More on Bibliophilia from the Washington Post: So this is a sex-romp. Or a sex-something. It favors verbs like “diddle” and “swive.” And nouns like “merkin.”

I want to say to this writer, “What’s your point?” Or, “Get a life!” Or even more harsh, “Get out of school!” The verb “diddle” does come to mind here. There’s more to this world than “a Barbie doll wearing Band-Aids for bra and panties; a white chess rook against which two shiny golf balls leaned.” There is, actually, life.

Inspyration - Everyday librarian-type ramblings.

This is sure to be a must-read:

Bibliophilia by Michael Griffith.

Some excerpts from the San Francisco Gate review:

A librarian stuck in a sexless marriage is deputized to thwart student hanky-panky in the stacks, a man afraid to tell his parents he’s gay gets trapped in a chimpanzee cage, and a father literally becomes a pawn in his teenage son’s life-size chess game at a county fair. That’s just a sampling of what goes on in Michael Griffith’s “Bibliophilia,” a novella and five stories that are only occasionally credible and always sardonic, clever and beautifully stylized.

In the title novella, for example, Myrtle, the middle-aged librarian/sex policewoman, demands that the real police use a rape kit on a mangled grapefruit in order to prove that a student with a duffel bag filled with fruit and vegetables has been copulating with citrus at the school library.

I can imagine the dialogue:

Student - ‘Hey, I don’t see a sign that says “No Fruit Copulation in the Library”. ‘

Librarian - ‘Doesn’t the sign clearly state “No food or drink in the library”?

Student - ‘Does it look like I ate the grapefruit?’

Sadly (or perhaps mercifully), only the title story is library-related.

They just keep comin’:

Tiny Little Librarian - Musings of a too-short girl in the high-stacks game of librarianship… (via dmoz submission)

And have I mentioned this one already?:

diy librarian - Bringing DIY and librarianship together (spotted first at Angry Thoat)

The author of diy librarian, Tara Murray, has a great job title: Information Core Director (for the Population Research Institute at Penn State).

After a lovely hiatus in scenic East Dorset, VT, I return to bring you a new weblog courtesy of a dmoz submission (still not updated, aargh!):

Tuna Breath - Judith E Bush discusses the launch and analysis of RLG.org’s RedLightGreen.com website — recasting traditional bibliographic metadata for a world that believes everything should work like Google(tm).

And a correction: John Gist is not a librarian. His post came from Zogby Blog via the Libertarian Librarian, Melissa Zogby. I thank him for the correction and note that it’s a good thing I take my time adding things to dmoz.

I’m headed to a wedding up in Vermont tomorrow, so I’ll be off my computer till Sunday. But before I pull the plug, a few final items are in order.

I received a great little note from the Planned Parenthood Action Network here in Indiana denouncing internet filters. I’ve decided to reprint it in its entirety:

What is Wrong with Mandatory Internet Filters for Public Libraries?

2. Write a letter to the editor.

Next item: According to this post, John Gist, author of The Lopsided Poopdeck, is a librarian.

And finally, I found a very strange comment on one of my older posts, whose author apparently didn’t understand the post at all.

Anyway, be back in a few days.

In further anticipation of my forthcoming article, an interesting discussion on LLRX.com: The Internet Roundtable #36: Branding, Part II: What Are Blogs and Why Is Everyone So Excited About Them.

Courtesy of BeSpacific.

So here’s the scoop on dmoz.org. On Monday, the public cgi scripts became active again, which means that the public is once again able to submit sites. However, edited categories are only now being updated on the public servers, one at a time, from the mirror dmoz site. This process should be completed sometime Thursday afternoon, so look for a current category listing then. Again, sorry for the misguidance.

Here’s yet another article that does a nice job of discussing the relationship between libraries and blogs: Blogging and the U of M Libraries.

Shane Nackerud argues for blog hosting as a service of the University of Minnesota Libraries:

“As a library, we are already discussing ways that we can change the scholarly publishing paradigm, ways that we can create communities of interest, and ways that we can create a digital repository of scholarly output. Hosting blogs would give us an opportunity to investigate how this new medium can help us accomplish, or touch upon, all three of these goals.”

“Hosting blogs would also make the University Libraries the center point for intellectual discussion on campus…Thousands of people would come to our site every day not just to look up a book, or find a full text article, but also to discuss important topics, read what other people are currently discussing, and possibly post their own opinions…Most importantly, hosting blogs would leverage the libraries’ traditional role as a defender of intellectual freedom, and indirectly help our faculty, staff, and students participate in our democratic society.”

Good points that deserve serious consideration by all academic libraries.

Courtesy of rawbrick.net.