LISNews: Librarian News

Do We Still Need Libraries? is a series of opinion pieces from the New York times. See:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/27/do-we-still-need-libraries?hp

WPRI reports: One year after donating $10,000 to Central Falls' Adams Memorial Library in Rhode Island, Alec Baldwin sent another $5,000 check to the library in response to its year-end fundraising appeal.

“I am overwhelmed with gratitude,” said library board president Bruce Kaplan. “A year ago, Alec’s donation helped us keep the doors open. This year he's helping us expand hours of operation and community programming.”

Funding for the Adams Memorial Library was cut in the wake of Central Falls' bankruptcy. It was forced to close its doors for several months in 2011, until a group of volunteers raised enough money to reopen the library.

The fight to keep libraries open has dominated the headlines but the UK has quietly lost more than 200 branches over the past year, according to a detailed national survey.

The rate of library closures has increased, reveals the annual report from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy: 146 branches closed between 2010 and 2011, with the number stepping up to 201 this year. The UK now has 4,265 libraries, compared with 4,612 two years ago, and the number of closures is likely to grow. Campaigners in Newcastle are currently fighting plans to close 10 out of the city's 18 libraries, with Billy Elliot playwright Lee Hall calling on the council to protect the city's heritage last month.

Sigh.

READING in bed, once considered a relatively safe pastime, is now seen by some as a riskier proposition according to this article in the New York Times.

Mark Lillis of Schendel Pest Services examines quarantined crates filled with library books in Wichita, Kansas.

That’s because bedbugs have discovered a new way to hitchhike in and out of beds: library books. It turns out that tiny bedbugs and their eggs can hide in the spines of hardcover books. The bugs crawl out at night to feed, find a new home in a headboard, and soon readers are enjoying not only plot twists but post-bite welts.