Ahoy, avast, and shiver me timbers

September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. If you, like me, wish there were more appropriate times to say things like "Arrrr!" and "Avast, me hearties," now is your chance to release your inner pirate.

If you would like some help talking like a pirate, you can try this handy guide from Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket on YouTube. There's also a longer video tutorial, How to Talk Like a Pirate, by Graham Stark and Paul Saunders.

What does a librarian pirate sound like? In my case, it sounds something like this:

• "Ahoy! I see ye be lookin' downcast searchin' for articles. Have ye tried ProQuest?"
• "Avast, me hearties! This be how ye find databases t'use for yer research."
• "Ye be looking fer microfilm? Arrrr! It be in that direction."

Now, if ye be lookin' for some pirate literature, here be some books ye can read online that won't cost ye a single piece of eight, thanks t' Project Gutenberg.

• Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates; fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish main
• The Pirates of Malabar, and an Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago
• The Pirates' Who's Who: Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers
• Captain Scraggs: or, The Green-Pea Pirates
  

What if your library looked like this?

This is the winning design for the soon-to-be built National Library in Prague. According to this Building Design article, the building is to be a symbol of democracy in the Czech Republic, and also to serve as a sign that modern architecture is happening in Eastern Europe, too. I find it oddly adorable, in a polka-dotted slug type of way, but if I lived in Prague, which is architecturally rich and bears the impressive nickname, "Golden City of Spires," I might be worried.

More images can be found here.

Check out a laptop!

Working at the Holland & Terrell Library is great, but right now I'm extremely jealous of the Owen Science Library because they've started something fabulous. Have you ever been in a library and wished that you had a laptop to work on? Wouldn't it be great if a laptop was something you could check out? Well, now you can. The Owen Science Library has six laptops available to check out for in-building use.

The laptops come stacked with all kinds of goodies. Here is a list of what's on the laptops (from the laptop FAQ page): Microsoft Office 2007, Adobe Reader, RealPlayer, selected IM packages, SciFinderScholar, and Pharos (to enable printing at the Owen Library’s public printers).

They've done a great job putting together useful information about the pilot project (including maps of wireless access points in the building), which you can find here: http://wiki.wsu.edu/wsuwiki/Owen_laptop_pilot

Not really about the library

Heineken's latest commercial, the one with the robotic women with beer kegs coming out of their torsos, has little to do with libraries, but it nicely combines interests in Advertising and in Women's Studies. I'm not posting a video of the commercial here because in all honesty it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I don't really want to give it any more play than it has already, but some of the discussion going on about it is very interesting stuff:

Bob Garfield, of Advertising Age, has this to say.

And you can find Women are Good for Providing Men with Beer over at Agency Spy

Library Update

For those of you who haven't heard yet, the WSU Libraries are embarking on some substantial journal cuts and cancellations. Your librarians are already hard at work looking at use statistics, re-evaluating the cost and importance of preserving and archiving information, discussing whether or not we can cancel a "big ticket" database or two to make the journal cuts less severe, and doing our darnedest to make the best decisions possible.

Making smart cancellation decisions is important, but getting rid of parts of this collection (a collection we've all worked hard to build in support of WSU's research and education missions) runs counter to librarian values and instincts - most of us got into this profession because we want to increase access to and use of good information. Cutting off access to information is, in times like these, necessary, but highly painful.

However, one very heartening thing that I can do here is to highlight some other access options. Here are two very good ones for journal articles:

• ILLiad, our interlibrary loan service, allows you to request articles and papers that aren't available in the WSU collections. You can use ILLiad either by using the Illiad web page or through the "Find it@WSU" button that you see next to the articles listed in most of our library databases.
• Also, this year we are piloting a new service called ArticleReach that will allow you to get articles for no fee if they are available from one of our ArticleReach partners. More information about this is available here.

Beautiful new computers!

I told you they were beautiful! Al Cornish has also posted Before and After pictures on his blog, Library Technology Issues.

O frabjous day!

What could make a librarian wax Carroll-ian? Well, in my case it doesn't always take much as I find many practical applications for a good Jabberwocky quote. However, this week I really do have amazingly happy news.

Because of a good deal of hard work and good decision-making on the part of many of my library colleagues, we have new computers available for public use in the libraries. They arrived last week, and I nearly did a dance of joy when I saw the flat panel monitors. I promise to post a picture tomorrow, though I'm kicking myself that I didn't do before and after photos.

Callooh! Callay!