Violet Fox 🦊

@violetbfox.bsky.social

5011 Followers 1123 Following

The Frank Grimes of librarianship. She/her. https://violetbfox.info/

Screenshot of a MARC record of a personal name authority record. The 670 field shows that the cataloger viewed the author's website in 2014 and added in brackets "image of male," which means they saw an image of the author and decided to categorize them as male based on their photo.
A hazy sky with the sun looking orange-y framed by power lines and the tops of brick buildings.
Violet smiles widely while standing in front of a 20-foot tall building that looks like a white duck.
A bumper sticker on a Subaru reading "Alexa change the president".
A flyer for the Journal of Library Outreach and Engagement (JLOE) special issue. Text bubbles say "give us your zines!" and "reimagining scholarly publishing".
A very small building with one small window and a sign reading "U.S. Post Office, Angle Inlet, Minnesota 56711. Most northerly post office in the contiguous U.S.".
Violet and her spouse smile broadly at the sign that says "Welcome to the United States. You are entering the Northwest Angle, Minnesota".
An open bag of Old Dutch brand ketchup-flavored potato chips.
A minigolf decorated with a red-eyed Mothman above the hole, which is roped off with a TNT barrel.
A Google form asking for street address, city, state, and postal code. I've filled out the required forms by saying "please explain why you need my postal address, it's weird.".
screenshot for a $550 donation to the Prairieland defendants legal fees. A note from Violet says "Librarians across the U.S. are thinking of you and looking forward to the overturn of your unjust convictions.".
Violet takes a selfie in a purple face mask, in front of a dozen zines on display.
Violet, a middle aged woman with glasses, wears a purple face mask.
table with a zine. The zine is titled "Zines Are Back!" and the sign says $5 donation for each zine.
A long sentence of text reading "Skills cited as in especially short supply include teaching experience, STEM expertise, social science expertise, art curation, spatial studies, organizational development, computer science, all manner of disciplinary fields, “area studies” of all types, scholarly communications, data visualization, research-data services, data management, information technology and systems work, geographic information systems, digital scholarship, data science, “data-intensive” fields, assessment, computational methods, fundraising, communications, publicity and marketing, and “information policy.”".
A page from the zine, showing expects and headlines from news articles from 2008 and 2009 showing the cliché "zines aren't totally dead" framing we recognize from today's headlines.
Cover of a zine titled "Zines Are Back"! The cover is in a mock newspaper format with an image of a zine fest.
bicycle fall meme, wherein I show that "thinking about my career in libraries" is like placing a pipe in the spokes of a bike, leading to self-injury.
Black and white poster featuring color headshot of librarian, scholar, and activist Fobazi Ettarh. Text: A celebration of life Fobazi Ettarh 1989-2026 Please join us to celebrate Fobazi's life & legacy Saturday June 27 2026 South Asia Institute - Chicago 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
A series of 30 slides in overview. 26 slides are very boring and white, while 4 have bright colors and fun emoji and pictures of cats. The text is too small to read but my slides have engaging and easily understandable text.
A squirrel sits under a tree eating half a bagel.
A squirrel looks attentive just a few inches away from my shoe.
Series of books on a shelf labeled with W call numbers. A label reading "w" shows this is where books about art are shelved.
Photo from the State & Lake L station showing a glimpse of the "CHI" part of the famous "Chicago" marquee sign.
A pretend mouse hole that has been painted on a baseboard. It has a painted set of tiny stairs, as if the mouse has a loft apartment inside.
A pinback button with the logo for the 50th anniversary of the Massachusetts Society of Professors. Smaller text reads "Proud union of faculty and librarians at UMass Amherst. Bargaining for public higher education for fifty years".
A shower curtain in a small bathroom that has a repeating pattern of a sea monster on it.
A wide view angle of a large living room with three windows. It's got nice, highly varnished wood floors and is sparsely furnished with a bookcase, a chair, and a loveseat.
A bronze frog sculpture but the human-like frog is lying in a sultry pose with its hand lying on its thigh. A sign below the frog says "Feed the frog, feed the hungry."
A beagle mutt lies calmly in the one sunny spot in a shady, grass-covered yard.
A cute brindle black and white dog lies in its owner's lap
A striped black and white woodpecker with a bright red patch on the back of its head eats suet at a bird feeder then flies away.
screenshot from Merlin, the bird identification app, showing six birds singing in St Cloud, Minnesota: house finch, Tennessee warbler, American Robin, Nashville warbler, northern yellow warbler, and blackburnian warbler.
A sign from the 1990s reading "This card catalog is not complete. Use magic and consult staff."
A poster with beautifully drawn blue and grey birds with the title "The Great America Jays". The birds are lined up in six rows facing left and labeled with their species' common name. Birds include the blue jay, the steller's jay, and the scrub jay.
A very wide river with tree-covered banks across the water.
Violet stands in front of the ball of twine holding a small cylinder of sisal twine.
