Course List for Rupert Giles, Master of Library Sciences Candidate, Michaelmas Term 1982
Anthropodermic Bibliopegy: How to Preserve And Handle Books Bound in Human Skin
Taking Your Glasses Off And Slowly Rubbing Your Temples: An Introduction
Guarding A Vampire Slaying-Teen: Is It For You? Non-Traditional Employment In A Saturated Library Sciences Market
Beginning Wizard’s Latin
How To Recognize Drawings of Demons
Data Analytics and Amateur Gravedigging
Cursed Metadata In Theory and In Practice
Late Fees And Love Spells: Intro to Communications Systems
Mystical Convergences And The Lunar Cycle: What Every Curator Should Know
Survey and Analysis of Current Literature for Children Grade 5-8
Making The Most Of Your Resources: How To Acquire Medieval Assault Weapons And Strange Tinctures On A Limited Library Budget
Filling Out Timesheets
Maintaining An Appropriate Student-Teacher Relationship
Digital Curation
Witch Mentorship Work-Study Program
Distinguishing Between Third-Degree Burns And Spontaneous Combustion
Integrated Library Systems And Standard Runes
Supernatural Harassment In The Workplace: What Every Librarian Should Know
Archiving Despite Demonic Interference
There’s An Ancient Prophecy For That: Matching Your Present-Day Disturbances With Twelfth-Century Romanian Curses
Remember, You Are Not A Hero: Doing What Needs To Be Done (What Your Slayer Doesn’t Need To Know)
Basic Self-Defense and Smothering
Comparative Cosmologies and World Religions: Angelology to Zoroastrianism
Tags: graduate school, i assume he started grad school a bit late because of his youthful hijinx, librarians, library science, rupert giles, television
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OH YES I want to take every single one of these classes.
If only all my bosses, ever, had taken “Filling Out Timesheets.”
Now, see, you wrote this article just for me (I must assume) and I am entirely grateful.
And I was entirely entertained.
Until we got to “Remember, You Are Not A Hero” and teared up, right here at my desk, and now all the feelings. Dammit, Mallory.
It’s a shame that Cursed Metadata in Theory and Practice isn’t a core course anymore – I have no idea how early-career hellmouth librarians manage without it.
Thank you Mallory. There is no such thing as too much Buffy, ever.
I finally know exactly what I want to do with my life.
He started late because he was busy tearing shit up as Ripper.
(I also stand by the idea that Giles has an MLS, not an MLIS, because he’s old-school and strictly works with books, not that new-fangled amorphous “information”.)
As I am a killjoy, I feel the need to point out that most library-type master’s courses in the UK are MAs or MScs (although I considered applying to one that was, for goodness knows what reason, MEcon).
Maybe he has an MSLS, which is what they gave me instead of an MLS. (Masters of Science in Library Sciences.)
Also – academia and their degree designations is the biggest circle jerk ever imagined.
I am a librarian who shares office space with :: counts desks :: four other librarians. Among us, there are four different degrees held. They are all library studies degrees of some sort. It is hilarious.
Definitely old school. So much so that I want to call bs on him taking Integrated Library Systems And Standard Runes, because Rupert Giles will die clinging to a card catalog.
Maintaining An Appropriate Student-Teacher Relationship
HA.
As someone who is starting a Library and Information Studies MA in a few weeks and who loves Rupert Giles, this is exactly my thing. (I am still really confused about Giles’ academic career. He dropped out of his History degree at Oxford before completing it; did he ever go back and finish undergraduate education, and if so, where? I also desperately want to know which Oxford college he was at, as one of the few people who cares (please be my one, please be my one).)
I guess Wesley was sick that semester?
My money’s on Balliol.
Balliol I can handle. Unless they start claiming they’re older than my college (look, it all depends on how you define “college” and “oldest”).
Oh are you at Teddy Hall?
Merton (or I was).
Ah! Sunny Merton College — the gothest college of all!
Fondly known as “the place where fun goes to die”.
