My good friend Barbara Rumsey shares my interest in and love for books. She volunteers for her local library and is a voracious reader. Recently she shared a website with me that I have really enjoyed. Enough so that I am going to be adding it to my link sites. The site is the repository for the comic strip Unshelved, a strip that has no sex or violence and very little political agenda. But it does have a heart and the soul of a librarian.
The web site also offers merchandise for sale such as a t-shirt with the words "What happens in the library, stays in the library". I don't know if that was produced before or after passage of the Patriot Act so I'm not sure whether it is a message of hope or defiance.
In any case, I highly recommend signing up to get a comic strip mailed to you daily. Also, buy the collections of comic strips that have been published as books. They make great coffee table books and you won't go blind going through all the archives.
I believe the what happens her stays here shirt is a play on the Las Vegas ad campaign recently.
ReplyDeleteAnd I certainly agree that it is nice to have an inoffensive comic like Unshelved. I am sick and tired of the violence Mark Trail endorses and the smut Family Circus peddles.
I'm glad you enjoyed the web site. It often addresses what seems to be an universal problem of stampeding, hormonal middle schoolers each day at 2:20. Volunteers try to get their work completed and out the door by 2:19. Normal, sweet and gentle natured librarians turn into "old biddies" as one middle schooler so stated recently after being told to "sshhh". Unfortunately, these children are not in a hurry to read and enjoy the library but to get to a computer. So as you can imagine, the comic strips truly do speak to the longing of the full time staff who would love nothing more than to flee with the volunteers! Sex and violence?? Come to the library at 2:21 Monday thru Friday!
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, one of the more humorous requests at our local Oklahoma library recently, was to see if we could check to see how many warrants for arrest in CA were out there for this individual. Our librarian passed on that one.