Here's where the fun begins

Julia, current MLIS student. Professional interest in copyright, digital literacy & children/youth services. Personal interest in mythology, sensationalist Victorian literature, superheroes, & typography. Blogging on MLIS matters at...

[infoneer-pulse]

Books, in ways that are different to visual art, to music, to radio, to love even, force us to walk through another’s thoughts, one word at a time, over hours and days. We share our minds for that time with the writer’s. There is a slowness, a forced reflection required by the medium that is unique. Books recreate someone else’s thoughts inside our own minds, and maybe it is this one-to-one mapping of someone else’s words, on their own, without external stimuli, that give books their power. Books force us to let someone else’s thoughts inhabit our minds completely. Books are not just transferrers of knowledge and emotion, but a special kind of tool that flattens one self into another, that enable the trying-on of foreign ideas and emotions.

Why can’t we read anymore? — Medium (via infoneer-pulse)

[powersimon]

The carrier of carriers. A tribute to Terry Pratchett

[watercolorteas]

“And then he went home, And the world turned towards morning”

-Night Watch

Thank you, Sir. Your words were there for me when a lot of other things weren’t. Safe journeys. 

[newyorker]

What I’d really like, in fact, is to be young and middle-aged, and perhaps even very old, all at the same time—and to be dark- and fair-skinned, deaf and hearing, gay and straight, male and female. I can’t do that in life, but I can do it in writing, and so can you. Never forget that the truest luxury is imagination, and that being a writer gives you the leeway to exploit all of the imagination’s curious intricacies, to be what you were, what you are, what you will be, and what everyone else is or was or will be, too.

Andrew Solomon's advice for young writers. (via newyorker)

[completelybooked]

Book Recs for every major. All of these are works of fiction that I think would be particularly interesting to people of a particular major or area of study. Feel free to add to the list.

EDUCATION:

- We the Animals, by Justin Torres: a particularly fascinating story...

[mymodernmet]

New York-based, French photographer Franck Bohbot documents the breathtaking beauty of libraries around the world in his ongoing series House of Books.

[raunconference]

When librarians registered for this year’s Unconference, we asked them: Where do you learn about books? Many librarians, especially those new to RA, are overwhelmed by the sheer...

[librarylinknj]

RAUNCON asks: Where do you learn about books?

[slcl]

Ballet at the library? Yes! Kids at the Prairie Commons Branch experienced a special story time yesterday. Ballet dancers from the DaySpring School read the fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk, then taught the kids dance moves to act out the story they had just heard. You can see more adorable photos from the program here. 

Beanstalk Ballet is a part of SLCL’s Art @ Your Library series. The program is being held at multiple branches, get the full schedule here. 

[libraryadvocates]

That first shot is the best.

[cutterandmutter]

We Love The Library So Much: 13 Autostraddle Writers On Their Favorite Libraries

"You already know that books are really great. And you already know that libraries are where you can get books for free, which is why you may have raised an eyebrow at the recent fuss over the idea of “Netflix for books.” As important as free books are, however, they offer us more than that; libraries offer free access to knowledge, and knowledge is power. For queer and trans women, libraries gave some of us the chance to know something about ourselves — reading fiction or nonfiction about queer people without our parents around, or using the internet anonymously to figure out whether we really were the only one in the whole world who felt this way. Technically, National Library Week has passed, but is there ever a bad time to talk about how much libraries mean to us? No, no there isn’t."

[iworkatapubliclibrary]

Found in the IT Department.

[cutterandmutter]

#745.5 Found Objects#004.16 Computers (via iworkatapubliclibrary)

[vintagelibraries]

Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Film Room, year unknow.

"The Library was one of the first in the nation to circulate 16 mm films. To keep the films in good shape, special inspection machines operated by staff in white gloves were required to hunt for bad splices or breaks after every loan."

- John Fleischman, Free & Public: One Hundred and Fifty Years at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County

[cutterandmutter]

Aw, looking at this gorgeous fire hazard makes me miss the movie theatre that I used to work at.

[journalofajournalist]

The most controversial articles on Wikipedia, sorted by language. (via Daily chart: Edit wars | The Economist)

[cutterandmutter]

Heartbleed: Why the Internet's Gaping Security Hole Is So Scary

In the past 15 or so years, we've all learned to feel pretty safe on the internet. BigSite.com is surely handling your credit card information safely, at least as safely as any brick and mortar store. Maybe don't be so sure; there's been a bug lurking in one of the internet's most important security measures for years, and it's given attackers the keys to the kingdom. Enter Heartbleed.

[cutterandmutter]

"How to Become Virtually Immortal" by Laura Parker for The New Yorker (Illustration by Dadu Shin.)

"[Eterni.me] plans to store data from Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, photos, video, location information, and even Google Glass and Fitbit devices. While you are living, you can curate and add to this material; you can also choose privacy settings and determine what information you want stored and made public. Eterni.me then allows you to create a list of people who will be contacted and given access to your account in the case of death, giving your descendants quick and easy access to that Instagram pic of your latte or a detailed history of your Facebook pokes.

The service’s defining feature is a 3-D digital avatar, designed to look and sound like you, whose job will be to emulate your personality and dish out bits of information to friends and family taken from a database of stored information. A user will be encouraged to 'train' its avatar, through daily interactions, in order to improve its vocabulary and conversational skills. Eterni.me’s co-founder, Marius Ursache, thinks of it as a more advanced version of Siri, who, ten or fifteen years from now, will be able to 'respond to questions more naturally, and learn from every conversation you have with her.'"

[veronikelly-mars-deactivated201]

Readers unfamiliar with the children’s lit industry may be surprised by the degree of gender parity in the charts below. Those more familiar with the industry will likely be surprised too—by the significant representation of men in our overall numbers. For a relatively small percentage of our authors, men are very well represented among our award winners and list-mentions.

Go read the VIDA count for children’s and young adult literature.  (via catagator)

[autostraddle]

Ten Books For Queers And Feminists To Read This Spring

Ten Books For Queers And Feminists To Read This Spring

I haven’t read these but I’m absolutely dying to. Some are already out. Some are coming out. All look both amazing and also amazingly relevant to your interests.

Essential Spring Reading for Queers and Feminists

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[tehlibrarylife]

More addictions to my TBR pile… I meant to type addition, but addiction is more appropriate.

[cutterandmutter]

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