Eleanor Twitty Will Shush You

As I am typing this post my boyfriend is destroying the stacks of the New York Public Library with his Photon Wand. Any minute now an Ethereo-Spatial Rift (a portal to an alternate dimension) will open up in the middle of the reading room, leading to Eleanor Twitty’s murderer. Eleanor Twitty, former head-librarian and current library spook, appeared in the first Ghostbusters movie terrifying children everywhere with her shushing and banshee-like scream. The “Grey Lady” has returned in the new GhostBusters video game to seek revenge on the man who killed her and she is creepier than ever. The game devotes an entire “level” to the Eleanor Twitty mystery and it is awesome! As a Ghostbuster cadet you have the opportunity to explore several floors of the New York Public Library, including a nightmarish children’s library with haunted puppet theater and whispering ghost children and an archive room stacked with boxes, while hunting Twitty ,as she glides through the stacks. The game is beautifully designed and full of minute details like Read posters on the walls and book conveyor belts in the basement.

I must admit, blasting the books off of the shelves does look kind of fun–especially since I know I wont be the one who has to re-shelve them. Don’t forget to ShockBlast the book-bats on the way out.

Eugene the Librarian

OMG. What can I say about this? Eugene the Librarian on Britain’s Got Talent. Okay, so right off I was like, what the hell, this has to be a joke. There is no way this guy is real. He is the SUPER stereotypical Guybrarian, but to such an extreme that it seems like he is not a real person, but a parody of a British academic librarian: Awkward, giant glasses, walks like he has a stick up his butt, diggin’ on poetry and sweater vests. But for some reason, I kinda want to be best friends with him. He takes that poetic recluse image and uses it to get some laughs – and what’s so wrong with that?

Helen Klench – new character, same old stereotypes

Fox’s new Sunday night animation,  Sit Down, Shut Up,  was much hyped as the work of the same team that brought  you the show Arrested Development.

Unfortunately, all the quick wit and hysterical surreality is completley missing from this new show. And , to top it all off, they have a weird, mean librarian who manages to combine all that is bad about the old librarian stereotype of a crotchety spinster, with  the new NYTimes, bored hipster stereotype of the  “new librarian”.  Helen Klench , like this show, could be really funny, a cutting edge commentary on us all. She is not though and neither is the show. Shame!

Helen Klench

Library Detective

Email I received from a work study student last Friday night. All the names (except my own) have been changed to protect their identities…

—–Original Message—-

Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 5:53 PM

Subject: late night journal entry, april 13th – library detective

the particular case involves a certain PATRON. 0900 hours, or near about, PATRON purportedly received an email from candise (once head librarian, possibly with vendetta, worth looking into) regarding overdue library volumes.

those volumes are: 2905, 2838, 3691 and 4849. a search of the shelves revealed that, indeed, they were not returned and/or reshelved.

possible scenario: materials were dropped off. they sat at the library front desk waiting to be checked in. culprit snatches materials, easily placing them into book bag without anyone noticing (most are engrossed in internet activities, supposedly academic . . . but doubtful, probably myspace, emails and blogs). might behoove me to pose as student and skulk through library on the look-out for any suspicious book-snatching behavior. here’s the scene as described by a mr. WORK STUDY (unscrupulous character by the look of his sunken face and overly-slick mode of dress) (note: never trust a man with a pointy beard). PATRON enters the library around 1630 hours, april 13th, visibly upset – “but,” quote, “handlin’ it cool like she had nothin’ to worry about,” end quote. she informs mr. WORK STUDY of her belief that she had returned all materials borrowed from the library and of her surprise over receiving aforementioned overdue materials email. mr. WORK STUDY proceeded to look up her account in inmagic database and recite list of materials ascribed overdue. that’s when things got messy, like a book with all its pages torn out, words gone wild. PATRON denied knowledge of materials or ever having borrowed them (!). cooly, too coo-o-o-o-o-ly to be completely trusted, WORK STUDY said, quote, “no worries. there’s probably a good explanation for this. i’ll refer this matter to LIBRARIAN and she’ll take care of things,” end quote. (note: must look further into this LIBRARIAN character as she holds key position in the library hierarchy – no one is without scrutiny) strategy: wait, be ‘cool’ as mr. WORK STUDY would say, let culprit – LIBRARIAN, candise, WORK STUDY, unknown third party or even PATRON herself (!) – make next move. must be diligent. cannot let mistake slip by unseen. end entry.

The Library is Political

Dreamboat.

Breakdancing?!

I am not sure how I feel about this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK0GmiSMNGI. There is a lot going on and mostly I am not in favor of what they are saying about men, women or librarians  (not to mention what they do to the card catalog!!!!!!) but I have to say I can’t help but dance a little. Thanks to PVW for this one.

Movie Review: R.O.D.

