An activist in Hong Kong has been convicted of throwing out library books as an act of protest
According to a report by Jasmine Siu in yesterday’s South China Morning Post, Hong Kong-based activist Alvin Cheng Kam-mun has been convicted of theft and fined HK$3,000 (about $385 in US money). The… Read more »
Children and onlookers bemo-an the fate of Jakarta’s three-wheeled library
You’ve got to love librarians — especially the ones who find creative ways to get books to underserved communities. Unfortunately, one such community in Jakarta, Indonesia may find itself without easy access to books soon, after… Read more »
The Book Women: Librarians who delivered books on horseback
Way before Amazon started delivering books via flying robots (that’s how it works, right?), Depression-era women librarians were delivering books by horseback in the secluded mountains of Kentucky. The Pack Horse Library was part… Read more »
Tehran is now home to a massive book garden
Generally, theocracies that rank among the world’s worst offenders against freedom of expression aren’t expected to build indoor metropolises brimming with books. Usually they have the reputation of enforcing archaic capital punishment laws, suppressing… Read more »
6,000 books destroyed in Phoenix Library flood
It is monsoon season in the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix, Arizona. That’s right, buckaroo, the 120-plus-degree summer afternoon hellscapes that bring life here to a standstill are punctuated by evenings… Read more »
About those books in chains on Game of Thrones
(NB The following contains minor spoilers for Games of Thrones season 7, episode 1.) Last week, we were graced with the long-awaited return of everyone’s favorite politically-charged, blood-and-violence-infused fantasy series: Game of… Read more »
Pew report finds millennials are the absolute best generation (at going to libraries)
Back in those breezy, know-nothing days of 2014, Russia invaded Crimea, Ebola was terrifying the masses, and we were reporting on a Pew Research Center study that suggested millennials used libraries as much… Read more »
When you wish upon a university library…
Librarians at the University of Missouri are hoping Christmas comes early this year. They wrote a wish list of books they want for their library and sent it to the… Read more »
What’s the collective noun for twenty white, longlisted authors?
Ah, the nuance and beauty of the collective noun. Everyone has their favourite, from a murder of crows to a shrewdness of apes or an obstinacy of buffalo. Lane Smith’s book There… Read more »
The ceiling in the Rose Reading Room is broken again
After a piece of plaster fell from the ceiling of the New York Public Library’s iconic Rose Reading Room in 2014, the space was closed off for a staggering two-and-a-half… Read more »