A letter to the VPL concerning their catalogue

Hi,
Over the summer your catalogue seems to have developed a fairly serious problem in regards to your collection of graphic novels. At some point it seems that many of them were, for no apparent reason, reclassified from "Comic Book" to "Book".

Let's look at some examples.

1. If I search for Scott Pilgrim I get 23 items. If I limit this to "Comic Book" (under "Book" in the "Format" sidebar), this goes down to three items, one of which is actually a DVD. (If you don't believe me go look at the Full Record description where it's described as "Scott Pilgrim vs. the world [videorecording]".)

If I instead limit it to "Book", I get 15 results, the first seven of which are actually comic books/graphic novels (the rest of which are not actually related to Scott Pilgrim).

2. If I search for X-Men I get 179 results. If I limit this to "Comic Book" I get 13 results, including 2 DVDs, 2 children's books, 1 novel, a "how to draw" book, and a non fiction book. Not very useful.

If I limit this to "Book" I get 150 results, many (most?) of which are actually comic books/graphic novels.

3. If I search for Ghost World I get 318 items. If I limit this to "Comic Book" I get 2 results, one of which is a DVD and one of which is a comic, but not Ghost World by Daniel Clowes.

If I limit to "Book" the top two results are graphic novels, though one of them seems to be unsure of whether it's Ghost World or Maggie the Mechanic.

4. If I search for Naruto I get 129 results. If I limit this to "Comic Book" I get 25 results, and most of them seem to be actually comics! Only one (that I saw) is a DVD.

If I limit to "Book" I get 53 results, dozens of which are comics.

I think this to be a serious problem because people cannot effectively use your catalogue to find graphic novels.

I do not believe that this was a problem earlier this year, and I do not know what has happened, but I hope something is done about it soon.

Thanks,
Matthew

One Broken Promise, One New Promise (That I Promise to Keep)

You might remember, if you've actually been reading along with Matthew on his adventures in visiting all 22 branches of the VancouverPubic Library system, that he at one point borrowed a Magic: The Gathering novel after procuring a promise from a friend to read the whole thing. Well I am that friend, and I am here to announce that I am a promise breaker. Not that I didn't try, repeatedly for over a month (he had to do a loan renewal  trying to give me a more than fair chance to not renege on my promise) to finish that book, but in the end I had to give up in favor of finishing my last term paper in time to leave for ALA in Chicago.

In my defense I will cite this info-graphic from Goodreads which is very non-scientifically (and thus not actually really quality evidence in my defense) examining when and why people give up on reading a book. Notably under the “point of no return” reasons for why people finally dropped a book, my experience with this MTG novel was covered by five of the reasons people selected. This aligns me with 81.6% of respondents for reasons why I was totally justified in deciding, while life may not exactly be too short, I certainly deserve better reading materials for lazy days than that novel. On the other hand, note that the percentage of respondents agreeing with the various reasons listed under the point of no return equals 100.1%.

Which brings me to the second promise. Except it isn't really officially a promise, just an offer Matthew made. While he is off gallivanting about North America and will be bringing us tales from the libraries he finds along the way, I am back in Vancouver spending endless hours researching and reading about archives and libraries. Yup, I too am getting my Master of Library and Information Studies at UBC. I think I've visited around 11 or 12 of the local VPL branches since moving to Vancouver in January to start this program, but I certainly had no reason to visit every last one of them.

That is, until Matthew made me the offer I could not refuse – restarting his project to visit and blog about every branch of VPL. I mean how could I possibly pass up on this golden opportunity to garner fame and fortune in the blogosphere? Beside, you might have noticed that Matthew has a very specific point of view/obsession as he visits libraries (COMICS!), so I felt like there was plenty of space for me to bring my own unique point of view to this endeavor.

You might be curious as to how I will plan out, structure and accomplish this goal. As we have already established, I’m a great fan of well structured, scientific methods and results, so I will bring to bear my considerable interests and skills in carefully managing this project. Which is to say that I have no plan or method or timeline or any possible type of organizational structure whatsoever for this project. On the other hand, I have already visited a new library branch and taken pictures and notes for my next blog post. So I feel like we are off to a good start. Here’s to crossing the finish line.

