A new wrinkle this time is a theme: “Lost and Found in the Library.” Everything from your virginity to Jesus, a calculator to a long-forgotten manuscript, this issue will be about those things (people, ideas, etc.) that we have lost and/or found in a library.

The deadline to submit is May 15, which is only a little over a month away. My projected print date will be June 15 or after I get back from my planned trip to see Josh in mid-June. I’m not going to ALA or any other big library conference soon, so there’s not that external time pressure.

Submissions may be textual, photographic, artistic, prose, poetry, rants, reviews, laments, crossword puzzles, and so on and so forth. They need not be on the “lost and found” theme, but if I get a lot of good lost & found submissions, I may hold back other things for a later issue.

If you’d like to design/lay out your own submission, that’s wonderful. The zine will again be half-letter size, or 5.5in x 8.5 in. I’m also happy to accept just text or pictures from you and design your pages myself. Send submissions electronically to steve@stevelawson.name or postally to Library Society of the World Training Center / PO Box 7893 / Colorado Springs CO 80933. As always, I am the sole editor and I don’t promise I’ll publish everything anybody sends me.

I also have an idea for a group-participation project. If you don’t have an idea for a fully worked-out submission, keep an eye out for an announcement of that plan in the days to come.

So I wrote a book. The experience of writing the book–even a pretty short, straightforward book like this one–was far more difficult than I expected it would be, so you might imagine that it would make seeing it finished to be that much more rewarding.

I really don’t expect individuals to buy the book, because it’s priced for libraries. But if you have the authority to spend money on librarian’s professional development books, you could find worse uses for your money than the ten books in the series, The Tech Set. I’m happy to be listed alongside such witty, accomplished, and attractive people as the other authors on that list.

Lastly, if you are reading this blog post, there is a strong chance that I thanked you in the acknowledgements, either by name or by implication. So take a look below, and thank you again.

So far only TWO people have entered. They are lovely people with very nice entries, but two?

So, just to make things easy on y’all who didn’t order a copy of the zine or who are loath to remove a sheet from your copy, here is a downloadable version: PDF of the LSW Coloring Contest. This is a two page document, so if you can duplex print it, you can color on one side and fold according to the other side, and it’ll be great. If you can’t print two-sided, you can just print the coloring side and use the info on page two to address a conventional envelope.

Or you can click on the image in this post to get a full-size PNG that you can print and mail to:

Library Society of the World
Attn: Coloring Contest
PO Box 7893
Colorado Springs, CO 80933

On the sheet it says that the deadline is January 1, 2010–let’s extend that to January 15. And NO, I will not take scans, photographs, faxes, etc. You can take the PNG into Photoshop and go nuts with it, but in the end you gotta send me a piece of paper.

* Prizes not guaranteed to be fabulous. Offer void where prohibited by law. Must be 18 or older to enter. Odds of winning depend on number of entries.

So the Library Society of the World Ministry of Underground Publications is once again accepting submissions for the second ever LSW zine. I enjoyed handing them out in person at ALA Annual, so let’s make Internet Librarian our goal this time. IL2009 is October 26 through 28, or just about exactly two months from today. Deadline for submissions is October 1 and I expect I will have to be pretty strict about that in order to get everything ready in time.

I won’t be going to Internet Librarian this year, so I’ll be looking for a few people to volunteer to print 10-20 copies each to bring to Monterey. I’ll handle the mail order only this time. Internet Librarian is merely a convenient date for publication and distribution: there’s no need to make contributions that “go with” Internet Librarian.

So far I already have excellent submissions of photography and OPAC poetry (and if that doesn’t make you want a copy, I don’t know what will). I’d love to get submissions that are (1) short-to-medium length; (2) original (both in the sense of not published before and not already done-to-death); and (3) fun to read. “Fun” doesn’t have to be satirical or “humor writing”–I’d have fun publishing and reading some heartfelt stuff about working in libraries. But it does mean that I don’t want something that reads like it should be published in the Journal of Excruciating Library Minutiae. I’m the editor, my decisions are final, if you don’t like it, start your own LSW zine. (No, really. Please do start another LSW zine! That would be really cool. We could trade each other copies.)

I also hope to give the zine more of a handmade feel, and less of a desktop published feel, so original artwork, handwritten (but legible) text, photocopied collages and so on are very welcome. If you just want to send me text, that is also just fine.

For maximum confusion and uncertainty, I’m planning to change the name from Codslap! to something else. Currently, I’m thinking of It Looks Like Someone Dropped a LIBRARIAN BOMB in Here, known to its friends as Librarian Bomb. Any other suggestions?

Also, Codslap! Volume I, issue 1 is still available. Hit me on the PayPal using the button below, or send three dollars cash (or the equivalent in zines or novelty items) to Library Society of the World Clubhouse, Box 7893, Colorado Springs CO 80933. If you must write a check, make it out to Steve Lawson, please.

Everyone (well several people at least) has been asking how they can get their hands on a copy of Codslap! the LSW zine.

