Books But Does It Support Emoticons?
posted by on June 3 at 12:10 PM
Image from Vice magazine’s photo spread of Swedish librarians, which is the greatest thing that Vice magazine has ever done.
Just got a press release announcing that the Seattle Public Library’s ask-a-librarian program, which Christopher enthusiastically wrote up almost two years ago on Slog, is now available on IM.
To IM a librarian, you just have to go to SPL’s main page and, as the presser says:
…click the “Find” button without typing any text into the catalog keyword search box. The chat box will be on the right side of the screen. Type in your question or message where it says “Your question/message” and click “Send.” The staff member’s response will appear and the user can respond by writing another message and clicking “Send” again.
I hate using phones. This is good news.
I thank you from the depths of my heart for that Vice article.
There's a smoking hot librarian (complete with bangs and short wool skirts) at the NE branch. Just saying.
Goddamn I wish I knew Swedish. If I did, this new library school graduate totally apply for a job at the Stadsbiblioteket.
My glasses are completely fogged. Swedes + librarians might be more than I can handle. There are hot librarians EVERYWHERE. Librarians are about as hot as it gets. Lately I've been discovering that while KCLS may be just slightly below the SPL standard of hotness, they are FREAKISHLY HELPFUL and nice. That's at Bellevue and Shoreline, at least. Not that the SPL ones aren't outstandingly gracious as well. I'm talking to you, Wallingford!
SPL has some really hot librarians--male and female. The Cap Hill branch down the street is always full of eye candy.
Yet another reason to go to the library.
You know, at the inaugural SLOG drinky fest, I asked your late uber-intern (just before he left for israel) to do a short research project on the appropriate way to hit on SPL librarians.
I'm still waiting.
And I'm with everyone above. Cap Hill branch is smokin'.
when I tried to access that link at my desk, I got this:
The website you are trying to access has been blocked by the Barracuda Web Filter because it is in the Porn category.
My library is protecting me from pictures of librarians. Oh, the irony.
Is that link actually NSFW, or are the web filters just basing it on Vice's usual content?
i drooled so much, i'm dehydrated now.
Maybe the next SLOG happy hour should be at the library. You might not be able to drink in the library, but you can obviously BE drunk at the library.
Finally, some intellectual wacking material.
Perfect! I had a question I was planning to look up, but I gave this feature a whirl...
Me:Do you know where the usage of 'pickle' for 'in trouble' or 'a baserunner caught between bases' comes from? How did either (or both) of these meanings come to be described as 'in a pickle'
Librarian has joined the session.
SPL: Hi: From the American Heritage Dictionary:: Trade with the Low Countries across the North Sea was important to England in the later Middle Ages, and it is perhaps because of this trade that we have the word pickle. Middle English pikel, the ancestor of our word, is first recorded around 1400 with the meaning "a spicy sauce or gravy served with meat or fowl." This is a different sense from the one the word brings to mind now, but it is somewhat related in sense to its possible Middle Dutch source pekel, a solution, such as spiced brine, for preserving and flavoring food. After coming into English the word pickle expanded its sense range in several ways. It was applied, as it had been in Middle Dutch, to a pickling solution. Later pickle was used to refer to something so treated, such as a cucumber. The word also took on a figurative sense, "a troublesome situation," perhaps under the influence of a similar Dutch usage in the phrase in de pekel zitten, "sit in the pickle," and iemand in de pekel laten zitten, "let someone sit in the pickle."
Does that answer do it for you?
Me: That's a pretty good start. Do you have any resources as to the origin of that dutch phrase? If not I can go from here.
SPL: No, all I could find was this entry from the American Heritage Dictionary.
Also, another website says it's a very old Dutch phrase and that Shakespeare uses the "in a pickle" phrase: see
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/196000.html
Me: Great! Thank you so much! I like the new IM feature
SPL: You're welcome! Librarian ended chat session.
I'm a fan!
Smart women are hot...now where did I put that library card.
That library is hawt! Gunnar Asplund designed it, and Andreas Gursky made a great photograph of it.
The librarians seem nice, too.
carlita @ 2: i do believe she's in high school. since she's younger than my stepdaughter, i have to say she's "cute".
not hot. certainly not smoking hot. that would be very very wrong to say.
@7
The library doesn't have filters, unless you're at one of the children's computers. you can actually look at anything you want at SPL.
@15, however, if you're at Greenwood, and you're reading your email at one of the tables in the middle of the room, and the dingy weirdo at the next table is looking at porn, and LEAVES IT ON HIS SCREEN while he goes to the toilet, the librarian will come over and not all that politely request that you not do that, until the guy comes back and says "oh, hey, porn? sorry, dude, that was me". Thus giving me all the embarrassment of being caught looking at porn in public with none of the benefits of actually looking at porn in public.
Eric F, which library did Gursky photograph?
on behalf of all librarians - oh , and i am one,.... I ask what the fuck is it? Is it a supposed authority figure combined with supposed brains and healthy lifestyle resulting in quietly honed horniness??? (maybe)
@17: It is the thought of the government & law stacks, after hours. The quiet shuffle of clothing and pages, the faint squeak of the book cart's wheels.
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