Free Comic Book Day

So there is this annual event called Free Comic Book Day. Never heard of it? Check out the information here http://www.freecomicbookday.com/ We have an amazing time with it at our library service with kid and family friendly activities that run all day. We have actually had people tell us they are visiting us rather than the big comic book stores which is amazing! I have taken my nephew to it for all of his 5 years he has been around.

I have been asked to participate this year as a character. Huge excitement!!!!! I get to choose who I want to be and source the costume which hopefully means I can find something that fits okay.

So here’s the thing… have you ever looked for plus sized costumes? Pretty much all of them have the word “sexy” in front whilst men get these awesome looking things like the below with options for fat or skinny people.

Where are all the awesome costume options for shapely ladies?!!

At this stage I am pretty much assuming I am going to have to put one together myself so I have started thinking about who I might like to be. One of the other librarians is going as supergirl. I found some interesting costume (DIY) options for wonder woman which I think could work well. Another one I am pretty interested in currently is Claire Redfield from the Resident Evil comics/world… at least then everything is not as clingy and bodysuity… plus I really like the character.

Here is the current list I am considering:

• Claire Redfield – Resident Evil
• Alice – Resident Evil
• Wonder Woman – Wonder Woman
• Lady Mechanika – Lady Mechanika – would be awesome, but huge amounts of prep.
• Poison Ivy – Batman – would be a GREAT costume, but worried about doing a villain and having the kids be afraid of me when I am trying to get them involved with stuff 🙂 Also sometimes kids might “fight” villains.

Side note: I would totally love to do Abby from the new Ghostbusters, but that character isn’t from the comics 😦

What are your thoughts? There are other comic book characters I love, but I need it to be fat friendly, movable to some degree so I can interact with kids and hopefully more than one piece for ease of pee breaks 🙂 I would LOVE some suggestions from you all!

Annnnnndddddd…….. GO!!!

 

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Star Wars display

We had been pushing for a Star Wars display at work, one of the ladies husbands is a huge fan and she populated 3 cases with items from the past movies. Unfortunately we do not seem to have many Star Wars fans at my work because the ladies that do social media were like, ‘oh I never thought of promoting that’. I was kind of shocked, firstly because we should be promoting absolutely everything we do. Secondly we are the only people in the region doing any kind of Star Wars display… the people need to know!

I think it is a great display. I kind of wish we could have done even more, but space is an issue 🙂

Here are some pics of our Star Wars display:

Have you guys seen any great Star Wars displays leading up to the release of “The Force Awakens”?

Christmas Book Critters

You might remember the Halloween Book Critters I created back in October. Well, due to popular demand I was asked to create some Christmas Book Critters for our Christmas display. Woohoo! I was so excited and got straight to it and I am very happy with the results (although I think my Elf needs a hat, I will have to find some time to work on that or take some stuff home and work on it lol).

Introducing our Christmas Book Critters.

Santa:

Elf:

I really do think this guy needs a hat. Will have to work on it 🙂

Rudolph:

And last, but certainly not least… Olaf 🙂 :

Unfortunately you cannot see his arms and hair too well in this photo, but I swear he has them 🙂

Halloween Book Critters

So I found a picture similar to the critters we made somewhere a while ago. I can’t remember when I saw it, but the idea stuck with me and so I convinced my Youth Librarian friend that we totally had to make some Halloween Book Critters (payback for all the YA books I have read this year hahaha kidding).

So we were going to make 5 initially, but decided to go with four because of the space we had to put them in and honestly creating them took longer than we thought. I’m sure initially people thought we were silly spending so much time on a couple of decorations, but we were proud. Here they are…

This is Franky

Our witch

Our spooky ghost

and little Master Jack

Here they are on display

Remember how I said people probably thought it was a waste of time? Well the public love them and have been taking photos. A staff member uploaded them to our Instagram page and we got 200 likes overnight and a bunch of libraries are now doing the same and tagging our library as the inspiration. How cool is that?!!!

A little fun can be great promotion 🙂

Happy Halloween everybody!

The results… what do libraries mean to you (Part II)

Yesterday I asked you all to contribute some words that you felt described what libraries meant to you, or even words that came to you when you thought about libraries. I want to thank all of the people who provided me with some amazing words!

With the help of tagul I created the below word cloud. The bigger words mean more than one person chose that word. So with no further delay I give you…

What libraries mean to us 🙂

Yes I made a heart 🙂

Love it! 🙂

Thanks again to everyone who put in submissions 🙂

What do Libraries mean to you?

I thought I would try something really different today. I would love it if in the comments you guys would put a word or a few words that describe what libraries mean to you or words that remind you of libraries and what you can do there.

Once I have a few words I am going to use them to create a word cloud that will represent what libraries mean to us 🙂

I’ll get us started with a couple of words that represent what libraries mean (or are about) to me:

Community, adventures, fun, literacy, inspiring

Sound good?

Okay…. go 🙂

Librarian Rhapsody

I have a rather short post for you today, but that doesn’t mean it is lacking in quality.

Someone I know was involved in making the below film clip. It started as a way of showing what they had accomplished and morphed into something much, much more. This video was even shared by Brian May (lead guitarist for Queen) on his Twitter feed which sent the views into a frenzy.

