Bly Stays Home October 30, 2006

Photo by Kyndall Harkness, Minneapolis Star & Tribune Kudos to the University of Minnesota for coming up with the money to acquire the archive of Robert Bly, arguably Minnesota’s greatest literary figure since John Berryman. For $775,000 they get:1. 80,000 pages of handwritten manuscripts2. his journal spanning nearly 50 years3. notebooks of his “morning poems”;4. drafts of translations;5. hundreds of audio and videotapes,6. correspondence and first dibs on all future outputIt is a refreshing change…

Book Thief Hall of Shame October 27, 2006

Another book thief caught – another book thief goes unpunished Norman Buckley, a librarian at Manchester Central Library in England was convicted of stealing more than 450 books in a little over a year and then selling some of them online. The judge stated that Buckley “threatened the city’s literary heritage” then handed down a 15 month suspended sentence meaning he doesn’t serve any jail time. One would think the judge might have a higher…

The Book Building

Welcome to the “House of Free Creativity”Ashgabat, TurkmenistanA $17 million tribute to the free press built under the authoritarian leadership of President Separmurad Nyazov. Looks like a beautiful structure except there is only one small problem–there is no free press in Turkmenistan! Here is the Reporters Without Borders story on the hypocrisyhttp://www.rsf.org/print.php3?id_article=19370

W-Z October 26, 2006

W-ZThe ‘Libraries For All’ 1998 bond measure victory flagsHigh Point Library35th Ave SWWest Seattle A new Koolhaus designed Central Library, 5 other new branches and improvements to all 22 existing branches in Seattle. With usership up, the Central Library becoming a top tier tourist attraction, and each project adding something to each neighborhood we can only hope that we can take all this good karmic library energy that has resulted from this bond measure and…