libraries
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Books for the Future
Margaret Atwood’s next book won’t be published for a hundred years. The Future Library project is collecting a hundred manuscripts to be released in the year 2114 with Atwood’s manuscript the first to be added to the collection. Earlier this year,…
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A Floating Library Comes to New York City
NPR reports that floating library pop-up is coming to New York City in the Hudson River. The Floating Library is the work of artist Beatrice Glow and will feature books and chapbooks of underrepresented authors and poets as well as an outdoor reading room. The…
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Secret Locker Library Distributes Banned Books
A student at a Catholic high school has been running a secret library out of her locker distributing banned books to fellow students. The student, identified by online handle Nekochan, was incensed when The Catcher in the Rye appeared on…
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The Future of Libraries
Librarian Justin Wadland attempts to answer the question “What is the future of libraries?” at the Los Angeles Review of Books by reading three recent books about them. He suggests the future of libraries depends on our relationship with them.…
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Bookless Libraries
Florida Polytechnic University has just opened, in a building designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, a completely bookless library. Available to all the students is a catalog of 135,000 e-books that can be consulted in an impressive, completely empty room…
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Tehran Taxi Library
A taxi driving husband-and-wife team converted their cab into a library with more than 40 titles, reports The Wall Street Journal. Mehdi Yazdany and Sarvenaz Heraner sell about 30 books a day, but also give away books to passengers who…
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The Floating Library of Minnesota
With 10,000 lakes, it was bound to happen: The Floating Library, an eight foot square stocked with 80 books. Most of the volumes are handmade art books, the Star Tribune reports. Artist Sarah Peters created the library and serves as…
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e-Books Threaten Libraries
Libraries have adapted to the modern era by lending out e-books. In many cases, electronic books provide patrons easier access to materials. But a new study says that they also threaten an old system of distribution, reports GalleyCat. The main…
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House of Library Catalog Cards
The New York Public Library owns an absolutely peculiar collection: a 6000+ cards catalog of hand-typed children books reviews, written by librarians over the years. Lynn Lobash, NYPL reader services overseer, explained to Quartz that, “There’s about a billion card…
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Libraries Are Essential
Libraries are not “Netflix for books,” Kelly Jensen argues over at BookRiot, but serve as centers of their communities. Corporations like Netflix are driven by profits, while libraries, at least in North America, are free for their users. The real…
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Flattened Librarian
In the story, a young girl, Nancy, mysteriously receives a single Christmas gift – the steamroller. She takes the gift out for a ride and flattens many things along the way, one of which was human, as I recall. I…
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A Library’s Trash
Mark Luce, who teaches literature and history at the Barstow School in Kansas City, has a new column at Electric Literature, reviewing books that he and the school’s librarian have recently removed from the collection. His first “Discarded Pile” post…