Category: New Librarianship

Here’s another joke I wrote for my presentation in Charleston. Enjoy the joke, or watch the Charleston screencast to find out what it says about language use in libraries:

Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate a murder. After examining the scene Holmes announces that the killer was a librarian.

“How can you tell?” asks Dr Watson.

“Elementary my dear Watson. First the murderer not only alphabetized the victims books, but shelved them by genre.

“There is the fact that the murder itself was clearly inspired by a rare Victor Hugo novel recently acquired by the branch library down the street.

“However the real give away is that after the victim was killed the murderer dragged his body over to the toilet and wrote on the body ‘can you find the bathroom now?! can you find the bathroom now?!”

OK, so you enjoyed the first joke so much, I’ve included another I made up for some earlier presentations:

So Albert Einstein goes to a party. The host is keen to show off the world-famous physicist to his friends so he escorts Einstein around, introducing him.

The first guest asks Einstein, “So what is it you do Albert?”

Einstein replies, “I seek to understand time.”

“Wow,” says the guest, “We’re in the same business. I sell watches.”

The host introduces him to the second guest who asks, “So Albert, what is it you do?”

Einstein, trying to impress, replies, “I seek to understand how all the planets and stars in heaven move about the universe.”

“Wow,” says the second guest, “We’re in the same line of work. I build telescopes.”

A third guest asks Einstein, “What is it you do?’

To which Einstein replies, “I have discovered that light, magnetism, and electricity are all the same force.”

“Wow,” says the third guest, “We’re in the same business. I repair TVs!”

The host takes a now depressed and exasperated Einstein to meet a fourth guest.

“What is it you do Albert?” asks the fourth guest.

Now completely deflated Einstein says, “Nothing. I don’t sell anything. I don’t build anything. I can’t even repair anything. I’m useless.”

“Wow,” says the fourth guest, “I’m a tenured professor too!”

Here’s a joke I opened my last two presentation I thought I’d share. Consider it an open source joke…take and use it, but if you make it better be sure to share.

So God calls a meeting, and to this meeting he invites Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern classification (he’s the guy who gave out all the latin names we had to memorize in biology), Melvil Dewey, and Penny a rural library director who had just passed away the week before.

God says, “Well I’ve done it. I’ve called the rapture and brought up all the souls from Earth for judgement. In fact they’re all behind that door over there. The problem is, when I came up with this plan there were a lot fewer people on Earth – like two – and you folks have been busy. There are now a couple billion souls in that room and I need some help in sorting the saved from the damned.”

“No problem,” says Linnaeus who stride confidently through the door.

An hour goes by, then two, then 5. Finally at 7 hours Linnaeus crawls back out of the door. His cloths are torn and he is clearly shaken.

“I couldn’t do it.” He says. “I was doing OK until I came upon a goth Japanese teenager and I ran out of Latin. It can’t be done.”

“I’m on it,” says Dewey who strides confidently through the door.

An hour goes by, then two, then three. Finally, 8 hours later Dewey crawls out of the door covered in sweat.

“It can’t be done! I had all the Christian denominations all sorted out, then I ran into a Jewish family and a couple of Muslims and I ran out of numbers.”

Upon hearing this, Penny turns on her heals, marches through the door, and one minute later walks back out “Done,” she says.

“That’s great,” says God. “But how did you do it?”

“I just asked everyone who had ever voted to increase library funding to raise their hands and told the rest they could go to hell.”