--Anna

P.S. I just started a brand spanking new blog of my very own, so feel free to follow my non-VPL related adventures here.

Done!

I did it! I've visited every branch! Now to go and visit branches in other cities : )

And since I wasn't even in Vancouver when the last blog post went up, that shouldn't be too hard! I was just at the American Library Association conference in Chicago, I'm going to the Zine Librarian (un)Conference in Iowa City, visiting a librarian friend in Kentucky, going to Toronto to see family (none of whom live there), going to the Zine Symposium in Portland, Oregon, and probably going to other places.

Since I'm a super nerd, I'm sure I will go to libraries in some (or all) of these places, and you'll end up seeing posts about that library that was in Scott Pilgrim.

#9 Hastings Branch

Hastings Branch

2674 East Hastings Street

The final Vancouver branch! So far north and east of everything else. However, since it was a really nice day when I went to visit this one I was able to go to some thrift stores at the top of Commercial Drive, and then walk the rest of the way to the library. I also visited a nearby trading card shop that had the biggest selection of old Magic: The Gathering packs I've seen in town.

They also had a huge amount of terrible old '90s trading cards based on super heroes and stuff. Of course they didn't have any of the cards I was looking for (old fantasy art trading cards for my friend), or they had them in sets, but not packs, which are way more fun.

However! Nearby (ish, at Renfrew and 1st) there was another card shop that I have no idea how it stays in business as they mostly seemed to stock old comics nobody wants and old trading cards. However, in addition to old hockey cards and Gen13 cards, they also had various fantasy art trading cards! Hurray! When the guy working there took the boxes down from up on the shelf they were on, they were _covered_ in dust. I don't think anyone's even looked at those in at least a decade.

Okay, so what does this have to do with a library? Well, nothing really (though I did look up how to get to that second shop in the library), but I don't have that much to say about this branch. I mean, it was nice, and I would gladly go here more frequently if it was anywhere near anything I ever went to. I walked in and just really liked the atmosphere, but am completely unable to tell you why. 

Which leads to what might be the reason as to why I've barely written about library services on this blog: reviewing libraries seems like homework. I mean, I'm not doing any courses right now, but I am in library school and writing about the various services offered in different branches sounds like an (unexciting) assignment I might have to do someday.

In other news...

I discovered recently that the Central Branch of the VPL has gotten rid of all of their reference desks, and replaced them with roving librarians. That seems so weird to me, and more or less means that I'm not really going to ask them for help. I mean, you can txt them or use the phone they've set up for that, but, uh, I'm unlikely to do either of those things. I generally only end up talking to librarians when I want a book that's missing anyway (ie. passively telling them it's been stolen). Still, I'm interested to see how this will work for the VPL.

#20 Strathcona Branch

Strathcona Branch

592 East Pender Street

So after the Carnegie Branch had almost no children's books, this branch was almost entirely kids books! That is more than likely because the branch is actually inside a school. When I visited it was during lunch time, and the library (and everywhere really) was filled with kids. Which was pretty cool. 

At the same time that meant that there wasn't really that much for me to check out library-wise, and it wasn't really a great place to just go and hang out. (For a variety of reasons...)

I did discover VPL's strategic plan for 2013-2015. Sure, it's just a bunch of buzzwords and stuff, but it looks nice at least? I do wonder how useful it is for library's to make videos like this to put online. I mean, less than 500 people have watched this in the more than two months it's been on youtube. 

Anyway, across the street from this library is the Chinese Community Library Services Association, which I didn't even know existed! Of course, their website is entirely in Chinese, so I have no idea what services they actually offer. They were open on the day I passed by and there seemed to be lots of books and some people inside, so that's neat!

#2 Carnegie Branch

Carnegie Branch

401 Main Street

Woah, have I really only done one update this entire month? I have been slacking like hell in June apparently. Anyway I went to visit this branch last week and for those that don't know, it's located in the Downtown East Side (DTES) of Vancouver, an area know as the poorest postal code in Canada. There are a large number of poor, homeless, and addicted people in this area, but that means that there are also lots of services available for them.

