Image viaAn elementary school library in Manchester, England has begun using a new system developed by Microsoft where kids use their thumbprints to check-out and return books.The head of the school, Lesley Isherwood, praises the system for its efficiency and notes that no image of the fingerprints are ever stored. The system is also entirely voluntary. Phil Booth, national coordinator of NO2ID, a privacy campaign group is highly skeptical of the program. “For such a trivial issue as taking out of library books the taking of fingerprints is way over the top and wrong...It conditions children to hand over sensitive personal...
Masahisa Fukase’s ‘Ravens’ chosen Best Photography Book of the last 25 years
The British Journal of Photography asked five experts to pick their top five photography books of the last quarter-century. Masahisa Fukase's Karasu (Ravens), first published in 1986 by Sokyu-sha, was the winner. The photographs for this "obscure masterpiece" were taken during train journeys back to his birthplace in northern Japan following his divorce from his wife. Most were taken through the train's window.Many see the dark, ominous imagery as an "allegorical critique of modern industrialised society" as well as a visual meditation on mourning. The first American edition of Karasu was published by Bedford Arts in 1991, under the title Solitude...
Step Up in Style
Looking for a cool step stool to reach those books on the top shelves of your library or bookstore?The 50th anniversary library edition of the Cramer Kik-Step stool might be the answer.This special edition features quotes from the likes of Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger, Edith Wharton and Mark Twain emblazoned on its nonslip tread and has a slick stainless steel finish.It can easily be rolled around with the casters locking into place once you step on it. The bumper that surrounds it protects anything in its path.And for those who need to get the big heavy books on the upper...
Lady Masereel: Marta Chudolinska’s Wordless Novel ‘Back + Forth’
Noted illustrator, wood engraver, printer and book designer George A.Walker encourages his students at the Ontario College of Art & Design to "embrace 19th century linocut printmaking techniques to create extended visual narratives."One of the fruits of his labor is this stunning book by Marta Chudolinska. Chudolinska, who immigrated to Canada from Poland in 1991, cites Frans Masereel, one of the titans of the wordless novel, as her inspiration for the book. "Masereel's style is vivacious, focused more on expression and energy than on completely accurate representation" says Chudolinska. His "characters are still alive on the page a hundred years...
Library Graffiti
In the summer of 2007 Quinn Dombrowski started documenting the graffiti she encountered on her visits to the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago. She began posting the images on Flickr and by 2009 she had amassed a collection of over 700 pieces of graffiti.In the summer of 2009 the project got helped along by a story on Jacket Copy, the book blog of the Los Angeles Times, and by the time time the year was out Quinn published Crescat Graffiti, Vita Excolatur: Confessions of the University of Chicago, a book containing many of the highlights of the collection.The...