CC students respond to library annoyances

The “Let’s CC the World” Tumblr feed has a couple of funny visual aids for library annoyances:

When People Use the Library as a Place to Socialize (featuring a panda!)

and

When You Suddenly Lose Service in the Library (featuring Doctor Who!).

It’s nice to know that some students have the same crazy love for the library as we librarians do! Thanks, Dina Wood, for pointing these out to me.

Super Mario Brothers shenanigan

A lot of this Super Mario Brothers shenanigan takes place in Tutt Library, Colorado College. We’re glad somebody finally found a use for the little caged-in area at the bottom of our staircase. Thanks, Rebecca Harner!

IMing at the ref desk with pornbots

Sometimes we librarians get instant messages from sexy robots while we we’re at the reference desk. Here’s one way of dealing with it. Thanks, Steve Lawson!

A jungle in the library

photo by Scott Johnson

Colorado College student Max Robillard, of CC’s Integrative Design Club, created a small jungle at CC’s Tutt Library using plants found throughout the building. He says:

“I saw it as a simple, easy public space intervention. I just wanted to give people in the library something new, and to offer them a pseudo-shelter, or retreat, from the public space that the library is. My friends and I put it together on Sunday afternoon, and we took it down Monday night.”

Thanks, Carol Dickerson!

A drum set in the archives? Huh?

In spring 2010, a Colorado College art class met in the library to discuss incongruity. In advance of the class session, the professors (with the help of library staff) placed a drum set into the Special Collections archives area. The class then met outside the cage and discussed the jarring effects of the incongruity (or something like that — I wasn’t actually there). Thanks, Steve Lawson and Amy Brooks!

JSTOR withdrawals igloo

Tutt Library is in the process of discarding bound journals now available in JSTOR and backed up electronically and in hard copy in multiple locations in the state and the country. Last night, somebody — or more likely somebodies (students? we don’t know) pulled hundreds of them out of the dumpster and built an igloo-like structure in the parking lot.

It’s beautiful, I think, and a fitting monument to progress and the future and all that stuff. It’s sad, too, and in the few minutes I stood near the igloo I heard wistful comments from passers-by, even some anger or disappointment that the library would throw these things away. I found myself defending the library’s decision, but feeling a mixture of emotions as I did so. Frustration at how bad we are at explaining ourselves, love and affection for the people who feel love and affection for these materials. A feeling of helplessness.

Why do people assume that libraries and librarians hate books (or bound journals) and can’t wait to get rid of them? We went into this field because we love books, most of us. But we have to care more about the students and researchers who use our libraries, and we have to try to do what’s best for them. For a long time that meant taking flimsy journals and magazines and binding them, making them into solid book-like objects that would last a long time. Now it’s a new paradigm, and we’re making the texts in those journals available via the internet. We don’t like throwing out the bound journals, but we have to make room for other things in the library. We receive something like 6000 new books a year. The library building isn’t getting any bigger, but our collections are growing and growing …

Ah, I’m doing it again. I’m defending our decision — which I should do, as a librarian. But let’s talk about the shenanigan. It’s a well-built piece of art, and does just what art should do. It moves us, surprises us, makes us see things in a new way for a moment. And makes us see other things besides itself in a new way for a while.

Whoever has to put all the journals back in the dumpster probably won’t appreciate it, though. And I hope it doesn’t rain.

Addendum, Thursday, July 15: I should make clear that the bound journals get recycled. And I can report that the library staff worked together on Wednesday to get the volumes back into the dumpster before the rain hit.

Further addendum, November 2: One of the culprits/artists who involved tells me that a CC student and two alumni built the “crater/kiva/igloo” in about three hours, completing the project just before dawn. The student remarks: “I apologize if the book-toss was more work than it was worth. I fully understand the practical reasons for tossing the books, as well as the aesthetic, tactile, and conceptual beauty of ‘the book’ (both in the platonic sense and as physical/individual objects). Very rarely is one presented the opportunity to work with such a quantity of anything, let alone a medium as interesting and iconic.”

More fun with encyclopedias

Someone — no one knows who — (well, I have my suspicions) rearranged the World Book encyclopedias in Tutt Library at Colorado College this week. (Thanks, Steve Lawson!)

A yeti in the library!

Tutt Library, Colorado College, January 2010. http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4011/4292056792_67035f221e.jpg This patron told library staff “Sometimes it’s hard, being a yeti, in a library. ” She used her CC ID to check out the pictured book about yetis: http://tiger.coloradocollege.edu/record=b1461151~S5. (Thanks, Marianne Aldrich!)

Art installation at Tutt

Tent-like art installation. Tutt Library, Colorado College, November 2009. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tuttlibrary/4075063927/ Pictured: Tutt Library director Carol Dickerson.

"Berlin Wall" separating east and west sides of campus

“Berlin Wall” separating east and west campus. Tutt Library tunnel, Colorado College, November 2009. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tuttlibrary/4075063709/