Violet stands next to an enormous ball of twine, 40 feet in circumference and maybe 11 feet tall?.
Violet stands atop an enormous metal belt buckle, more than 19 feet long and 13 feet high. The buckle is decorated with a bull's head and small vignettes of things relating to Abilene, Kansas.
1950s-era handpainted sign with a neon ice cream cone and a starburst neon sign above a drive-in restaurant.
screenshot of an email about what to bring to a zine fest. Text reads: We highly recommend you bring: * cash/small change * portable charger * signage with Venmo/Paypal/other payment app links * signage with info how much your zines cost and/or if you’re open to trades * refillable water bottle *layered clothing for temperature fluctuations These are nice to have/optional: *credit card reader *food/snacks *tablecloth to decorate your table *shelves/racks to display your zines *signs describing what your zines are about *business cards or flyers with your contact info *freebies (stickers, candy, buttons)
A neighborhood in Chicago with gentle pink and blue skies. Orange-ish sodium lights are lit up in the streetlamps.
An indoor mini golf course hole where players put over an open medieval manuscript.
The Minnesota state flag on a flagpole in front of a small white house.
A beautifully designed red and white streetcar parked in front of the Kenosha Public Museum. This is the 4609, formerly a Toronto streetcar.
Yellow flowers and dry tall brown glasses line a nature-filled harbor on Northerly Island. The city of Chicago's skyline is visible in the background.
Photo of a map of the U.S. in the Chicago Amtrak station, showing white spots where people's fingers have rubbed off the ink. The white spots correspond to popular Amtrak routes, radiating out from Chicago, with smaller white spots at New York City, Washington DC, Denver, and New Orleans.
A maze-like illustration made of linoleum which has been embedded into the pavement with tar, reminiscent of a Toynbee Tile. It's blue, light green, and white, and maybe 14 inches long.
Screenshot of an email from Violet to a Gender Justice League employee: My regular donation to Gender Justice League is entirely because of spite! Back in 2020, Library Journal named Seattle Public Library as their 2020 Library of the Year, a pretty prestigious thing in librarianship. There were many of us in the profession who were mad about this choice, because in 2019, Seattle Public Library hosted WOLF, a TERF organization. (Seattle Public Library said they were required to do that because of their open meeting room policies, but 1. other libraries chose not to host WOLF and they didn't get sued, 2. SPL could have changed their meeting room policies but chose not to, and 3. SPL didn't apologize or take actions to support their trans workers or patrons—to this day, they remain unapologetically, weirdly, staunchly proud that they're "intellectual freedom fighters," without consideration about the bigots who that emboldens.) Library Journal's write-up about Seattle Public Library didn't mention that SPL had figuratively thrown their trans workers under the bus. So I started a petition to get that award revoked (1,700 people signed the petition!), and asking the $10,000 award to SPL be given instead to GJL. Library Journal did not revoke the award, but they did apologize for not initially discussing it and for dismissing the complaints. Plus, at that time, the sponsor of the award gave a separate $10,000 award to GJL. For the last few years, Library Journal has asked me to present (on an unrelated topic) at one of their webinars. Every time I present for them, I donate my $600 honorarium to GJL and talk about their bad decision in 2020 during my webinar. (My spouse asked a few days ago, "haven't you made your point already?" and I was like "I GUESS NOT!!!") That's the story. Also my 13-year-old nephew is trans and I love him dearly, and want a better world for him. Grateful for the important work you're doing and happy to help when I can. Thanks, Violet
Brick apartment buildings partially obscured by branches with green leaves and white blossoms).
A white water tower with the words "Waite Park" and a small yellow water tower painted on it. The painted water tower is yellow and has a smiley face.
Graffiti seen from the window of an L train reading "Made your lady have two orgasms".
Single panel comic of a man punching another man. The caption reads "I deftly sketched in the finer points of my thesis".
Single panel comic of a train approaching. An orange is in peril on the tracks ahead, soon to be crushed. The caption reads "Fruits of the world in danger. Number 1: the orange."
Single panel comic of a nerdy looking man hiding in a jungle from armed guards carrying a giant butterfly net. The caption reads "Eric was now beginning to wish he'd returned his overdue library books".
Single panel comic of a man reading a book while wearing a deep sea diving suit underwater. The caption reads "In order to escape the insidious commercial excesses of Christmas, Uncle George opts for a quiet weekend away from it all".
Single panel cartoon of a young girl writing at a desk. The caption reads "Janet set aside an hour each day to work on her threatening letters."
Single panel comic of a cowboy shooting a gun in an art gallery. The caption reads "Big Jake's views on abstraction were all too well known west of the Texas panhandle."
Single panel comic of a startled cowboy and equally startled horse encountering a row of paintings filled with squares. The caption reads "It's a trap! Turn back! They're all Mondrians!".
Single panel comic with a man looking dejected while steering a speedboat in lush jungle surroundings. The caption reads "How he hated Saturday morning shopping".