Bullet Point: Sam Colt Revised

God created mankind, but the library makes them equal.

The phrase to which I've given a twist--"God created men, but Sam Colt made them equal"--is portrayed as a frontier adage, but all I've found suggests it's a modern invention.

Wanted/ Not Wanted

What is the difference between an interrogation and a library job interview?

In one there is a threat of torture behind the questions. The other is called an interrogation.

ACRL 2013: Hot Chocolate

For once the room chosen for Battledecks* could accommodate the numbers who showed up to watch the competitive melee. In past library conferences the rooms for the activity have always attracted more than there were seats so that the overflow have had to lean or sit against the wall or wherever creative space usage led them.

The Conference Center was saving on ventilation or perhaps there was a wish to change the room into a sauna, while the number of endotherms added to the tropical climate. Those who brought along chocolate bars soon had the opportunity to drink them as hot chocolate.

*For this game the contestants, in isolation from each other, see a series of miscellaneous slides to which they must ad lib a narrative thread within a limited time. The slides are not chosen for their mundanity.

Meting Punishment

Hollywood makes movies about police and their work, business people and their work, and even teachers and their work, but it doesn't make movies about librarians and what they do, and that goes octuple-squared for librarian meetings. Such drama and clashes that exist are the equivalent of "The Rape of the Lock" without the satire. The subjects and the working-out of solutions are no 12 Angry Men, and come closer to No Exit. Maybe that's why the meetings are so enjoyable.

ACRL 2013: Fast Food

The drive from Missouri to Indiana took longer than I suspected. I was in the hotel room by 3:30 Wednesday, so even with picking up my badge I'd be able to squeeze into the first keynote at 4. But then an alarming discovery. The room clock showed 4:30. Like an expert three-card Monte player, Indiana's time shift from Central to Eastern had fooled me.

There turned out to be a silver lining. Not able to attend the keynote, I waited for the Exhibition Hall's 5:45 opening. Snackables were many and lines short. More people came in later. There is gloating satisfaction, perhaps with a taint of perversity, in seeing people in a long line that you have managed to avoid by a preemptive arrival. I figured they were just out from the end of the keynote and its associative ACRL housekeeping announcements.

Although this will dismay the organization, the non-Aesopian moral is that if attendees want short lines and first dibs on food, trade in the keynote for an on-time arrival at the Exhibit Hall opening.

Exchanging Vowels

Harvard has created what it calls a "labrary", its way of describing what a library will look like in the future. Apparently it is a descendant of the word "laboratory". Other substitute vowels don't form  neologisms so eloquently. Nothing fits "lebrary," barring an attempt at a construction in French (as in "Monsieur Le Brary"). On the other hand, going by the Oxford English Dictionary the "lob" part in an hypothesized "lobrary" has numerous meanings; for example, when "lob" signifies a "country bumpkin" it suggests a "lobrary" is a collection of reading material dealing with rural matters. An oversize, sprawling collection of items with simple words and lots of pictures fits a "lubbary" (from "lubber" as defined by the OED: a "big, clumsy, stupid fellow").

Book 'em, Danno

Perhaps with enthusiasm, perhaps with trepidation, you pick up a book to read, but as you go along you realize the book is not for you. A decision must be made: should the reading continue, or be given up? It is almost as though there's a fear that somewhere lurked a cadre of reader police waiting to arrest whoever balks at finishing a book.

Very different is the student assigned to read a book. He or she may find deceitful or ethically-challenged means to get around not only not finishing a book, but not starting it. They enlist the internet or maybe Masterplots and its ilk.

But it is the voluntary, reading-for-pleasure persons who feel the mystic obligation to slog on to the final page. Some who won't think twice about slipping aconite into a spouse's coffee will be nudged by guilt to finish a mammoth volume they hate from the get go.

Reading is the single form where this compunction dominates. People switch away from a television program, walk out of a movie, ruthlessly turn off a music CD, surf sporting events, nod during a speech, or daydream as a story is related.

There is a workaround for those who want to proclaim that they finish any book they start. They can follow the example of Forrest J Ackerman. The collector of a vast library of science fiction and fantasy books would tell listeners, “I've read every last word in every book in my collection,” then add “When I get a new book I turn to the last page--and read the last word!”