Our library’s reference desk usually handles several hundred interactions daily, but there are slow moments. That’s when this reference librarian pulls up BoingBoing.net on the computer to quickly read brief entries about unexpected things, like Japanese bagelheads, skateboarding in Kabul and the origin of Good Humor Bars.
BoingBoing’s “one of the most-read and linked-to blogs in the world.” The term “blog” was coined in 1999 by early blogger Peter Merholz as a blend of “web log,” according to Wikipedia. Blogs “evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives.”
BoingBoing is a group blog with several contributing editors, all with Wired Magazine connections. It was a print magazine in the 1980s and was influential “in the development of the cyberpunk subculture.” It went online in 1995 as “a directory of wonderful things,” and began focusing on trends in technology, futurism, gadgets, science fiction and intellectual property.
Today’s BoingBoing has articles on Japanese “bagelheads” (youngsters whose foreheads are injected with saline solutions to create eye-catching and popping impressions), photos of the June 21 “Go Skateboarding Day” in Kabul, Afghanistan (complete with safety helmets worn over burqas), and a book review titled “Unbearable Sadness of Winter Tomatoes” (“what it takes to grow food that can meet full-year, everywhere, low-cost demand”).
Then there was the origin of the Good Humor Bar, which BoingBoing linked from the original Smithsonian Institute website. Ohio candy-maker Harry Burt had invented the Jolly Boy Sucker when he created a recipe for a smooth chocolate coating for ice cream in 1920.
His daughter Ruth, his taste-tester, approved the treat’s flavor but lamented its messiness. Son Harry, Jr. suggested freezing the wooden Jolly Boy sticks into the ice cream and a new era in confectional enterprise ensued.’
“Good Humor” came from Burt’s “belief that a person’s ‘humor’ or outlook on life was related to the humor of the palate.” A photo of a 1938 Good Humor truck was included, along with the note that the vehicle is “one of 137 million artifacts” the Smithsonian owns.
Another BoingBoing article that lit my fancy begins, “Years ago, I read a bit of advice in the ‘The Whole Earth Catalog’ which said a great way to get up to speed on a subject you are interested in is to read a children’s book about it.” The author told how 20 minutes reading a children’s biography of Frederick Douglass allowed him conversance enough to guide his child’s second-grade report.
Librarians have long known this trick, but adults can be reluctant to accept juvenile books. Our public library shelves adult and juvenile nonfiction items together mostly for space considerations, but this allows us to unobtrusively give adults good, albeit simple, information.
“A Library Is Many Things,” a poignant BoingBoing article tells of a 1971 project by Marguerite Hart, the first children’s librarian at the Troy, Mich., Public Library. That library was a year old when Hart wrote dozens of celebrities requesting “a letter to the children of Troy about the importance of libraries.” Ninety-seven responded, including Pat Nixon, Neil Armstrong, Vincent Price, Dr. Seuss, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., all encouraging reading and learning about our wonderful world.
Sadly, Troy Library is threatened with closing by a community that has forgotten the words of Isaac Asimov, the prolific author who also wrote a Troy Library letter 40 years ago, in more hopeful times.
“Congratulations on the new library,” he wrote. “It is a space ship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the universe, a time machine that will take you to the far past and the far future, a teacher that knows more than any human being, a friend that will amuse and console you — and most of all, a gateway to a better and happier and more useful life.”
Greg Hill is director of Fairbanks North Star Borough libraries.
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