That includes a library! It's inside the Carnegie Centre, which offers a variety of services I'm not really familiar with other than the library. I do know that the library has the longest hours of any branch in town (10am-10pm every day of the week), and that they also suffer from a high theft rate. That might be why I don't remember seeing a graphic novel section in the library. Apparently you can find people outside blatantly selling DVDs stolen from the VPL. Also interesting was the fact that their children's section was the smallest I think I've seen in any library.

One neat thing was that the offered photocopies of daily newspaper crosswords and other puzzles. I'd dragged along a friend who told me that at the library they used to work at they had the crossword section of the newspaper go missing all the time until they'd started putting a theft deterrent sticker _on_ the crossword. That means that nobody could do the crossword! The system at Carnegie seems to make a whole lot more sense.

#14 Marpole Branch

Marpole Branch

8386 Granville Street

This branch is so far south! I mean, I didn't even realize that the street numbers went up that high (68th) until a couple of months ago. So the only reason I ever came to this branch is because of this blog, and even then I had to send a hold there so I'd actually go. Thankfully the hold showed up and now I have some excellent terrible early '90s X-Men comics to read. Great!

The branch seemed to have a pretty good graphic novel section overall, but the most important thing was the thrift store right next store! I found an apparently never used copy of the board game Super Dungeon Explore for $5! I can't wait to play! After I finish putting together all the models that are inside. Gluing stuff....

One of the signs said that the library (and the neighbourhood I guess) was named after Richard Marpole. I was curious as to who he was, so I looked him up. Check out that beard!

Three libraries left!

#19 South Hill Branch

South Hill Branch
6076 Fraser Street

Let me update you all on my quest for X-Men comics to read (and the side story of missing/stolen comics at libraries). I stopped by the Central Branch of the VPL the other day to pick up a hold, and decided to see what X-Men comics were available. I checked the catalogue, and saw that there were 25 X-Men related comics supposedly available on the shelves at that branch right now! Hurray!

So I went to check the young adult/teen section and couldn't find any. I wasn't sure if I was just being stupid or what, so I went and asked a librarian. That librarian couldn't find any of the graphic novels they supposedly had in stock (and said they were confused as to how things in that section were organized), so they asked a YA librarian to come help me. They also couldn't find any on the shelves, so they went off to look elsewhere. They eventually came back with the one they had managed to find (which I'd already read), and sadly told me that the rest were probably stolen. There was also one in the reference section, which I didn't check, so that one might be there. But that's, at best, 8% of the X-Men comics were there, and 92% were missing. Crazy!

On a different day I stopped by the brightly painted South Hill Branch to check out what they had. They actually had X-Men comics available to read! (I think they had only three, but I also don't think any were actually missing according to the catalogue.) So I read the final volume of Kieron Gillen's recent Uncanny X-Men (it was pretty good!), but I was disappointed by the seating options available as I was looking for a place to hang out for a few hours and read as the weather outside was kind of gross. Instead I went to a different library and finished reading a terrible/ridiculous 1930s travel guide to Chicago, and some other stuff. Yay reading! Yay libraries!

Only four libraries left! This blog is almost done!

Statistics

So after the last post I was looking around the VPL collection for other X-Men comics. I quickly discovered a noticeable trend, and so decided to go through every volume that shows up on the site when you search for X-Men and limit the results to comic books.

There are 145 results. Now many of these aren't X-Men comics, but I'm willing to give the system the benefit of the doubt and assume that at least one of the X-Men show up in the comic somewhere.

Of those 145, six of them are not actually comics. Remember this is _after_ I've already limited my results to only give me comics.

Of the remaining 139 comics that show up, 55 are missing/trace. That's 39.6%!  And remember, those are just the ones that are tagged missing/trace on _every_ copy. Many more have only a sole copy left.

Of the remaining 84, 32 are currently in processing, checked out, being held, or in transit (which I've learnt can mean that the book is actually missing, and has been for several years, why can their system not alert someone if a book has been in transit for that long?). Leaving 52 "at any location" (including two that are only available in the reference collection), or 50 that you could theoretically walk into a library and borrow today.

How many of those do you think are actually there?

I was always aware that theft was an issue in regards to libraries, but I guess I didn't realize both the extent to which it is an issue, and the fact that stolen books aren't always replaced quickly/ever. I know that Marvel is pretty terrible at keeping books in print, but I also know that many of these books (or different editions of the same material) are available.

So I guess I've got an new question in regards to libraries that I'll have to consider: How do you deal with library theft?

#22 West Point Grey Branch

West Point Grey Branch
4480 West 10th Avenue

This library was the final branch I visited on a disappointing three library day. "Three libraries in one day?" you ask, "What are you? A crazy person?". As though the very existence of this blog hadn't convinced you of that fact already.

But before I get into why I went to three libraries in one day, some background information.

This may count as vaguely surprising (to people who have internet stalked me) based on the fact that my internet presence related to comics is decidedly "indie"/"alternative" in nature, but I'm actually a rather big fan of X-Men comics. The cartoon came on TV about a year after I originally moved to Canada, and I really loved watching it. My love extended to a series of  books aimed at kids that "novelised" older X-Men stories, and eventually to my reading the actual comics (and their spinoffs) themselves. Throughout the '90s I scoured back issue bins until I completed a full run of Excalibur, and read lots of issues of Uncanny, X-Men, Generation X, and more.

And while I haven't bought a new X-Men comic in years, I have read issues through collections borrowed from libraries. I've also read a lot of the Essential X-Men collections, huge thick black and white books that reprinted 20-30 issues of older comics. Despite the "Claremontisms" I enjoyed the stories and characters enough to keep reading. Plus part of me was always at least a little excited when I read a comic that I'd only ever seen referenced before.

So I've read ten volumes of Essential X-Men (comprising almost two hundred issues of the main series, and countless annuals and crossovers), the seven volumes of New Mutants Classic that are out (over fifty issues of that series), and at some point I want to read all those volumes of Essential X-Factor as well (if I can find them cheap somewhere...). Or rather, I've almost read ten volumes of Essential X-Men. I'm halfway through volume ten, and am up to the X-Tinction Agenda crossover (and all the crossovers happening in the later volumes are one of the reasons I want to read X-Factor, and wish there were more New Mutants collections). But, as I said before, these collections are in black and white, and I discovered that the VPL had the X-Tinction Agenda hardcover that collected all of these stories in colour. That's the one I want to read!

So I looked up where the copies were, and one day, after having lunch with some friends nearby, I went to a branch of the library to find the copy that was supposedly on the shelves. I couldn't find it. I asked a librarian if they could help me. They couldn't find it, and it's currently in the system as "trace", meaning they're trying to find it before it's listed as "missing". The librarian did let me know that there was another copy at a nearby library, so I hopped on a bus and head over there.

Of course you know where this story is going, that copy was missing as well. Now I generally think it's pretty shitty to steal books from libraries (steal from Chapters instead!), but the fact that two of the three copies of this book have been stolen from the library is both weird and super frustrating. This isn't exactly a classic of modern literature. Plus thieves have forced me to ask for a book called X-Tinction Agenda twice. Twice! That's not a book I ever want to have to admit to anyone that I'm reading (please ignore this blog post), let alone two librarians in one day. Oh well, I've got a hold on the last remaining copy, and hopefully it shows up.

Meanwhile, I headed off to this branch later in the day to...well, have something to write about for this blog. I'd gone past it on the bus loads of times as it's fairly near to UBC. It seems fine inside, but I guess I couldn't really get much enthusiasm up. I looked at the books and graphic novels and DVDs, removed a volume of The Unwritten from the kids section (shelvers, please look at what you're putting in that section, not every comic is suitable for kids), and left. Not that exciting really.

#10 Joe Fortes Branch

Joe Fortes Branch

870 Denman Street

The most Northerly branch of the VPL is pretty small. However, on the afternoon when I went it was filled with people! In fact when I briefly sat down to use a computer I was next to the reference librarian on duty who was constantly being asked questions, and having to tell people that he'd help them as soon as possible, but there were multiple people ahead of them in line waiting for help!

(Of course most of that help seemed to be "I'm old and don't understand computers" or "I'm young and don't understand computers", but I'm sure there was some other advice given out too!)

I didn't actually borrow anything from this library, but while there I did discover a Magic: The Gathering novel in the discard section. I told my friend (who I play Magic with) about this, and she was so confused/excited by this that she promised me that she would read it no matter how bad it was.

