Librarians do Gaga

In this smashing video, students and faculty from the University of Washington's Information School perform a Lady Gaga remix ("Catalog") with enormous humor, verve, and grace. Librarians are so goddamned awesome. Seriously.

Librarians Do Gaga (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

58 Comments Add a comment

Anon #1 5:14 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

flippin' sweet dog!

David Carroll #2 5:17 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Of course librarians are seriously awesome! It's a fact. Ask any librarian.

Here's another fact: Boys who don't make passes at girls who wear glasses are idiots.

freshacconci #3 5:22 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

I'm lucky to be married to a librarian. This video is very nerdy in all the right ways.

apoxia #4 5:24 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

I used to be a librarian and it is true, we fucking rock.

Anon #5 6:08 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Nicely done.

I've been re-writing lyrics for my class to perform a Phys Ed based song to this same tune, and that semi-rap part is especially difficult to scan.

slithybrilig #6 7:16 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Great lyrics, Nancy Pearl, Awesome moves, and the CODEX SERAPHINIANUS!!!!! OMFG! My weekend, nay my week, is now totally complete!

doggo #7 7:40 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Oh baby! Them are some seriously sexy women right there, I'll tell you what! Gaga's got nothing on them.

Anon #8 7:40 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

They had a Codex Sarafinianus.... i'm flabbergasted. My university had one, but it was stolen, naturally.

spunky #9 7:50 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Haha, love the Doctor Who reference at the beginning. Great video!

Joller #10 7:52 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

If there were any justice in the world, librarians would be more celebrated, loved, and adored than Lady Gaga could ever hope to be. There is, because I'm celebrating, loving, and adoring them right now.

Anon #11 7:53 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

WhooHoo! My MLIS alma mater & adored professors!
LittleTsu

Ocker3 #12 8:13 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

I'm going to forward this to the librarians at the school where I work, they are also awesome and will get a kick out of this. I have known many awesome librarians over the years, but my mother said I shouldn't become one as I would spend all day reading the books. Which is probably true

feuilletoniste #13 8:29 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Yay, a Dr Who reference! 'This is my information detector. It goes ding when there's stuff.' (Substitute 'timey-wimey' for 'information' and you're home and hosed)

kimnbri #14 9:02 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Werd to the nerdy chix! HAWT!!!

Anon #15 9:24 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

How did they get Nancy Pearl to be in this video?

zikman #16 9:41 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

holy hot librarians!

Chuck #17 9:53 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

All we need now is for ************** to do an in-depth analysis on this video like they've done on Lady Gaga's videos.

Patrick Dodds #18 10:03 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

This reeks of meme.

gladeye #19 10:33 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

I'm glad I'm not in college anymore.

Anon #20 10:46 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Yes, we do rock. Remember that a lot of us are facing layoff threats and severe budget cuts. Please let you city governments know just how much you support your libraries & librarians!

jeligula #21 11:49 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Spent my time at the Suzzalo & Odegaard libraries off of Red Square. This song stinks, however.

I once saw a guy playing acoustic guitar on the steps to the Suzzalo library in 1987. He was alone but didn't stay that way for long. He was ripping it up in a major way and when I walked up to him I saw that he was none other than Carlos Santana. I later learned that Señor Santana had a habit of giving impromptu performances in cities he was scheduled to appear. Not saying that Lady Gaga is untalented, it's just that this song seems to point to a profound lack of song writing sensibilities.

Mim replied to comment from Chuck #22 11:59 AM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Oh the antelopes! The antelopes!

Mim replied to comment from gladeye #23 12:00 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

College? This is grad school! :P

sfazzios #24 12:05 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

If anyone is curious about the antelope reference, it actually refers to the work of Suzanne Briet. She famously asked the question, 'What constitutes a document?', and whether an antelope is a document. She argued that an antelope is a document if it's in a zoo, but not if it's in the wild.

The antelope-document has become an in-joke among librarians and other information science folks.

bklynchris #25 12:42 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

"boolean limits pare things down to just what fits" ROFLMAO

Anon #26 1:00 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

I'm pretty amazed also, slitybrilig, about the Codex Seraphinianus.

For those of you out of the loop, the Codex Seraphinianus is an ultra-rare book that is probably one of the oddest and most singular published in the 20th century. It is an atlas/encyclopedia of sorts about an imaginary, surreal world. It is written in its own language and uses its own base 21 numbering system. It is completely and wholly strange, and any happy mutant worth his or her salt needs to know about it.

Here's the wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus

Slorrin #27 1:08 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

I left an anonymous comment about the CODEX SERAFINIANUS (sp?) and they never moderated it. nowi look like a 2nd man man.

Antinous / Moderator replied to comment from Chuck #28 1:27 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

We don't allow links to hate sites, even if your intent isn't malicious.