Former Hildabeast reporting for duty!
Jesusite here 🙂
The House! (And I think we’d have the Watchers…)
Oriel 🙂 (though never as a student, but I did work there for 3 years)
I’m claiming him for Christ Church.
Watching Buffy re-runs in High School (2 hours a day! everyday in the morning!) convinced me of two things
1) I really really really want to write genre stuff with monsters and demons and stuff
2) Rupert Giles is strangely attractive and I want to be him when I grow up.
Reader, I’ve not only published genre fiction, I also own an alarming amount of tweed
I take issue with two of your points: first, that there is anything strange about Rupert Giles’s attractiveness, and second, that any amount of tweed is alarming (unless you are alarmed because you don’t own enough tweed).
theoretically, one can always own more tweed.
I concur. I did draw the line at tweed hotpants though.
I hereby question your dedication to tweed.
I did pose for photos with them, but I just couldn’t do it.
.
.
.
I thought I was an articulate person
.
.
.
Words. Fail.
.
.
.
(you didn’t try them on?)
No! I was laughing too hard.
It’s so much visual information, and I’m still having trouble processing it, but I think it’s the lining inside the butt that slays me.
Slays me. Hmmm, perhaps they’d be useful in fieldwork?
I do actually have a tie that matches that lining.
Oh goodness.
Wow. Where was this?
A stall at Royal Windsor horse show – but they’re actually fairly ubiquitous at big horse shows now, this was in 2010 and they were a bit of a novelty then!
I both own and wear tweed hotpants (in winter, with tights).
They’re almost the exact shade that Giles is wearing in the picture up there.
I bow to your commitment to tweedery! Although I wil admit that if I ver wore hotpants, they would probably be tweed ones.
Practical Pratfalls: Maintaining Mental Acuity in the Face of Constant Concussions
Tea Time is Me Time: Balancing Your Consumption With Healthy Bladder Function/Caffeine Intake
Featuting A Special Seminar on How to Sip with Withering Sarcasm
“One day you’re gonna wake up in a coma.”
So much withering. At least once a day I want to tell someone “and you, have the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone.”
Not to be confused with “the emotional range of a teaspoon.”
BRB. Must practice Sarcastic Sipping. Thanks for the delightful seminar title.
If Giles took Digital Curation, he was not paying much attention, given his intense dislike of computers.
However, A+, would read again. Needs more Giles pics/gifs though.
Well, it was 1982, though. What was he even working on?
Just stacks of punch cards and a difference engine that ran on gears.
You mean “those dread machines”.
“A Vampire Slaying-Teen”?
yeah what of it
The hyphen seems to have ventured afield a bit, is all.
Sexually Confusing Young People With Yearning Coffee-Shop Performances in Theory and Practice
YES. Rrrrrawr. I think that performance actually launched me into adult sexuality – having Those Feelings for an actual Adult Man.
At the very least it helped me prepare for the Spuffy era, a time of Wildly Conflicting Feelings of the Mind and Body.
Ah, the Spuffy era. Also known as “that time when you watched the scene where Spike and Buffy have sex that causes a house to collapse over and over, reliving it in your imagination before going to sleep”.
I watched it with my parents. It was awkward.
My mum always seemed to walk into the room when Spike and Buffy were having sex. It was uncanny.
“Comparative Cosmologies and World Religions: Angelology to Zoroastrianism” Yes please.
Also, I would love to know how many librarians do read the toast. Seems quite a few do. And on that note, time for me to be on the reference desk!
Me!
Me! Mwahaha, I’m not on desk today.
Me, soon (just finished my graduate trainee year, soon to be a student).
Here we are!
Do lowly library assistants count? If so, me!
*waves* Although librarian, not Librarian (ie, no MLIS yet).
Librarian lurker here! I actually couldn’t care less about Buffy; I just wanted to read a clever bit on library classes.
And one more, waving from the World of YA Librarianship.