However, I checked out what other Magic the Gathering novels the library had, and they were all in the central branch. So I went over there and ended up getting confused as the difference between the fantasy section and the "adult paperback" (or something) section, which was right next to it, and not catalogued at all. I found it kind of weird that the library had a section of books that were available to borrow, but weren't in the system so you could only find them by physically looking at the shelves. (The one I actually got out is in the system as "Adult Paperback (2010)", and the library has 452 copies. I should just start putting holds on it to see what actually shows up.) I got a Magic novel out for my friend, and I'll be sure to update you once she finishes reading it.

Anyway, back to Joe Fortes, I took this photo of their Spanish book collection that I thought was funny. And it wasn't just the top shelf, all the books on that bookcase were in Chinese. I'm not sure where their Spanish language books are.

#7 Firehall Branch

Firehall Branch

1455 West 10th Avenue 

While you can't see it in this photo this branch is actually in the same building as a fire station! Neat! I would have taken a picture if there had been any fire trucks outside, but alas on the day I visited there were none.

Instead you'll have to deal with some of the pictures that were on the side of the non-fiction shelves inside.

This one brings to the library patrons' attention the thin line between religion and mythology. I think it's kind of interesting that the mythology section is so much bigger.

This picture shows the type of things I tend to like reading about, and I've probably looked up dinosaurs, aliens, monsters, and submarines in encyclopedias before. Hell, I've probably read encyclopedias about many of those subjects. (And while I may never have read a submarine encyclopedia, I do have a book about Zeppelins on my shelf just waiting to be read.)

Also, I've just wasted like half an hour trying (and failing) to track down a sample in an electroswing mix (it's something Balkan I think, but beyond that I dunno....). So this seems like a good time to post this killer video that talks about sampling. Also, I have no idea what went wrong with the font.

#6 Dunbar Branch

Dunbar Branch

4515 Dunbar St.

So I just moved house! To a completely different part of town, so now I have a new local library that's just a few blocks away! It was even one I'd never been to before, so it made sense that I'd check it out as soon as possible!

The branch itself is fairly small, but it still had some neat stuff in it. One of which were these bookmarks that I saw inside books in the teen section. I'd actually heard about these before, as I'm a member of the BC Library Association Readers Advisory Interest Group (BCLA RAIG, go acronyms!), and they were brought up in the last meeting. I thought they were a really neat way to encourage dialogue between library patrons without them having to actually talk to each other.

In this case the book is a volume of Dengeki Daisy, which  someone loves because of "The secret love of Teru and Daisy! Squeal!". Okay, so that's not a recommendation that I'm going to pay much attention to, but I'm generally going to ignore any of the Shojo Beat manga graphic novels anyway. Actually, I kind of want to read Honey and Clover, but that's about it.

Here's the other side of the bookmark, indicating that these are just for teen books (though the RAIG is discussing doing them for lots of different books in the library). I think it looks pretty good, though I probably would have aligned the text differently.

Have you encountered anything like this in a library? What did you think of it?

#1 Britannia Branch

Britannia Branch

1661 Napier Street

So a while ago, when I still had classes to go to and assignments to do, I submitted one of them as a PDF. This turned out to be not what the professor or the TA wanted and I was asked to resubmit as a Word file (while this may have been mentioned in class at some point it was not in the assignment requirements). Fine, easy right? Except my computer was broken. And I didn't actually save a version of the final assignment that wasn't a PDF. (I'm a super genius.)

So I headed off to this library to try to recreate the assignment and submit it as a Word file. Thankfully one of the computers became free soon after I got there, and after too much time I was able to recreate the assignment and resubmit it. (So much formatting...)

As for the library itself the address may say Napier Street, but it's really located off Commercial Drive. Looking at this on Google Maps it appear that at some point Napier Street was blocked off and replaced with a pedestrian walk way with a bunch of trees. Awesome! Except Google thinks you can still drive down that road. That's the second time on this blog that the all powerful Google has been wrong. Well, you know what that means? No webgods, no webmasters!

There are also these robots outside this library! Of course, they do raise a question: if the robot on the right is wearing clothes, does that mean that the one on the left is naked?

#13 Kitsilano Branch

Kisilano Branch

2425 MacDonald Street

Despite having gone to this branch a couple of times (the original photo I had was taken at night and was incredibly terrible, thankfully I got a better one), I don't have much to say about it at all.

