In Texas, architects have turned an abandoned big-box store into a huge library.  Formerly a Wal-Mart, now it houses thousands of books, and provides a much greater service to the area than a huge wasteland of steel and concrete was. See also: Big Box Reuse, which has a companion book.

Via.

Labels: architecture, library, texas

A few weeks ago I was at the Fargo Public Library, and saw the book to the right: it was so naiively incomplete, I had to take a few pictures. Everything You Need to Know About the Goth Scene is a tiny book full of pictures with only the slightest superficial information on Gothness, including a connection to Wicca I'd never really heard before, so I planned on panning the book here. When I got home, however, I saw Hang Fire Books had linked to the Awful Library Book blog, so I thought I'd send it to them instead and get their take on it.

The reason those librarians found the book to be awful were largely different from me. I had thought it was a book focused on parents trying to come to terms with their weird-dressing child, but their research saw the book as mostly filed under "young adult" categories, which I could see in the simple language and unassuming blandness of most of the content. It probably is better suited for kids than parents, but I found it filed in the adult shelves, so my assumption was based largely on how it appeared on the shelves than its content. A book mostly of pictures with simple language and general statements definitely is more suited for a 10-year-old than a parent — had I found this in the kid's section, I wouldn't have questioned the Everything book's uneverythingness. That brings the Awful Librarian's thoughts more into light: a librarian is often less a judge of content, more an overseer of how information is filed and presented to the potential reader.

Labels: children's books, goth, library

Library cats are, by far, the best animal in the world to own. Need to get some research done? Send the cat down to the library to look it up for you. Past-due books? Tie them to his back. Fidel, on the right, stops in to his public library daily after his owners let him out in the morning. They go to work, he goes to the library, and when his owners get home Fidel checks out his books, pushes in his chair, and goes home for the night. Here in the U.S., libraries have to buy their own kitties, sadly. Via.

Labels: cat, library, uk

Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell were artists, friends, and lovers, with a sense of artistic boredom that led them to the library.

"Libraries might as well not exist; they've got endless shelves for rubbish and hardly any space for good books." Orton, 1967.

The pair were sentences to 6 months in prison for altering and defacing library books to entertaining ends. Somebody, probably originally for the sake of evidence, saved the altered covers. Orton and Halliwell got nationwide media attention due to the story of their arrest, entitled Gorilla in the Roses, after this altered cover.

via.

Labels: altered books, culture jamming, joe orton, kenneth halliwell, library

Labels: bookseller, donation, gotham book mart, library

The Night Bookmobile, a serialized graphic novel by Audrey Niffenegger — start at the beginning.


(via)

Labels: Audrey Niffenegger, comic, graphic novel, library, the night bookmobile

The Wifey and I aren't so good at this (and, I must admit, I'm better at it than the Wifey); our recent solution was to buy some taller shelves to put more books on. Laura Miller of the New York Times was forced into the position by a need for repainted walls. Like a fine English garden, you need to do some pruning and cultivating for a book collection to remain clean, pretty, and wanderable. Your criteria for what's a weed and what's a flower is a matter of your personality.

Labels: book collecting, bookcase, library

Jay Walker, a made-up name if I ever heard one, has one of the geekiest personal libraries ever:

Yes, that is an actual Sputnik.

Labels: jay walker, library, sputnik

The great thing about the internet is how thought progresses along hyperlinked trails. A few weeks ago, I painstakingly transcribed and scanned some early 20th century plans for a hydrocarbon-burning 'magic lantern' (or primitive slide projector). Days pass, my little page is linked at a few popular websites, and today I start to see incoming links from "Friends of African Village Libraries", a blog of a nonprofit working towards providing books for small African settlements. It's clear the idea didn't come from me directly, but the info I provided helped build evidence to back up the concept that basic multimedia systems can be provided for literary education, without significant power consumption, rather than a high-tech solution that requires electricity. It reminds me of the candle-powered radio I read about in the book Design for the Real World, intended for rural third-world regions. The radio required little to no maintenance, could be powered by anything that burned, and could be made from simple components salvaged from available materials (and a few key provided components, of course). Viewing a culture for its capabilities and familiarities may be more successful than to throw technology at it; there's a limit to what technology can accomplish without causing societal changes to make it work.

Labels: africa, infomercantile, library, progressive, technology

It's a common bugaboo about national security, the comment that the government can see your library records (the film Se7en even made it a plot point), but the Patriot Act days we live in actually have FBI agents desiring people's reading habits. These are performed, without warrant, simply by giving a librarian a National Security letter explaining they are gagged from discussing even recieving a letter, and that they are required to turn over the records without ability to question or appeal the request.


