Lesetipp des Tages in verschiedenen Sprachen: Ultimi giorni dell'umanità - Les derniers jours de l'Humanité - The last days of mankind - Die letzten Tage der Menschheit

Remarkable libraries, part III: the "Fachbibliothek für Germanistik" (special library for German language & literature studies) is part of the Vienna university's library and collects media in the fields of German-language literature from its beginnings to the present, philology, onomatology & dialectology, German as a foreign language, nordic and Dutch languages & literature... It offers about 145000 items, nearly 200 serials and a really nice reading room.

Recently, I bought an issue of the "Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine". It contains a really charming story that keeps me smiling whenever I think about it: "The Unpleasantness at Le Château Malveillant" by John Morressy. The text is part of a series about the sorcerer Kedrigern and his wife Princess.

I hereby continue my series about remarkable libraries. Today: the Vienna University of Technology's library (short: UBTUW). The library was founded in 1815, its current premises were finished in 1987. It has a very pleasant working atmosphere (which is not self-evident in Austrian academic libraries), it offers an extensive open-access shelving area (which is not...), and the staff is very friendly (which is not...).
One of the most remarkable features is the so-called "Eiserne Kassa" (~iron till). It is a vault where the really valuable books are stored. During my internship in 2001/02, I had the possibility to glance at its content, and I did some research on the authors, the books and the prices that similar items were dealt with by antiquarian book-sellers; e.g. early editions by the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler. But normally, users don't have the opportunity to look at it. So I content myself with other books about quantum physics (alas only the more popular ones), the relation of philosophy & science and information retrieval.

Der Arbeitskreis kritischer Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare im Renner-Institut KRIBIBI und die Sozialwissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Arbeiterkammer Wien laden herzlich ein zur Veranstaltung "kalt warm. Bibliotheken zwischen spektakulären Eröffnungen und unbemerkten Schließungen".
Früher oder später werden HistorikerInnen dem Phänomen des Bibliothekssterbens am Beginn des 21.Jahrhunderts nachgehen. Während weltweit architektonisch ansprechende Bibliotheksneubauten gebührende Beachtung finden, sehen sich gleichzeitig abseits öffentlicher Wahrnehmung wichtige Teile des Bibliothekswesens in ihrer Substanz gefährdet.
- Lesung: Christine Linzbauer und Erwin Wögenstein - Texte über Bücher und Bibliotheken
- Gespräch: Peter Huemer mit Ferdinand Lacina und BibliothekarInnen
- Kleines Buffet
Ort: Lesesaal der Sozialwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek, Prinz Eugen-Straße 20, 1040 Wien
Zeit: Mittwoch, 24. März 2004, 19 Uhr

Via the weblog of the institute for library science at the Humboldt university Berlin (IB), I discovered there's an interesting comics library in Berlin.

In the summer term 2002, I attended an online seminar about female librarians. Now we have the possibility to publish the results in form of a book. I was in a group writing about female librarians in literature & movies, and I specialized on anglophone children's books.

At the weekend, I read the latest volume of the Miss Zukas mystery series by Jo Dereske, namely "Miss Zukas shelves the evidence". It was a real pleasure. It is very funny to see when the little rebel being hidden in every librarian comes out.

I recently bought a kitschy romance, called "The librarian's passionate night" written by Cindy Gerard and published by Silhouette books. Now I just discovered that this is not the only Silhouette novel starring librarians, they rather seem to be uncountable (okay, it's hyperbolic):
Sharon Sala: Amber by Night (2003); Allison Leigh: Montana Lawman (2002); Elizabeth Bevarly: The Temptation of Rory Monahan (2001); Carol Grace: The Librarian's Secret Wish (2000); Elizabeth Harbison: Annie and the Prince (2000); Sally Tyler Hayes: Cinderella and the Spy (2000); Nikki Benjamin: The Major & the Librarian (1999); Caroline Cross: The Notorious Groom (1998); Barbara McMahon: Cinderella Twin (1998); Kathryn Jensen: I married a prince (1997); Linda Turner: Maddy Lawrence's Big Adventure (1996); Glenda Sanders: Look Into My Eyes (1995); Laurie Campbell: And Father Makes Three (1995); Cathie Linz: Handyman (1991); Emilie Richards: Runaway (1990); Stephanie James: Velvet Touch (1982)...
As far I can say from the short descriptions on biblio.com and abebooks.de, most of these (female) librarians have something in common: They are mid30s, unmarried, still virgins and longing for a man like they use to read about...

I just browsed the catalogue of Harrassowitz publishing house and found very interesting books. One of my areas of collection emphasis is dictionaries of various languages. My most "exotic" ones are - so far - "Japanese - English - Sinhala" and "Indonesian"; the most beautiful one is a French "nouveau petit Larousse illustré" from 1938 with many illustrations. At Harrassowitz', I spotted the following which I'd really like to purchase: a "concise dictionary of Akkadian", a Tartar - German dictionary, an Aramaic - new Hebrew dictionary... and: the "Rückläufiges Wörterbuch der vogulischen Schriftsprache" (~ retrograde dictionary of Vogulian literary language).
I never heard anything of Vogulian before, so I googled a bit: Vogulian is part of the finno-ugric family. More precisely, it is one of the three ugric languages, which makes it similar to Hungarian, actually most similar from all finno-ugric languages. It is also called Mansi(c) and is spoken by only five-thousand people living in parts of Sibiria, east of Ural.

