Thursday, April 17, 2008

Snoopy, Dewey and 20,000 Years of Fashion

Yesterday's Peanuts strip originally appeared in 1961 in honor of National Library Week but still rings true. Librarians like to feel needed - who doesn't?
Librarians also like the web comic Unshelved, which on Sundays is always about a book, for instance Magic Pickle and The Planet of the Grapes. The rest of the week it's a comic strip about the Mallville Public Library and its Gen-X librarian, Dewey.

In honor of the blog reaching 20,000 hits a few days ago during the Nightshade blog tour, I looked up 20,000 in the BHPL catalog. Besides Jules Vernes' Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, I found 20,000 Years of Fashion by Francois Boucher. I didn't think that textiles could last that long, so I immediately turned to the section on prehistoric costume. There's a reproduction of a cave painting with women in fur skirts at the Museo Arqueologico in Madrid, and also photos of Bronze Age clothes in the National Museum in Copenhagen. (You can see a photo of a model wearing a modern replica here; scroll down to Bronze Age.) The museum doesn't have too many pictures on its site, but you can see more Bronze Age clothes at a museum visitor's blog.

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