I recently had the pleasure to accompany my daughter and her 3rd/4th grade class on a three night camping trip to the Mt. Baker wilderness in Washington State. The goal of the trip was to teach the kids about watersheds, ecosystems, and our role and place within them and for the kids to get to know each other a little better at the outset of the school year. For me, it was 4 days of being completely unplugged and off the grid. One of the activities was a trip to the Baker Lake Salmon Hatchery, a state-of-the-art facility run by...
The Power of the Military….Library!
It was during World War I, when soldiers began wanting to have some reading material around for their downtime, that the book light went on in the military. It's also when the American Library Association went to work delivering books and magazines paid for through the war bond program. They raised "a whopping $5 million in public donations, distributing more than 7 million books and magazines, erecting 36 camp libraries and providing library collections to over 500 sites, including military hospitals." The effort became "the foundation for the Defense Department’s first and longest-running morale, welfare and recreation program." Nellie Moffitt, the Navy’s general...
A New Book Domino Record
[youtube]http://youtu.be/jfG3U4HAXJM[/youtube] Well that didn't take long. A mere 3 months after the Seattle Public Library established a new Guinness World Record for Book Dominos with a 2131 book tumble the folks at the Central Library in Cape Town, South Africa and the Open Book Festival have gone and shattered it. 2586 books went down. Congratulations to all involved. Who's next?
Graphically Speaking: The Benefits of a Library Card
September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month and the folks at The Pinal County Library District have come up with a novel way to promote the benefits of a library card. They compiled a list of 30 solid benefits offered by the public library and then transformed the list into a visual feast based on the minimalist, and retro design style of Penguin and Pelican classic paperback novels. All graphics were done by Pinal County Library District Emerging Technologies Librarian, Ann Leonard. More images and info: Benefits of a Library Card | Pinal County Reads h/t Boing Boing
Bookermania: The Man Booker Prize invades the Morgan
Check out what's coming up at the Morgan Library & Museum: HISTORY OF ENGLAND’S PRESTIGIOUS MAN BOOKER PRIZE IS THE SUBJECT OF NEW EXHIBITION AT THE MORGAN THIS FALL Bookermania: 45 Years of the Man Booker Prize September 13, 2013—January 5, 2014 New York, NY, August 22, 2013—England’s Man Booker Prize turnedPossession into an instant best seller, propelled The English Patientand Life of Pi onto the screen, and made a star out of an advertising copywriter named Salman Rushdie. Throughout its history, it has been a dynamic force in marketing literary fiction, while drawing attention to questions about the critical, popular, and economic influences that shape cultural value and...