Ladies and gentleman I give you… Librarian Rhapsody…

Shoalhaven Library service is not overly large, but it covers quite a large area and obviously their staff work incredibly hard and are extremely talented 🙂 If you want more information on them you can visit their webpage http://www.shoalhavenlibraries.com.au/

I hope you enjoy it and feel free to share on your social media pages 🙂

Déjà vu clients

Recently I seem to be having a lot of deja vu clients and it’s starting to make me feel insecure!

What is a deja vu client?

A deja vu client is someone who comes into the library (or whatever workplace you are in) and asks a question. You look at the client and figure out either immediately or partway through the answer that not only have you answered this question before, but you have answered this question to this EXACT person.

This seems to happen most with scanning, photocopying and printing. Even though I make the client do it each time and just verbally guide them AND show them the instructions hanging on the wall NEXT TO THE PHOTOCOPIER/PRINTER/SCANNER and they come in ALL THE TIME they just can’t seem to remember how to do it.

There is a gentleman that comes in who can never connect his WiFi, I don’t know what he does to his computer at home, but everytime he comes there are issues connecting. I have helped him twice. Both times he has said to me, “I don’t think you know enough, you need to get someone else” and both times I have said to him, “sir, there is only one person in the whole Library service with more IT knowledge than me and she is unavailable” (in my mind I added “jerk off” to make myself feel better). This same gentleman has asked me twice how to save pictures from an email and get this… it was the same damn picture each time (SIGH!). The first time I showed him how as soon as we pressed ‘save as’ his picture library came up with some pretty graphic close ups of lady parts, I turned away and said I couldn’t help him with that on there and he seemed embarrassed. The second time I was wiser and said to him, “remember we have done this before” he said we hadn’t and when he brought up the picture I said, “yes, see this is the same picture we saved last time and remember when you pressed save some inappropriate photos came up. If they come up again I will walk away” he looked at me and then said, “oh, okay, I will delete them”.

Just today I had a lady ask me how to scan documents, I looked at her and knew we have had this conversation before. I told her she needed a USB and she said she didn’t have one. I let her know that the machine will only scan to a USB and she asked if she could borrow one, I said we didn’t have any to borrow, but she could buy one at the front desk for $10. She said too expensive so I suggested she walk down the road to Kmart because they have cheaper ones there. I felt like a robot during this discussion, we have literally had this EXACT conversation before. I remember her because she has some cool tattoos. Cool tattoos yes, but I think she needs a remembrall!

Does anyone else have this happen with their clients regularly? I am not sure having the ‘you need to be quiet in the quiet study area’ really counts does it? If it does then I have an epidemic on my hands hahaha.

The brilliance of eBooks

Have I told you all how much I love eBooks? No? Maybe? All the time? Well I can’t help it, I totally do.

With my library card from work I have access to literally hundreds of eBooks at the tap of a screen. If I go through the Library website I have access to a number of online reference books (like medical and legal volumes plus encyclopedias) and online databases.

My library also has two eBook platforms; Overdrive and BorrowBox. Overdrive is American and therefore has a wide range of eBooks and audiobooks on it whereas BorrowBox is Australian so concentrates more on Aussie and NZ authors which is great too.

Due to the fact that it is winter and therefore snowy, rainy and cold out, plus the fact we just got a boatload of new content on BorrowBox here is one of the promos I put together for our social media promotion.

Created using befunky.com

Normally I pick up physical books whilst at work because hey, I’m already there right? But sometimes I forget (I do get very busy) and find myself stuck on the weekend without a precious novel (THE HORROR). Then I remember not to fret, I do not have to go down to work on my day off because I can just pick up my iPad and open the app for either Overdrive or BorrowBox and find a great book to read 🙂 Most recently I chose ‘The Lie’ by C.L. Taylor which was great, you will see my brief review in my June 52 Books in 52 Weeks list, it is number 31 🙂 – I promise June will be out soon, a little shorter than normal, but it is definitely coming!

You will know from past posts of my fall from grace due to my Netflix addiction, you do have to pay for Netflix, (let’s be honest though, the amount is less per month than a single visit to the movies) but wouldn’t it be amazing if soon you could get Netflix access through your library card too.

Gotta love my job 🙂

The Rescue of Johnny Depp

Last night some douche pants left this little prince in the library car park. He survived the night in spite of some terribly cold weather and was found under the bins this morning.

He is now in the capable hands of multiple library staff who are well versed in animal rescue 🙂 Or are really good at Googling.

Naming however has become an issue; our collections manager has started calling him Dewey which let’s face it is pretty awesome. However due to the fact that his natural colouring makes it obvious that he wears eyeliner better than any of us I am calling him Johnny Depp we are also considering Jack Sparrow. I also feel that Johnny Depp would be an appropriate name seeing as though he has captured the hearts of almost all the staff and thus is now a Library celebrity 🙂 He has already made it on to our Instagram account which means he will soon be stealing the hearts of our patrons as well.

Don’t worry about this little one’s future as many of the staff have already put up their hands to house him. The staff member who won out is well versed in raising kittens and has even hand reared them before. He will have a kind and loving home with her and her family I have no doubt.