You know when you’re bored and staring off into space?  Well, stare at your computer instead.  Here is a list of some websites that are the funniest or cutest or a combination of both.

Fail blog: Start with greatest.  This website is a collection of people doing moronic things with the unwelcome addition of a camera being present.  It’s kind of like America’s Funniest Videos in pictures.

ihazahotdog: Cute dogs + captions = cute and funny.

icanhasacheezburger:  Same as the loldogz but they’re lolcatz.  Hoo-rayz!

Texts from last night: You know that text that you probably shouldn’t have sent, yea well it just ended up on the internet, congrats.  (The numbers in front of the posts are area codes)

Samples:

(512): I know I’m not learning anything when I can’t even spell the name of the class I’m taking

(724): my one-armed grandma is doing the YMCA. you figure it out.

Unshelved: OK so this is sort of a librarian thing except that regular schmoes find it funny too.

Today we introduce another regular feature, inspired by the Twitter meme Webseries Wednesday. Each week we’ll point our readers towards our favorite webseries. This week, we start off with Unshelved a webcomic about life in a Public Library.

Like standard newspaper comics, the strip is published daily in black and white, with a full color extended strip on Sundays. Each Sunday the strip features a book review, which they call the Sunday Book Club.

Its a clever strip that can be appreciated by anyone who works with people, even if not in a library. Enjoy!

Unshelved is an online comic strip for librarians and library-lovers that I have emailed to me every day. Today’s (9/14/09) strip has got to be my favorite. It is so true! Albeit, I definitely got this sort of scenario more when I was working at Harris Teeter as customer service and cashier. Anyone in a customer service-esque position will see something in this particular strip.

Enjoy!

Edit: Urgh! My wordpress background or who knows what cut a little off the right end of the strip. Still readable, but in case: “Is this the observatory? Exciting news. I found the center of the universe!”

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More Than Google

Unshelved posted a great series of comic strips published in 2007 that are a spin off of the Macintosh and Windows advertisements. This one ends with a question from the Internet, with a question from the Internet saying, “there’s more than Google?”

I have to laugh because this is an assumption made by a great many people, especially new students. Surprisingly, I’ve been hearing similar comments echoed by staff and faculty members as well. Although instead of assuming that everything is available online like students (or at least what they need), they are surprised that resources do not exist yet to fulfill their information needs.

September is rolling around the corner with one of the largest freshman enrollments at my institution’s history, partly due to the crazy economic downturn. While it is true that information continues to flow from print to digital as items are continually scanned, there’s a great deal of literature and information that remains in print and may perhaps stay in print indefinitely, especially material that is uniquely owned and is available no where else.

The take home point is that not everything exists on the Internet, and probably never will. That is not to say that information will suddenly begin to be available only in print–those days are going. Most items are born digital, and it is highly likely that information will continue to be born digitally. Access will be limited though.

The above shows the current Unshelved strip, but the “I’m the Internet. And I’m a library” part started on Monday August 10, 2009.

For those who are involved with the scholarly publication process, here is a comic that discusses the publication process (from the publisher’s perspective): scientists give their work to publishers for free, scientists review the work for free, and publishers bundle the reviewed articles & sell it back to scientists for a profit because scientists want to be published.

View comic

Here is a great comic strip that deals specifically with libraries and library issues, and it includes an archive which can be browsed. http://www.unshelved.com/

For the Trekkie/Trekker whom also loves to read.

Avalible at the Unshelved online store.

Man, I can’t wait till mind arrives!

Today is a good day ... to read

This and other brilliant library themed items available from the Unshelved website’s online store.

I haven’t posted a link to Unshelved here in a while and I think it’s due.  Today’s comic is just perfect.  In three panels Bill and Gene have managed to nail the current, bizarre state of libraries nationwide.

I love Unshelved, the library comic strip created by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum. The characters and situations they get in remind me to laugh about the stuff we deal with in libraries on a daily basis, and often remind me of people I know in the real world. As it turns out, I’m not the only one to have that deja vu feeling – they recently announced an Unshelved Lookalike Contest, because:

Hardly a week goes by without someone telling us they work with someone who is just like Dewey, or Mel, or Merv.

They’re asking people to upload pictures to Flickr and to tag them with UnshelvedLookalike2009. (Additional contest rules are available on their blog.) What a great way to use a free tool to collect submissions. Should be fun to see what people post! Know anyone who reminds you of Dewey or Mel or maybe even Buddy?

The Unshelved strips last week sparked a conversation about e-books in which I surprised a coworker with my enthusiasm for the digital versus paper book.

It’s true.  Almost in spite of myself, I have become a fan of e-books.  I am never without my e-reader, with at least ten books at my fingertips at all times.  Never again will I be caught unaware at the end of a book without a replacement in sight,  nor will I be laden with multiple hardcovers in fear of such a moment.

And while by no means a trendsetter, I have enjoyed being asked (rather often) to explain my e-reader device while in a plane or on the subway. Publishers Weekly reported just yesterday about the sharp spike in Overdrive’s digital “checkouts” in 2008.  I am happily in line with the latest library trend!

-Erica