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 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.

In this issue of the LSW zine, you will find photographs, reports from the field, research articles, found poetry, a coloring contest, and various other wonderful things. I’m indebted to all the contributors who made this a very funny and high quality issue:

• Alcorn, Louise
• Crossett, Laura
• Dettmar, Nicole S.
• Fitchett, Deborah
• “K”
• Kennedy, Marie
• Kraus, Joe
• “Meg V.”
• Neff, Joshua M.
• Puckett, Jason
• Randall, Jessy
• Rothman, David
• Steiner, Sarah
• Walker, Cecily
• Walden, Rachel
• Wylie, Nethery

To order, please use the PayPal buttons below. I have copies of Codslap!, the first LSW zine, still available as well. Zines are two dollars each, with shipping being two dollars in North America for up to five zines. If you are outside North America, if you want more than five zines, or if something PayPal-ish doesn’t seem to be working, email me at steve@stevelawson.name.

I will also gladly take cash or (if you insist) a check mailed to PO Box 7893, Colorado Springs CO 80933. If you do that, please don’t put the words “Librarian Bomb” on the envelope, as I don’t think the USPS has a sense of humor about bombs.

Also, let me point out that I have only one coloring contest submission so far. The field is wide open.

Order LSW Zines

Codslap! (LSW Zine #1): $2.00:

Librarian Bomb (LSW Zine #2): $2.00

Putting out Codslap! has been so much fun, I want to do it again.

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.

Introducing the latest: The Library Society of the World Cod of Ethics T-Shirt and Related Merchandise.

Yes, now you can show everyone that you aren’t merely common rabble: you live by a Cod. Right now, I have men’s and women’s shirts for sale, plus mugs and mousepads. I can add other products if there is demand.

I think it’s fair to ask where the money goes in cases like this. About 10% of the purchase price is my profit, though it looks like Zazzle takes some fees out of that profit, too. If that bugs you, download the full-resolution image (2.12MB PNG image) and make your own shirt.

Since librarians are likely to care about this, the cod image is in the public domain. It’s from The Fisheries and Fisheries Industries of
the United States, a publication from the 1880′s. I first found it on the Wikipedia page for cod, then followed up the documentation to find a higher-resolution image on the NOAA Photo Library – Historical Fisheries Collection. Dorothea Salo cleaned up the source image.

Word is that Dorothea will be sporting her Cod shirt at ALA this summer. Don’t be left out.

Note: the LSW CafePress site is still up and running, so you can get your LSW logo shirt or Shovers and Makers shirt there.

[Cross-posted to Humbug! The LSW Blog.]

Time to start thinking more about that other Library Society of the World project, the LSW zine. I hope to post some more details (progress report, deadlines, guidelines) for the zine later this week.

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.]

Someone (who?) gave Boing Boing blogger and science fiction author Cory Doctorow a Library Society of the World ribbon for the ALA badge he wore at his book signing.

Cory Doctorow at ALA by cindiann

And, as I predicted in a comment on this post at ACRLog, the Library Society of the World team won the California Dreaming contest at ALA.

Library Society of the World wins the “California Dreaming” conference game team competition by ALA – The American Library Association via a Creative Commons by-nc-sa license.

I should point out that I had nothing to do with either of these things, I’m just enjoying them from afar. I celebrated by creating an LSW Flickr group, so post your LSW-related photos there, please.

LSW presenters

Originally uploaded by Hatchibombotar.

In the past 36 hours, I have met more than a dozen of my imaginary friends in person for the first time. It has been a little overwhelming, but in a good way. I find that most people’s communication styles online are quite close to their affect face-to-face.

Cindi takes great photos. I don’t, but I post ‘em anyway.

I went to talks today by Mary Ellen Bates, Jeff Wisniewski, Tom Ipri, and Roy Tennant. All were excellent speakers with very well-done presentations. I don’t know if I’ll take time later to type up my notes, but if you can find their slides on the CIL site or in the wild, they would be worth your while.

The talk I gave with Josh Neff and Rikhei Harris on the Library Society of the World was total chaos. Which is to say, it went rather well. There were about 150 people in the physical room with us and 20+ people in the LSW Meebo room.

I was worried that the whole thing might seem like an inside joke, or “look at us, aren’t we cool?” And maybe it did a little bit (OK, maybe a lot). But I think people got our main ideas about the creation of online community, the benefit of online spaces that blend the personal and professional, and our joy in making these connections. It must have resonated with a few people, as there are more names on the wiki, and more “guests” and new members in the Meebo room today.

We left the LSW room chat window up on the screen for the whole presentation. I knew that it would be distracting, but that was part of the fun (especially when we got rickrolled, and you could hear “Never Gonna Give You Up” start up on people’s laptops throughout the room).

I couldn’t see much of what scrolled by on the screen, but it drew laughter and confused stares.

We didn’t have slides. If we did, they might look like this, or even these. But probably not.

A few blogs have posted on our session. Here is what I have seen so far:

• LSW FTW from Kate at Loose Cannon Librarian
• CiL Day 1 from Rochelle at Tinfoil + Raccoon (who came bearing gifts!)
• Harrumph: When TLIs intermingle from Walt “Plausible Deniability” Crawford
• LSW goes public by Jenica at Attempting Elegance

At the very least, we did something a bit different, a bit anarchic. Greg Schwartz (who is selling T-shirts these days, I hear) said there was an interesting contrast between our half of the session, and the group we shared our timeslot with, the Infododads bloggers. Greg pointed out, that unlike us the Infodoodads folks had “structure and content.”

At this point, I’ll take that as a compliment.