LISNews: Librarian News

Did you feel it? Any books fall off the shelves? A 5.9-Magnitude (corrected to 5.8) earthquake struck the Eastern US shortly before 2:00 pm EST, centered in Virginia, but it was felt from the Carolinas to Toronto. Lots of libraries and other buildings were evacuated (some on Wall Street in NYC); here's a story from Spartanburg County, SC:

Spartanburg County Emergency Management Coordinator Doug Bryson was attending a state emergency managers’ meeting in Columbia discussing Hurricane Irene when the room began shaking. “It was a weird feeling,” Bryson said. “The floor and chairs were all shaking. Apparently, it’s affected the whole East Coast.” Bryson said he began getting calls about the quake but had not heard of any damage so far in Spartanburg County. The quake shook the shelves at the Spartanburg County Headquarters Library, which was briefly evacuated.

More reports from Patchogue NY, the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg VA, and the Nation's Capital, where the Library of Congress was evacuated.