I want to be a librariaaaaaaaan toooooooooo! *crying on technical draft, wipes eyes on decent salary*
Well, I’m embarrassingly late to this party. But in my defense I’ve been on the reference desk for 3+ hours each afternoon since the day this was published.
if i could have taken these classes in library school i might not have fallen asleep so often
I’d take these classes and write “LOVE” on one eyelid and “YOU” on the other just like that girl in Raiders of the Lost Ark and close my eyes inappropriately constantly.
The Story of the Stammer: Survey In Affected Intellectual Gravitas, 1680-present
Guest lecture by Judson, in a dazzling display of cross-over brilliance?
GILES.
I assume you’ve all seen the thing where Nick Brendon is currently the age that ASH was when Buffy started, right? I.e., 43.
Please let this mean that we can expect a reboot in the next one-two years with Nicholas Brendon as Xander in the watcher-ish role. Please please please.
Ooh, I like the way you think!
I’m imagining something a touch more lighthearted, where he lands a super disciplined, straight-laced slayer (a la Kendra) and has to, like, teach her how to act like a normal teenager. Also because Xander is better when he’s a goofball and worse when he’s Mr. Morality-Pants.
*grabbyhands*
Woah.
Right?
That makes my crush on him when I was 16 even less appropriate.
Wait, wait, I was already out of high school when Buffy started airing and the actors are STILL older than me? This makes no sense!
Also, man, I lobbied SO hard for a Medieval Demonology and Folklore class at my college, and even though it was a hippie college where any course was acceptable, I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to teach it.
Thus my own career as a Watcher was stymied.
Well, clearly nobody asked ME. Yeesh. There needs to be some kind of dating service to match up those of us Educated Beyond All Hope of Gainful Employment with students who want to learn things that are interesting rather than practical. OKMinerva?
That…that is a really great idea.
Like. An amazingly great idea.
Now I am thinking, hmm, a niche provider of online classes … the issue would be getting credentialed so people could take the classes for credit. But hey, all the community colleges around here (LA) offer online extension classes on things like “Forensics for Mystery Writers” and “How to Get Your Real Estate License,” why not “Medieval Demonology” and “Introduction to the More Gruesome Aspects of World Mythology”?
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that accreditation is actually THAT important, since a lot of the courses you’d want to do would be things that people didn’t especially need for anything anyway. I think probably a bigger challenge would just be thoroughly vetting the teachers, so that you don’t have a reputation as a kind of junk shop for people that think they know a bunch of stuff.
I feel like you’d want to vet the contributors, have a look at reading lists and curriculums, &c.
I have a vast network of under-employed medievalists, Indo-Europeanists, and folklorists with doctorates and masters’ from top-flight schools to draw upon, just for starters. Some are already working in online instruction. Hmm. I suspect the problem is that most of us are too overwhelmed with day-jobbery to actually follow through. But still, something like an Anti-Phoenix is an interesting notion.
Hm hm. Well, maybe a small start — I know a lot of folks have already put together syllabi for classes that they’d like to teach one day (I know that a lot of schools require you to put it together before they’ll approve the class); what if you did something like a four or six week project where you assigned a couple readings, and then did a “lecture” once a week? (On Saturdays or something?)
You could do it like a book club or an AMA, too — you can set up a website with something like Intense Debate, so that people can ask questions in the comments and have discussions, and the lecturer can be there to respond to them for a set period of time. I think you can even create private blogs like that, so you could charge people some nominal fee, then give them the syllabi and the password for the lectures/comments.
In the early 2000s, Barnes and Noble had an “online university” where you could take very book-oriented classes–a “lecture” was posted once a week and there was a bulletin board for discussion. I taught a class on the mythological background to Tolkien for them. No assignments or tests, just a kind of lecture-cum-book club. One of the main problems was people who came into it with an agenda or a feeling that they already knew it all–very tedious, as the instructor, to be forced to deal with them week after week. Class credit, tests, all those things tend to weed out trolls, even more than tuition fees. But it would be lovely to figure out a way to do this so the people who have all these “useless” degrees might earn some money for it.
