Zombie comic tutorial for using the college library

Lisov sez, "I love this! The McPherson College Library has made a tutorial comic using zombies! It certainly got my attention. They should do the same for drivers ed with maybe some live roleplaying. I'd be a brilliant driver if I learned while being chased by zombies. In short - I think this really works! Miller Library FTW!"

Our Zombie Guide is FINISHED!

Library of the Living Dead (PDF)

(Thanks, Lisov, via Submitterator!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

@anon #12
This is Matt Upson, the librarian half of the creative team. And yep, I noticed that after it went to press. I revamped the diagram and did not edit the text correctly. My fault :(
But Mike can easily change that in the future.
Thanks!
Anonymous

I interviewed these guys on how they created the guide. (Shameless self-promotion). http://theoutreachlibrarian.com/2011/04/20/zombifying-the-library-how-two-creative-guys-found-a-way-to-deal-with-student-needs-and-save-the-world/

ANd yes, DD is more common in academic libraries than you think, especially older ones.
Anonymous

Thanks for the kind words, people! I was the writer/artist of this book, and we are SUPER psyched at the attention it’s been getting. Hundreds of thousands of unique downloads…it’s dizzying!

As for our library’s continued use of Dewey, we are (as someone else already said) a small liberal arts college, and Dewey is pretty well-suited to the nature of our collection. Switching to LOC wouldn’t really benefit us at all, though even if it would, we simply don’t have the manpower to pull it off right now.

If any libraries out there are interested in commissioning their own guides, contact me at cmichaelhall@cox.net I am available. :)
Varekai

@TheMatt: It’s not terribly uncommon to find college libraries still using Dewey. You’ll tend to find it more often at 4-year schools with a liberal arts or humanities focus, as it can be more flexible for them. LoC classification becomes more important when you have a focus on science and engineering, law, or a really sizable collection.
Kerouac

During the past few years, librarians have revealed a certain hipster chic few people knew they had… but this absolutely takes it to a new level. Love it!
Anonymous

Profoundly cool. Reminds me just a little of this University of Saskatchewan site, for which I did all the design and artwork:

http://megabyte.usask.ca/

It’s not exactly zombies but also has a vaguely retro/horror feel to it to add some excitement. Why don’t more universities – and other places for that matter – enliven “dry” subjects this way? I any case, to the creators I just want to say: GREAT JOB!
Anonymous

The third example in the “And, or, not” section is wrong. The image shows the results for “Car OR Culture NOT America” rather than “Car AND Culture NOT America” as the text says. Zombies FTW
Idle Tuesday

As a librarian and a zombie-fan, I just can’t put into words how brilliant this comic is. Awesome.
TheMatt

Really cool!

That said, the one thing that intrigued me most of all was that a college library uses the Dewey Decimal system. I thought most, if not all, college/academic/research libraries used Library of Congress system (in my experience). Is DD more prevalent than I know?
- VeggieLibrarian
  
  The library is small enough collection that using a system such as DD is fine. My feeling is that if the library would expand to a much larger collection moving to LC would be something to consider. Also, Miller Library is a one librarian shop ATM; changing the collection over from DD to LC would be time consuming and costly.
Karlos

Ha! Love it… reminds me a little of the comic “Rex Libris”

http://www.jtillustration.com/rex/index.html
Anonymous

I am a fan of this neat idea, got a huge kick out of the zombie artwork, and LOVE libraries, but I respectfully submit an edit for future editions.

While explaining and/or/not searches, the diagram for “cars and culture, but not america” actually depicts “cars OR culture, but not america”. This could be confusing to students who are very new to the concept, as it contradicts the distinction between and/or you just introduced above that. A slight rewording might be helpful?

Thanks!
-someone who should really get an account one of these days
Roy Trumbull

My last 5 working years were as a staffer at a state college. I worked in the library building. More than a few times when taking out a book that had been published 5 or 10 years before, I found I was the first to borrow it. Lots of virgins in the stacks.
The internet is sort of a thin gloss of information. A good library is the real thing.
- kjulig
  
  There’s nothing that can replace Google Scholar and Google Books though. If you’re lucky, the full text is available or the bits you need are in the preview and if not, you now know which book you need and can try to track it down (maybe even in your university’s library). I find that most books I need are not immediately available locally.