libraries
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Free Books Still Rad
Rumpus 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…
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Queens Library Undaunted by Hurricane Sandy
What 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…
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A NEW KIND OF NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARY
The 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…
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Train Spottings
The 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…
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Library Lamentations
“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…
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Shelves to Fill
Inspired 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…
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Homeless at the S.F. Public LIbrary
“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…
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Libraries as Incubator
The 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…
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Books and Beards
The 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…
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LA Libraries are Back
The 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…
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Less Bad News for NYC Libraries
There’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…
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The Lost Books of the Science of Judaism
They’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…