Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Librarian - My Morning Jacket


I first heard of My Morning Jacket when I picked up one of those free iTunes download cards at Starbucks a few weeks ago. The song was "I'm Amazed" and I liked it. I thought, "Good choice, Starbucks." I always pick up the free download cards but this was the first one I'd actually downloaded, so I was happy that it was a good one.

Then last night, I was searching around for a pair of librarian glasses. I was several pages into the Google results when I saw the result for My Morning Jacket's song "Librarian." I thought, "Aren't those the free iTunes download guys? They have a song about librarians?" So I read through the lyrics and I downloaded the song and let me just say...wow. It is such a resonant, beautiful song. I fell in love. Take a look or a listen and discover it for yourself. I won't go into deep song analysis because I think you should hear it yourself first, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Now I have to check out the rest of their tunes. Good job, My Morning Jacket! Bravo! (And aren't they lookers, as well?)

Ex libris,

Marissa

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Book explosion!


I got to work today and WHOA! The carts were overflowing. I freaked out a little bit because this is the fullest they've been since I became shelving supervisor in June. Everything will eventually get shelved, but it is a big mess right now. I put out an APB for all my shelvers to come in and help if they can. Everyone is returning from vacation and dropping their books off, and summer reading is winding down also. The children's carts are the worst because people take out tons of books at a time.

In other shelving news, one of our shelvers resigned on Saturday, so we're down a pair of hands. However, we'll be hiring two new shelvers for the fall, so that is great.

It ebbs and flows.

Ex libris,

Marissa

Monday, August 18, 2008

Waiting game

So I registered on 1001 Journals for Journal 3031 out of Maine. The theme is "Look what I found!" I find all sorts of stuff in the library, so I'm excited to add my finds to this journal. Hopefully this will revive me a little bit. Now I must wait.

Ex libris,

Marissa

Bookmaking attention


Last week at work I gave out two business cards. That's epic. The first one was to a library patron who had work in the library's current art exhibit. I bought a piece of his and he came to check out his books and I told him that I was the buyer. Then I pointed out my pieces in the show (both within sight of the circulation desk) and he asked for my card.

The second instance was the next day. I was walking from children's to the circ desk and a woman was looking at one of my books and we got into a long conversation about bookmaking. Apparently her daughter is a bookmaking instructor and we chatted about how I got started and how her daughter went to North Bennet Street School and how I have an Etsy shop and it was awesome. And I gave her my card.

So now I must make things for my shop tout de suite.

Ex libris,

Marissa

Saturday, August 16, 2008

A curious dualism.

I was just speaking to Lesley, who works in the children's library with me. Apparently there was an article about Tomi Ungerer in the New York Times a few weeks ago. He wrote and illustrated a bunch of children's books, which I knew, but I did not know that he also did erotic books. Interesting combination, no?

He illustrated Flat Stanley, which is a huge favorite of mine, in addition to writing and illustrating his own books. And erotica. There is an increased interest in his work now since the article (which is why there are a pile of his books sitting on one of our carts waiting to be shelved). However, I'm surprised that there aren't any "concerned parents" getting all huffy about the erotic books. Now, we don't have any of those sexy tomes in our library, but I'm sure there are some folks who would like to ban all his books in case there is anything subversive in them. It will be interesting to see how this develops (or if it develops at all), especially since a number of his children's books are being republished in the fall.

Check out the article. It's quite interesting and he seems like a cool guy. I love artists.

Also, if you do a Google image search for Tomi Ungerer, you can see some of his work (including some of the naughty bits).

Ex libris,

Marissa