Librarians, however, are standing up to the invasion of their readers' privacy -- but at great risk to themselves, which paints them in a poor light in the FBI's eyes, practically terrorists themselves. While progress has been made, enforcing lawful search-and-seizure requirements for all law enforcement, terrorism focus or no, the government is still pushing the limits of Constitutional review of citizen's reading history.

Labels: crime, library, patriot act, privacy

A librarian in Ludington, MI, penned a book about various strange and pitiful library patrons she had encountered while behind the desk, but her literary aspirations have gotten her fired. Painting readers in a bad light is a serious issue to her library, but readers are rarely a problem -- it's the homeless and mentally ill who have nowhere else to go, and end up at the library with its comfy chairs, quiet bathrooms, and unlikeliness of getting arrested. It's serious enough that the ALA addresses the issue, but the problem is mostly homelessness, not the libraries themselves...unless a librarian starts documenting them for her novel. I haven't read the book (or even any excerpts) -- if it's written well, good for her; if it's written humorously, treating people in need as clowns, then I'll have a problem with the book.

Labels: authors, homeless, library

Inmates do well to spend their time reading, when they've got nothing much else to do. As a publisher, I'd say about once every three months we get a letter from a prison inmate asking for a catalog, or at least more information on the kind of books we publish. The letters rarely contain any useful information (is this for personal use, library-stocking, profit-making resale?), and some clearly have no idea what kind of a publisher we are. However, Wifey and I were talking about this on the drive to Wisconsin a few weeks ago, and noted that one out of every 140 Americans are in prison (source: 1 2 ) is a significant portion of society for whom having access to books would be a greater benefit than most recreational readers. It made us wonder if there's publishers or distributors catering to this, ahem, "captive" market, providing non-contraband books that would provide a value to an incarcerated person, possibly with funding from non-profits or federal grants due to the beneficial nature of the business. As a small niche business goes, we know crime and prisons aren't going away anytime soon, and that's the market to get into according to most entrepeneurial advice.

Labels: book publishing, crime, library, prison

No, I'm not talking about soccer in the stacks: I'm talking about this video game. In it, you take the stack of books on the left, and drag them over to the bookshelf in the middle. The complicated part? You have to shelve them correctly, according to Library of Congress number. When I was in school, they drilled in Dewey Decimal; then I got to college, and found that smart peoples organize their books differently. This game should help any of you who stand at the front of the library, jaw resting on your chest, staring dumbfounded at how all those books got in order. If you think the game is lame, well, you have compatriots at Fark, who are very amusing in their hatred of this game.

Labels: call number, game, library, library of congress classification

The Pew Internet & American Life Project, in conjunction with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, has performed a survey (pdf of results) to find out where people turn to for information: internet, libraries, friends, family, etc. Interesting to me: 40% of Generation Y would go to the library, as opposed to 20% of those above age 30. The survey is complex in its respondent makeup, though: I wonder if this is skewed by the number of young people's lack of home computers and internet connections -- people over 30 are probably more likely to have a computer in the house, have kids around preventing a quick run to the library, and other reasons and benefits to stick at home rather than dashing down to the bookitorium. Still, if teens and young adults still see libraries as a valuable resource -- whatever form the library has taken today or in the future -- then there's something to be said for libraries as a cornerstone of an information society. If the ALA wants to remind people that the internet is not a library, then they should embrace that their combination of internet and library is of significant value. Now, if only governments will realize the value of libraries to their public.

Labels: library, pew internet, study

Labels: books, library, monkeys with typewriters

Sometimes, a book makes such an impression, that they're hard to overlook:


This is the parking ramp for the downtown Kansas City MO library. It is, of course, a facade, to pretty up what's traditionally an ugly type of structure, and really makes an impression as to what the building is all about. I'm impressed that they accepted and enlarged a few traditionally 'banned books' -- Catch-22 and Fahrenheit 451, but that's what library's are supposed to do, right? The giant-book project was done in 2005, and it seems to still be around. (more photos, including construction)

Labels: architecture, books, facade, kansas city downtown library, library, parking garage

The Wyoming State Library, in the interest of bringing attention to the libraries in their state, has produced an award-winning ad campaign. My favorite: The sexy-girl-mudflap image (see ex.), adapted to have the busty lady reading a book. That's my kind of gal! That particular image is designed to advertise the Library's free access to the online Chilton library -- an excellent bonus, compared to a lot of other areas. Car repair and chromed babes go hand-in-hand, and books are sexy, you've got to admit it. For the state with the smallest population and a reputation for a cowboy lifestyle, Wyoming's library system does a good job of making themselves useful, resulting in over 8 items checked out per year per capita (ref). I'm sure this is due to the statewide library-card, allowing cardholders to check out books, anywhere -- including colleges -- with their one card. When a state makes their libraries both sexy and accessible, it's no wonder people use them.

Labels: advertising, books, library