Here’s the scoop: you can use the button below to send me US$3.00 to get one copy postage-paid within the US and Canada. Make sure your address is accurate. [Edit: depending on your feed reader, you might have to click through to the website to view/use the PayPal button.]

Or, if you aren’t in the US/Canada or if you want multiple copies, or if you are an old skool zinester and want to mail me cash in an envelope, email me at steve@stevelawson.name and we’ll make it happen.

There are two catches to all this:

1. Aside from the copies I have reserved for contributors, I’m pretty much out of zines.
2. I am going out of town for about a week.

For me, this works out great. The orders can roll in this week, and then I will know how many to print when I get back. For you, this means you will have to wait a while before you can assume the zine is in the mail.

Feel free to email with any questions or leave a comment on this post, but remember I might not reply promptly.

If all goes well, when librarians gather in Chicago in July of 2009 for the American Library Association Annual Meeting, LSW agents will be packing copies of the first ever issue of the LSW zine along with their “FRBR? I hardly knew her!” t-shirts and Roy Tennant thongs. We will then sell or otherwise distribute the zines to an unwary population of humid, bus-riding librarians.

If at this point you are asking, “what’s a zine?” I’ll just say briefly that it is a small-circulation magazine-style publication, often photocopied and produced on the cheap. If you want to know more about zines, I refer you to the Barnard College Library Zine Collection and to the Wikipedia entry for “zine.”

This particular zine will be a collection of work by many people, including, I hope, YOU. Here is what I am thinking so far:

• Articles or artwork should be your own work, not previously published (though some collage or “found” submissions would also be welcome).
• Pseudonyms are fine.
• Personal attacks are not fine.
• The LSW Zine will not get you tenure, so save the longitudinal studies and the content analyses for the Journal of Tedious Librarianship (though parodies of such articles would be great).
• Cursing is fine. Keep that in mind if you don’t like cursing,. Your submission will inevitably be next to someone who does like cursing. A lot.
• Keep it fairly short. A one-to-five page submission is more likely to be published than a twenty page monster.
• Keep it on the personal level. What do you love or hate about libraries? What gets you excited? Tell us about you worst day on the job or the day it all clicked. What is in your desk drawer? Draw the magic library unicorn. Who would win a Texas Cage Match, Meredith Farkas or Sandy Berman (assume Farkas isn’t pregnant and Berman can use whatever subject headings he chooses)? Just keep it personal and specific.
• I, Steve Lawson, am the editor, and while I aim to be inclusive, it’s entirely possible I won’t be able to accept everything submitted. You are welcome to start your own zine titled “Steve Lawson is a Tool.”
• The zine will be black-and-white, probably photocopied, and “half-letter” size (or the size you get when you fold a US Letter Size sheet of paper in half, or 5.5 x 8.5 in.). It will as many pages long as it takes, though the cost of printing will be a factor in how long we can let it get (see below).
• In the grand tradition of the author-pays publishing model, authors will be expected to help print the zine, either by being responsible for making a certain number of copies or kicking in a certain amount of money. I haven’t really figured this out yet, but if you aren’t willing to spend $10 – $20 to get this thing printed, please don’t submit. (If $10 – $20 is a legitimate hardship for you, please let me know and we will work something out.)
• I expect to have two deadlines: those people who just want to submit raw text and/or images and leave it up to me (and, I hope, the lovely and talented Tim Keneipp) to design the pages will need to get things in a little sooner. Those who want to go the whole nine yards and design their own 5.5 x 8.5 in. pages can hold out until a little later. In any case, ALA is in mid-July, so expect to see deadlines in April and May to leave time to print the crazy thing.
• ALA Annual is merely a convenient deadline, far enough away to make this all seem plausible, and a time when many of us will actually be in close physical proximity. The American Library Association has nothing to do with this zine.
• Will we sell it? Give it away? How would we handle collecting money? What format should submissions be in? Is anyone going to want this thing anyway? Will Michael Gorman have a column? Answer: That all remains to be determined.

Will this work? Heck if I know. But it should be fun to try. Leave a comment on this post or email steve at stevelawson dot name if you want in.

[Cross-posted to Humbug! The LSW Blog.]]]> http://stevelawson.name/seealso/archives/2008/12/the_lsw_zine_a_call_for_rants_manifestos_articles_and_artwork.html/feed 30 http://stevelawson.name/seealso/archives/2006/07/survey_survey.html http://stevelawson.name/seealso/archives/2006/07/survey_survey.html#comments Sat, 08 Jul 2006 04:31:22 +0000 Steve http://stevelawson.name/seealso/archives/2006/07/survey_survey.html

Recent publication number one: With my friend, colleague, and occasional commenter on this very blog, Jessy Randall, I recently published a “humorous” “survey” in the “journal” American Drivel Review. It’s worth publishing something there just to have “American Drivel Review” on my list of publications.

The ADR allows authors to keep copyright as a matter of course, so I can offer this odd little item here on the blog. You can download the PDF version of Survey Survey as it appeared in ADR, but I recommend you take the Survey Monkey Survey Survey instead.

Tags: survey, drivel