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From Stephen Elliott
The site is live but DPLA appears to just be the beginning.
An idea almost three years in the making, imagined first by the leaders of 42 of America’s top libraries and research institutions has now come to fruition. The Atlantic asked the project’s executive director a few questions.
...more“The more you read, the iller you’ll be as an emcee…”
–Rodstarz
In the Bronx, the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective has turned a former candy factory into the Richie Perez Radical Library for Youth. The objective of the library is to promote literacy through radical and political literature that isn’t usually taught in typical academic settings.
...moreLast week, British children’s author Terry Deary (famous for his Horrible Histories series) declared that public libraries are unnecessary relics of a past age; they cheat authors of their rightful earnings and “are doing nothing for the book industry.”
A few days later, Julia Donaldson, another British children’s author, fired back:
...more…libraries are the places where our readers and book-buyers are created.
This should be interesting: a judge in San Antonio, Texas, is opening a library without books.
Or rather, there will be books, but only digital ones, which patrons can read on e-readers in the library or at home.
Since “[t]he community around the proposed location currently has no public library and is home to a lower income population,” a few e-books could go a long way, publishing industry controversy notwithstanding.
...moreRumpus interviewee/contributor Scott Hutchins on the importance of libraries: “I’m from a town with no bookstore, so there would have been no option for books except for the library. The library was pretty much everything.”
There are significantly fewer maternal librarians on Amazon, that’s for sure.
...moreWhat do you do when a devastating hurricane prevents your community from going to the library?
You bring the library to the people with “a mobile book bus” and “a rapid response team of librarians.”
Librarians: dedicated to their jobs to the point of heroism.
...moreThe New York Times writes about community-generated libraries that are popping up on sidewalks across the country.
Little Free Libraries are small wooden boxes full of books with latched glass doors, slanted roofs and a sign that reads “Take a Book and Leave a Book.” You can purchase the posts directly from Little Free Library or build your own; each new library is asked to pay $25 to register with the nonprofit organization.
...moreThe strange confluence of affection for both literature and modes of public transportation is highlighted by The New Yorker today, in their post about the website Underground New York Public Library.
The website catalogues two types of subjects: people who read on trains, and the visibly disgruntled strangers who sit next to them, many of whom seem displeased or bemused at the prospect of their picture being taken.
...more“A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.”
How do we value libraries? Novelist Zadie Smith writes an essay about the imminent closure of her local library, articulating the roles libraries serve beyond their utilitarian functions, and the political implications of their dismissal.
...moreInspired by last year’s video by Melissa Jackson, librarian at Ballou Senior High School in Washington DC, Guys Lit Wire held two book fairs that helped Ballou move from having a library with “less than one book for each of its 1,200 students at the beginning of 2011 to a ratio now of two books per student.”
Hoping to further decrease the school’s “literary deficit,” GLW is kicking off another book fair.
...more“What started as a tough situation – staff members worried about people washing up in the bathrooms, or acting badly – turned into an opportunity. The library, which has always thought of itself as a resource, found it had nothing to offer people who came in asking for help finding housing or places to sleep.
...moreThe recently launched Libraries as Incubator Project seeks to broaden the public’s notion of libraries “by celebrating the ways that they nurture arts communities around the country.” Check out the LIP website, which features “the work of artists who have relied on the support of libraries during their careers, as well as libraries that have supported the arts through unique collections or initiatives.”
(Via The Book Bench)
...moreThe Silver Lake Public Library in Los Angeles will host a facial hair competition on December 20th. The event, which is free to enter, will feature Jack Passion, author of The Facial Hair Handbook and reigning champion of the World Beard and Mustache Championships.
...moreThe entirety of LA’s 73 public libraries will be running in full force—the first time this kind of operational simultaneity has happened since August 2010, when budget cuts enforced some immediate cutbacks.
You can thank Measure L, the ballot which passed last March, that allots money to the public library system.
...moreThere’s more bad news about NYC’s libraries, but it’s less bad than ever, which in the context of libraries is almost like good news.
The budget for the 2012 Fiscal Year is out, which was the impetus for Mayor Bloomberg’s assertion that libraries have been “saved.” Cuts in service, closings of branches, layoffs (although the cut backs are apparently less bad than expected) are still inevitable.
...moreThey’ve traveled the world for more than half a century, in the suitcases of antiques dealers and in the collections of academic institutes.
Now important books from the Science of Judaism collection, curated by a Jewish librarian at the start of Hitler’s rise to power, have been located.
...moreFinally a social science experiment attempting to answer the age-old questions: “Can Atlas Shrugged find love with the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test? Is attraction possible between a Jonathan Franzen reader and a die-hard Elizabeth Gilbert fan?” Speed dating at the library might just work, giving people more to go on than astrology signs and bad pick-up lines.
...moreBookninja pointed me in the direction of the recently released “1992 Librarians and Sex Survey Results.”
Apparently, the Wilson Library Bulletin ran this survey way back when, and then promptly fired its author and destroyed all remaining copies. However, 5000 librarians responded, and now, thanks to the Internet, we get to see the answers!
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Something happened and Morning Coffee missed the schedule. We’re not sure why.
Ruben Brulat takes some pretty amazingly epic self-portaits.
Eight ways in-vitro meat will change our lives. (via MeFi.)
Evidently a new species of orchid was just accidentally discovered.
...moreI was out last week on vacation, but I’m back. And there’s a lot to catch up on. Here goes …
In Turkey, you can go to jail for using the letters Q, W and X. (via)
Even Bill and Ted might have gone to this library.
...moreThis week, the book blogs are full of answers. Listen to them.
Vonnegut knew why we are all such drama queens (there are charts involved).
A thought-provoking take on writing a satisfying ending.
The Book Bench points out that CNN somehow knows what future libraries smell like.
...moreA couple of Michigan librarians have started a web site designed to publicize terrible library books for a) our amusement and b) to bring to light the need for libraries to keep their shelves stacked with current books.
The most glaringly terrible selection, from a 1975 book called Moving Through Pregnancy, provides us with this winning quote: “With all due respect for the liberation of women, someone has to clean the house and do all kinds of boring chores.
...moreSometimes, the book blogs seem resigned to the idea that we’re entering some terrible dystopia, shaking their heads sadly as the businesspeople in charge douse the future in gasoline and dance around with a matchbook in their mouths. No longer. Today, the book blogs are accepting the future and figuring out what to do about it.
...moreSam Leith argues that Grand Theft Auto, Twitter, and Beowulf all demonstrate that stories will never die.
...more