More genres really need to get in on this eye-catching-title thing.

You see, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, and other occupations around the country have set up libraries. How do you run a library on the street? [...]]]> There’s some seriously awesome, exciting, historic things going on right now. If I hadn’t already chosen a paper topic long ago, I’d be tempted to do one on these.

You see, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, and other occupations around the country have set up libraries. How do you run a library on the street? Especially in places that rain and soon snow will be falling?

Here’s a good introductory post about the Occupy Wall Street library:
The Occupy Wall Street Library

“A few days ago, Betsy, a trained librarian who lives in Brooklyn, came to the protest for the first time and found a short stack of books lying on the ground where everyone was camped out. She decided to go to one of the organizational meetings for the protests and ask if anyone else thought it would be a good idea to start a proper library. People did.”

The Wall Street library has a blog, a Facebook page, and an online catalog through LibraryThing. 3337 items in the catalog right now!

Because Boston is close to me, I’m watching them with interest as well.

Here’s an article that just came out a few days ago:
Occupying Boston and Beyond, With Tent Libraries for All

“The librarians have eschewed the Dewey Decimal System, concerned by historical accounts that portray Melvil Dewey, its inventor, as a racist and misogynist.”

Interesting, no?

And here’s the Occupy Boston library wikipage.
With Simmons College in Boston, they shouldn’t have a shortage of librarians and library students to help out. They’re even doing story times!

This is what a library looks like.

Till Death Do Us Bark Kate Klise

Yup! This title was so good, it’s been used more than once.

Here’s an assortment, collection, arrangement of links for you.

The New Hampshire ILL service is under scrutiny because one state rep feels 1 van should be perfectly adequate to deliver materials to every library in the state in a timely manner.

Rep Targets Federal [...]]]> Is it Y’All or Y’all when it’s in a title?

Here’s an assortment, collection, arrangement of links for you.

The New Hampshire ILL service is under scrutiny because one state rep feels 1 van should be perfectly adequate to deliver materials to every library in the state in a timely manner.

Rep Targets Federal Interlibrary Grant — Unfortunately you have to register on the Concord Monitor site to read this.
Library Loan Program is Working Well — Ditto, since it’s the same site as the link above.
Statewide Interlibrary Lending System in Jeopardy
The Rage to Defund Libraries Goes Off the Deep End — This is from the Annoyed Librarian blog.

Later I’ll do a post about how librarians feel the need to defend the profession as a profession. But here’s a good listing of what people who work in libraries do and why volunteers are not a good substitute!

What Do Public Librarians and Library Staff Do? — A few of the items are UK-specific, but most are universal.

We throw books out. It’s horrible. But that’s after we’ve seen that Better World Books doesn’t want them. And I can’t be too sad if we’re trashing 10 copies of the latest Patterson. I am more sad when it’s children’s books! They could be useful for crafts projects, right?! Alas, I can’t save them all. And have so far resisted saving any. I don’t have the space at home. All of which leads up to this link:

Hard Choices: Do Libraries Really Destroy Books? – On NPR

To make up for it, here’s some links:

Neil Gaiman interviews Terry Pratchett over on BoingBoing — [...]]]> Life got in the way of blog posts and I ran out of the Monday Titles and Wednesday Trailers posts that I had lined up ahead of time. So I missed some Mondays and Wednesdays! Plus, holiday.

To make up for it, here’s some links:

Neil Gaiman interviews Terry Pratchett over on BoingBoing — Focused pretty tightly on talking about his Discworld books. I enjoy interviews where they talk about the genre in general or other stuff. They only get into that a bit.

“The Rage to Defund Libraries” – Annoyed Librarian — Talks about the New Hampshire Rep who wants to cut the state ILL vans from 4 down to 1. The vans are paid for with FEDERAL money.

It Gets Better video by Random House Inc staff — People are still making these? Apparently. Is this the first publisher to do so? These guys didn’t even publish the book.

As a bonus to the pun, cockatiels is a fun word for a cute bird.

Thanks again to the Outer Alliance Google group for giving me suggestions.

These are only fiction titles found in our library catalog.

Children’s: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Nancy Willard) M/F The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Ted Dewan) M/M [...]]]> Over on my The Blogger’s Bride post, K requested I look at The X’s Apprentice, and also note the gender of the Apprentice and the X. So, yes, I do take requests!

These are only fiction titles found in our library catalog.

Children’s:
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Nancy Willard) M/F
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Ted Dewan) M/M — Of note, the apprentice is a robot, with male pronouns.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Felicity Trotman) M/M (retelling)
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Inga Moore) M/M (retelling)
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (James Ponti) M/M – Disney movie novelization
The Wizard’s Apprentice (Jackie French Koller) M/F
The Shaman’s Apprentice (Lynne Cherry) M/M
The Puppeteer’s Apprentice (D. Anne Love) F/F – The puppeteer is disguised as a man.
The Tiger’s Apprentice (Laurence Yep) M/M – And it’s actually a tiger!
The Midwife’s Apprentice (Karen Cushman) F/F
The Printer’s Apprentice (Stephen Krensky) M/M
The Ink-Keeper’s Apprentice (Allen Say) M/M (a bit of a guess based on the cover image)

Adult:
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (Laurie R. King) M/F (Sherlock Holmes is the beekeeper)
The Quilter’s Apprentice (Jennifer Chaiverini) F/F
The Heretic’s Apprentice (Ellis Peters) M/M
The Warrior’s Apprentice (Lois McMaster Bujold) M/M
The Baker’s Apprentice (Judith Ryan Hendricks) F/F
The Alchemist’s Apprentice (Dave Duncan) M/M (Nostradamus is the alchemist)
The Alchemaster’s Apprentice (Walter Moers) M/M (The apprentice is a cat-like creature)
The Philosopher’s Apprentice (James Morrow) M/F
The Healer’s Apprentice (Melanie Dickerson) F/F
The Herring-Seller’s Apprentice (L. C. Tyler) M/F – He’s not actually a herring-seller, pity. It’s really an author and his agent.

One thing I instantly notice is there are no YA titles. Which is odd, considering most apprentices would be YA age, wouldn’t they? Maybe they’re Journeymen by then. (Oddly, only 2 titles with Journeyman, one OSC’s Alvin Journeyman and the other The Glasswrights’ Journeyman by Mindy L. Klasky. That apostrophe is in the correct place. And that one does happen to be YA.)

Lots of magic-related or academic sort of professions there. There aren’t a lot of hands-on type craftsman, which would be more typical of apprenticeships. Where’s the carpenter, the gunsmith, the blacksmith, the other-smiths?

The masters are typically male, as kind of expected. The only ones that are women are a quilter, a baker, a healer, a midwife, and the puppeteer who has to go about as a man.

In at least some of the cases where the apprentice is a girl and the master is not, she’s definitely bucking trends to be that. She might be ‘the only girl’ or ‘the first girl’ or it might simply be uncommon. I can’t give exact numbers without actually reading some of the books.

Or where it’s an M/F relationship and the girl is a little older, it probably involves a romantic relationship developing at some point. That seems to be the case in at least two of the titles listed above.

Absolutely none of them had a female master teaching a male apprentice!