Librarians: Mimi Smartypants needs our Help!

Mimi Smartypants is my favorite blogger. I want to say more about her writing and why I enjoy it, but everything I type comes out like: “blarg! cliche! gush! gush!”

So, I’ll just skip that and mention that she recently asked for comic book recommendations for her daughter. This woman needs a librarian! We are compelled to help! Here’s a thumbnail reference interview:

  1. The little girl in question is Preschool age
  2. Ideally, avoid mainstream comics. You know, ones with TV tie-ins or superheros.
  3. She currently enjoys The Far Side, and Sam and Max
  4. Violence/weapons are to be avoided.

I took a crack at it. Let me know what you think in the comments, and I’ll ship the whole list off to her Miminess at the end of the week as a tribute of librarianly esteem.

These are comics I have personally read and recommend. I take full responsibility if you think they suck. I avoided the Bone series, despite the cute drawings because those Stupid Rat Creatures can be pretty scary. Stupid, stupid rat creatures.

Librarian Powers: Activate!
Clan Apis – A view of life as a honeybee but without looking like a Mark Trail comic strip. Hilariously written by an entomology grad student who is allergic to bees. Great for kids, fun for adults.

Pogo Possum – I learned to read with these cartoons. Which gave me a rather unusual grasp of the Queen’s English. Still, you don’t have to be old enough to read to appreciate the indelible Albert Alligator and Porkypine.

Castle Waiting – These are the sweetest stories ever. Great art, gentle tales with subtle feminist undertones. Sort of the anti-Optic Nerve.

Liberty Meadows – Frank Cho. Why not? Talking frogs are funny.

Ok, go ahead. You try.

We are the Men of IBM…

url.jpegOne of my student employees, Katie, is being recruited by IBM. We’re proud of her, and not a bit surprised. Our other student, Zach, is trying to decide between working at Google or Amazon. They will be lucky to have him.

One of the advantages to doing web development at a University, is that you get to work with Google-caliber people, but get to pay them student slave wages. For some reason they don’t seem to mind.

So, in honor of our super students, I’d like to direct you to these official IBM Songs that you can listen to online from their corporate archives. Enjoy, and remember: We are the men! Of IBM!

Amazon customer reviews: Bananas

I spent the afternoon poking around the more obscure areas of Amazon.com (It’s snowing, I’m lazy) and I came across a distributor that sells fresh groceries.

amazonfruit.jpgThe page layout is the same as any other Amazon product, the content is just a bit…different.

I love reading what other people think about something before I buy it. The Amazon customer reviews for bananas, however, are just a bit silly.

There is some hilarious writing lodged in the crevasses of online consumer reviews. I can’t help wondering if the Internet caused these folks to burst from their creative shells, or if they might be writing actual books instead of, say, posting on their weblogs.

Just in case you were wondering, Amazon directly sells bulk drygoods groceries through their beta site Amazon Grocery. They have some good organic stuff that might be difficult to find outside of Hippieville, USA where I live.

Full disclosure: I do not work for Amazon.com. They aren’t paying me to be nice to them. But they should. Amazon: Call me!

Reference Challenge!

I called in sick to work today, with a sore throat and general upper-respiratory grossness. I spent the day lying on the couch with cats floating on pillows around me. Our two cats are huge wooly monsters. Rescued from cat-jail, they resemble bobcats more than housecats.

chesscat.jpgFortunately, they don’t seem to know how huge and potentially ferocious they are. Curled up in sleeping cat-balls, they resemble furry manhole covers. Occasionally one will purr and try to shove himself up my nose.

Sick days for me usually involve DVDs, Tylenol PM, and tea. Recently however, I have discovered a wonderful website called eBay.

I’ve been online since 1994 and Mosaic. I was one of the first librarians to have a blog (Jessamyn at librarian.net was and always will be waaaay ahead of me!) I subscribed to A List Apart back when it was a list, and learned CSS by copying code from Webmonkey. I’ve been e-around for a long time. But I’d never gotten trapped by eBay until now.

rug50.jpgIt started innocently. We needed a rug. Rugs are expensive. I found an eBay seller with deeply discounted Pottery Barn rugs. I bought one and got it almost immediately. Then I found people selling Anthropologie clothes for crazy prices. I created a favorite search. It was all over.

Living in a rural area like Ithaca is almost ideal. There are mountains, gorges, parking spots, and very few car thieves. But the shopping is terrible. Unless you have a penchant for Old Navy, or hemp clothing, there are no recognizable stores within an hour’s drive. Since I refuse to buy my work clothes at the Farmer’s Market, I tend to shop in short bursts while I’m traveling. EBay has opened a new world for me. The combination of librarian ninja query skillz and quality stuff for a dollar has made online auctions dangerously profitable.

I’ve mostly gotten it under control. Now I just log in to explore new categories.

Your sickly, addicted, digital librarian friend, Erica

Duck mating dance

anseriformes.gifHee. One of the nifty things about having my library’s Animal Sound and Video collection available online, is I get to stumble across hilarious things in the course of my duties. Like this video of Mallard ducks doing a mating dance.

Watching the ducks, I’m really reminded of this: Mah nah mah nah.

You’re welcome. Hope the speakers were on.

Animal Recordings. Dotcom.

Eat my educational interactives baby! The Cornell University Lab of Ornithology project I designed won second place in Science magazine’s 2006 Visualization Challenge.

Plus, we were on the front page of Der Spiegel last week, so Germans love us!

What does this mean for you? It means you can now go online and visit the world’s largest collection of animal sounds and video. Listen to animal recordings and watch videos for free. Explore the crazy world of animal behavior.

Right now you can use Realplayer to listen to sounds, or you can download our plugin that lets you watch and manipulate spectrograms in real-time. Which has never been done before, incidentally.

So, to summarize, alligators, elk, robins, and whales, all online and free. Good? Go nuts. Version two should be out in a few months.