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Libraries are educational institutions? Who knew?

Library Journal noted in this article that the Supreme Court of Suffolk County, New York, has formally ruled that libraries are educational institutions. According to the ruling, libraries “serve the same inherently beneficial effects on the community as do schools”.

This ruling applies only to libraries in New York, but the LAUSD ought to sit up and take notice.

If libraries are educational institutions, librarians are educators. Even if they don’t take attendance daily.

 

Posted on June 5, 2011 by , Reply

Summer Scares is here!

Perhaps you’ve used “I have no time” as your excuse for skipping over leisure reading this year. Well, it’s time for summer vacation (surely you have at least one day of leisure between now and Labor Day), so you can’t use that as an excuse now!

“But I’m out of touch,” you say. ” I don’t even know what’s out right now”! Lucky for you, MonsterLibrarian.com has teamed up with Spooky Reads, Horror World, Hellnotes, and the Horror Fiction Review to provide you with reviews of a whole bunch of possibilities as part of our Summer Scares project. Check it out, please- some awesome people put a lot of work into putting this project together.

So, find yourself a good book and do what our reviewer Sheila Shedd recommends. Find yourself an ocean view (or a mountain view), order a pizza, and kick back for some leisurely leisure reading.

Check back here later for some of our staff’s personal recommendations!

Posted on June 5, 2011 by , Reply

The Monster Mash(up)

Kudos to Booklist Onliine for including this article, Classic Monster Mash-ups as the topic of their May 15 Core Collection feature. (Core Collection, for those of you who are not librarians, means “you gotta have this one in your collection, NOW!)

Christine Meloni put together a nice introduction to the subgenre, with an annotated booklist of some of the better known books (she did note that some of them, like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer are not actually mash-ups. I was familiar with a lot of these but good Lord, someone out there really thinks Jane Austen and zombies are a rockin’ combination! I counted FIVE related books on Meloni’s list, and she didn’t even include the two sequels to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!

My only quibble, and I mention this mainly because I’ve recently become sensitive to it, is that once again, these books are never described as horror fiction- they are “supernatural literary fiction”. You know, if a teenage boy picks up a book promising zombies and “ultraviolent mayhem”, it’s probably not because he cares about the literary value of the timeless romance between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Outside of that, I really appreciated Meloni’s comments about monster mash-ups- that they can be fun and are worth reading. Thanks, Christine!

 

Posted on June 2, 2011 by , Reply
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