Or is it?

Just in time for the end of Banned Books Week –

118. What you are looking for is in the library – Michiko Aoyama

This is a hopeful little book. It also extols the many virtues of honeydome cookies, which I hope actually exist due to the clear level of joy they seem to be bringing people who randomly wander into this community center library. Libraries can be anywhere and even a small collection can clearly change lives. Lives with direction who want a different one, lives without direction, lives with thwarted purposes. Apparently, it is also much easier to give people a little push towards finding their happiness or at least a new way of looking at their life with an unexpected book recommendation and also a felted gift. It was nice that it was also repeatedly mentioned that being an actual librarian requires significant training…because it does. The nice thing is unless you want to be a school librarian, which requires additional certification/licensing, you can keep your title and use that training anywhere it is useful, stepping in and out of working within a library at any time.

Anyway, this is a series of interconnected stories taking place at a community center in a Tokyo neighborhood. A variety of people end up finding the little library and interacting with a librarian who in turn intimidates and calms patrons from her desk with her super fast typing and pointed looks. She was an interesting mix of what I like about reference, i.e. why would anyone need to look happy all the time when I’m here to answer questions effectively? Pretending to be happy should not be required for anything… and the effect of knowing how to help, i.e. once the patrons realized that her recommended books were most certainly not mistakes, they were more appreciative of her skills.

Reader’s advisory and reference are complicated and it’s fun to know what people need before they know what they’re even asking, but apparently they do not require a super big collection like I prefer working with in this book. Doing it right does involve not banning books and pulling them out of library collections for ignorant reasons or firing librarians and turning school libraries into detention, oh excuse me, they said “discipline,” centers though. No honeydome cookies for those banning books and especially the ones using AI to choose the books based on keywords.  AI doesn’t get context or critical thinking and neither do they, apparently.

Libraries and librarians are under attack all over the US and so I’ve referenced some exploitation themes because sometimes you need a “roaring rampage of revenge” like borderline all the Grindhouse movie trailers say. Peregrine is the right pig for vengeance since I thought if I sent her into the libraries I’ve worked in for me, no one would notice the difference. So now she’s my ladypig of Pigsploitation parody posters. She’ll help libraries and librarians with those ridiculous book banning requests and put the sneaky fascist bastards asking for them in their place… and obviously she also doesn’t like it when people botch research scenes either.

 

One eye based pointed looks are one of Pere’s specialties, so she really fits into revenge film parody paintings and library settings… even if I depict her with two eyes.

 

I know it’s hard to see the teeny titles. One skeleton has a pamphlet entitled “Inaccurate Research Scenes” (I wonder which one?) and the other has “Library to Detention Hall.” There’s a reason these titles are not books and also it’s all a bit easier to see on my art sites. And of course, I also labeled the microfilm to once again show it’s not the same as fiche.
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It is entirely possible to choose books that won’t be great for your patrons and if you ban all the good and useful books and choose only “approved” titles with no librarians helping who understand libraries are meant to be access to information for all, this is the kind of stuff you end up with – three books in this one: Mein Kampf, Corporal Punishment, and Bad Choices. Just hammering the point home like Pere in the painting. Again, this may be easier to see in detail on my art sites, I upload bigger versions so they print nicely on stuff and things.
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