catalog and into the library: “I need to correct the father’s name on my son’s birth certificate.”
Librarian: “Is it just a misspelling, or a different person?”
Tall Blonde: “I’m Robert Hamilton,* but the birth certificate says Buck Hamilton.”
Librarian: “So uh, was this a DNA testing type situation with Buck?”
Tall Blonde: “Well, it’s complicated. Buck was my alter identity for about 10 years while I was doing all the crimes I committed. And Buck is on the birth certificate. But now Buck is dead.”
Librarian (thinking well I be gawddamn, this is a new one): “Well it sounds like Buck needed to been doin’ a name change. I mean, because you’re sayin’ the issue is not your son’s name. Normally they change the father’s name on a birth certificate because there’s two people and one name on the birth certificate. Yer sayin’ there’s one person and two names.”
Tall Blonde: “I’ve settled everything else. This is the last thing I need to take care of. I don’t know how I would go about it.”
Librarian: “I don’t know either. The usual situation involves paternity. Have you ever taken a paternity test?”
Tall Blonde: “I would be willing to do that. I could do that.”
Librarian: “Here’s all the papers.”
Tall Blonde: “Is there any place in these papers where Buck would need to sign?”
*The names have been changed because, you know.
Tweet of the day, honorable mention
Specifically, he’s been tweeting gorgeous photos from this collection all afternoon.
