I've long wanted to be able to link directly to my library's and also Library of Congress records, but the URLs generated in Voyager Endeavor (now ExLibris Voyager) are, alas, unstable. However, some enterprising enterprisers developed this canned search generator that creates a stable URL for your search or for the record itself in multiple views.
Dear Library of Congress Subject Authorities,
Can you suggest a subject heading for "The Cute Issue" of Ladyfriend zine? I was thinking CUTENESS or CUTE THINGS, but I don't see either of those in the authority file, or references to any heading that would be useful in describing a monograph about cute things.
Dear Library of Congress Subject Authorities,
I would really like a subject heading for FOUND POETRY. I bet you can figure out cross references to poetry and found objects and the like, right? The zine that prompts this request, is Word Math. But you have some books in your collection that might enjoy being so described, too:
Dancing on the pedals : the found poetry of Phil Liggett, the voice of cycling [edited by] Doug Donaldson
Foundlings : uncollected found poetry by John Robert Colombo
When people ask me whether people are still making zines today, I often tell them about Katie Haegele's wonderful literary zines. The one that prompted me to write this post, Word Math, is a collection of found poems, created from thrifted manuals, spam, and craigslist personals. The last is what particularly slayed me. You can listen to Katie reading it.
Since I graduated from high school, I stopped going to church, I discovered found poetry, and I got my wisdom teeth out. (introduction, 1st page)
I just won myself a Shover & Maker Award, and you can win one, too, but you have to upload your profile by 5/15.
This 3 minute documentary of the of the ABC No Rio Zine Library came my way via Heather Davis on the Zine Librarians Yahoogroup.
Another "horrible-alternate-world-scenario" suggestion from Julie the teen librarian, How I Live Now isn't a high tech horror story like Feed. It's scarier because it's far more realistic. The 15-year-old protagonist, a New Yorker with n eating disorder and a wicked stepmother finds herself vacationing with her cousins (one of the kissing variety) in England when war breaks out. Their house gets "sequestered," and children get separated by gender. The rest of the story is of their survival and how they find one another again.
Staying alive is what we did to pass the time. p.155
A "horrible-alternate-world-scenario" story recommended by my teen librarian friend Julie on the Anarchist Librarians discussion list, Feed imagines a realistic vision of a future where we're wired directly to computers, networks, and advertising. Anderson does a good job of creating a natural sounding teen speak, though sometimes it's so good, that it feels a little self-conscious.
When I asked her what her dad did, she said, "He's a college professor. He teaches dead languages."
"People study that?"
She shrugged. "I guess."
"Okay. So what are the dead languages?"
They're languages that were once important but that nobody uses anymore. They haven't been used for a long time, except by historians."
"Like what languages?"
"You know, FORTRAN, BASIC."
She slid off the bunk, and went to get her bag. She opened it and pulled out something, which was a pen. She also had paper.
I looked at her funny. "You write?" I said. "With a pen?"
"Sure," she said, a little embarrassed. She wrote something down. She put the pad of paper on my lap.
She asked me, "Do you know how to read?"
I nodded. "I can read. A little. I kind of protested it in SchoolTM. On the grounds that the silent "E" is stupid."
"This is the language called BASIC," she said.
On the paper, it said:
002110 Goto 013500
013500 Peek 16388, 236
013510 Poke 16389, 236
She read it to me. I could tell the numbers fine.
"So what does that mean?" I asked.
"It's the first thing my dad teaches the students on the first day," she said. "It means, 'I came, I saw, I conquered.'" p.53-54
It smelled like the country. It was a filet mignon farm, all of it, and the tissue spread for miles around the paths where we were walking. It was like these huge hedges of red all around us, with these beautiful marble patterns running through them. They had these tubes, they were bringing the tissue blood, and we could see the blood running around, up and down. It was really interesting. I like to see how things are made, and to understand where they come from. p.116
Library of Congress Subject Headings Weekly List 14 (April 8, 2009)
The Library of Congress, thanks to Muppet Wiki, welcomes MISS PIGGY, also BEARS AS PETS (not referring to Fozzie Bear, thank you very much), and what seem to be inconsistent headings for people who lived in countries before Europeans found them.