Since 1999 our friends up north have designated January 27th as Family Literacy Day"Every year, on January 27, families and communities across Canada celebrate this special day at literacy-themed events coordinated by literacy organizations, schools and libraries"Why might such a celebration be in order?Because of these 7 facts of life: Simple things like reading and telling stories to a child at 18 months are powerful stimuli for brain development in the early years. (Early Years Study Final Report: Reversing the Real Brain Drain, Government of Ontario, 1999) Reading to children more than once a day has a substantial positive impact...
The Digital Battle For Our Literary Heritage: The Internet Archive vs. Google
"Libraries exist to preserve society's cultural artifacts and to provide access to them. If libraries are to continue to foster education and scholarship in this era of digital technology, it's essential for them to extend those functions into the digital world." One of the most important battles in the book world today is the fight for who gets to digitally archive our literary heritage.From the leading university libraries to the great collections housed in our public institutions decisions are being made that could potentially alter access to the treasure trove of material that lies within their walls.It is an idea...
Mid-Century Library To Be Demolished
In 1953 Hungarian architect and furniture designer Marcel Breuer designed the Grosse Pointe Central Library in Detroit. From the Detroit Free Press article:Getting Breuer to design the library in the Pointes was considered a coup. He crafted a small but elegant structure, two stories tall, with a front façade that was partly unadorned brick to echo the traditions of Grosse Pointe building materials, and partly a series of tall windows that created a transparency inside and out.In 2007 the" community's library board plans to demolish the Grosse Pointe Central Library and replace it with a newer, bigger structure"No renovation, no...
Picturing Independents
Opening today in The Cooley Gallery at Reed College in Portland, Oregon is the U.S. debut of "New and Used" an exhibit of photographs by Marc Joseph. Joseph traveled across America photographing "the spaces and objects of independent book and record stores". Steidl has recently published these photos in the book version of "New and Used". The book is accompanied by "a set of essays, short, fiction, and poetry by contemporary writers and musicians" who relate their own " used and new experience". Contributors include Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth fame, Eileen Myles, Jonathan Lethem, Shelley Jackson and Stephanie Snyder,...
The Disappearing Book Middle -Class
Much like the disappearing middle-class of American society the world of used books is being redefined as the market for mid-price books ($25-75) is slowly vanishing.Within the last 10 years, the influx of technology, the advent of online bookselling and widespread internet connectivity, has brought into the market millions upon millions of books that were simply unaccounted for.The book resale market has become a petri dish of supply and demand economics. Here the true free market is deciding price points.This flood of available material has taken many of the books in the $25-75 price range and reduced them to $1-$15...