Friday Funnies

The internet is shit.

SomeOne pointed to internetisshit.org:

\"I can name 20 people from my old school class who aren\'t in Google. I can walk into any public library, no matter how tiny and underfunded, and find facts, stories, amazing information I would never touch in a month of webcrawling. I can go into a bar and hear stories Usenet hasn\'t come close to in its 22 years of waffle. \"Oh but what about the stuff you CAN get on the web?\" the netheads say. But they\'re missing the point.
\"

Small-town Illinois library housed in former strip club

This Wednesday, NPR\'s All Things Considered presented a story about Washington Park, IL [audio here]. The focus of the story was the town\'s primary industry: adult entertainment. It\'s location right off of the highway near St. Louis makes it a great location for strip clubs, and the town government has embraced the clubs as a source of revenue to improve the fortunes of the ailing community. There is, naturally, considerable opposition to this.
What I found interesting about the story was a brief statement that the Washington Park Public Library used to be one of these clubs. That must have been an interesting renovation.

New additions to the collection!?!

Gwen writes \"New additions to the library collection!?!

CNN Reports A brood of ducklings have hatched in the plaza of the Great Falls Public Library, and the library\'s director named one of them after Melville Dewey, founder of the Dewey decimal system.

The director, Jim Heckel, was adamant that none of the other seven ducklings be named Huey or Louie, after the famous Disney cartoon duck family.
\"

Monkeys fail to write Shakespeare

In an effort to recreate the works of the Bard, experimenters at a UK university gave six monkeys a computer. "But after a month, the Sulawesi crested macaques had only succeeded in partially destroying the machine, using it as a lavatory, and mostly typing the letter 's'."

The results of the experiment have been published as Notes Towards The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

I am ready to go to Toronto.

Troy Johnson writes "I am all ready to go to the ALA Conference in Toronto. See my website for my preparations."

Note to Troy: Danger, your suit has a rip in the back!

<I>Overdue</i> now <i>Unshelved</i>

In a followup to this story, the library comic strip formerly known as Overdue is now Unshelved. Creators Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum chose the name out of hundreds, and the first book of their strips is on its way to the printer.

Scalia bans broadcast media from speech

<setup>
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia banned all broadcast media from a speech he gave this week.

<punchline>
He was speaking at a ceremony where he received the Citadel of Free Speech award.

AP story here.

(It's Friday on the other side of the globe ...)

The LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines

Presenting, the LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines!
Feel free to use them at work, conferences, out at your favorite pub, or anywhere you may find the librarian of your dreams. Note: use at your own risk, may result in slapping, or having a drink thrown in your face.


What\'s your cutter number baby?

I bet you have quite a nice book worm!

You must work at a busy library, cuz baby you just increased my
circulation.

Are you a librarian? Well I really need to be shushed!

Damn... you have more hardcovers than my private stash -- Read More

Rejected workshops for library conferences

Tony Doyle started this thread on LM_NET back in December. We took those initial ideas, and added more than a few of our own. Below you will find a list of \"Rejected workshops for library conferences.\"
Feel free to add your own.

\"King for Kinder\" How to use stories from the Master of the Macabre, Stephen King, to scare the poop out of little kids.


\"The New Library Standards: How to fake it\" Learn how to talk the talk without walking the walk. Make everyone think you have a great library media program without actually doing all of that tedious work.

Much more below... -- Read More

Big Little Books

Lileks has added his take on Big Little Books (or is it Little Big Books?) to his Institute of Official Cheer. "They\'re comics! They\'re books! They\'re a joyless synthesis of both!"

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