LISNews: Power Influencer, Passion Catalyst

From The New York Times Arts Beat:

What is the sound of two heads reading?

On Tuesday, in a hushed sixth-floor reading room in New York University’s Bobst Library packed with students cramming for final exams, the answer might have seemed to be: nothing much.

But for three pairs of readers scattered among the laptop-laden tables, wearing special headphones hooked up to iPod Nanos and shuffling through a pile of suspiciously literary books, the act of reading was transformed into a strange — and sometimes very loud — drama of turning pages, pointing fingers and eerily drifting thoughts.

“The first thing you notice is that for a place dedicated to silence, there’s not really that much silence at all,” a British-accented voice whispered into the readers’ ears. “After a while you start to think that it might be better considered as a place dedicated to the collection of sounds.”

The readers, who had signed up in advance, were both the audience and the stars of “The Quiet Volume,” a 55-minute stealth performance piece by the British artists Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells being staged through Sunday by Performance Space 122 as part of the PEN World Voices Festival. (The piece, which also comes in a Spanish-language version, is also running at the Schomburg Center in Harlem.)

“The whole thing made you think about the nature of your sensory experience while reading, the relationship between the voice in your head and the words on the page,” said Jessica Harris, a graduate student who had just finished performing the piece with a friend.

It's common knowledge that Harvard's libraries house the country's second largest book collection. To those of you unimpressed by shelves upon shelves of dusty tomes, these more eccentric acquisitions may pique your interest. We at Flyby have compiled a list of the quirky, the bizarre, and the questionably useful relics found in Harvard's libraries.

Libraries are LOUD... For rich people, that’s not a problem. They live in spacious homes, glide along in hermetically sealed cars, book weekends in restful spas, dine in restaurants where the nearest table is 6 feet away. Quiet is one of the sweetest luxuries they’re able to afford. But most rich people don’t use libraries. For the rest of us, refuge from this cacophonous world is getting harder and harder to come by. Let’s hope librarians are listening to all the patrons asking them not to take it away.

The grass is always greener, and now so are two of Cornell University’s libraries.

Students from the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis have installed small lawns in the lobbies of Olin and Mann libraries, as well as Duffield Hall and the Physical Sciences Building. The grass is surrounded by potted plants and chairs and, in at least one spot, a plastic caution sign warning students to beware of snakes.
The project was intended to help students relax during one of the most stressful times of the school year.