One thing that always seems to get people’s attention when showing them the wonders of Congressional Universe is the Financial Disclosures section. I showed a bunch of undergrads how to look up the financial statements of elected officials and they seemed mighty impressed!
Totally unrelated to gov docs, but still fun, via Mefi, you can get […]

This is the time of year when it is time to unpack your blankets, the leaves begin to turn, the stores start putting up their christmas decorations, and when a very large number of freshmen start to work on their research projects!
I taught 3 classes yesterday, which is basically my limit. After one class I […]

I got quite a haul of graphic novels recently. For some reason at the Coop, they had marked down the first couple volumes of Akiko by Mark Crilley, and I know its gotten great reviews, so I decided I had to liberate these books from the bargain bin.
I did some online shopping and picked up […]

Quicksilver is mocking me. I haven’t made much headway. It sits there and smirks, with its many lenghtly pages and historical references.
Insead, I’m reading kids’ books! I picked up Coraline, and loved it. It is the darkest and spookiest book I’ve read in a long time. There were many details that seemed very true to […]

This felt very luxurious. I was working reference instead. I had one not so great and one really good virtual reference transaction today.
The not so great one was for a student who had the dreaded “formats assignment”, where he was required to use x number of books, x number of web sites, and x number […]

I’m finally starting Quicksilver. I’m glad there’s a wiki up to annotate it. Currently, I am very very amused that the opening paragraph starts the novel off with a hanging at the Boston Common. Good lord, it is 916 pages long. Pray for me!
Also pray that Don Nelson will not let Antoine Walker take as […]

Via Animenewsnetwork, Heat Guy J is going to be on MTV sometime next year. I’ve been curious to check this out because some of the same people who worked on Escaflowne, the director of the movie (which had some wonderful animation despite the not so great adaptation of the tv series plotline), and the character […]

Comic book resources column “The Comic Pimp” on getting comics into libraries, the suggestions are excellent because a librarian helped with the column!

Sometimes when I am filled with anger, I like to visualize a giant plumed helmet falling out of the sky to smite my enemies.
This is a product of reading The Castle of Otranto, one of the first gothic novels. You have to love a book that features a paragraph like this in its opening chapter:
The […]

It was a busy day at the reference desk. I love the fact that people wait 2 days before their paper is due to get started on their library research.
I used to do this all the time when I was in college, but usually I’d have all the research out of the way and then […]