July 24, 2013 by lindsay
Buzzfeed Books always seems to pull out something that makes all the librarians I know share the same list, but this month the site has really been showing libraries, and librarians, a lot of love. Here are three recent lists published in honour of libraries:
49 Breathtaking Libraries from All Over the World
30 Things Librarians Love (I have a weakness for numbers two, six, eight and 16)
19 Vintage Photographs of Stylin’ Librarians
Category on the web | Tags: library tourism | No Comments
December 8, 2012 by lindsay
Monty Python’s take on the library job interview.
Category on the web | Tags: | No Comments
October 5, 2012 by lindsay
On October 14, the Lee Road branch of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library will be unveiling a bronze Harvey Pekar statue. According to Comics Alliance, Pekar’s widow, Joyce Brabner, decided to start a Kickstarter to fund the statue to raise awareness for comics as a literary artform.
Before his death, Pekar spent a lot of his time at this library branch. At 2pm, October 14, there will be a statue and plaque dedication ceremony followed by a presentation by JT Waldman who collaborated with Pekar on his posthumously released book Not The Israel My Parents Promised Me. The book, which was released this summer, will be for sale at the ceremony.
Category news, on the web | Tags: comics,Harvey Pekar | No Comments
August 10, 2012 by lindsay
During the Canadian Library Association National Conference and Tradeshow in Ottawa this past June, I met Chatham-Kent Public Library Board member, Mark Reinhart, who was on a panel discussing how to reach LGBTQ audiences in libraries.
An artist as well as a library board member, Mark was on the panel along with Chatham-Kent Public Library’s public services coordinator Tania Sharpe to discuss their project A Queer Archive, an archive of LGBTQ material that is as much an art installation as it is a mobile library.
Mark and I have kept in touch post-conference and he will be bringing the archive to Toronto on October 21st for the zine fair I organize, Canzine.
You can read more about the archive in an article Alison Lang wrote for the newest issue of Broken Pencil, which just hit newsstands this week.
Category news, on the web | Tags: archives,LGBTQ | No Comments
July 13, 2012 by lindsay
photo courtesy of OCADU's Learning Zone
My dream job is to be a zine librarian.
My original dream job was to be a journalist who wrote about zines. That came true in 2006 when I got the job editing Broken Pencil magazine. But in 2009 — after writing about film for various magazines for years (that was another dream job) — I decided that journalism just wasn’t fulfilling me anymore. I had already achieved all my goals in that field, and I could no longer think of anything to strive for. Then it hit me: I wanted to be a librarian.
Because I had been working with the Toronto Reference Library on its zine collection (which was started in part by Broken Pencil), and because I had given a number of talks to high school and post secondary students about zines, I realized that teaching people about zines (and the many great things that come along with zines such as social justice, political awareness, literacy and self esteem) was what I wanted to be doing.
For the uninitiated, zines (pronounced zeens) are independent publications made by individuals or collectives to share their views. There are no rules around making zines, so they can take any form imaginable and can be on any subject. The variety and unstructured nature of zines makes them both useful to libraries (in part because they document local communities in a way no other medium does), but it also makes them difficult to catalogue.
In 2010 I started studying at the University of Toronto’s iSchool and am now a recent MI (LIS) graduate in Toronto looking for a job. While in “library school” I focused on zines as much as possible, creating a zine collection at a student-run library on campus, helping the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU) to choose online cataloguing software to make its collection searchable, starting a book club at OCADU that integrated zines into the reading choices, and giving talks at libraries, schools and conferences about how zines can be used as literacy and teaching tools. So I was happy to see Kevin Coleman over at Hack Library School estimating that zines are an emerging career in librarianship. In his piece, Coleman articulates what Broken Pencil and zine makers everywhere have been advocating for years: that we must not forget the innovation that still occurs in print during this digital revolution.
Next week I am speaking to a Readers’ Advisory class about zines and their potential uses in public libraries. In addition to talking about what a zine is, how to find them and how to start a zine collection in a library, I will be discussing how zines can be used not only to educate but to empower readers to create. A zine collection in a library can serve as a launching pad for programming for teens and young adults such as zine writing workshops, zine reading and making clubs, public zine readings and more.
I realize that I’m not about to land a job entitled “zine librarian” anytime soon (or maybe ever), but I hope that in whatever library I end up, I will have the opportunity to pitch and develop a zine library and create programming to attract and engage new patrons.
P.S. Celebrate Zine Library Day on July 21st!
Some Resources for Zine Librarians:
ALA’s Zines in Libraries panel (which includes a zine on building a zine collection)
Zine Librarian Group on We Make Zines (a social media space for zine makers)
Category on the web | Tags: zines | No Comments
July 2, 2012 by lindsay
This video by cartoonist and filmmaker Derek Kirk Kim was taken at the American Library Association convention’s Artist Alley. In the video, comic creators talk about how refreshing it is to sell their work at a convention for librarians where the people coming to their tables are enthusiastic, curious and grateful.
Indie cartoonist Jerzy Drozd particularly likes that librarians are more open to independent work and are not focused purely on characters with mainstream popularity. The video also features commentary about biases against comics and the reasons that comics belong in libraries.
Category on the web | Tags: comics,graphic novels | No Comments
May 22, 2012 by lindsay
Twitter is buzzing with the latest hashtag game #ReplaceAWordWithLibrarian. To play, tweeters take famous phrases from books and films and replace a word with “librarian.” For example: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your librarian” (@NateCrowder), “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my librarian. Prepare to die” (@CAwkward) and “I love the smell of librarian in the morning” (@andrewhunterm).
The Huffington Post has collected a few of the best tweets that have resulted from this game.
Category on the web | Tags: | No Comments
May 3, 2012 by lindsay
Category on the web | Tags: | No Comments