I'm planning to introduce remarkable libraries here, and I'm starting with the "Literaturhaus Mattersburg". It offers a library with about 7000 books - its main focus being on central european literature, Austrian contemporary fiction, ethnic minorities, judaism, exile - and a carefully selected children's library. The libraries are opened Tuesday and Thursday from 10 to 6, Friday from 9 to 1 o'clock.
There are also a lot of literary activities, like children's storytime at night and readings from centraleuropean authors. Yesterday, the new series "literatur nach tisch" was started, taking place one Tuesday a month on 2 o'clock. The title is a play on words, so not easy to translate, but "nach-tisch" means "dessert" as well as "after dinner". Here people involved in the cultural life introduce their favourite books or books on which they want to draw attention.
The head librarian of the Burgenland provincial library, an author himself, introduced two books by authors coming from Burgenland: "Wäre Franz ein Fluss, müsste er pausenlos entspringen" (really can't be translated properly) by Franz Zalto and "Am Pinkaboden" by Friedrich Singer.

I read a wonderful book last weekend: "Miss Zukas and the library murders" by Jo Dereske, Avon Books 1999. Miss Helma Zukas, an US-American librarian with lithuanian roots, works in the public library of Bellehaven. When suddenly a dead man is found between the stacks (fiction, MO - NE, by the way), she and her friend Ruth, an unorthodox artist, can throw light on the crime. Zukas is a quite proper and accurate librarian (yes, it is quite stereotype), but she is portrayed with affection and certainly not "black&white". She contrasts perfectly with bohemian Ruth. The books are funny and exciting, and, along the way, the readers can learn a lot about American public librarianship (if they want to). And please have a look @ the cover!
The author was a librarian herself, which is fortunately reflected in the texts. There are many more mysteries with Helma Zukas: for example 'Out of circulation', 'Final notice' and 'Miss Zukas shelves the evidence'.

There are a lot of job titles for librarians - just have a look @ the job title generator. Recently, I read an interesting one: "knowledge sources management". I don't know if I should really like it. If the majority of non-librarians reacts to the word "librarian" with an epitheton not really ornans like "boring", "old-fashioned", "not interesting", and if this majority says "hey, knowledge sources management sounds cool", well, then let's do something for our image. Sounds comprehensible. But: I'm proud of being a LIBRARIAN and nothing else, and if those people with a horizon as high as a carpet don't know that librarians are at least as cool as knowledge sources managers, they can't be helped. Of course, this sounds arrogant. So, concluding, I don't know if I should really like it or not.

How to recognize LIS students doing their cataloguing courses: They come in and ask for a numbered monographic series and a multi-volume monograph.

At the moment, I'm doing my evening duty in the library, with, as usual, approximately no, null, nought, zero, nil users coming around. So I'll use the time to rant and moan about my two exams next Wednesday. Both lectures at Vienna University were interesting and exciting, but there's a lot to read and learn. Of course I could have started earlier, but hey, it's me!
Of all the books I had to read this term, I especially liked the following ones: "Kassandra" (Christa Wolf, narrative), "Heldenplatz" (Thomas Bernhard, drama), the short novels of Karl Emil Franzos, as well as his novel "Pojaz" dealing with Judaism in the eastern parts of the Austrian-hungarian monarchy, and "Lotti, die Uhrmacherin" (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, novel). The absolutely lowest point for me was "Kalldewey Farce" by the German dramatist Botho Strauß.

The Austrian library conference ("Bibliothekartag", cfp) takes place in Linz in September. I once wrote a seminar paper about librarians as characters in english children books, and we collect fiction with librarians as characters in the library I work in. So I'd like to give a talk about librarians in literature at the Bibliothekartag.

I have an eGovernment bibliography on my website (with emphasis on Austria), which I updated and expanded today. The listed literature is subdivided according to topics, for example eVoting, electronic administration, eDemocracy & participation. I just added the two groups "governmentality" and "government libraries".
Besides, an article from my colleague Fritz Betz and me (mainly from him, I admit) was published these days. The article is called "Electronic governmentality in Austria: 'Governance work' between self-bureaucratisation and central surveillance" and was published in the collected edition "e-Democracy: Technology, Law and Politics" edited by Alexander Prosser and Robert Krimmer.

On Wednesday, I experienced a somewhat peculiar encounter: In the library for German language and literature studies in Vienna, there was a dead mouse. Probably she's in mouse heaven now, watching "Tom & Jerry" or reading "Of mice and men". At first, I thought the waitress must have put something in my morning coffee and I'm hallucinating. But the librarian confirmed that poison baits were spread out in the library.
I would have suggested a library cat instead. There really is a "library cats map" which lists over five-hundred "Total Known Library Cats"!

Last month, I mentioned Tori Amos' new album "Tales of a librarian". Meanwhile, I had the opportunity to see and hear it. It's really nice - the songs are classified in DDC classes. You can read an article about it here and listen to excerpts here.

Today I'd like to talk about two CDs I recently bought. The first one is "Sex & Drugs & Jesus Christ" by Christian Death. It contains one of my favourite songs, "Incendiary lover" (sung by Gitane Demone), which is here quite "overcooled" when compared with the erotic, "hot" version on the compilation "Gothic Rock", but not less delightful. I like also the song "Tragedy" very much.
The second one is "Ziggy Stardust" by David Bowie. My favourites: "Five years" and "Starman", the latter offering a hopeful message for SF fans & alien believers like me: There's a starman waiting in the sky...