Ask me about weirdos in public libraries!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about weirdos in public libraries!

Vindolanda: Feb 13, 2012; It's just like him too, y'know?

My Lovely Horse posted:

Folks, I'd like to pick your brains a bit on if we've got our English terminology right at my library.

Returns go on the Book Heap. Stick everything else in the Book Hole.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2021 09:38

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 05:50

Vindolanda: Feb 13, 2012; It's just like him too, y'know?

My Lovely Horse posted:

good god we really have been overthinking

everything

Actually to make things clearer for ESL patrons maybe the Book Hole would be better labelled the Book Pit. In the interests of conservation I suggest that the library be build on well-drained sandy soil so as to keep the pit dry.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2021 10:47

Vindolanda: Feb 13, 2012; It's just like him too, y'know?

My Lovely Horse posted:

Adventures in video production: after painstakingly setting up a recording session for an online library introduction talk and testing it multiple times, everything worked like an absolute charm except for the actual recording, which turned out to be completely unusable, and I had to reshoot, and ask the other participants to reshoot, the whole thing as an asynchronous Q&A session with our cell phones.

Cell phones being pretty decent these days I'm actually quite pleased with the result but man that was two days of completely unnecessary stress.

actual library work is taking more and more of a back seat.

e: also I have another terminology question. What do you call the area of a library with publically accessible shelving and study spaces? I've looked around a bit and it feels like anglophone libraries don't tend to call that anything in particular. I need a term to express things like "you will find this book in the _____" (as opposed to the closed stacks, in our case), but it also needs to stand on its own.

"Open collection" seems more organizational than referring to a space and plus feels more like a directly translated than a native term, "reading room" seems to imply study spaces only, "open stacks" seems to imply shelving only. I've also come across "open access area" but I don't think I like the potential confusion with "open access" as in publishing.

Open collection is the book heap, closed is the book hole (not the returns hole).

Taking it seriously, when you say �closed stacks� are you referring to something like a rare book section? My context is more dealing with universities and research institutions than public libraries, but most people seem to call the bit where you can wander around and get things �the library� and distinguish the bits where you say �I want the Psalter of Charlemagne� and someone brings it out by calling that something like �rare books� or �access by request� etc.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2021 10:58

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about weirdos in public libraries!