Lindsey // 25 // Arizona
Dude filmmaker: We wanted to cleverly critique the way women are brutalised then sidelined in films. To do this, we had the women in our film brutalised then sidelined. I think you’ll find it incredible; I found it so good that at one point in the film you can hear me audibly groaning “ahhh, cinema” from behind the camera.
1. “These books aren’t for me. They’re for my wife. I wouldn’t read anything like this. Obviously.”
2. “No, you can’t have that prize. It’s for girls.” - A parent, while the sobbing child holds tight to a sparkly silver magic wand.
3. “Can you show me where the boy books are shelved?”
Ugh. I get patrons asking me to direct them to the “boy books” and “girl books” for their children all the time and it kills me inside.
“Welcome,” she said. “Welcome, and thank you for agreeing to be a volunteer with Multnomah County Libraries. We are so grateful for you and your commitment to our community. For the next hour, we’re going to go over some important information that you need to know as a volunteer, no matter what role you play.”
I expected that we were going to learn about things like policies for canceling our shifts, or maybe where to find first aid kits. We probably did talk about those things. But the part that I remember most vividly is the first thing she talked about.
“We’re going to start with the Library Bill of Rights from the American Library Association,” she said, and she projected the text of the document onto the screen. “Everyone who works for libraries, including volunteers, helps to support and uphold the Library Bill of Rights.”
This was new to me. I’d been a regular patron at my local public library for years, graduating from Dr. Seuss to The Babysitters Club series to, most recently, my fixation on books about neo-paganism and queer sex. No one had mentioned this whole Bill of Rights thing. It was a short document with just a few bullet points.
“Libraries support free access to information,” Bess explained. “One of our core values is intellectual freedom. This impacts all of you because when you’re volunteering for the library, we expect you to support the rights of library users to find and read whatever they want, even if you don’t agree with what they’re looking for.”
She continued, “For example, let’s say that a small child came up to you and asked where to find the Stephen King books. You might think those books are too scary for someone that age, or that he shouldn’t be reading that kind of stuff. But that doesn’t matter. No matter what, we help people find the information they want, and we don’t censor their interests. Does that make sense?”
Heads around the room nodded, and I leaned back into the wall, letting her words sink in. It was absolutely, positively the most radical, punk rock thing I had ever heard in my life.
I can read whatever I want. No one can stop me.
I can help other people read what they want. And no one can stop them.
“This is core,” Bess added, “to a functioning democracy. We believe that fighting censorship and providing free, unrestricted access is key to helping citizens participate in the world. And, most importantly, we keep everyone’s information strictly confidential. So, even if you know what books your neighbor is checking out or what they’re looking at on the computer, you don’t share that with anyone.”
As someone who kept carefully guarded notebooks full of very personal thoughts, I was especially excited by the library’s emphasis on privacy. All of this sounded great. I wanted more. I wanted in. I wanted to be a crazy, wild, counterculture librarian-witch who would help anyone read anything from The Anarchist’s Cookbook to Mein Kampf. I would be a bold freedom fighter in the face of censorship. I would defend unfiltered Internet access and anatomically correct picture books. Maybe I was only in the eighth grade, but I was ready to stand up to anyone who tried to threaten the ideal of intellectual freedom. Fuck blink-182. Libraries were the real punk rock.
Last night I dreamt we had a baby girl. I woke up this morning and took a test and it was negative. Admittedly, it is still a little early to be testing this cycle. I’m not any more discouraged than I have been the past few months, and I’ll probably test again in two days, but oh man did that dream feel like it meant something.
One of our most popular teen programs this summer has been Escape the Library!, an escape room-style event. I have hosted four so far and still have two to go. This event took a lot of planning. I wasn’t sure I could come up with a good story, nor did I have the time to invest in creating puzzles. I looked at Breakout EDU, but it was a little out of our price range for this fiscal year. Luckily, I found Lock, Paper, Scissors (formerly known as Heist Party).
Lock, Paper, Scissors is a business that creates DIY escape room kits. For $20, I was able to purchase a kit that I can use over and over again. There are four kits to choose from. I selected Escape Room Z, which involves zombies trying to steal your pizza. Once you purchase a kit, you gain access to a file with everything you need to print the game at home. The file includes all of the clues, posters, and a Publisher file that allows you to edit the game.
Once printed, I had a little difficulty figuring out the set-up but Lock, Paper, Scissors provides a handy YouTube tutorial that walked me through it. For our programs I used some real props to make the game more interesting and to make it seem more like an actual escape room, rather than our library meeting room. I recommend making a map of where you’ve hidden the clues, because I found myself forgetting a couple of times. Also, try a practice run with some staff members before your actual event.
The game was a little difficult for our teens, but they still managed to solve the puzzles and escape within about 30 minutes (with LOTS of hints). Escape Room Z is recommended for groups of 4 -6 players. We’ve been averaging about 15 teens per event. To accommodate all of the teens, I printed off multiple copies of the game and color-coded the clues. The teens were then divided up into teams by color and then all played simultaneously to see who could finish first. The team play went smoothly, but it’s a good idea to try and have a “hint master” per team. After all teams “escaped”, the teens were allowed to shoot the zombies with toy dart guns. This was their favorite part. We served pizza, but I think they even enjoyed shooting the zombies more than the pizza.
Overall, I think the DIY kits from Lock, Paper, Scissors are an easy and affordable way to host an escape room event at your library.
me rn
If you add two pounds of sugar to literally one ton of concrete it will ruin the concrete and make it unable to set properly which is good to know if you wanna resist something being built, French anarchists used this to resist prison construction in the 80s
I’m just gonna go ahead and reblog this for purely educational purposes.
We desperately needed A Good Thing to look forward to so I just bought us Conor Oberst tickets for his show here in May.
![teachingliteracy:
“ marionhoney:
Book haul on le blog :]
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