As seen online

There have been lots of fun tidbits floating around the internet the past week. Here are some that have caught my interest:

The first is from the public library in Troy, Michigan. In 1971 construction of the new library was finished, and the children's librarian wrote to hundreds of celebrities, authors and notable public officials asking them to wrote the children of Troy about their new library. She collected 97 of them and they are now up on their website. Some of my favorite's include Issac Asimov, Dr. Seuss, Saul Alinsky, Pearl Bailey, and Vincent Price. Even Ronald Reagan and Pat Nixon wrote some very sweet letters!



Here's an article on how the University of Chicago has built an underground book storage facility that is powered by robots. While this has the potential to cut down on the potential for browsing, I think that this still awesome for an academic library. It creates more space for studying and creates a protected space for valuable materials and archives. Plus, robots are cool.

The Chronicle published another great article looking at innovative academic libraries. This one describes embedded librarians at Johns Hopkins and reworking space to match students needs.

I love working in a medical library and I love learning about new (and free resources). This interactive 3D Human Anatomy Search Engine is pretty rad, and I feel would be an excellent resource for a more general academic or even public library.

I've posted about Snooki before, and I will probably post about her some more. Here is a great article about two academic librarians who use MTV's The Jersey Shore to their advantage.

what's a snooki?

It's been a tradition that after the Newbery and Caldecott Medal Winners are announced at the American Library Associations' Midwinter meeting the award recipients are interviewed on the Today show live in New York City. That didn't happen this year. Apparently the Today Show the morning after the meeting was already booked, and Matt Lauer interviewed...

...Snooki.

For those of you who don't know who Snooki is, she's famous for getting drunk on ron ron juice and smushing in front of millions of viewers on MTV's The Jersey Shore.

Really, today show? Really? You're going to promote Snooki's new "novel" over award winning children's literature? When America is clawing itself out of a horrible recession, there was a recent national tragedy and the political arena is so vitriolic its painful to watch the news, this is what you choose to put on your show?

Classy.

For those of who are as outraged as I am - there is a facebook campaign to try and get the Medal Winners back onto the today show. Who knows how successful it will be, but if facebook got Betty White onto SNL than it might just work for this campaign too.

And for those who are interested in who actually won the award, rather than the drama surrounding them, check out the Newberry Winner by clicking here and the Caldecott by clicking here.