Blog Archives

The Retro Kid is a group image pool on Flickr which includes illustrations from kids' books, LP jackets, puzzles, etc. Looks like it covers the 1940s through the early 1970s. We didn't notice any pics we remember, though the styles of many are familiar.

If a mad scientist were to create some strange, mutant creature combining T.S. Eliot and J.K. Rowling, we'd expect to see more verse like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Poet.

The Librarian's Guide to Etiquette blog is pretty damn funny. We especially like the reference-book style subjects on all the posts. But we can't completely relate to this item; although we're left-handed, we mouse with our right hand. (Other things we use righty: scissors, guitars, baseball bats, golf clubs.)

Rex Libris. And isn't it appropriate that a comic with a librarian as the hero is published by a company called Slave Labor?

Archie McPhee has come out with a Deluxe Librarian Action Figure. Still Nancy Pearl, but with red threads, more books (including her own More Book Lust), a book cart, and a computer. And the box is a ref desk diorama. We'd like to see a large coffee mug and a cat included in the set, too.

Y'know, they have a male nurse figure, so how 'bout a male librarian? Perhaps ...

• Steven Cohen (press a button, and he says, "You're dead to me, Email!")
• Michael Gorman (amazing foot-in-mouth action)
• Dewey from Unshelved
• A Library History two-pack of Melville Dewey and S.R. Ranganathan

We're thinking that catalogers must really be getting annoyed with Puff Daddy P.Diddy Diddy.

"(Please Return Them Library) Books on Time" is the latest song by Marc Record. He did this one without the Good Ol'PACs, recording it in a motel room somewhere in Nebraska. You can almost hear the ice melting in his Coke-and-whiskey on the nightstand. Lyric sheet is here.

BTW, we've added an RSS 2.0 feed, so that those of you who like to get feeds of audio files can subscribe and get new BibDitties that way, on those rare occasions we post songs. Someone really ought to make up a word for this type of audio distribution ... how about "soundication"?

We're re-doing this site with a CSS-based layout. And lots of color! So far, we have the homepage, the BibDitties pages, and a few others done. As part of the remodeling, we decided to dump the Print Shop and Library Lunacy areas into the Junk Box.

In his examination of several dozen librarian blogs that have some sort of reach (whatever that means), Walt says that The Laughing Librarian is "very much on topic with moderate voice." We just might have to sue him for defamation.

BTW, all you library school students out there: In case you haven't noticed,Walt's list provides a head start on a research paper about uniqueness, inbreeding, and other relationships among blogroll listings in libraryland. (If Blog A lists Blog B, what's the likelihood that Blog B lists Blog A or that both of them list Blog C?, etc.) Also, next time you're in a group at a bar, you can see who can make the most words out of the letters in "biblioblogosphere."

The Cliffs Notes on R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" are even funnier when you consider that, yeah, that probably will be the subject of a few freshman papers this fall.

Here's a Flickr slide show of some old kids' books, and some of the pics are pretty darn funny. One of the books actually appears to be about an unfortunate child. Related tangent: We were big into Herbert S. Zim books when we were young, and our animal-book geekiness came in handy once when someone walked into the library with a bigass (dead) wasp in a jar and wanted to know if those things were dangerous. When she said she'd seen them carrying cicadas ... ding! ... we recalled such a thing as a cicada killer, did some Googling, and quickly put the patron's mind at rest.

A patron tries to dupe an unwary librarian in Mr. Boffo, and someone sends the library a message in Brevity.

The video for the All-American Rejects song "Dirty Little Secret" rips off was inspired by the PostSecret project, which collects secrets people write and illustrate on homemade postcards. One of the cards in the music video says:

"I leave poetry in library books."

If you're a Wikipedia-hatin' librarian, compare what they have on planet 2003 UB₃₁₃ with what your commercial online encyclopedias have. We checked Grolier and World Book this morning; found nothing on Grolier, and World Book just had a short blurb (though prominently linked on the home page) with links to some related WB entries and a couple sites. Both commercial publishers have put a lot of work into very nice interfaces, but four words for them: cur rent con tent.

All Your Spoilers Are Belong To Us is a hilarious collection of images with Harry Potter 6 spoilers. If you're still planning to read the book and don't want to know about Draco Malfoy accidentally strangling himself when he doesn't follow "Mistress" Hermione's bdsm instructions (Oops!), don't click through.

BTW, we're surprised that a Google search for "wizard formerly known as the half-blood prince" gets so few results.