Friday Foolery #56: Unshelved Bacon!

Me with Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum, creators of Unshelved

Does it get any better than hanging out with our local hometown heroes of the library comic strip world and receiving an autographed copy of their latest book for free as a thank you present for helping out? As a bonus I can add that I know how to operate those credit/debit card swipe machines to my CV!

The truth about the bacon bookmark: Pretty much every library meeting and conference Unshelved goes to (including ours) has someone in attendance who has experienced this strange user phenomenon in their returned books. It's about 50/50 whether the bacon is raw or cooked. Have you had this happen at your library?

Friday Foolery #39: Save your bacon - use a bookmark

Bibliobuffet - The Legend of the Bacon Bookmark

Apparently plenty of library books have been returned with real live dead bacon strips as bookmarks in them! I had forgotten about the 2003 Unshelved strip (ha!) dealing with the matter and may just need to have Gene & Bill autograph a printout for me at the PNC/MLA 2009 meeting where they will be our speakers. No really, it's true! See "Banquet with the "Unshelved" guys" on October 19th?

The writer found many mentions of bacon bookmarks (including "book jerky" in Cinncinnati) although I do have to quibble that Multnomah County is is Oregon. If your location has a whole lot of Ks & Ts (Klickitat, Kittitas) or Ss and Qs with unclear pronounciation (Sequim, Snoqualmie), you're in Washington.

PNC/MLA 2009: Our guests are spilling the beans before we are!

As Publicity Chair (I think... this was in an email at some point many months ago when I was still in the haze of my first few weeks on the job) for the 2009 Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association (PNC/MLA) conference, I am thrilled to announce that special guest speakers Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes of Unshelved are promoting our meeting in Seattle before we have a website up for it yet. Is that quality customer service or what?

Save the date for October 17-20, 2009, in Seattle at the Washington Athletic Club. I promise not to show up there in my workout gear or yoga pants and hopefully my colleagues will do the same.