I like this because it’s basically the thing that universities were in the first place.
I have a Master’s in English and Medieval Studies from UVA, and my thesis was on Werewolves in Medieval Literature. I would like to volunteer to teach young people fascinating, but completely useless skills.
There are some interesting things going on at mythgard.org — “Death and Rebirth in World Mythology” would fit right in.
Read that as “Medieval Dermatology.”
I’d take that class.
Mostly it involves potash facials.
The problem with medieval remedies is that they come in basically two varieties:
1. horse-shit poultice
2. “Maybe we can cut it off?”
You can still “like to Watch,” at least until you go blind from self-abuse.
How to Assemble a Memorable Halloween Costume
(seminar offered each October)
The dramatic timing for putting on/taking off glasses is an art that tweedy British dudes really seem to have locked down. Sigh.
In the anime “Log Horizon,” there’s a special sound effect (it’s kind of like a wet rag squeaking on glass) whenever the mage/systems analyst/online RPG battle strategist Shiroe significantly pushes his glasses back up his nose after making an important point. (The glasses usually glitter momentarily for further emphasis.)
Just the title of this post had my heart racing. This is many wonderful things all in one place.
Most attractive Giles types:
1-8. Singing Giles
9. “Casually Killing Ben” Giles
10. Frustrated Giles
What about Sombrero Giles??
I’m not a hat girl personally.
That’s ok, more for me.
Chainsaw Giles!
RUNNING THE MAYOR THROUGH WITH A SWORD GILES
THREATENING SNYDER FOR BUFFY’S EDUCATION GILES
TAKING CARE OF BUFFY AND DAWN WITH HIS CHECKBOOK GILES
“Telling Buffy he respects and supports her” Giles!
Oh, and I can’t forget “I’d like to test that theory” Giles, whose sudden appearance caused seventeen-year-old me to squeal so loudly that my mom thought I had hurt myself.
Twelve-year-old me also squealed quite a bit. Giles!
I can hear him saying it in my head, but much to my shame I cannot recall the context…
That was the moment I knew I loved the show.
Teenage Giles
How could I have forgotten “Band Candy” Giles?!?!?!?
Because he’s so amazing your brain can’t handle it?
Oh my…”Band Candy” Giles *swoons*
Beating Angel With A Flaming Bat Giles
11-100 LISTENING TO RECORDS WHILE SMOKING CIGARETTES GILES
Dirtbag Giles
Sex with Buffy’s Mom on the Hood of a Car Giles
Rupert Giles is my dream job, forever.
Witch Mentorship Work-Study Program
Maybe should have paid a teensy bit more attention to that class, eh, G-Man?
(no but seriously this is my everything i love him so much)
I co-sign all of these Giles-es.
Ooh, burn.
“Cursed Metadata In Theory and In Practice”– unfortunately for Giles, he doesn’t realize the metadata librarians are the ones doing all the cursing.
“Integrated Library Systems And Standard Runes” – Aaah, so that’s why Sirsi-Dynix system labels are so hard to understand. *Nyuk nyuk nyuk!*
Be ashamed.
(I’m kidding don’t I should be ashamed for getting it.)
I found out at a librarian meet-up that I am really good at making really lame librarian jokes and now I can’t stop, won’t stop.
So happy to have found this community of true Giles-lovers. Ripper for life!
So…how many of my fellow librarians are here at The Toast, anyway? *waves*
There are 90,000 of us. Approximately.
(Hi. Undergrad librarian. No you can’t just use Google come closer and let me ruin you.)
Hi!!
Hi! (Solo academic librarian right here!)
hello, from youth services.
Um, I got my final mark back last night and it was an A and I have an MLIS now. It is pretty cool. I am hyped.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKie-vgUGdI
They left out my favorite class: “The Computer: Stupid, Useless Fad, or Something More?”
Giles is the reason I simply COULD NOT take ASH seriously as magic-hating Uther Pendragon on Merlin.
