Library Stuff

“While I was researching some of our reader-nominations for Book Riot’s 2013 charitable partner, I stumbled across The Library Initiative of The Robin Hood Foundation and was, to be perfectly honest, blown away. The Robin Hood Foundation itself is a large organization dedicated to fighting poverty in New York City. One of their specific projects, though, is something I hadn’t seen before: partnering with the New York City Board of Education to rehabilitate and rejuvenate the city’s school libraries.”

via Book Riot

“Libraries and big six publishers are at war over eBooks: how much they should cost, how they can be lent and who owns them.  If you don’t use your public library and assume that this doesn’t affect you, you’re wrong. In a society where bookstores disappear every day while the number of books available to read has swelled exponentially, libraries will play an ever more crucial role.  Even more than in the past, we will depend on libraries of the future to help discover and curate great books.   Libraries are already transforming themselves around the country to create more symbiotic relationships with their communities, with book clubs and as work and meeting spaces for local citizens.”

via Forbes

“Libraries are no longer simply a holding area for books, they are community hubs. People gather at the library to share ideas and enrich their lives. Computers and internet are now standard in libraries and are often in demand. Unemployed individuals can come to the library and apply for jobs. Kids can do their homework (or play games) at the library. But did you know that libraries are now becoming much more than books, computers and internet? Libraries are becoming creation spaces, often called maker spaces (or makerspaces).”

via Between the Lines

“The fight to keep libraries open has dominated the headlines but the UK has quietly lost more than 200 branches over the past year, according to a detailed national survey. The rate of library closures has increased, reveals the annual report from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy: 146 branches closed between 2010 and 2011, with the number stepping up to 201 this year. The UK now has 4,265 libraries, compared with 4,612 two years ago, and the number of closures is likely to grow. Campaigners in Newcastle are currently fighting plans to close 10 out of the city’s 18 libraries, with Billy Elliot playwright Lee Hall calling on the council to protect the city’s heritage last month.”

via Guardian

“As a way to connect two pieces of paper, there are few better tools than a stapler. Without the aid of electronics, a piece of zinc-plated steel is punctured into two sheets of paper and then bent, combining the two into one.

This is the design function of a stapler. It performs best when used for this purpose. For other uses of a stapler, success is not a guarantee. If used as a hammer, for instance, a stapler will only work in limited circumstances. In the best case, an older, heavier, metal model might work to get a nail through soft wood, but even then, the hand positioning and effort required would make the task awkward. The modern library is a stapler, and we are all using it as a hammer.”

via Nick Stamatakis

“It was the little things, the sudden absence of everyday fixtures, that disoriented residents in the Rockaways in the days after the storm, as much as the loss of house and home. The traffic lights had gone dark. Where was one to get a prescription filled? And oh, what about books due at the library? The Rockaways still look like ghost towns. But the community libraries are there — if only in the form of a bus, parked in front of the gutted, muddy Peninsula branch. Days after the storm laid waste to four Queens Borough Public Library branches in the Rockaways, a colorful mobile library bus has hummed just outside its former location on Rockaway Beach Boulevard, offering warmth, power outlets, emergency information and books.”

via NY Times

“The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Utah filed a lawsuit against the Davis School District after elementary schools in the district were instructed to remove a children’s book about a family with same-sex parents from library shelves. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a mother whose children attend one of the schools where the book was restricted. In Our Mothers’ House, by acclaimed children’s author Patricia Polacco, was initially placed in the Easy Reading section of Windridge Elementary School in Davis County. After a group of parents complained that the book “normalizes a lifestyle we don’t agree with,” the school district instructed librarians to place the book behind the library counter and to lend it only with written permission from a parent.”

via American Civil Liberties Union

“With his plan to sell 2,000 new yellow-taxi medallions still in doubt, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has proposed slashing money for libraries and after-school programs and increasing fees on school lunches and parking meters to compensate for more than $600 million in lost medallion revenue.”

via NY Times

“Here’s a gathering place that seems to have it all. You can catch a recent movie, settling back in a cushy chair in a state-of-the-art black box theater. Maybe you’d enjoy learning how to knit or listening to a meet-the-candidates program. Or you could breeze in for a yoga class, a look at the latest paintings in the art gallery, or a freshly prepared panini sandwich. Oh yes, and while you’re here — visiting what is actually a public library — you might also check out a book”

via Standard-Examiner

“As newly appointed city librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library, John Szabo runs the nation’s largest public-funded library system, measured by population served.”

via LA Times