August 2015

The library’s renovation is as exquisite as its history is turbulent. The building sits in the heart of the provincial capital that was wracked not so long ago by battles and bullets.

A three-decade civil war pitted Sri Lankan forces against rebels fighting a brutal campaign for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils. The rebels, known as Tamil Tigers, were crushed in 2009, in the closing months of the fighting.

From Up From The Ashes, A Public Library In Sri Lanka Welcomes New Readers : Parallels : NPR

In the mountains of Colorado last week, a group of library leaders were joined by thought leaders and decision-makers from government, technology, business, academia and philanthropy to consider and plan for the future of the public library. Assisted by facilitators at the Aspen Institute, participants in the Leadership Roundtable on Library Innovation, part of the Aspen Institute Dialogue on Public Libraries and supported by Knight Foundation, worked over three days on proposals to guide libraries through a difficult march toward future relevance.

From Libraries of the future: Super connectivity and a national stature | KnightBlog

As a follow-up to the early 20th-century American camping guides in the Rare Book Room of the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM), here is a look at their printed materials from the early 1900s reflecting this new focus on women and the outdoors. For example, Woodcraft for Women (1916) begins with these words by author Kathrene Sutherland Gedney Pinkerton:

From The Books that Taught American Women to Camp in the Early 20th Century

The public library in Redlands, California is much more than a steward of books and information. It is an exemplar of the history of the town and a living legend of its spirit of generosity, a hallmark of Redlands since its first days.

From Redlands California Library as Center of Civic Revival – The Atlantic

My principal connection to the field of history is through an undergraduate course I co-teach called “History of Information.” It’s a course that seeks to take students from Lascaux to WhatsApp and beyond in fifteen weeks: its key transitional phrase, as my colleague notes, is “moving right along.” The naivety of such an enterprise probably reveals to the audience of this blog that neither of the teachers is a historian.

From When was the age of information? | JHIBlog

The book is dead, long live the book.
Digital technology has certainly had a profound effect on the traditional book publishing and retailing industries, but has it also given the book a new lease of life?

From Did technology kill the book or give it new life? – BBC News

The “drinkable book” combines treated paper with printed information on how and why water should be filtered.
Its pages contain nanoparticles of silver or copper, which kill bacteria in the water as it passes through.
In trials at 25 contaminated water sources in South Africa, Ghana and Bangladesh, the paper successfully removed more than 99% of bacteria.

From Bug-killing book pages clean murky drinking water – BBC News

A Colorado man plead guilty on Thursday to littering. He wasn’t dumping trash, or toxic waste from a mine, but books, writes the Times-Call newspaper.

The paper reports that Glenn Pladsen, 62, got a ticket this spring after he tossed books along U.S. 287. Pladsen lives in Arvada, a town just outside of Denver, and apparently threw thousands of books out on the highway over several months because “he couldn’t figure out another way to get rid of them.”

If only he had other options. I took the liberty of googling “Denver book donations” and “used bookstores in Arvada.” If he had sought out the advice of the Denver Public Library, they probably would told him they accept donations. It appears that there are a few used bookstores in Arvada, too.

Full piece:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/14/432315904/colorado-man-throws-books-out-car-window-is-nabbed-for-littering

It’s not the e-reader that will be driving future books sales, it’s the phone. WSJ’s Jennifer Maloney joins Tanya Rivero with a look at now publishers are rethinking books for the small screen.

Commitments for NYLA often take me to far flung corners of New York State, and many times I have observed beautiful libraries along the way and lamented that my schedule prevented me from stopping to visit and explore.  As some of you know, I am the overly proud owner of a 1978 Volkswagen Westfalia Camper Van.  In order to make the most of my tween son’s waning agreeability, and the take the time to explore all those enticing libraries I have driven past, we planned a ten day barnstorming tour of the great state of New York, with him riding shotgun.

From August 2015: NYLA Library Tour 2015