With a Wonder and a Wild Desire

“

If you’re trying to raise a reader, you need your library. It’s too expensive and somewhat wasteful to buy the hundreds of books a young reader goes through in those first years of learning to read.

Parents, Children, Libraries, and Reading: Select quotes from parents and library staff (via pewinternet)

(via libraryjournal)

05/6/13

libraryjournal:

“When you have these two important qualifications - love for books and love for people - you may well consider the vocation of a librarian, a vocation that gives full enjoyment to the librarian and radiates it to the public.” - [x]

A gif set of my dreams.

*love*

(via libraryjournal)

04/25/13

libraryjournal:

Five Great Things Libraries Are Doing With Old Books | LJ Insider

Library book sales (and their descendants, such as Better World Books) are a great institution, but they’re not the only thing libraries can do—or help their patrons do—with obsolete titles besides the dumpster. Here are five creative reuses from real libraries.

Turning them into New Books

In Richmond, VA, The People’s Library is a collaborative art project to create 100 handmade books of personal history. The Richmond Public Library helped collect discarded books to be recycled into paper, then bound into books with prompts inside them. They’ll be added to the library’s permanent collection, and patrons can check them out and respond to the prompts.

Turning them into Art
In Bath, England, the library found a new use for weeded books that don’t sell. Patrons collect a book and turn it into an art contest entrywith the help, if they like, of a series of library workshops. The resulting art projects are exhibited at the central library and online and the public votes for their favorites; the winner in each category receives a free ereader.

Fixing Them
For 40 years, Georgia’s Hall County Library System has partnered with the National Library Bindery to restore old books and Biblesbelonging to library patrons. Repairs take about two months, and patrons are charged for the service.

Turning Them Into Furniture
An oldie but a goodie: a reference desk made of books in a Dutch library.

Turning Them into Fundraisers
Recycled Reads, the Austin Public Library’s used bookstore, upcycles old books and media into crafts and sells the results.

I now really want to start an art contest for book sculptures. We have an art major and books that will never sell on the book sale (hello, London postal code from 1967!). I can make this happen.

04/18/13

deweyscloset:

OMG funny!

(via noeatinginthelibrary)

04/11/13

I work at a public library.: Thanks, Many

iworkatapubliclibrary:

Dear Patron,

So you’d like to donate some books to the library? We appreciate you thinking of us! However, please first ask yourself these questions:

Have they been sitting in your basement or attic for any length of time?
Are there roach droppings in the boxes?
Are the pages yellowed or…

Read it. Remember it.

01/17/13

libraryjournal:

Also, check out #librarianstress on Twitter.

01/4/13

“

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.

The Wrong War Over eBooks: Publishers Vs. Libraries - Forbes (via sdiaz101)

Definitely an interesting article about the ebook arguments between libraries and publishers, but I’m not sure about his conclusion of a pay-per-circ model for library ebook distribution. Though at the end of the day, that may be because the past and current interactions between publishers and libraries have focused the power too far on the publishing side and seemed arbitrarily expensive and restrictive without data to back up those costs or restrictions.

(via libraryjournal)

12/13/12

libraryjournal:

Inspired by School Library Journal’s 2012 Librarian Lump of Coal Gift Guide, and selected by the completely subjective methodology of “I thought it was cool,” here are 10 gifts for the librarian you actually like. (Via LJ News Editor Meredith Schwartz).

Definitely intrigued by many of these items. Except anything Dewey is strange to me…LCC ftw.

(via libraryjournal)

12/13/12

informationscienceantelope:

[Need to validate your existence as a librarian to yourself or others,

There’s a Neil Gaiman quote for that]

Aside from the popular Google quote (“Google can bring you back 100000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one.”), I’m quite fond of “I see libraries and librarians as frontline soldiers in the war against illiteracy and the lack of imagination.” and “Rule number one: Don’t fuck with librarians.”

(via noeatinginthelibrary)

12/6/12

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A librarian isn’t a clerk who happens to work at a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a Sherpa, and a teacher.

Seth Godin

(basically, librarians are ballers)

(via angelalovestoread)

(via libraryjournal)

12/6/12

With a Wonder and a Wild Desire

Ask me anything