My new colleague - this is in my current job, though fingers crossed I have another to go to now - mentioned a friend from library school who claimed to have found a strip of bacon left in the pages of a returned book. That's right, it happened to a friend of a friend.

Bacon's never come my way at work but the story certainly has, and hearing it from different sources only convinced me more that it's an urban myth. The only solid evidence I had for it was the dismaying story of bacon placed in a Koran, presumably through deliberate malice rather than charming absent-mindedness.

So I was delighted that when pseudomonas polled about bookmarks, both dyddgu and gnimmel claimed not second- but first-hand encounters with bacon. Even better, at the aptly-named BiblioBuffet website, The Legend of the Bacon Bookmark by Laine Farley rounds up all these stories in one place. A link to, er, Add to Favorites.

Our conclusion? If there's bacon in the books, it's only because the story inspires copycat crimes. Go vegetarian instead.

This article on articles is exactly why my work, though sometimes minute, is crucial. One slip of a key and a book's as good as dead.

Never mind the rights and wrongs of wearing bike helmets. As a rare books librarian, I was often asked with mild surprise whether I shouldn't be wearing gloves. None of the four libraries where I've been lucky enough to turn old pages has required readers to cover their hands; yet gloves, especially in white cotton as visible mimicry of surgical sterility, are as essential a sign of curatorship as a white lab coat is for science. Hypocritically, therefore, when my hands were photographed supporting fragile volumes for my last library's "Adopt A Book" campaign, they were gloved.

The Guardian has picked up on a campaign against this 'security theatre', and cites an excellent summary of the argument, Baker & Silverman's Misperceptions About White Gloves [International preservation news 37 (Dec. 2005); PDF]. As well as the loss of tactile feedback and the increased transmission of dirt, the article mentions in passing the risk that I had been told, that cotton fabric was likely to catch on paper and extend a tear; unfortunately it doesn't demonstrate that this is risk is real. But the overall message is sound and welcome: books, like the ideas in them, are surprisingly hardy.

... but in the New Year I'll be starting a permanent job as Assistant Librarian (Cataloguing) at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

The salary is £20,044, a small pay cut made up for financially by no longer paying £300 for a monthly season ticket from Zone 7 and psychologically by seeing much more of Janet. Oh, and the free lunch. And apparently pleasant colleagues. And being able to walk to work.

I'm really, really pleased.

(Bonus point if you can explain the reference in the subject line.)

Walking London in alphabetical order of Underground station is a brilliant and simple idea. I wish I'd had it, but credit is due to modalverben, who puts the psycho into psychogeography. It shouldn't be a surprise that librarians approve of this approach to the unruly metropolis and I wasn't the only once and future library worker on the walk between All Saints and Devons Road. Not that they have libraries in Tower Hamlets, they have Idea Stores, as you can see in the old sentimentalist's photo essay. (I was too deaf to be sociable, but the next day I was inspired to find more intimate magic in London as I wandered through a rainy night in Soho.)

In the super Store I eavesdropped a conversation about the Idea of blue lighting in toilets, intended to disguise veins and make it harder to shoot up. Unfortunately it doesn't make injecting impossible, only harder, and potentially more dangerous, among other unintended consequences.

Look, a Gratuitous Icon Post, from Belle & Sebastian's new EP Books.

Why did no one tell me about sexylibrarians? Not safe for work, obviously, even if you work in a library. Or especially if.

I went to NTK's NotCon yesterday, with huskyteer and fivemack. I'm not a fannish sort, so this was my first con of any description; and to paraphrase Douglas Adams, I still think digital cameras are a pretty neat idea, so an emerging technologies con was particularly inappropriate. I had a great time.

( Collaborative cartography, ZX Spectrums, and the Internet Archive )

Alice and I left before our heads exploded, so I missed the talks by simon_cozens and Cory Doctorow, and the launch of http://www.theyworkforyou.com/. But as Tom pointed out, unlike the revolution, they will certainly be blogged.

How a library converted crime into art, a slideshow [via mooism]:

For nearly a year, a vandal mutilated more than 600 books on gay and lesbian themes at the San Francisco Public Library. Without explanation, he carved up covers and pages and left small typewritten slips of paper advertising a Bible radio station tucked inside the damaged works. Ironically, his attempt to rid the library of these books resulted in a far stronger statement from the community: with help from artists around the country, the San Francisco Public Library transformed the crime into an art show titled "Reversing Vandalism" ...

[Afterthought: The letter killed; the spirit given life.]

Spotted by a colleague:

Laura Bush, Fist Lady of the United States, recently enjoyed the Rancho Mirage Pubic Library stating that she "worked at libraries and I love to visit them."

http://www.sirsi.com/Sirsiclients/Spotlight/20040405ranchomirage.html

I warned my colleagues that my arrival at lunchtime in suit and tie didn't indicate a surreptitious job interview. (Just having ironed my clothes could have been suspicious.) Rather, for the inclusive celebration of reading that is World Book Day, I was visiting two of the most exclusive libraries in London's gentlemen's clubs, and abiding by their dress codes.

It is at the Reform Club on Pall Mall that Phileas Fogg makes his bet to go around the world in search of savoury snacks eighty days. The doorman was kindly and welcoming, but could presumably summon a team of elite fencers had we moved towards the wrong door. The lobby is a sumptuous two-storey vaulted atrium with a mosaic floor and 20 columns in artificial marble. Despite the lightwell and the many mirrors, the subdued reds and greens create a sombre air.

