The following examples of Library humour and/or general oddity have come my way this week.
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Odd book title of the week:
On farting: bodily wind in the Middle Ages, by Valerie Allen and John Thompson.
(This is apparently a serious academic study, by two American professors, of "the fart in medieval culture")
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Misprint of the week:
(To be fair, this dates from November 1997, but I only rediscovered it when emptying a drawer this week)
In a piece in the Times about the "noble" English sport of grouse and pheasant shooting:
".... Perhaps the same was true of Sir Charles Clore who, notwithstanding hie experiences at Blenheim, felt assured enough to run his own estate. In the eight years up to and including 1978, 42,595 peasants were shot on his land in Berkshire. And there, his table manners were his own affair."
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Lyndsay Rees-Jones mentioned this site weeks ago, and by coincidence one of own customers found it as well and recommended that I had a look.
http://www.librarianavengers.com/nflibrary.html
The item to which this points ("Why you should fall to your knees and worship a librarian") is excellent, and exploring the
site in more detail yields plenty of other gems. I can particularly recommend the section
"What they didn't teach us in library school"
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The following was not submitted as a "funny", but it is part of the address sign-off of one of the regular contributers to
SOLOLIB-L. My apologies for including it without permission, but it's too good to miss!
Evelyn: Look, I -- I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a
treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O'Connell! But I am proud of what I
am!
Rick: And what is that?
Evelyn: I... am a librarian!
The Mummy (1999)
Rick: Are all librarians this much trouble?
Evie: Mmmmmmm.
The Mummy Returns (2001)
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I worked part-time reference in two public libraries for a while. Though I
was at the adult reference desk, when the children's librarian was busy
the older children would come over and ask their school questions.
That particular Saturday was Native American reports for the third grade.
Two girls, 8-9 years old approached the desk. The first one told me her
report was on "Sacajawea, but she didn't know how to spell it". That was
not a problem (it was the third Sacajawea report in an hour).
The second girl could not remember her person's name, but she
remembered "It sounds like 'Goat Cheese' ".
The absolute blankness only lasted about 3 seconds before I realized she
was looking for Cochise.
Ironically, my husband (who did not believe the stories I told him about the
reference desk) was there to take me to lunch and heard the whole
exchange. He never doubted me again.
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Every so often there are sales people that come to the office Reception
desk and drop off a variety of books for sale. These books are at a reduced
rate and the staff always looks forward to them. They are mostly
cookbooks, decorating, children's books, and odds and ends and of course,
with this being a Special Library we do not have books of general interest
on our shelves.
We hadn't had any for quite some time and everyone was asking about them.
Finally, one day, they showed up with a pile of new books. As we don't
like to have them in our Reception area we put them on a table in the
library right next door.
I sent out a quick email to those interested and in my email I said:
"We now have BOOKS in the Library until next Thursday!"
As soon as I pressed 'send' I knew I had made a boo boo.
I got a quick reply:
"How novel-- books in the Library!"
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I had just started work in a Hospital Medical Library, and was called by a doctor with a very thick foreign accent. He managed to explain to me that he wanted to know what I had on ''Oy-ten-AHs-ya" After saying "Pardon me", and "Please repeat that" a number of times, I asked him to spell it. He said he couldn't, but he knew I could and hung up. I eventually found someone who knew the Doc, and told me he was probably speaking with a Spanish accent. (How would I know? I just have French, German and Latin!) Further investigation made me realise that what he wanted was information on "EUTHENASIA". I did a careful search and selected an appropriate sample of what we had in the collection. When he picked it up he was most surprised at how technical it was... after all, he only needed it for his teenage son's homework!
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Another day I was called by a member of the public. Any strange calls were referred to the Hospital Medical Library for disposition! The young woman was obviously uneducated, but had no trouble in asking her question. She wanted to know if AIDS could be transmitted by oral sex. (This was a number of years ago, when AIDS was still relatively 'new' to the public.) I explained to her that I had not seen any literature that was absolutely definitive on the subject, but surmised that if one partner was HIV positive, precautions should ALWAYS be taken, even with oral sex, and there were still no guarantees. She started shouting to someone in the room with her, than said to me "Tell that to him.... he keeps wanting me to do it!" Her boyfriend then came on the phone and listened to me as I repeated the info, reminding him that a doctor's advice should be sought since I was just a librarian. His reaction was "****! He'll say the same thing! You always do!" and hung up. Was that a compliment? *grin*
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Studs Terkel recently visited my place of employment to be
honored for his work. He tells this story...
Studs received a letter from a beleaguered public librarian from
somewhere in the south U.S. As happens in many libraries, she
received a letter of protest from one of her patrons. The patron was
QUITE upset that a "certain" book was available on their library's
shelves! After the written tirade wound down, the patron finally
named the book in smaller print (as if to whisper the title), but with
obvious indignation -- "Working Studs by Terkel" !!!
Harumph!
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not sure if this counts as library humour - also works better in performance
Chap walking through the town centre - starts to feel hungry, so goes into the library - walks up to counter and says "Big Mac and fries!" (loud voice)
The library staff look quizically at each other, one comes up to counter, leans over and says "I'm sorry sir but this is a library"
The man leans over the counter and says
"oh, of course, sorry - Big Mac and fries" (quiet voice)
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