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ALA is seeking nominations for the 2018 I Love My Librarian Award, which recognizes librarians for transforming lives and communities through education and lifelong learning. The national award invites library users to nominate their favorite librarians working in public, school, college, community college or university libraries. Nominations are being accepted now through October 1 at I Love Libraries....
ALA, Aug. 6 |
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Lightning struck the Hopkinton (N.H.) Town Library August 3 and set the building on fire. The resulting smoke and water damage destroyed the library’s inventory, and staffers say it’s unclear how long the building will be out of commission for cleanup. The Hopkinton Library Foundation is collecting donations....
Concord (N.H.) Monitor, Aug. 5 |
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Hundreds of people showed up at the Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales branch of Denver Public Library on August 5 for a unique fundraiser. DPL teamed with Certified Tattoo Studio to offer literary-themed tattoos, with a portion of the proceeds going to the library. DPL is also one of a number of libraries that has offered readers‘ advisory based on patrons’ existing ink....
CBS4 Denver, Aug. 5; American Libraries feature, March/April |
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Kent Oliver writes: “A recent opinion piece in Forbes suggested Amazon should replace local public libraries to save taxpayers’ money. The pushback was overwhelming; the article was pulled, and the message was clear: libraries offer people more than books. Their return on investment for the American people is unlike any the private sector can offer—frankly, a library’s value is unmatched. Studies around the country all show that, when you look at dollars spent on public libraries, taxpayers get a great deal.”...
The Nashville Tennesseean, Aug. 5 |
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Jack Nicas writes: “For decades, the district south of downtown and alongside San Francisco Bay here was known as either Rincon Hill, South Beach, or South of Market. This spring, it was suddenly rebranded on Google Maps to a name few had heard: the East Cut. The peculiar moniker immediately spread digitally, from hotel sites to dating apps to Uber, which all use Google’s map data. The name soon spilled over into the physical world, too.”...
New York Times, Aug. 2 |
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Kristen Tsetsi writes: “I’ve been air-quoting ‘reading’ since my first legitimate introduction to audiobooks this past winter. Before then, the only time I’d heard a book—well, part of a book—was in a hot car during a summer visit to Minnesota in the eighties. It had put 13-year-old me to sleep, and so it had also put me off audiobooks. But exactly 30 years later, Ian would get an Audible account to ease the pain of stop-and-go work commute traffic, and not long after that, on a drive to Litchfield, Connecticut, to do some Christmas shopping, he’d convince me to listen to J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. I warned him that I might fall asleep. I didn’t.”...
JaneFriedman.com, Aug. 6 |
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Rachel Paige King writes: “In 1961, what newly published book was denounced as “subversive and intolerably offensive”? Was it the new American edition of Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s sexually explicit autobiographical novel? Nope. Although that book was called filthy, rotten, repulsive, and “an affront to human decency,” the correct answer is Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.”...
The Atlantic, Aug. 5 |
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Like all libraries, New York Public Library gets thousands of questions from patrons looking for books whose titles they can't quite remember—the story about a dragon that enlists a young girl as his apprentice, and also happens to be a cheesemonger, or the one about a kid named Wurm who makes a computer game in his college dorm room. Reader Services Librarian Gwen Glazer recently convened a team of book sleuths from many NYPL branches for a “Title Quest” hackathon....
Atlas Obscura, Aug. 6 |
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Christian Holub writes: “The stories of Judy Blume have remained on the page despite millions of sales and dozens of awards. That might change soon, however. Blume tweeted on August 2 that she was meeting with ‘many talented people’ in Los Angeles about possible adaptations. She even asked her followers to chime in with suggestions for which of her books they would like to see on screen.” (Read our 2014 Newsmaker interview with Blume.)...
Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 3; American Libraries feature, March/April 2014 |
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Louise Candlish writes: “I freely admit to trawling newspaper crime reports for ideas of the kind to scare the middle classes witless. Like having your identity stolen by a fraudster. Yes, some alternative identities are created for the cold-hearted facilitation of a crime—or, in the case of witness protection, in a bid to escape personal jeopardy—but sometimes it’s more emotionally complex than that.”...
Crime Reads, Aug. 6 |
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