We saw the morning room, the coffee room, the smoking room, the dining rooms, all variations on this splendid theme, and the card room with octagonal baize-covered tables set out for bridge. Membership is a reasonable 1,000 pounds per annum, dining not included.

The Reform Club was designed by Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament and also the room in which I am typing. Next door, at 106 Pall Mall, is Barry's earlier commission, the Travellers' Club. This has a near-identical exterior but lighter and more sober decoration inside. To my dismay, it remains men-only, yet the librarian is female.

Membership is reserved for men who have travelled at least 500 miles from London (no longer such a demanding requirement). The library doesn't pretend to rival the magnificent collection of the Royal Geographical Society. What it does have, in common with the Reform Club, are secret doors to render servants' presence inconspicuous, disguised behind fake book spines with punning titles. Unfortunately we weren't shown the button to press to make the whole wall revolve, but every library has one.

Be librarian for a day! [thanks to several_bees]

Oh, good grief. Singles can Mingle! at the British Library. At least they don't ask if you feel left on the shelf.

From j4, the postman brings an old clipping speculating about the even older rumours of Cambridge University Library's statutory porn collection. It has the excellent title 'OK, I'll come quietly'.

Librarians pay lip service to libertarianism - and libertinism - in fine statements of principle. But in practice? Bored and bolshy at library school, I wrote a hands-on proposal to help a public library select, classify and promote a collection of Black Lace-style genre fiction. Since then, a few such books have crept into London libraries.

Anyway, those rumours are all true. The British Library has its 'Private Case', while the Bodleian's erotica is shelved under the Greek letter Φ, presumably because those who have studied the classical world are already beyond redemption. (That's where the rare books live, at least; the full-colour mags are held in a repository in Nuneham Courtenay, a pretty village outside Oxford.) Elsewhere, the Bibliothèque nationale de France disproves the stereotype of continental tolerance by consigning its naughty books to 'Enfer' - Hell.

You're curious, aren't you? Go to COPAC and do a Subject search for 'sex periodicals'. If your favourite R18 magazine is missing, the blame may lie less with official prudishness than the publishers' overlooking their obligations: to send one copy to the BL and offer copies to the five other libraries of legal deposit. In turn, one reason those five might refuse the offer is the high risk of theft or mutilation. No longer do libraries protect the readers from the books: now we protect the books from the readers.

A coming attraction, thanks to the Legal Deposit Libraries Act which came into force on New Year's Day, is that electronic publications must now be deposited. There's fun work for a bold Head Librarian.

The head of reader services at Cambridge University Library has prepared a depressing exhibition of Marginalia And Other Crimes [via Eli Naeher]:

These last examples show a book slashed but nothing removed, and another with puerile obscenities scrawled on the text. It is a condition of admission that readers are fit and proper persons. This is a delicate way of saying they should be sane and lacking criminal records. I consider that readers attacking texts in this way have failed to meet the first condition and should be excluded from the library.

This is the perspective of a public collection. H.J. Jackson's sympathetic study Marginalia: Readers Writing In Books cites Flann O'Brien's idea of a book-handling service for cash-rich time-poor private collectors:

Popular Handling: Each volume to be well and truly handled, four leaves in each to be dog-eared, and a tram ticket, cloak-room docket or other comparable article inserted in each as a forgotten book-mark. Say, £1 7s 6d. Five per cent discount for civil servants.

By default, Amazon is where you go to investigate a book, or to provide a link. Maybe BookSense if you're feeling anticorporate, or All Consuming if you're a hip blogger. Seldom a library catalogue.

That's because Amazon has all the fun stuff - the summaries, the cover, the readers' reviews. But I want to know if I can read the book for free, dammit, so I have a LibraryLookup bookmarklet.

There is a book database bigger (and cleaner) than Amazon's: WorldCat. Wonderfully, there is a pilot project to embed Worldcat records in 'a major search engine' coughGooglecough.

These thoughts brought on by the news that Amazon.co.uk has populated its catalogue with the British Library's bibliographic records for its secondhand service. (For a couple of years, the BL's online catalogue sported an advert for Amazon.co.uk.)

I prefer the idea of Open WorldCat: Google directing readers to the library. Forget Earth's Biggest Bookstore, we're moving towards Earth's Largest Library.

Last year I borrowed just six books with my three public library cards. This may be low for a librarian, but it's right on the national average of 6.79 books per person per year [source: LISU]. Strange, when borrowing is FREE, but the library's all of ten minutes' walk away...

heartspunmom recently pointed to the neat LibraryLookup bookmarklet. When you uncover an interesting title at online.bookstore.of.your.choice (ahem), clicking on the bookmarklet searches for the same book at your local library. (It requires your bookstore to embed the ISBN in its URLs and your library to have its catalogue online, which is true of Camden where I work but not of Lewisham where I live. There is a project called What's in London's Libraries which should soon provide a metasearch across the 33 London boroughs.)

So I look forward to seeing if my borrowing habits change. Previously I've used Waterstone's physical stores for browsing and ordered the titles from Amazon; now I can do quick and dirty bibliographic searches at Amazon and borrow what I want from Holborn library. Result!