The Button Museum  3279 W. Armitage Ave.  Chicago, IL   "Since pinback buttons were patented in 1896, people have found many ways to express their life events through buttons.  We created the Button Museum to show how people commemorated noteworthy times in their lives by creating and collecting these wearable mementos.  The words, artwork, printing style, color, and size were the final result of a vision they wanted to communicate or be a part of.  You are welcome to visit Busy Beaver Button Co.'s factory to view the Button Museum in person.  We also happily accept button donations!  Please add your button images to the Fan Museum and also, please contact us if you find any missing information.  Our goal is to make this as complete and concise as possible, while piquing your curiosity about the times these buttons represent.  We look forward to hearing from you."  http://www.buttonmuseum.org/about  Visit the online button museum at http://www.buttonmuseum.org/

Nerdfighteria is a community subculture, based mainly online.  It began in 2007, when the VlogBrothers (John and Hank Green) rose to prominence in the YouTube community.  As their popularity grew, so did coverage on Nerdfighteria, whose followers are individually known as Nerdfighters.   Nerdfighters and the Green brothers have collaborated on many projects such as the charitable drive, Project for Awesome, launched in 2007, and the convention focusing on topics surrounding the world of digital media, VidCon.  Nerdfighters have been documented by websites such as The Hollywood Reporter, and The Wall Street Journal, with a following estimated to be in the millions.  Nerdfighteria is known for its online collaborative nature, as forums, spinoff blogs, meetups, and charitable events have been spawned by its members.  A prominent symbol in Nerdfighter culture is a double-handed gesture with crossed arms, resembling the Vulcan salute from Star Trek.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerdfighteria

In 1955 Toledo, Ohio, suffered the double indignity of losing both its baseball team and its baseball park.  The departure of the Toledo Sox and the fall of Swayne Field were unexpected, sudden, and brutally final, and the effects were long-lasting.  As the 1955 baseball season drew to a close, no one in Toledo suspected the coming losses.  Baseball in Toledo had been on shaky footing since World War II.  Under the ownership of the St. Louis Browns, the Toledo Mud Hens had their last winning season in 1944, and the Browns sold the franchise to the Detroit Tigers after the 1948 season.  The Tigers operated the team for three seasons, leaving after the 1951 campaign and not having had a winner either.  Danny Menendez brought an independent team to Swayne Field for the 1952 season, but transferred them to Charleston, West Virginia, in June, leaving Swayne Field empty for the remainder of the summer.  Just before the opening of the 1953 season, fortune smiled on Toledo.  The Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in the first shift of a major-league franchise in more than 50 years.  The Braves displaced the American Association Brewers, who, in turn, landed in Toledo and began a rags-to-riches saga.  The Brewers, who had won the pennant in 1952, were renamed the Toledo Sox and gave the city its first pennant since 1927.  Toledo’s new team set an attendance record in 1953 as 343,614 poured through the Swayne Field turnstiles.  The Sox were the top farm club of the Braves, who were building the team that would win the World Series four years later.  Toledo’s baseball future seemed bright.  The Sox fell back in both the standings and the gate in 1954 and 1955, but were competitive and still drew good crowds.  Inexplicably, the parent Milwaukee club moved its Toledo operation to Wichita after the 1955 season.  Just days later, Swayne Field was sold to the Kroger Company, which very quickly transformed the site into a shopping center. Swayne Field had been Toledo’s landmark baseball park and outdoor sports center for 46 years, but seemingly overnight it was gone.  Sportscaster Frank Gillhooley spent a lot of time at Swayne Field.  Beginning in 1937 he worked as a clubhouse boy for three years, followed by two more as batboy.  He returned as the radio voice for the Sox in 1953, and was still behind the microphone for Mud Hens games when the team left in 1955.  He didn’t hesitate when asked about his most vivid memory of Swayne Field.  Mickey Mantle.  He was there the night in 1951 when Mantle was in town with the Kansas City Blues.  Mantle hit for the cycle with two home runs.  His single came on a ninth-inning bunt and after he was ordered, as a crowd-pleasing gesture, by his manager George Selkirk, to swing away on a 3-0 count.  Read more and see pictures at http://sabr.org/bioproj/park/7636274a

