James Patterson books are an invasive species humans brought into library shelf environments because we wanted fast-reproducing, easily-digestible food. But at the time, we didn't know as much about their natural airport environment, which has very few available nutrients. This environment greatly favours the genericalist species like Patterson, so there's very little bibliodiversity compared to the more specialized library or bookstore environment. This means that each species in an airport has an enormously expanded niche compared to just about anywhere else books can thrive - in their natural habitat, Patterson books may be one of only 3 or 4 species competing for available nutrients. In these low-density, low-nutrient environments, Patterson books occupy vast swathes of territory without bothering other species. This history makes it extremely easy for them to outcompete the more specialized inhabitants of the library shelf, who have often been carefully selected to fill ultraspecific subgenre niches.

Left unweeded, Patterson books will expand their territory over multiple book bays, crowding out or even straight-up eliminating space for competitors and sending contributor-author runners out to other shelves. Contained to a single, planned set of shelves and kept strictly pruned, Patterson books can contribute to a healthy ecosystem. But many curators don't know or don't care to do the planning and maintenance, leading to the nightmare of overcrowding and loss of circulation.

ok posting this while i have a positive view of the future: i’m going to be a librarian! a Purveyor of Tales. a servant of the community. a part of the education system for any age. this is gonna be good for me and it’s within my reach

So Fox News ran a story about how they think libraries are turning into drug-infested sex dens and I am shocked, shocked that I was never offered any drugs during my 15+ years working in libraries.

oops! it seems i tripped and dropped several million free books, papers, and other resources

https://annas-archive.org

https://sci-hub.se

https://z-lib.is

https://libgen.is

https://libgen.rs

https://www.pdfdrive.com

https://library.memoryoftheworld.org

https://monoskop.org/Monoskop

https://libcom.org

https://libretexts.org

http://classics.mit.edu

https://librivox.org

https://standardebooks.org

https://www.gutenberg.org

https://core.ac.uk

"Don't use Libby because it costs libraries too much, pirate instead" is such a weird, anti-patron, anti-author take that somehow manages to also be anti-library, in my professional librarian-ass opinion.

It's well documented that pirating books negatively affects authors directly* in a way that pirating movies or TV shows doesn't affect actors or writers, so I will likely always be anti-book piracy unless there's absolutely, positively no other option (i.e. the book simply doesn't exist outside of online archives at all, or in a particular language).

Also, yeah, Libby and Hoopla licenses are really expensive, but libraries buy them SO THAT PATRONS CAN USE THEM. If you're gonna be pissed at anybody about this shitty state of affairs, be pissed at publishing companies and continue to use Libby or Hoopla at your library so we can continue to justify having it to our funding bodies.

One of the best ways to support your library having services you like is to USE THOSE SERVICES. Yes, even if they are expensive.

*Yes, this is a blog post, but it's a blog post filled with links to news articles. If you can click one link, you can click another.

"My Lord, you are coming back, aren't you?"

Insta | Twitter

As a young librarian, I started trying to figure out why more young people aren't ever coming in; 90% of our demographic are the elderly and parents of children, and the rest are a rough mix of the kids and teenagers who come in just for school projects. As a result, I've been attempting different ways to get the Youth TM to come into libraries, but first I wanted to see why they don't come in. Please reblog to get this poll out to more people! <3

Back at it with my enchanted merthur shenanigans

Obligatory everyone's-mad-about-Scooby-Doo-adaptation plug for Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

It's not exclusively a pastiche on Scooby Doo - there are some other Kid Mystery Gangs mixed up in there - but it's a book about sort of the primordial ideal of your Gang of Meddling Kids, now young adults and deeply, diversely psychologically fucked up after their last job, which went wrong somehow.

The style is kind of internet-friendly/Terry Pratchettesque¹, with neat, creative, twisty analogies and use of screenplay formatting and dialogue to get points across differently.

The plot is fun, but not light - there's that adage that a really good parody is both a mockery and a good example of the thing it's parodying, and the thing Meddling Kids is parodying is horror². I'm a terrible source for content warnings, but seek them out if you're unsure.

¹Woman who's only read one author: "Wow, this sounds exactly like-" [the agent assigned to me slams the detonation button]

²And, I would posit, the full-length Scooby Doo movies a lot of us grew up on, where the putative monster threat just keeps escalating

imagine ur garthy o’brien, just trying to fuck this hot ranger you met at your brothel that you own, except her teenage kids/wards/bosses keep knocking on the door to your bedroom and interrupting you guys and THEN you learn that she’s actually in a committed relationship but didn’t tell you, so THAT sucks but THEN one of the teens comes and finds you in the middle of the night yelling about how his friend is gone and they can’t find him and he might be in danger, so you help him teleport to his friend, and then when they all get back, looking extremely upset and dejected, you apologize to the ranger’s daughter for making her feel uncomfortable by fucking her mother and in the process SHE reveals to you that her mom’s boyfriend is actually this really cool werewolf guy that you KNOW and have fucked on multiple occasions

my two favorite pieces of hbomberguy's video were these two tests/rules he has for video essays and making media:

"When I think a video is being lazy, I do a little test. I check what sources the video used... and I compare it with the sources you would get if you went to the Wikipedia page for the topic." (Hbomberguy, 55:07)

"I have a little rule for quoting that other creators seem to use as well. If someone saw a clip of your video out of context, would it be possible for them to tell you're quoting someone and where it's from?" (Hbomberguy, 48:18)

These rules I think can be applied to both the act of watching and creating. If you're creating something not intended to be cursory in nature, where are you getting your sources? After that first wikipedia search we all love to do, where do you go from there?

If you're consuming something, and it is intended to be informative in nature, can you go to a random time in it and understand where their sources are coming from?

Sources:

“Plagiarism and You(Tube).” Youtube, uploaded by hbomberguy,2 December 2023, https://youtu.be/yDp3cB5fHXQ?t=3307. Accessed 4 December 2023.

Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza, October 2023–January 2024, A Preliminary Report from Librarians and Archivists with Palestine (LAP), February 1, 2024 (pdf here)

Plus: A Talk About Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza, by ArabLit Staff, ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly, February 8, 2024

(image: «This is what remains of my younger brother's home library. My brother is an extraordinary scholar of Arabic language grammar and was about to earn his PhD and who has introduced six books into the Arabic language rich collection of scholarly books.» – Mosab Abu-Toha)

btw if you borrow dvds or cds from library you can rip them onto your own blanks or onto your hard drive or whatever. librarians don’t care and they won’t know if you do it or not

I have learned many important things from my librarian spouse, and I will now share six of them with my fellow non-librarians

Public libraries are not the perfectly silent buttoned down places of scholarship movies make them out to be. They're a place for everyone to access everything, from Minecraft to garbage romance novels to picture books. And everyone includes people who make noise. And that is okay and good actually.

They are also for buttoned down scholarship and they can help you with that. They actually really like helping you find information.

Libraries often have way, WAY more than just books. Movies, of course, but also telescopes and tools and 3D printers and board games and I heard of one that even has an apple press!

Being a librarian is pretty much never "sitting around reading books until you're needed." Maybe if you're at a niche private collection that happens? But no, not for public librarians. There is so much that has to be done every day. Sorry to everyone who thought that was a thing.

Put the books you pick up on the return carts if you don't check them out, this has some kind of positive effect on the collection. I don't know why, but do it or else

The best way to support your library is to use your library! And vote for library funding whenever you can. But mostly just use the dang library!