With the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Anaheim fast approaching, whiz kid Dan Kraus has put together a handy primer on taking part. (Stars director of membership development John Chrastka, who, rumor has it, was born wearing a tweed blazer with a pipe in the pocket.)

Gee willikers! Check out this swell 1950s-style educational film that gives you the A-B-Cs of having a jim-dandy time at Annual Conference. It’s packed with so many super tips that every Billy and Sue out there will exclaim, “Golly! Can we watch it again?” Yes indeedy, you can! (Stick around afterwards for a few bloopers, too.)

Batting second: Game On.

Batting third: Super Sized:

And, batting cleanup, Vending Machine.

Keep up with the latest NLW videos here.

With National Library Week fast approaching, hard-working American Libraries associate editor Daniel Kraus has been working hard on a series of humorous video homages to libraries and the hard-working people who make them work. Batting leadoff, Reference Desk:

(And thank goodness for anonymous commenting–safe haven for the hit-and-run artist.)

I like lots of librarians, but my favorite librarian doesn’t actually exist. (Which certainly makes it less politically awkward than if I were to choose a favorite librarian who did exist.) Welcome back again, Israel Armstrong.

“We’re librarians actually,” said Israel.

“Come again?”

“Librarians.”

Israel thought that Barry’s face coloured slightly at the mention of the word “librarian” and that perhaps he twitched nervously inside his cheap suit with its expensive-looking lining. But then twitching nervously in the presence of a librarian wasn’t an uncommon response–librarians, like ministers of religion, and poets, and people with serious mental health disorders, can make people nervous. Librarians possess a kind of occult power, an aura. They could silence people with just a glance. At least, they did in Israel’s fantasies. In Israel’s fantasies, librarians were mild-mannered superheroes, with extrasensory perceptions and shape-shifting capacities and a highly developed sense of responsibility who demanded respect from everyone they met. In reality, Israel couldn’t silence even Mrs. Onions on her mobile phone when she was disturbing other readers on the van.

Ian Sansom’s first Mobile Library Mystery, The Case of the Missing Books, was wonderful. The second one, Mr. Dixon Disappears, didn’t work as well. The third one, The Book Stops Here (which will be published in August), made me laugh almost as much as the first.

More free-book madness. For the next month, you can read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for free–as long as you don’t mind sitting at a computer with a live internet connection. On Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow (Overclocked) gives it a bad review (the interface, not the book). Gaiman responds to that and another charge, as well:

I was surprised by a few emails coming in from people accusing me of doing bad things for other authors by giving anything away — the idea being, I think, that by handing out a bestselling book for nothing I’m devaluing what a book is and so forth, which I think is silly.

…

This is how people found new authors for more than a century. Someone says, “I’ve read this. It’s good. I think you’d like it. Here, you can borrow it.” Someone takes the book away, reads it, and goes, Ah, I have a new author.

Libraries are good things: you shouldn’t have to pay for every book you read.

(Read Booklist’s review of American Gods.)

More timely old stuff: lifehacker’s 13 Book Hacks for the Library Crowd.

Most of us spend a lot of time in the virtual world these days, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate a good book every now and then.

From your local library to the classroom to the bookstore, there are a lot of tools available to help you save time and money when it comes to the bound world of information. Today, in the interest of lifehacking your bookshelf, I’m rounding up my favorite 13 “book hacks” for getting the most from your bound literature.

Because it’s Friday, I feel I should leave you with something exciting to look at this weekend: “Red-Hot and Filthy Library Smut” (the nonist). Apparently the post was originally called “Sex Libris.” I have the distinct pleasure of telling you that I have visited the premises below in person.

(Thanks, Carlos!)

I keep trying to write a funny caption for this and then feeling as if I’m insulting the taste of millions of readers. Let me just say that I still don’t understand James Patterson’s popularity. Or maybe it stands to reason that, if you publish 12 books per year, you’re 12 times more likely to be checked out of the library than someone who only publishes one book per year. From The Independent (”The author of choice for Britain’s library borrowers“):

He may have been dismissed as a “best-seller factory” who churns out novels at a rapid rate to fill bargain-priced supermarket shelves, but James Patterson is now able to claim that he is British book borrowers’ favourite writer.

In the Times Literary Supplement (”Erotic qualifications“), Robert Irwin offers a somewhat cheeky (ahem) review of Gaetan Brulotte and John Phillips’ Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature (Routledge):

I also finished my reading of these two volumes with the feeling that sex was a lot less fun than I had hitherto supposed.

That’s funny, I had much the same feeling after finishing Chuck Palahniuk’s new novel. (Rimshot!) Although there is a clear difference between the two works:

In general, the entries tilt towards the intellectual, the magical realist, the transgressive and the gay. In the article on the novelist Jack Fritscher, Fritscher is quoted: "The gay erotic writer is to gay non-erotic writers what Ginger Rogers was to Fred Astaire: gay erotic literature does everything gay literature does, but it does it backwards and in high heels adding to its Olympic degree of difficulty and pleasure". This is a striking but puzzling metaphor. What sort of shoes is the non-gay erotic writer wearing and for what sort of dance?

But the real reason I’m writing about Irwin’s review of the EEL (as we in the “biz” refer to it) is a throwaway line in the first paragraph:

(It is common practice in reference books to insert a bogus entry or two in order to establish copyright in any future plagiarism case in court.)

Really? Is this true? Such a practice would seem more likely to cause the publishers of a reference book to end up in court themselves than to help them drag others there.

Can any reference librarians out there weigh in on this?

If there’s anyone who questions the enthusiasm of librarians for their line of work–and it sure ain’t me–show them this. Could writers and readers have any better friends? (Further reading.)