Teresa Brewer (born as Theresa Breuer 1931, died 2007) was an American singer.  She was born in Toledo, Ohio.  Her father was an inspector of glass for the Libbey Owens Company (now Pilkington Glass), her mother was a housewife.  At the age of two, Teresa was brought by her mother to audition for a radio program, "Uncle August's Kiddie Show" on Toledo's WSPD.  She performed for cookies and cupcakes donated by the sponsor.  Although she never took singing lessons, she took lessons to tap dance.  From age five to twelve, she toured with the "Major Bowes Amateur Hour," then a popular radio show, both singing and dancing.  At the age of 12, Teresa was brought back to Toledo, ceasing touring to have a normal school life.  She did, however, continue to perform on local radio.  In January 1948 the sixteen-year-old Teresa won a local competition and (with three other winners) was sent to New York to appear on a talent show called "Stairway to the Stars," featuring Eddie Dowling.  It was about that time that she changed the spelling of her name, as she won a number of talent shows and played night clubs in New York (including the famous Latin Quarter).  An agent, Richie Lisella, heard her sing and took her career in hand, and soon she was signed to a contract with London Records.  In 1949 she recorded a record called "Copenhagen" with the Dixieland All-Stars.  The B side was a song called "Music! Music! Music!" by Stephen Weiss and Bernie Baum.  It turned out that this side was the one that took off, selling over a million copies, and became Teresa's signature song.  All together, she recorded nearly 600 song titles.  For her contribution to the recording industry, Teresa Brewer has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  http://www.last.fm/music/Teresa+Brewer/+wiki

Mickey Mantle & Teresa Brewer - I Love Mickey  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYRJhMzRtFs  1:52

Library & Information Science Careers:  What Can I Do With a Degree in Library Science?  http://simmons.libguides.com/c.php?g=371958&p=2515351&utm_content=buffer17b59&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer  Thank you, Muse readers!

The Library of Congress has released statistics for fiscal year 2015.  Its collection now comprises more than 162 million physical items in a wide variety of formats.  The daily business of being the world’s largest library, the home of the U.S. Copyright Office and a supportive agency to the U.S. Congress resulted in the Library adding 1.7 million physical items to its permanent collections, registering more than 443,000 copyright claims and responding to more than 1 million reference requests from Congress, the public and other federal agencies in fiscal year 2015.  Some notable items newly cataloged into the Library’s collection include the papers of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and composer Marvin Hamlisch; rare Civil War stereograph images; recordings from the pioneering folk music label Stinson Records, featuring Woody Guthrie, Peter Seeger and Lead Belly; the Archive of the Association of American Geographers; and the backfile of issues on microfilm of the French satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo," which began publishing in 1970.  The U.S. Copyright Office registered works in fiscal year 2015 from authors in all 50 states.  The Grammy Award-nominated songs "Uptown Funk" (Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson) and "Alright" (Kendrick Lamar and Pharell Williams) and such box-office toppers as "Inside Out," "Furious 7" and "Jurassic World" were among the nearly half-million novels, poems, films, software, video games, music, photographs and other works submitted.  Reference librarians and Congressional Research Service staff responded to more than 1 million reference requests from patrons both on-site and via phone and email—an average of 4,600 requests every business day.  The Library’s web portal for teachers recorded more than 11 million page-views.  Find more statistics at http://loc.gov/today/pr/2016/16-023.html

January 27, 2016  By popular demand, the American Library Association is reissuing the David Bowie poster.  This special limited-run reprint of the 1987 READ poster honors the singer-songwriter, actor, producer, and artist.  An avid reader, David Bowie was one of the first celebrities to pose for the READ campaign.  Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, he received a 2006 Grammy for Lifetime Achievement, among numerous other awards throughout his career. David Bowie:  1947-2016.  See graphic at http://www.ala.org/news/member-news/2016/01/ala-graphics-reissues-david-bowie-1987-read-poster

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1420  February 4, 2016  On this date in 1801, John Marshall was sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States.  On this date in 1825, the Ohio Legislature authorized the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal.