Showing posts with label hbll. Show all posts

an ode to the hbll



Most of these photos are a couple years old and have been sitting in a draft on my blog for nearly as long. Mostly I wanted to post them because I love these little library snippets, the peripheral moments that these photos capture. I would always joke that the library was my second home—between working part-time there (or full-time in the summer), studying there, occasionally napping there, and socializing there (with my periodicals-bestie-turned-real-bestie and coworkers and friends and roommates who also worked in the library and friends and classmates needing my assistance at the desk and study groups and my sister), it really was almost like a home and I felt so at home there.

and she says I'm the snob.

[a whispered conversation that took place in the HBLL]

"Do you know what that is?"
"What, the Forum?" [who do you think I am?]
"Do you know what it was used for?"
"Yes. Social and political functions, and trade."
"That's acceptable."

Oh, Emily. She thinks I don't know anything, just because she's writing a 12-page research paper on Augustan portraiture and I'm not.


In other news, M just sent me an email titled "lust and other such vices" regarding the most attractive boy that we see in the library all the time.

Happy Friday.

ahhhhhhhhh!


Imagine my excitement [understatement] to look at the most recent copy of a favorite Italian design magazine and find our beloved Piazza del Campo featured on the cover!! Quanto mi fa felice questa coperta!

lisb. which is short for lisbon, the capital of Portugal

"Do you suppose the St. Swithin's furnace-man was my one true love? Since I never spoke to him, it seems unlikely, but at least it was a passion unscathed by disappointment."

-Juliet to Sophie, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, p. 8

Dear M,

I hope you laugh out loud as you read this, preferably while in the library.

love,
L

clever clever

This week the advertisements for finals extended hours at the library were put up. Usually these say something clever or witty, such as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen...after finals," which appeared during finals last December.

This time around, the signs are referencing these famous posters:

I think that's rather clever (even if it is a little cliché).

the best email I have received all day.

As my library coworkers will attest, we have many regulars at the HBLL. We are on a first name basis with some of them.

One such library patron was on a first name basis with Melissa, but she had no idea who he was or what she had initially helped him with. She pointed him out to me once, and I saw him in the library all the time after that. Almost every time I saw him, he was wearing a green collared shirt. Thus we gave him the nickname of 'Green Polo' since we didn't actually know his name.

Melissa just emailed me the following:


     Guess who is sitting at a table next to me? 

     GREEN POLO. 

     Guess what? 
     HE'S WEARING A GREEN POLO.


     My day just got so much better.

YES!! Mine did too.

snowflakes

Just another reason to love working at the hbll: one of my coworkers is a master with the paper snowflakes (do you see the snowmen, pine trees, and house?!).

 It's incredible, really.

oh, you know, that library where i work...

aka my second home (it might as well be, i'm there ALLLL the time). it occured to me that i have no photographs of the hbll on this little blog...

i love the library, and i think the architecture is beauuutiful!

 it reminds me of the louvre in that the atrium has a glass, pyrimidal shape and is the point of entrance...and the atrium was added later and contrasts with the architectural style of the older portion of the building.
this last picture (taken by my sister emily) shows the bay windows in the periodicals section where i work. i'm all about natural light.

on magazines. and print materials in general.


i bought this issue of harper's bazaar in the airport a couple weeks ago, initially because gwyneth paltrow was on the cover and i LOVE her but after flipping through the magazine quickly i was excited about reading it. since working in the library, i realized recently that i have become much more particular about the magazines that i buy, mostly because so many of them i can read for free at the hbll. i guess in a way i treat potential magazine purchases like i would potential book purchases...will i want to read this again? in this case, YES! i loved the fashion photography in this issue, especially the gwyneth paltrow feature.

and i also love the letter from the editor:
"After I got back from covering the fall collections, I had yet another fashion moment: I spent a Sunday at home pouring over all the magazines I had missed while I was away. No matter how much information I get from newspapers, the Internet, or chitchat in the office, and after editing magazines for more than 20 years, I still see curling up with a magazine and a cup of tea as one of life's greatest luxuries. I adore magazines. And I mean this as a reader. The feeling of the paper and the visceral impact of spectacular images on glossy paper are things I never tire of. And I never tire of creating these images for Bazaar. ... I want to shop and dream as much as you do–but when I see something that inspires me, I want to rip it out, not print it out."

that is EXACTLY how i feel about magazines!

and lastly, i really loved this:   [click to enlarge/read]

yet another reason why i love the hbll


"we have to resolve the problem of creating an interesting space and structure while using the local way of construction and materials, and within a limited budget."

[because i can read things like this AND practice italian at the same time.]

my life is a black hole of school

and it will continue to be, probably for the next month and a half.



that's all.

best plan ever? yeah it is.


this is just one of the sixteen [yup. i counted.] recipes that i emailed myself while i was starving [oh did i say starving? i meant sitting] at the reference desk at work tonight, a veryyy slow night at the library. thank you, new york times!

28 gennaio 2010.


one time I wrote this for my italian class cultural event assignment:

and by one time, i mean today.

Lavoro nella biblioteca e sempre vedo reviste e altre giornali italiani. Per quest evento culturale, ho letto della revista Firenze Architettura. Mi ha piaciuto molto questa revista quando l'ho trovato. Perche sono studiare l'architettura, è molto interessante per paragonare lo stile moderno d'architettura lì con lo stile qui negli stati uniti. Anche ho imparato alcune parole nuove: pregnante, scrittura, percettivo, ecc. E mentre leggevo, ho riconosciuto tanti frasi com'è frasi inglese, per esempio: "mare della conoscenza."

In English: I work in the library and always see Italian magazines and other journals (or newspapers, what have you). For this cultural event, I read some of the magazine Florence Architecture. I liked this magazine a lot when I found it. Because I am studying architecture, it's very interesting to compare the modern styles of architecture there with the style here in the United States. Also I learned some new words: poignancy, writing, perception, etc. And while I read, I recognized many phrases like English phrases, for example: "sea of consciousness."



[image from the article I read in one of the 2004 issues, Il Viaggo]

just a side note

(although i guess "side" isn't really applicable, because this isn't aside from anything)

last semester i got a job in the periodicals department of my campus library, and i started full-fledged part-time this week. and i LOVE it. love. it. which is such a relief! due to the fact that i mostly hated the two jobs i had over the summer, so i'm sooo very happy to find a job that i particularly enjoy.

i think my favorite part is how much i have learned since I started working there, especially in the past week. since i'm fairly new, some of the questions patrons ask I might not know, but i find the answers pretty quickly and then I remember them for next time. In doing this, i have learned so much about all of the resources in the library, which are truly incredible! there is so much immediately available to me that i never knew about, and of which i am going to try and make use. also, daily i discover new periodicals that the library has subscriptions to which i had never heard of, but most definitely will go back and read when i'm off the clock. such as Palladio, an italian architecture periodical!
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )