Great Libraries on Film. No, really.

There was a great post by Jessamyn West a while back that guides journalists on how to represent library staff accurately in the media. We all know there is a significant gap between the most of the public's perception of libraries (shushing!) and what actually happens in them.  So, understandably, I was a little hesitant to look at this Bookriot list of Great Library Scenes In Film, however there were some pleasant surprises as many more "special collections" were included than expected. 

Are there any significant ones missing? Party Girl starring the indie darling Parker Posey is conspicuously absent, and has an hilariously vicarious exchange between library staff and a patron reshelving a book. Not that any of us would really ever do that.

Oh, and Doctor Who, of course, for an extra specially creepy library.

And a stereotypically outdated view of libraries in the latest round of superbowl ads.

What's your favorite library scene in a movie or television?  Did any of these particularly resonate with you? Do you find them to be accurate, or laughably misguided?

What's the holdup?

Umm... has this ever happened to you?  You're going through donated books and hello! A library employee in Indiana got a surprise last month.  The weirdest thing? It's not the first time.  Be careful in the book drop, fellow SSDers.

Look at your library. Now look at mine.

A brilliant video from the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young: You can easily get sucked down the YouTube path to more library videos - what are your favorites?

Magical meat?

Grilled unicorn detail from a newly discovered
Medieval cookbook at the British Library.

In case you missed it, an article over at American Libraries has an April Fools roundup, with this year's best from libraries around the globe. 

I especially like the Really Advanced Search from google.  Technically not a library, but since it's google, it's only a matter of time, am I right?

Greg Landgraf, the articles author, says libraries and pranks have a strong tradition.  Did your library "celebrate" April Fools?  What is your library's best prank?

And since it's the season for Peeps, this really never gets old.

-Rebecca

Gobblegobble

So... We've all had weird things returned to our libraries, but what about break-ins?

But does it glow in the dark...

You can watch this without sound...

I hope I don't ever do this...

One of our past presenters, Sam Wallin from the Woodland Community College in Woodland, WA, has some absolutely hilarious videos on his YouTube channel .  They are called "Libraryland!" and are "little shows about working in the public library."  If you hit play after following the link, it will play the entire series for you. Most are under a minute and well worth watching. Sam was part of the Marketing Your Library: Strategies for the 21st Century presentation at our 2011 conference.

It was hard to choose just one for an example, because they're all good, but I 've heard people do this before:

Oops!

Which of these videos made you laugh the hardest? For me, the laughs were cumulative - the more I watched, the funnier they got.

Have any of you used YouTube as a marketing tool for your library? How has it worked for you? What strategies have you implemented from this conference session?

Libraries hate wookies?

From forcesofgeek.com, a video by killingmylobster:

Hard Times Can Make For Good Parodies

Nobody can deny that times are hard in many ways now. The news is rarely hopeful, and most (if not all) libraries are coping with either current or upcoming budget cuts.

There's nothing funny about it. And yet humor is a valuable way to deal with tough times.

Here at the State Library, I've been writing one or two song parodies every year for performance at our winter staff party. I'm lucky that several of my co-workers are willing to get up in front of the rest of the staff and risk making fools of themselves year after year. Below, we're singing about our scheduling software, to the tune of "Ding Dong, Merrily on High"



I've found that the worse things are, the easier it is to write a parody. Last year, both H1N1 and unpaid furloughs provided inspiration.

Last week, OLA past president Connie Anderson-Cohoon forward this video to the OLA executive board

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8QjjKrEK7Y

It's worth watching, despite the danger of ending up with an ear worm. These library folks are definitely using humor (and a good deal of skill and talent) to point out the importance of their services.

Do any other libraries have parody traditions, or other ways of using humor to deal with difficult realities? If so, please share!

In Praise of Ambiguity

In the library world, and particularly in Technical Services, we've got a reputation for being very literal, even unimaginative. Of course, we all know that we're really outside-the-box people with big imaginations and hearty senses of humor.

Fortunately, our work life provides us with the occasional giggle.

This morning, I made a note on the back of an old catalog card from a stash that we use for scratch paper. As I sometimes to, I turned the card over to see the title. It was the wonderfully ambiguous Fighting with Food. You can come up with all sorts of things that it could be about! Knowing that it was published by the U.S. government in 1918, I can infer that it was something about the war effort in World War I, but it still gives me a chuckle.

My previous favorite ambiguous title was 1958 Fish Stockings by Watersheds. I know it's about stocking fish in different areas of Oregon, but it conjures up an image of fish trying to pull stockings over their fins.