Anon #29 1:28 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Passing this on to my librarian-colleagues here in Finland :D

@bklynchris +1

(btw. respect for using recaptcha for spam-moderation. It's one of the wickedest tools around)

Anon #30 1:42 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Can't use my... Catalogue?

I know you HAVE Thesauruses, Ladies! I know you have rhyming Dictionaries!

Did you ever consider... DATABASE?

Glindie #31 2:12 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

So, the Codex Seraphinianus is a "poor" man's Voynich manuscript? Cool.

Anon #30..."d-d-d-database" would be *really* awkward, imo. Thus "c-c-c-catalogue".

Anon #32 2:26 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Librarians and Doctor Who references FTW! Excellent!

Marilyn Terrell #33 2:34 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

At National Geographic, our librarians take mud baths in volcanoes in Colombia: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2010/03/colombia.html

freshacconci replied to comment from Anonymous #34 2:46 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Yeah, but "catalogue" is more associated with librarians than "database" in the popular imagination.

Anon #35 4:21 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

@Anon#30:
Listen carefully to the lyrics: "Can use my, can use my,you can use my catalog (don't forget the databases!)"

saintlaurent #36 5:33 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

Thanks for posting this video. It really made my day.

Anon replied to comment from Anonymous #37 6:22 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply

They probably just asked her. She is adjunct faculty at the iSchool. Readers' Advisory of course!

Anon #38 10:15 PM Saturday, May 29, 2010 Reply


Don't get caught in a bad hotel --- more lady gaga - this time brought to you by the unions!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-79pX1IOqPU

Mark Crummett #39 3:21 AM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

Librarians RAWK!

And I'm starting to like Lady Gaga more. Anyone who does a song _about_ librarians is alright with me.

Mark Crummett replied to comment from Mark Crummett #40 3:50 AM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

OK, what do I know about Lady Gaga? It _should_ be a LG song!

Anon replied to comment from Anonymous #41 5:44 AM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

Tell them they can find it for a relative cheap price (€89) in Italy.
The editor is Rizzoli from Milan (Rizzoli, 2006, 384 pp., ISBN 88-17-01389-7). Serafini himself add 9 new pages as prologue to this new edition.
Ciao!
Corrado

JohnRomeoAlpha #42 6:52 AM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

Librarians, search, databases, dancing in the stacks, so many hot women wearing eyeglasses, so many books...I am completed by this video.

Anon #43 7:10 AM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

Cool. I will disclose in Brazil. Fabio Pinho

klaatuu #44 7:46 AM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

This is Sarah Wachter's website where she talks about how and why she made the video.

http://www.athenasbanquet.net/

Anon #45 10:31 AM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

Yes, indeed, THIS is the school my son will go to this fall! I love it.

Chuck replied to comment from Antinous / Moderator #46 11:06 AM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

>We don't allow links to hate sites, even if your intent isn't malicious.

Hmm. I guess I perceive them as more wacky. Although I suppose there are risks in constantly telling impressionable people that the world's a demon-haunted place. Maybe I only find it funny because I'm not insane ... well, actually, I am, but ...

Anon #47 2:21 PM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

Holy Hot Librarians, Batman!

Being a Physicist, I cannot express myself strongly enough how librarians are awesome, and how my work would be almost impossible without them.

Anon replied to comment from Anonymous #48 2:43 PM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

A bunch of us in the program have taken/are taking classes with her (on reader's advisory, of course) so I'm sure Sarah just went up and asked her.

Anon #49 6:14 PM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

"This is my information detector... it goes ding when there's stuff" I sense Doctor Who fans among those librarians! This was great!

Jaan #50 9:04 PM Sunday, May 30, 2010 Reply

I'm so glad human civilization has progressed to the point where librarians are genuinely desirable.

Anon #51 10:40 AM Monday, May 31, 2010 Reply

absoluty nice! mauro

Bazilisk #52 8:35 PM Monday, May 31, 2010 Reply

Oh, sweet. That's one of the top choices in my list of places to apply to get my MLS degree...

Anon #53 9:35 PM Monday, May 31, 2010 Reply

And they ALL look like 'librarians'... ;-/

Clever...catchy...but still total 'geek' looking

Anon #54 9:59 AM Wednesday, Jun 2, 2010 Reply

Wonderful share in a fun way, I think I'll share this with faculty we train.

klg19 replied to comment from Anonymous #55 3:20 PM Wednesday, Jun 2, 2010 Reply

She works at that library, that's how.

Anon #56 12:15 AM Sunday, Jun 6, 2010 Reply

i like how almost everyone in the video is wearing glasses

Anon #57 12:45 AM Saturday, Jun 12, 2010 Reply

That's just genius!

I will be showing it at the next meeting of our Library Marketing group. I am also going to flag it up with CILIP and see if it gives them any ideas.

Thank you so much for sharing it.

Anon #58 6:56 AM Sunday, Jun 13, 2010 Reply

This video was wicked awesome!

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