Librarian Humor

MLA, being in a new job, planning events, broken glue containers, important things breaking down . . . Whatever this week has thrown at you, you could probably use a good laugh. This video here –> https://youtu.be/MxfO-6VCeX0?si=TO_li3Ej-IsOTOyx <– should do the trick. It demonstrates the wide spectrum of librarian humor, which I now think should be its own genre. My favorites were: $ saved notes, blind dates, and grab bags, and honestly, every library needs secret bookshelves. I hope everyone else finds their own reasons to smile while watching this video.
Note) As one of the people who fixes books in this library, I do feel I need to point out that putting books on their foredges as shown in the video is not a good idea. It causes books to start separating from their covers which means fixing hinges and breaks for us.

The MU Extension Center’s Garden Hour

This particular event was brought to my attention by Tammy Green who is affiliated with Heart of Missouri Master Gardeners.
Meeting frequency varies with the season and will be switching to monthly instead of weekly since fall is around the corner. According to Tammy, “it is a great opportunity to ask gardening questions and learn.” If you are interested in attending you can visit this website (https://ipm.missouri.edu/) for more information.
They also have a YouTube channel where you can watch the event live or past meetings. (www.youtube.com/c/MUIPM)

A Closer Look at Friendships in Books

Pick your favorite story and I’m guessing there’s at least one friendship, probably more. According to the article in the link further on, there are seven types of friendship. How many can you guess before reading the article (https://lithub.com/the-seven-kinds-of-friendships-you-find-in-literature-a-taxonomy/)? Do you have a favorite? Which characters among everything you have read form your favorite friendship?

One Map to Rule Them All

Unless someone knows of a map that does this for the entire world. If such a map exists, it should rule over all other maps.
Clearly, I have found a map that makes me happy. It shows locations for bookstores for most of the U.S. including Hawai’i and even a few in Canada. For about half of the states, there are so many bookstores you can only make an educated guess at which state you are looking at. Nice! You can find it here: https://www.iheartbookstores.com/
Here is an article that talks about the map: https://lithub.com/never-get-stranded-without-a-novel-again-with-this-map-of-6000-bookstores/. I recommend checking out their Literary Atlas of America as well. Happy exploring!

Scriptember

September is almost here and with it, the Scriptember challenge (https://kickinthecreatives.com/scriptember-lettering-challenge/). This has nothing to do with writing plays or prepping for NaNoWriMo. It’s about hand lettering. If you don’t know how to hand letter, then this is a perfect chance to try. 99designs has a good tutorial here: https://99designs.com/blog/design-tutorials/basics-of-hand-lettering-tutorial/#section2-1.
For this particular challenge, you need only a few basic art supplies (traditional or digital) and a good collection of your favorite quotes. It’s not a problem if you don’t already have a collection. You can go through any annotation notes you have or look through books of nothing but quotes. If you ask your friends for their favorite quotes, then maybe at the end of this challenge you could return their quote as a gift, or the front of a card, for them. There are also a slew of sites that have collections by themes.

VR Training Programs at Nevada Libraries

Nevada libraries are filling important gaps in job training using VR. This helps people prepare so they get hired and helps people fill the gap between knowing about a skill and actually being able to do the skill. “The state’s VR headsets are ‘like a mobile library that has a specialized collection that’s all about careers that are in demand in the state of Nevada,’ Westergard explained.”

International ??? Day Books

So, I am doing it again, a book list post, and yes, I’m confident read-aholic animal lovers, especially the cat owners, will find this list’s twist interesting, and hopefully, useful. Curious about what cats might suggest are good reads for their human friends? Then this article in honor of International Cat Day is the spot to go. I will refrain from cat puns – promise.