After the yearly bookfair held in Romainmôtier, a small quiet Swiss town near the border with France, artist Jan Reymond takes the remaining books and creates an installation. Reymond says he wanted to give the unsold books "a last life" before they got thrown away.The bookfair is held at the town church, a classic Romanesque structure that dates back to the 5th century. It is in one of these perfect Romanesque arches that house Reymond's installation. For Reymond the arch represents "spiritual power."This year the arch became home to a book framed doorway with books suspended from the top of...
Haunted Libraries
We're still a long way from Halloween but Halloween season is certainly in full swing.George Eberhart at the Britannica blog has his second installment (covering Florida-Maryland) of his "fairly comprehensive list of allegedly haunted libraries, or at least ones where patrons, staff, or local folklorists have associated with paranormal happenings."Some highlights:At the Cairo Public Library in Illinois there is the ghost named Toby who "reportedly hangs out in the special collections room on the second floor of this 1884 building."In the old Cedar Rapids Public Library (which now the Cedar Rapids Art Museum) in Iowa "an apparent case of “crisis...
The Demise of the Jackson County Library System
As of next week the libraries of Jackson County, Oregon will have been closed to the public for 6 months. No storytime for kids, no books, movies or cd's for the residents, no book clubs and no internet access for the people most in need and most importantly one less place for people to get information.In April, the libraries ran out of federal money and were left to their own devices to fill the gap.In May, for the second time, voters failed to approve a tax increase that would have reopened the 15 libraries.The interim library director, Tom Stark, left...
Book Review: Illuminated by Matt Bronleewe
The bad guys need to round up 3 extant Gutenberg bibles so they can piece together a secret code through the illuminations and gain "immeasurable wealth while doing incalculable damage to two major religions." They kidnap the kid of a rare book dealer or "archeobibliologist" August Adams who's knowledge base is the only hope the bad guys have to figure out the mystery.Adam's wife also happens to be a librarian at the Library of Congress and has access to their copy of the Bible which is also needed for this operation. Her name is April.One of the main villains is...
Banned Books and the Presidents
Chris Finan, President of The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE), reminds us that the whole concept of Banned Books Week is a direct response to the Republican Revolution that began with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.Booksellers, librarians, and publishers celebrated the first Banned Books Week in 1982 against the background of a political and cultural counterrevolution. Many people saw the election of Ronald Reagan as a chance to strike back against the liberalization that had occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. On the local level, they began challenging hundreds of books that were used in schools...