Credit: Photo by Christian Hansen for The New York Times Each week for the past eight years, with a suitcase stuffed with books, librarian Colbert Nembhard leaves the Morrisania Branch Library in the Bronx for a 10 minute walk to the Crotona Inn homeless shelter. Once there he turns "the shelter’s day care room or its dimly lighted office into an intimate library" and the magic begins. Mr. Nembhard goal is to encourage children to have a lifelong relationship with libraries and its' working. His program has served as the model for a citywide initiative to place small libraries at shelters for...
The World’s First Mobile Library; A ‘Jacobean Kindle’
The year was 1617. William Hakewill MP commissioned it to give as a gift to a friend. And it just might be the first mobile library. The Jacobean miniature travelling library consisted of 50 gold-tooled vellum-bound miniature books contained in a wooden case that resembled a large folio. Inside there were three shelves for the books. The inside cover was an illuminated table of contents. The subject matter covered history, poetry, theology and philosophy and included works by Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Horace and Julius Caesar. It was the perfect gift for a reader on the go and must of been a hit for within...
After years of military rule books and hope are returning to Myanmar
After decades of repression and censorship the people of Myanmar are getting their books and libraries back! Since the military leadership lost power in 2011, the country has developed a network of mobile libraries to compensate for the vast network of public libraries that are in various states of disarray. Through the non-profit Daw Khin Kyi Foundation foundation, created by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and new leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, resources are being harnessed "to promote health, education and living standards". As you can imagine, little energy went to the development or care of the library system during military rule. The libraries were...
Books on Wheels: A Global Jaunt
Antonio La Cava's Ilbibliomotorcarro - Italy Recently we posted a photo on Tumblr of Antonio LaCava roaming around Italy in his three-wheel creation. It has turned out to be a very popular post so we thought we would expand it a bit to feature some wheeled libraries from around the world. From India's first bookmobile to Raul-Lemesoff's book tank the power of the written word remains strong and our hats are off to these dedicated people of the book. Raul-Lemesoff's Weapon of Mass Instruction, Argentina Image (cc) by Carlos Adampol on Flickr Mr Doi. And his bike, Japan Eastern Europe? Bicicloteca, Brazil Kordestan, Iran,...
Tell a Story: Bringing literature to the tourists
If you happen to be visiting Lisbon any time soon you might run into this blue book van at one of the cities main attractions. The project is called Tell a Story and was created by the Portuguese advertising agency MSTF Partners. The goal is to expose visitors to a wide array of Portuguese literature in translation, in other words, to tourists that do not speak Portuguese. What visitor to Portugal wouldn't benefit from a little José Saramago, Fernando Pessoa, or Eça de Queiroz ? Luckily, Tell a Story is not a one-way street. "There's no better way to remember a journey than a book. And...