Before COVID shut the library down, I was helping a little boy and his mom find books.

“What do you like to read about?” I asked. “Dinosaurs!” This is common request, but can mean different things, “Okay. Do you want a story about dinosaurs, or facts about dinosaurs?” “Facts.” I took him to the dinosaur section (567.9) of the juvenile nonfiction. He picked out a couple books, and I asked him if there was anything else he was looking for. “Do you have anything on DNA?” I had to think about that for a second. “I think so…but I’ll have to look it up.” The boy beamed, “I want to find out how DNA works, so I can bring them back!” “We just saw Jurassic Park,” his mom explained with a smile that did not waver when she added, “We didn’t learn anything.”

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Phenomenal news. Just what the people ordered.

Were the "Moms for Liberty" prosecuted for theft?

My cartoon for yesterday’s @guardian

a recent cartoon for the Guardian. Visit www.tomgauld.com for links to my other work.

I feel seen. And not in a bad way.

(via qg2wl29q3ioa1.jpg (JPEG Image, 720 × 1065 pixels))

I have very strong opinions on this subject, and I'm curious how others feel.

Hi, public librarian (lower case l, no degree) here, please don't.

We're already, in general, severely underfunded. Shocker, the capitalist hellscape we're stuck isn't great about allocating county budget to such a socialist outlet.

When you write in the margins, that's considered damage, and we just do not have the funding to replace every book we have to weed for damage.

Use sticky notes. Please. Write your margin notes on sticky notes in the book. You can even keep your place that way. But please please please don't write in the books, don't crack the spines, and don't dog ear them. That's just going to force us to weed them, and we can't always replace them.

#we flip through every book that comes in the drop off to see if the pages are loose torn damaged or written on #and we're supposed to set aside all of those for checking by collections #to see if its severe enough to warrant weeding #and frankly as the budget gets tighter i know im not the only one turning a blind eye to some damage #because i know we wouldnt be able to replace it anyway #better to let it slide til it gets worse #but its a serious problem

Hi, capital L Librarian here, if you think your notes enhance other readers' experience of the book 1) you're wrong and 2) no one's going to get to read them anyway because you damaged the book and we had to throw it away.

Good job breaking it, hero.

due to personal reasons I will need to own a library filled with, at least, all of the books and it will have a secret door that leads to even more books. please respect my wishes at this time

based on a true story

I don’t think Fortnite is to blame for kids nowadays not reading…

That’s the joke. It’s the authoritarian overbearing parent.

He was being sarcastic lol

Reminded me of these

That violin one hit close to home.

I remember doing homework once, asked my grandmother if she was proud of me. “Do some thing for me to be proud of.” That hurt.

That comic up there – I witnessed almost that exact scenario. Teacher wanted the kids to all pick books. One kid spots something on the shelf and gets visibly excited. Pulls it out and starts reading. Teacher sees it, snatches it off him and tells him that this is a book for 8 year olds (the kid was 15ish) and tells him to get a book more appropriate for his age. Kid slouches around the shelves for about 10 minutes, finally picks up a book at random and sits in his chair tucking the edges of each page into the binding to make that looped-page look. He didn’t read a word. He sat there and did this to his book for the remainder of the reading session:

He had been genuinely excited about the 8 year old book he’d picked up. It was a new one in a series he used to read as a younger kid. He’d been actively sitting and reading, and then he was embarrassed in front of his classmates, told off for reading a kids book, and voila. He lost all enthusiasm for reading anything else that day.

What’s worse? That kid had been hit by a car like a year and a half earlier. Severe brain trauma. Had to re-learn a lot of basic things, like how to speak and how to read.

An 8 year old book would have been perfect for him. Easy enough to read that it would have helped rebuild his confidence in his own reading ability. A book meant for 15/16 years olds? A lot harder to read than a book for 8 year olds. Especially if you’re recovering from a relatively recent brain injury.

And yeah, the teacher knew all about his brain injury, and the recovery. He just seemed go be of the opinion that the kid was 15, so he should be reading books for 15 year olds, irrespective of brain injury.

Reading this thread I’m reminded of Daniel Pennae’s The Rights of the Reader, which can be found in a lot of bookshops and school libraries: 

The child speaking at the bottom in Quentin Blake’s distinctive spiky handwriting is saying ‘10 rights, 1 warning: Don’t make fun of people who don’t read - or they never will’

I remember at one point at my old school, I’d read so much one year for that AR test thing that they banned me from the Library just cause I was reading so much.

'Spectacular' ancient public library discovered in Germany

The remains of the oldest public library in Germany, a building erected almost two millennia ago that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls, have been discovered in the middle of Cologne.

The walls were first uncovered in 2017, during an excavation on the grounds of a Protestant church in the centre of the city. Archaeologists knew they were of Roman origins, with Cologne being one of Germany’s oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 50 AD under the name Colonia. But the discovery of niches in the walls, measuring approximately 80cm by 50cm, was, initially, mystifying.

“It took us some time to match up the parallels – we could see the niches were too small to bear statues inside. But what they are are kind of cupboards for the scrolls,” said Dr Dirk Schmitz from the Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne. “They are very particular to libraries – you can see the same ones in the library at Ephesus.” Read more.

Today I learned that the university of Coimbra in Portugal has a great 18th-century library, the Biblioteca Joanina, that maintains a colony of bats to effectively control the population of paper-eating insects called papirófagos. These bats are less than an inch long. They roost during the day behind the bookcases and come out at night. There doesn’t seem to be any English word for papirófago, a cursory search turns up no details about what sort of insect they are, and ngl I am slightly concerned about them as a phenomenon. But I think my overarching point here is clear: 

This library keeps tiny bats that look after the books.

I’m here for tiny bats saving books.

Look at their little faces, they’re good bats.

I trust them and I think they’re doing a good job

I think a lot of people forget that a library is a giant room filled with free awesome shit that you can take home and play with, no questions asked. just as long as you tell them you’re gonna, and remind them if you want to spend more time with the stuff.

I think the US library system should have a once a year advertising spree where they just have the phrase

“Libraries. Don’t forget: Things are free in here.”

Posted literally everywhere.