Librarians on Wheels

I know, when you normally think of librarians on wheels you think of those old boxy bookmobiles rambling around on county roads, delivering books to patrons in areas not fortunate enough to have a real standing library. But that's not what I'm talking about. Instead, I'm talking about roller derby librarians, who smash ribs and stereotypes at the same time.

Meghan Gaynor, that's her in the front in the red, is actually hanging up her skates. Apparently, being a roller derby queen (and yes, Jim Croce is playing in my head right about now) is not a sport that one normally plays later in life. Like beer pong, it's an activity best enjoyed by those of the younger set.

But then this got me to thinking. We used to have carhops back in the day, where the waiter or waitress would bring your food out to you in your car while on skates. Why can't we adopt that business model (since libraries nowadays will accept anything from the business model) and just put skates on our librarians? It should please administrators as we would be able to get a book off the shelf just that much faster. Laid off half the staff? No problem, just throw them on some skates and they can zoom around the library and all your patron service problems arising from decimated funding will vanish almost as magically as your book budget did.

There could be one downfall though. I can only imagine the endless committee meetings about what type of skate would be allowed. One side arguing for old school, another for in-line. One side arguing that we must preserve our cultural traditions, the other arguing about the need to embrace new technology. And in the end, the patron just wants to know where the section is for 796.21.

A Plethora of Forgotten Words

When I was doing my time serving this great country of ours, I had a army buddy who would say the most ridiculous things. Not things that were grammatically incorrect or even mildly amusing, just words that shouldn't be used during a military drill. One day, during one training in the middle of a field, he said "Look, there's a plethora of trucks." What? You couldn't just say a shit-load of trucks like everyone else in this unit would have said? I was convinced he had one of those word a day calendars because he would come up with the strangest words.

In his honor, I wanted to point people to this website that is sponsored by the people who put out the Oxford Dictionary. Save The Words offers a plethora of words for you to adopt that have fallen out of favor. Need just the right word to describe that homeless fellow hanging out in the library lobby? Maybe he's mingent, which means he's discharging urine. Exactly how little are these words used? Well, the spellchecker said I spelled "mingent" wrong, so there is some subtle satisfaction in knowing that I am slightly more intelligent than the spell-check function.

While I am one is who is much more interested in seeing language evolve (witness all the times people have criticized my choice of words and I have to tell them that I am creating new ones), for those who would like to save the past, and sound slightly pretentious doing so in my opinion, have a go.

There's some scray stuff going on.....

....and it's not even Halloween.

Apparently there are ghosts in two (count'em, not just one, but two) libraries in Scottsdale, Arizona. It appears that even the dead like to hang out in libraries. (I'm guessing it's to get better Internet service because I hear the service that you get from the other side is just horrible)

Apparently a conversation was caught on tape that went as follows:

"Do you sit in that chair a lot over there in the corner?" the reporter asked.

What sounds like a male voice saying "no" can be heard a few seconds later.

This just proves that ghosts aren't stupid. Anybody who has ever worked at a public library can tell you that you shouldn't sit in a chair there. At my old job, we had to take the chairs out of commission every now and then and sanitize them. So that seems like a softball question to ask a ghost. Instead, they should have asked the ghost who it is that keeps stealing all the books on paranormal activity from the library. That would have been some useful information.