In fact about the only thing I really remember about this branch is that it's where I suggested to a friend that they read Joe Sacco's journalistic comic book Footnotes in Gaza.

Footnotes in Gaza was in my opinion the best comic published in 2009 and, despite it winning Sacco the Eisner award for Best Writer/Artist–Nonfiction, I feel it wasn't talked about as much as it maybe should have been. I think this is in no small part due to it being published on December 24th (and thus missing many year end "best of" lists because people didn't read it until some time in 2010). I think it's a powerful and affecting work, which raises many questions about current society and historical events in Israel and Palestine. I haven't read it in a few years though, so asked my friend to write about it instead.

Published in 2009, Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza pulls readers deep into the conflicted territory of Palestine and even more conflicted territory of its history and relationship with Israel. It’s not an easy read. It’s dense and this stuff is brutal to read about, but Joe Sacco produced an amazing piece of journalism cum comic book. The story moves between the activities of Joe Sacco, the character in his own book, researching and pulling together the broken threads of a half century old series of massacres, and Sacco’s renderings of the 1950’s events around those massacres through the eyes of people he interviewed and who claim to have been there. It works beautifully, as well as being drawn beautifully and densely. Both the place and its people are strong characters in the narrative and are expressed in detailed and powerful images, in detailed and powerful words. It took me weeks to read the whole thing and I honestly kept interspersing it with Yotsuba&! to ease the pain, but it was absolutely worth it. Yeah, it definitely has a Palestinian point of view, but neutrality is always a bluff, so read on anyway.

Halfway There!

I've now written about eleven of the twenty two branches of the VPL! Or at least "written about" them in some cases. It's taken far too long to get this point, and I'm sure there will be more delays and asides along the way, but I am still committed to this project.

On the map above you'll see the libraries circled in hideous green are the ones I've been to (and in several cases gone to over and over again). You can kind of tell what parts of town I go to just by looking at this map!

If you have suggestions for where I should go next, or anything about specific libraries I should check out, please let me know!

#8 Fraserview Branch

Fraserview Branch
1950 Argyle Drive

I pretty much only go to this library when I go and checkout the nearby Value Village. I mean, it's so far south! Anyway, I'd gone to this one a while ago and...forgot what I'd borrowed from it, or done there. So since my friend and I were checking out the nearby thrift store anyway (we failed to find anything), I proposed we go to the library as well.

So we got bubble tea (mine was a sesame seed slush with pearls) and headed down, only to discover that it was closed! Nooooooooo. This is why I don't like Mondays.


(And woah, apparently that song is about school shootings, I had no idea.)

Anyway, this turned out to be blessing in disguise as I got to take the following amazing photo of the book drop inside the library's front door.

Holy crap! That is a huge pile of books, DVDs, and other stuff. Is that really the best way to have people return things? Also, is that the normal amount of stuff that's piled up by Monday afternoon? Cause that's kind of awesome if that much stuff is being returned on days when the library is closed. Though I weep for the physical well-being of those items.

I also found something else awesome! Right outside the drop box (next to the sign asking people not to put donations through the slot or leave them outside), I found a bundle of magazines and comics someone didn't want! Most of them were old and boring, and while I debated taking at least one of the decade old video game magazines, I decided not to, and instead took the following two French language graphic novels (BD).  

Lucky Luke! The most popular French comic to never really get any amount of popularity in English speaking countries. (ie. I've never read any of it. I know some of it's available in English. And maybe it's really huge in, like, India, they published 24 volumes of it in English there in 2009.)

Sophie! I have no idea who this is, and as far as I can tell none of it has ever been translated into English. Anyway, I'm super pumped to "read" both of these. The Sophie book has a dinosaur!

#17 Outreach Branch

Outreach Branch

302 - 345 Robson Street

The most hidden branch of the library (or maybe second most hidden after Kerrisdale), this is the branch you've probably never been to. In fact, it's probably one of, if not the, least visited of the VPL libraries. Why? Well, you should be able to tell from the name, the Outreach Branch delivers books to people's houses! No, not you specifically (probably) but to people who cannot visit the library due to mobility issues, disabilities, or other reasons. I think this is really neat! 