Okay, so before I start this review, I just want to put it out there that I love anime. Watch it all the time. If it involves guys that dress like girls, high school drama or girls with magic powers, I’ll probably watch it. That being said, you might think that an action show involving the Library of Congress and a bookish librarian-type would be right up my ally. Well it is…sorta.

The plot of R.O.D. (Read or Die) is just as ridiculous as any other anime. Yomiko Readman is a woman who lives to read. She is an substitute teacher/librarian who only works so she can add to her vast collection of books – she doesn’t even seem to have any furniture, just piles and piles of books. Yomiko seems to be living a pretty dull life, which seems to fully consist of searching bookstores for rare books. That is, until we discover that Yomiko is actually a secret agent for the Library of Congress, codename “The Paper”. (Great use of names, eh? “Readman” and “The Paper”. It just doesn’t get more brilliant…) She also has the ability to create objects out of paper. Sorta like origami, only the paper somehow has the same physical characteristics of the object it is trying to imitate. So if she makes a rope out of paper, then it works just like a real rope; a paper knife is just as hard and sharp as a real knife. Get it?

Although I am pretty stoked that a show about a book-nerd who works as a secret agent for the Library of Congress even exists, I can’t actually recommend this as being good. I don’t think R.O.D. is good by any standards, even anime fanboy standards. The plot is pretty absurd, something about dead geniuses being cloned to steal rare books. All you really need to know is that Yomiko’s new ally and bff is Miss Deep (yes, you heard right), a femme fatale who can walk through walls. Their relationship is pretty much used as a crutch for the “paper-thin” plot.

Yomiko wears frumpy clothes and is pretty much a big nerd. She is obsessive about books, almost to the point of literal booklust. Heavy glasses, smock-dresses and sensible shoes, Yomiko looks like the stereotypical anti-social bibliophile (or archivist). But beyond the boring attire, Yomiko is a bad-ass. She will fight tooth-and-nail for what she wants, be that saving the world or the chance to purchase a super-rare German book that no one else would ever want to read. And there’s nothing I like more than a tough, self-sufficient lady.

To wrap up, ROD is not good. But if you like media depictions of book culture and just want to be entertained and zone out for a bit, then at 3 episodes (or about the length of a short movie), Read or Die might just be the perfect Sunday afternoon viewing.

Alright, guys – Fashion Show!

YALSA is going to be hosting a full-on, runway fashion show at the ALA annual conference in Chicago this summer!  AND it’s going to be hosted by some guy who was a contestant on Project Runway!!!  Just one more reason to attend the yearly gathering of our prestigious professional organization.

“The Librarian 3″ and the un-radicalness of guybrarians

A few weeks ago I got a chance to see an advance screening of The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice, the third made-for-TV movie in The Librarian series.  It has since made its little screen debut on TNT.  I had never seen any of the previous Librarian movies, so I didn’t really quite know what to expect (well, to be honest I didn’t expect much) but I was actually pleasantly entertained.

It’s basically a cheesy, comedic take on James Bond, with a librarian for the main character.  There are plenty of library references and library scenes.  The main character has a seemingly endless store of trivia at his command, which he often uses to defeat his foes (perpetuating the stereotype that librarians know everything, when in fact, though we might know much, our power lies in being able to look it all up).  All in all, though, the movie totally puts libraries and librarianship (and books) in a positive light, with the possible exception of the main character’s middle-management-level supervisor (of course the library director is a man – Bob Newhart, in fact).  The supervisor is a late-middle-age, nagging, shrew of a woman (does this librarian representation sound familiar?) who is always complaining about the budget.

And therein lies my main critique of the movie: why is the only female librarian in the movie a bitch?  (There’s only one other main female character in the movie: she is a sexy, buxom lounge singer with super powers).  Why, for that matter, are most of the recent cool-librarians in pop culture cast as males?  I’m thinking of Rex Libris, that guy from Bookhunter, and even Dewey in Unshelved.  Is it that hard to have a cool librarian who is also a woman?  And are these male characters really doing anything to challenge the conventional stereotypes of librarians, or are they in fact implicitly reinforcing those stereotypes of female librarians by contrasting them to their cool, ironic, male librarianship?  It might be nice to see more women librarian characters in pop culture who were challenging the dominant professional stereotypes – that would finally be something radical.

Cowbrarians!

Cowboy

If we are going to stereotype librarians by gender, then let us remember the librarian ladies of the wild west!  In this article  from the recently threatened Chicago Tribune, Christine Des Garennes sketches the typical librarian from 1908, in Salem, OR.

Gun-toting, horseback-riding, walk-2-miles-to-work-in-a-blizzard type of woman

As I trudged through the snow in Sherwood, OR yesterday to get to my library I thought fondly of these women. Read the whole article here.