America’s public schools are hemorrhaging librarians
America’s public education system is falling apart. Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia have all seen teacher walkouts this year. Teachers rightfully point to low pay, overcrowded classrooms, and stringent teach-to-the-test policies as… Read more »
Which musical instruments can you now check out from the Brooklyn Public Library?: An explainer
True fact: Libraries are the best, even beside the fact that their most basic function—to make an endless supply of books available, for free, to everybody—is just psychedelically excellent. For… Read more »
Police in Berlin have raided an anarchist library
Unpleasant news from Berlin, where, in the culturally simmering neighborhood of Kreuzberg, the Kalabal!k anarchist library has been raided by police. The library is part of Reiche 63a, a left-wing housing collective run by the… Read more »
A book was returned to a San Francisco library forty-seven years overdue
Better late than never. As Michelle Robertson reports at the San Francisco Chronicle, a library book has been returned late to the San Francisco Public Library after more than forty-seven years — forty-seven years,… Read more »
The University of Texas library puts books in storage to make way for makers
Last month, I had the chance to attend the Urban Librarians Conference here in Brooklyn. As I listened to librarians discuss the changing spaces they manage, they talked about more than… Read more »
Librarians are fed up with you people using cheese to mark your pages
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark? A feather? A candy wrapper? An old photograph of a man’s rear end? (The latter is not just idle conjecture;… Read more »
Maybe put Susan Orlean’s new book about libraries on hold at your local library
Susan Orlean, longtime New Yorker staff writer and author of books such as The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin, has announced her upcoming new book in ab exclusive to Entertainment Weekly’s… Read more »
Four teenagers stole rare books from a university library in 2004, and now their heist is being made into a movie
I wouldn’t know personally, but smoking weed sometimes gives people great bad ideas. In the case of four college freshmen in Kentucky, the idea was to steal upwards of $11 million… Read more »
The Case of the Secret Code in the Library Book
Last week, according to a story in the BBC, Georgia Grainger, a librarian at Charleston Community Library in Dundee, Scotland went viral on Twitter after sharing her story about a mystery… Read more »
“A book? What’s that? It’s made of trees, you say? Can I at least swipe on it?”
As you read this post, written by a currently very-depressed-publishing-professional, on your computer screen, tablet, or smartphone, the future of book-loving children everywhere hangs in the balance. According to Bronwen… Read more »