George Washington: What a Bastard

Gee, thanks, George Washington, first president of our nation and extremely delinquent library-materials-returner.

George Washington racks up late fees at NY library

AP Graphics – George Washington “Lansdowne”1796 oil painting by Gilbert Stuart, photo.

Sat Apr 17, 2:13 pm ET

NEW YORK – If George Washington were alive today, he might face a hefty overdue library fine.

New York City's oldest library says one of its ledgers shows that the president has racked up 220 years' worth of late fees on two books he borrowed, but never returned.

One of the books was the "Law of Nations," which deals with international relations. The other was a volume of debates from Britain's House of Commons.

Both books were due on Nov. 2, 1789.

New York Society Library head librarian Mark Bartlett says the institution isn't seeking payment of the fines, but would love to get the books back.

The ledger also lists books being taken out by other founding fathers, including Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and John Jay.

The entry on Washington simply lists the borrower as "president."

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Information from: Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com

Retrieved 4/17/2010 from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100417/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_george_washington_library_fines

Happy National Library Week

April 11th-April 17th is National Library Week, so I expect you all to get celebrating!

This year, National Library Week culminates a local PR stunt game of library-based "Clue." Not in a fun board game way, but in a grueling "collecting cryptic fortune cookie clue statements" kind of way. Now, I am all about this game. I love solving puzzles. Unfortunately, none of our patrons seem to care.

So now I ask: what is it the public wants in a PR stunt, precisely? Is it strippers? Please say it's strippers.

I've got a stripper pole ready and everything.

Interabang? Interrobang!

I have just discovered a not-quite-accepted punctuation mark I wish I had always known about: the interrobang. It's a combination of an exclamation point and a question mark. As someone who has always resisted using more than one punctuation mark at the end of a sentence, this is a godsend.

So hey, publishers and software developers: let's get working on spreading the interrobang! I would like to be able to use it while posting a blog entry instead of pointing people to the Wikipedia page, which has some lovely pictures of it in different fonts.

Library of Mongress

In honor of the Australian tradition of Movember (Mustache November), gonnabe librarians proudly presents Great Mustaches of the LOC. That's right: flickr uers decided to tag their favorite mustaches in the photographs posted by the Library of Congress. Now the whole world can enjoy these fine figures of men - and their mustaches.

More Comics!

I'm continuing fellow author Natalie's post by providing you with another dose of comics. Huzzah!

The first is Piled Higher and Deeper, or PhD comics. It's about grad students working towards their doctorates. Although the library students on this blog aren't PhD students, the comic is eerily accurate for those of us (like myself) who work as research assistants. And I actually found out about this webcomic through a library, so that makes it even more relevant, somehow.

The second and final offering for today is actually just a not-so-safe-for-work storyline within a larger not-so-safe-for-work webcomic: Diesel Sweeties took a brief if entertaining trip into the land of sexy librarian stereotypes. Hello, Library Anne!

The Secret Life of Librarians

Hi, I'm Nicole! I'm the newest addition to the gonnabe librarians crew. I'm originally from the Syracuse area, and I'd really like to become a special collections reference librarian.

Some of you out there are probably wondering what library students like to do for fun. I have a lot of interests, but I'll provide a sampling.

One of my hobbies is hugging mascots:


I'm currently trying to learn Arabic, and I enjoy listening to Arabic music:


And I also love Korean karaoke:


So that's a brief look at a library student's hobbies! Hope you enjoyed it.