jpe9 tumbling

[jpe9]

Fiction Can Help Us Deal With Trump’s Chaos

Making sense of the presidency, one novel at a time.

[jpe9]

(On Being Studios)

[strandbooks]

We’re taking a moment on this bustling Saturday to remember Umberto Eco. 🌹Best known for his stunning novel The Name of the Rose, a medieval detective novel set in an Italian abbey - it was later turned into a film starring Sean Connery. After his success, Eco became a respected intellectual voice in Italy and is tributes as “the writer who changed Italian culture.” 🇮🇹 #UmbertoEco (at Strand Book Store)

[hybridic]

REMEMBER: If confronted by a librarian while looking for a book to check out, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE BY CLIMBING A TREE. There are NO TREES in the library, and the precious moments it will take you to look around and realize this, will ALLOW THE LIBRARIAN TO STRIKE. Don’t become a statistic.

Welcome to Night Vale episode 27: First Date (via hybridic)

"Don’t become a statistic."

(via libraryjournal)

[watchhowisoar]

For most of the human race, pretty much all of the lifespan of the human race, information was currency. Information was like gold. It was rare, it was hard to find, it was expensive. You could get your information, but you had to know where to go, you had to know what you were looking at, you had to know how to find your information. It was hard. And librarians were the key players in the battle for information, because they could go and get and bring back this golden nugget for you, the thing that you needed. Over the last decade, which is less than a blink of an eye in the history of the human race, it’s all changed. And we’ve gone from a world in which there is too little information, in which information is scarce, to a world in which there is too much information, and most of it is untrue or irrelevant. You know, the world of the Internet is the world of information that is not actually so. It’s a world of information that just isn’t actually true, or if it is true, it’s not what you needed, or it doesn’t actually apply like that, or whatever. And you suddenly move into a world in which librarians fulfill this completely different function. We’ve gone from looking at a desert, in which a librarian had to walk into the desert for you and come back with a lump of gold, to a forest, to this huge jungle in which what you want is one apple. And at that point, the librarian can walk into the jungle and come back with the apple. So I think from that point of view, the time of librarians, and the time of libraries—they definitely haven’t gone anywhere.

Neil Gaiman talks about his love of libraries. (via watchhowisoar)

And I stand by every word of it.

(via neil-gaiman)

[jpe9]

Library 2.0 web site

Library 2.0 is a useful web site about the future of libraries in the digital age. It sponsors a…

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[explore-blog]

The biggest bookworms in the world, in an infographic map depicting the number of hours people spend reading each week and how different genres fare across age groups. From the department of gaping discrepancies, the United States is to India what romance-reading men are to fantasy-reading men.

Console yourself with this vintage booklovers’ map of America. 

[libraryjournal]

Tumblarian 101: A Starter Kit

Welcome to Tumblr! By now (I hope), you’ve picked a URL and set up your theme. Now, you have to figure out a) who to follow, b) what tags to track, and c) how and d) what to post.

Who to Follow

Well, the Library Journal tumblr. (Hello.) Also check out Tumblr’s favorite book-related tumblrs. (NYPL, The Lifeguard Librarian, Librarian Wardrobe, and LJ are included here.) Kate Tkacik (pronounced Ta-Chick)—aka The Lifeguard Librarian—maintains a list of librarians and librarians on Tumblr. (Want to be added? Tell her!) Rebecca Hopman—aka Ex-Tabulis—maintains a similar list of archivists and archives. Click around! See what you like! Follow folks who make you think, make you laugh, make you sit forward in your chair.

Tags to Track / Use

The primary community tags are #libraries, #librarians, and #Tumblarians. The singular versions, #library and #librarian, don’t have much going on. The curated tags #politics, #history, #education, #lit, and #tech are also useful. (You can find a list of popular, curated tags at tumblr.com/explore.)

To track a tag, search for it in the white, upper right hand corner field. Once the search results appear, a blue button that says “track" will also pop up in the right hand side of the search field. Click it, and you are set.

How to Post

The easiest way for me to post to Tumblr is to use the bookmarklet. Go tumblr.com/apps; at the top you will see a big gray button that says “Share on Tumblr." Point, click, and drag that button (aka bookmarklet) to your browser’s toolbar or bookmarks folder. That way, while you are reading an article you find interesting enough to share on Tumblr, you can highlight a bit of text you want to quote, click on the bookmarklet (which will cause the quote to pop up an auto-prepared post), and publish it to your tumblr. This makes posting to Tumblr much, much easier.

In general, it’s good to post fairly frequently and throughout the day (generally I post 8am-7pm EST, but really whenever). This can be accomplished remotely by adding your posts to your tumblr’s queue, which will roll them out automatically in regular intervals.

What to Post

Well, it’s up to you. In general, Tumblr is a more informal space. Don’t be afraid to crack bad jokes, post a selfie, reference a tv show, or get nerdy about cataloging. Talk about the things you like (in terms of librarianship and otherwise)—chances are other people will like them too.

Don’t be afraid to reblog. Don’t be afraid to write short. (Don’t be afraid to write long, either!) Don’t be afraid to give yourself the time to get a feel for the medium.

Further Reading

Check out the Powerpoint for the ALA 2013 Conversation Starter, Tumblarian 101.

I also highly encourage you to check out LJ’s recent article about the Tumblarian community, The Library Is Open: A Look at Librarians and Tumblr. (Yes, I wrote it.)

[jpe9]

Well, I guess I'm one of the  #tumblarians ...

[penamerican]

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

A characteristically measured piece of advice from the hard-drinking, bullfighting, bad boy of the “Lost Generation" of ex-pat writers, Ernest Hemingway, who died 52 years ago today, on July 2, 1961. (via penamerican)