He will always be King Giles in my heart, to the extent where I was always briefly confused by mention of the name “Uther” instead.
Right? “Magic is evil and must be eliminated from our kingdom. *hastily stuffs book on the interpretation of ancient Sumerian prophecies under the throne*”
I mean, he also ate while wearing heavy leather gloves, so that was pretty ridiculous too.
Ah, my eye fell on the word Michaelmas, and I was IN. Mini-toastie-snob-quiz (NO googling) what are the two subsequent terms named?
Hilary and Trinity. (does it count given I went to Oxford so have no excuse not to know?)
Depends which university/public school you’re talking about. If it’s Oxford, it’s Hilary and Trinity, but other places differ.
Ooh, you ladies win all the prizes, but when I was writing my Uhmaazing Quiz, I did worry for a second it was Oxford only.
At ‘the’ other place, it’s Lent and Easter. But you knew that.
At the other, other place it’s Easter and Epiphany, for that satisfyingly posey end to your year.
You are all my people.
As a person with toddlers in the house, I frequently have that line from Giles’ Restless song running through my head: ‘And try not to bleed on my couch/ I’ve just had it steeeeam-cleaned’.
OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD. I love everyone here in this room forever.
The Toast giveth, and The Toast never taketh away
This is everything.
Sexy fuddy duddy.
I want to embed a gif but I’m afraid I’ll fuck it up.
I don’t think I fucked it up!
My mama always said sexy is as sexy does. — Rupert Gump
Perfect gif choice!
I *LOST* it at Digital Curation. Ugh. Nailed it.
Even Giles can’t escape Digital Curation…needlepointless, MSLIS
MORE OF THIS ON THE PAGE!!
Giles smothering Ben was his greatest moment., and I will defend this assertion against all comers.
this is amazing. giles should be knighted. you should be knighted.
I LOVE YOU ALL
I KNEW IT ! ! !
That shirty little ponce is the reason
why I wasn’t able to force add
“Cursed Metadata In Theory and In Practice”
in my Junior year. Threw my whole schedule off.
Mallory you truly are a treasure. Thank you for this!
1. I love this.
2. I was recently reminded that Principal Snyder is also Quark on DS9 and is one of my very favourite character actors of all time.
ASH also makes a good Frank N Furter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKgVln8XmuE
This thread is why The Toast is my favourite place on the internet.
I guess they would have held back Advanced Theory-Testing and Not Asking for Spike’s Opinion for Hillary Term.
🙂
oh my god, this is so freaking hysterical! but it makes me really miss Buffy 🙁
Oops, submitted accidentally before adding that my fave of them all has GOT to be this one – -Making The Most Of Your Resources: How To Acquire Medieval Assault Weapons And Strange Tinctures On A Limited Library Budget
Thanks for the laugh!
Digital curation in 1982? That would be Taking Care of Ink-Stained Fingers?
Surely it would have been MA in Librarianship? I can’t imagine him doing a Library qualification in the US back then.
Definitely a forward-looking library school, with all that course work in digital curation, metadata, and Integrated Library Systems happening in 1982.
Pretty sure he failed the one about maintaining an appropriate student/teacher relationship. He’s lucky the staff of Sunnydale High don’t find anything weird about a teenage girl spending all her time with the librarian, but still having awful grades, because if I worked there my first thought would not be, “She’s probably a vampire slayer.”
Written in 1999, but truly fits in here. http://girasoleazzurra.com/tag/giles/
I woke up this morning remembering him in Repo: The Genetic Opera. Why?
I woke up this morning remembering him in Repo: The Genetic Opera. Why?
Everytime I read something fun, amazing or hilarious on the Toast I just assume it is Mallory. I have never been wrong yet.
Ahh, Giles. I'd take any class he taught.
Guest lecture by Judson, in a dazzling display of cross-over brilliance?
I feel a great need to share this here. http://girasoleazzurra.com/2014/01/17/giles-hero-…