The library itself is located in the same building as the Central Branch downtown, but is accessed by a completely different entrance. Inside you'll find many of the things you'd expect from a library such as computers and a photocopier and books and stuff, but the majority of the material here is large print and audio books which are delivered to people. I think it's awesome that this service is available, and I think the people who borrow books through it really appreciate the service. Here's a video that shows a brief example of what the Outreach Branch does.

I'm not sure if just anyone can come in and borrow stuff from here, I probably should have asked them that when I visited!

#12 Kerrisdale Branch

Kerrisdale Branch
2112 West 42 Avenue

Up to this point I've been posting about branches in the order I visited them, but it's been a while since I updated this blog (stupid school), and even longer since I've actually been in some of these places, so let's move ahead to the most recent branch I've visited (don't worry, I'm still going to write about every branch).

Recently for a class project I headed to the Kerrisdale branch of the VPL to pick up a reference book (a copy of the Essential Official Handbook Of The Marvel Universe, required for any reference library that needs to tell you about early '80s Marvel characters, sometimes library school is great). So I typed the address into Google Maps and got on a bus only to find out that I was nowhere near where the library actually was. I started walking and about fifteen minutes (and one confused friend that I was txting trying to help me and failing) later I found the branch.

So why was this branch so hard to find? Because Google Maps has _SIX_ different locations mapped for this branch's address.

Look at that shit! Two of those locations are 3.5 kilometres away from each other! How the hell has this site fucked up so badly? (For the record the "1" on the map is the actual correct address with the same postal code as the VPL site, but "2" is closer to where the branch actually is located.) To add to the confusion the library is in the basement of the Kerrisdale Community Centre, a building with a completely different address entirely. It's on a different street!

Anyway, after walking for a while (and 42nd Avenue literally ceasing to exist at least twice) I finally found a building with a bookdrop outside. This had to be it! I went inside, went down some steps, and finally found it! Thankfully the book I was looking for was still on the shelf. And while you may not think that there's much demand for reference material about the Marvel universe, the other Official Handbook the library has in their catalogue is missing, while the Marvel Atlas has been in transit for at least two weeks. Where is it? The assignment is finished and we never got to see a copy and now I'm just curious.

The branch itself is fine. About the only thing I remember about it is that they had a shelf of books (all advanced reader copies) that people could take home without checking out. There was a sign telling people that they could write or draw in the books, and to please bring them back. Kind of reminds me of another library school project I've worked on...

Here's the final version of the reference guide we created for the (fictional) UBC Comic Book Club. I designed the cover to look like a comic book, and then laid out the contents on comic book sized pages. It looks fucking awesome! Totally the best looking assignment I have ever passed in. While the interior is just words, I did make a pretty awesome PowerPoint presentation that was a fumetti comic for class for this assignment. I can add "taking photos for a photocomic" to the list of things I didn't think I'd be doing in library school but have ended up doing (also on the list: using a power sander, painting things, agreeing to run RPGs).

#11 Kensington Branch

Kensington Branch

1428 Cedar Cottage Mews

I quite like this branch, I used to live nearby when it first opened, and they had a huge graphic novel selection (at least at first). However even if you hate libraries and books there's still a really good reason to visit this library: the incredibly weird statues.

There's a whole courtyard of these things! The whole piece is called Peaceable Kingdom, and the bronze statues are the work of artist Tom Dean.

Now, I'm not sure if it says more about how I think, or an utter failure in the message the artist was trying to convey with these pieces, but I certainly didn't think that this exhibit was about how "serene beasts coexist in a precarious sensual paradise" (source).

I definitely didn't see these creatures as "serene"! In fact, the whole exhibit made me think of death, sickness, and conflict.

"But it could collapse in a moment into sex and violence as a demon beaver leads berserker rats into paradise, and a giant vulture waits patiently for someone to die in paradise." (source), that sounds a lot more like what I saw (well, maybe not the demon beaver...). 

Apparently Dean was inspired by some passage from the bible, and The Merchant of Venice. I honestly have no idea. Here's an article with more information about the whole thing.

"a demon beaver leads berserker rats"

I apparently missed out on some of the statues, so if you want to see the sloth or condor/eagle/bird you'll have to go yourself!