It looks like that's about how much it will cost to be a member of the London Library.The library, founded in 1841,was the brainchild of Thomas Carlyle who wanted (and needed) an alternative to the Reading Room at the British Museum. "The true university of these days is a collection of books,' said Carlyle.He asked his friends to help and they did:John Stuart Mill chose the books on political economy,William Gladstone picked the ecclesiastical history.Thackeray kept the books.George Eliot became a member, andDickens hung out at the library while researching A Tale of Two Cities.It is now the largest private...
Binding the Booker Prize
Binding: Lester Capon for 'Animal's People' by Indra Sinha (Simon & Schuster), Designer Bookbinders was founded over 50 years ago to promote the craft of fine bookbinding.Since 1991 their members have been creating beautiful unique bindings for the 6 shortlisted novels for Booker Prize.Here's how it works:"The binder...has only four to five weeks to read, design and bind their book (with a container). The books must be ready in time for the night of the final prize announcement, when each bound novel is presented to its author at the famous 'Booker dinner'."Wouldn't it be great if we had something similar...
Library of Congress Refutes Washington Post Article: Books are Not Missing They’re Just Not on the Shelf
The folks at the Library of Congress (LOC) got a lot of heat on Capitol Hill last week. Much of it centered around the Washington Post story, Materials Missing at Library of Congress, proclaiming that 17% of the material at the LOC is missing.Matt Raymond over at the Library of Congress blog shares with us the library's response via an article by Gail Fineberg in the internal LOC newsletter the Gazette titled IG's NOS Report Prompts Questions and Answers (IG = Inspector General; NOS = Not on Shelf). Excerpt is reproduced below.The library claims that all the missing material is...
The Day 300,000 Books Fell
"The top four floors of San Jose, California’s, eight-story Martin Luther King Jr. Library, which serves as the public library system’s main branch and the San Jose State University library, were temporarily closed to reshelve books after a 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit the city October 30."The building suffered no major damage but the building did intentionally sway back and forth to absorb the shock of the quake and as a result 300,000 books fell of the shelves!They are almost all picked up.American Library Association articleImage above of a bookstore after the Bay Area's 1989 Point Loma quake by J.K. Nakata of...
Rwanda’s Biblio Bus
Biblio BusThough traditionally an oral culture reading is increasingly on the rise in Rwanda and it is not an easy task providing access to reading material to its people. The cost of books and newspapers remain outside the reach of most Rwandans.The Biblio Bus is one of the 3B's. A project instituted by a group called Ishyo. The bus carries 4000 books in 3 different languages, Kinyarwanda, English and French, and is decorated by local artists.Currently the Biblio Bus visits schools and prisons only with the hope of eventually providing service to individuals.Students can borrow books for up to a...