The essence of a successful library is one that serves its community well.But what about those places that are hard to get to and where it is to costly to build a library?That's where the bookmobile or mobile library comes in and this one might just take the cake.The Biebbus was specially designed for the people of the densely populated and difficult to navigate Zaan region of the Amsterdam metro area by architect Jord den Hollander.It consists of a refurbished shipping container that pops up to provide two rooms, one for the 7,000 books it carries and one for the...
A Book Wall in a Food Place
The restaurant is called Brushstroke, a much anticipated Japanese restaurant about to open in New York City, and the walls of the bar/lounge are made of 12,000 used paperbacks!The Gothamist notes in their post on the opening the potential problems of such an undertaking "Who will be the first sake-bombed customer to idly pull out one of the books and bring the entire restaurant crashing down?"The interior was designed by Super PotatoFrom the photo above it looks like, with some minor tinkering, the the room can be turned into a Kafkaesque biblio-prision for the illiterate.
A Flash Mob of Readers in Support of National Library Week
In honor of National Library Week about 75 people showed up at a mall in Holyoke, Mass to stop and read a book.Here is the promotional poster for Library week featuring John Grisham as Honorary Chair:and here is Grisham sharing some library love:
Andy Rooney on e-books
In 2007 Andy Rooney did a segment on 60 Minutes on his visit to the New York Antiquarian Book Fair. In it he reminded us that books are one of the greatest inventions of all time.Now, nearly 4 years later, Rooney weighs in on e-books and e-readers and as you might expect he isn't too impressed."I'm not interested in having my books on an electronic device. I want them in books. I want my words in books" says Rooney.Full text of segment hereAnd for those in the New York area the 2011 book fair is currently under way.
Text-Off
The folks at the app judgement show on the Revision3 network hold a text-off.The rules: Who can type the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" the fastest on their mobile device.It begins with the first mobile typing device, a typewriter!A few info nuggets:"Words Per Minute" is generally the standard used to measure the speed at which someone types and according to a study quoted by Wikipedia, the "average" typing speed for the average "fast", "moderate", and "slow" typists is 40, 35, and 23 words per minute respectively.Also according to Wikipedia, the average professional typist reaches 50...