Tech Tips & Timely Tidbits
Forum to share information, books, news, technology, issues in education, …. “Whatever, Whenever!”
Welcome!
Subscribe by RSS
Meta
Tech Tips and Timely Tidbits by Heather Loy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Awful Library Books
Recently, someone on the YALSA-bk listserv shared a link to Awful Library Books, a blog that shares covers and tidbits about books that have been weeded (recently!) from library collections. It then made the rounds of our state listserv. The examples on the Awful Library Books blog are funny, yet sad at the same time. They brought back memories of my first weeding adventure as a brand new librarian at Wagener-Salley.
I couldn’t get over the books that I found. It made me wonder if anyone had ever weeded the collection before. There were books as old as the early 1900s – some that say copyright 1896, but not sure if that’s true – could be, but I’m skeptical. I kept a few of the books I weeded in an archive section, simply because they were either ones I wanted to take a longer look at or too priceless: beautiful field guides from the 1930s; a Grays Anatomy from the 1950s, Essays by Emerson (the 1896 book), and this little gem…
The Happy Bookers: A Playful History of Librarians and Their World from the Stone Age to the Distant Future
by Richard Armour w/ Appropriate Illustrations by Campbell Grant
Copyright 1976
McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York
This was too funny! I enjoyed paging through it and looking at the illustrations. I’ll admit that I haven’t read it yet. It’s been sitting in my back storage closet for when I have that all elusive “free time” I keep hearing about.
Check out these page shots I scanned of the present and future librarians and technology (early ebook reader??)
A. “She’s come a long way.” – I guess that’s a past “librarian” and a “today” librarian. Actually, that’s a pretty accurate depiction of me “today” – just add a few pounds <grin>.
B. “Disastrous breakdowns.” – I remember those filmstrip projectors from my childhood, but I’ve never had to work one before – I’m so glad for DVDs and streaming video we have now!
C. “Dial a book” – An early look at ebooks? Not too far off, just not quite right.
May 27th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
LOL I have actually threaded a film projector before and felt exactly like the picture above, with film all around my feet. But only ONCE, dare your remind me my 46th birthday rapidly approaching. This was too funny–glad you shared.
May 27th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Glad you liked this one. In cleaning out the back closet, I found a box of hand held viewers – the kind for non-audio filmstrips. We also had a metal film cabinet that had a bunch of instructional “films” that you used with them. I kept one viewer and a few of the more interestingly titled or topics to review later – the ones that hadn’t already begun to disintegrate. I gave the metal cabinet to building construction to use to store tools! The bottom of it was rusting and damaging the Formica work table. BTW, I’m not too far behind you in the age category – a little less than 10 years separate our ages!
May 29th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Too funny! Both yours and Cathy Nelson’s recent posts have inspired me to take some photos next week as I finally get around to tackling those four carts full of books to be weeded in my office next week!
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:27 am
Hey Heather….your blog is always entertianing and full of inspiration. This post reminded me of a time, years ago, when we were celebrating National Library Week at school. I was at the bank making a deposit after school, and this guy kept staring at my chest. I thought “How rude! How blatant! What is WRONG with you?” Then I realized I had on my “I’m a Happy Booker” T-shirt! Guess I WAS asking for trouble! I will be reading all the YABA titles, too, God willing!
Cheers…
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:23 pm
@Fran – I hope you enjoyed your weeding adventure and will share some of the more interesting selections!
@Leah – yep, did a double take when I pulled the book off the shelf. That’s what happens when your brain fills in letters you think you see and not what was actually there. Still haven’t gotten around to the YABA titles yet. One of my favorite authors released a book that I was unaware of (The Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede) and I had to rush out and buy/read it and I’ll blog about it someday soon (I hope!)