Apologies

I've been having some trouble logging in to the blog to add new material. All apologies to anyone who has been checking in. More to follow when I am not heading onto the desk for a two hour afterschool marathon.

Games About Librarianship

While doing a random search for Library newsfeeds I came across these two games developed by Carnagie Mellon University Libraries. One is fair, the other is brilliant.

http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/etc/index.html

Within Range is what a lot of people think Librarians do all day, put books back on shelves according to an esoteric classification system. I have used a similar game as part of a training session when I was a library assistant during grad school. It is an OK way to start to understand the mechanics if not the purpose of the Library of Congress classification system. We librarians really don't do all that much of this stuff though, it is usually up to pages and shelvers to handle this kind of book traffic.

I'll Get It though is just brilliant. It creates a nice little flash model of the real life of reference librarianship and public service. If you want to get any sense of what I really do all day (in between class visits, programming, collection development and the like) this is your ticket in. Seriously.

Trading Card

OK, this image tool is pretty fun. I did always want to be on a trading card despite having no skill whatsoever in any sport which would actaully GET me on a trading card. I didn't collect them either, but as a kid you see fame applied in these very tangible ways.

For the record that is me in that suit. I was Libro the Library Lion for the Bermuda National Library. The suit was incredibly hot and impossible to see out of. Having said all that it was pretty fun to get the kids reactions (except for the little bastards who pulled my tail). I do sort of wish that the library could have gotten a tshirt or something made up for me because without the signs I used to carry there is really no way to know that the lion is a LIBRARY lion (except when I made my library RRRRREEEEEAAAAAD roar).

A lot of kids suspected that Mr. Z was Libro. There was a great moment when Mrs. Z wore the suit and the two of us were seen side by side. I liken the looks of shock to those great DC comics moments when Batman would pretend to be Superman so that Supes could be seen with his "good freind" Clark Kent all to throw off the keen witted Lois Lane.

You spend enough time with your head encased in a Lion mask and this is the kind of thing that comes to mind.