Portraits of Librarians
(via kottke)
Hot & Heavy Library Action
So here I sit editing and fact-checking the transcript of an oral history interview. I go to look up the proper forms of a few names, and — “All available connections to Library of Congress Authorities are currently in use. Please try again in a few minutes.”
Must be something I don’t know about. Maybe horny guys on oil rigs are looking for porn.
Nevada Test Site Oral History Project
Courtesy of the National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office.
In December 1950, President Harry S. Truman approved the establishment of a continental nuclear proving ground 65 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. Between 1951 and 1992, 1021 nuclear detonations took place at the Nevada Test Site — one hundred explosions were in the atmosphere and 921 were underground. It is estimated that the test site employed 125,000 during the Cold War. The photograph [above] shows the De Baca test, detonated on October 26, 1958. Five days later the U.S. and U.S.S.R. agreed to a nuclear testing moratorium which stayed in effect until the Soviets resumed testing in 1961. In 1992, a second nuclear testing moratorium went into effect. Subcritical tests and other national security programs are ongoing at the 1375-square-mile Nevada Test Site.
Dead People’s Books
Folks over at LibraryThing are beginning to aggregate the library catalogs of dead people. The first completed archive is Thomas Jefferson.
“Dude! Santa Cruz Scores Dead Archive!”
The archives of the Bay Area rock band the Grateful Dead - a treasure trove of more than 30 years of memorabilia that includes the band’s first recording contract, life-size skeletons of band members and artwork hand-made by its fans - are headed to UC Santa Cruz, where they will be displayed at McHenry Library.
i love the library
A few months ago I logged on to the Sacramento Public Library website to put a hold on Psychogeography and have it sent to the branch nearest my house.
Of course, the Library didn’t own Psychogeography. Naturally, I filled out the online request form suggesting they buy it.
Yesterday, I stopped in to see if they had any books for me and, sitting on the hold shelf with my name on it was a brand new copy of Psychogeography.
The Social Function of Libraries and Archives
Back when I went to “Library School”, we all had to take a course titled “The Library and Society”. One day in class I said out loud, “One under-appreciated social value of libraries is that they provide employment to the otherwise unemployable.”
See comment by Cindy Scroggins ff.
Of course, this observation does not apply to Cindy or to Aaron Winslow or to me or any of the other librarians or archivists who contribute to or otherwise participate in the clusterflock experience.
NOON reading, NYC
NOON2008
The Mercantile Library
17 East 47th Street
April 14 at 6:30
Clancy Martin
Dawn Raffel
Christine Schutt
Many Hands Make Light Work
For Sheila, as well as the five people who don’t read BoingBoing: The Library of Congress invites Flickr users to tag its photos.
See the archives . . .
The archives of Cormac McCarthy, below, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, have been bought for $2 million by the Southwestern Writers Collection of Texas State University-San Marcos, The Associated Press reported. The university said the archives included correspondence, notes, drafts and proofs of 11 novels by Mr. McCarthy, 74, who won the Pulitzer for his 2006 novel, “The Road,” and a 1992 National Book Award for “All the Pretty Horses.”
(link, via private correspondence)
Texas State University (nee Southwest Texas State University) is where I earned my masters; the Southwestern Writers’ Collection was just getting started when I graduated, so I’m feeling especially proud to know this.
The Back-of-the-Envelope Bush Library Design Contest
(Illustration by Bob McGrath)George W. Bush might not have been much of a book reader when he was at Yale University, but like any modern president, he will have a presidential library — likely at Southern Methodist University.
Robert A.M. Stern, celebrity architect and dean of the Yale School of Architecture, has been picked to design it. But we are certain that Chronicle readers have their own ideas of what the George W. Bush Presidential Library should look like.
We’re asking for your back-of-the-envelope designs, as if you’d sat down next to the president and sketched out your idea on a scrap piece of White House stationery.
We want designs that are serious, humorous, adventurous, or all of the above. You could win a sleek iPod Touch.
Here’s how this will work.
Card Catalog Quilt
Never got around to posting about Card Catalog while it was in progress. I’ve written before about my affection for card catalogs, which developed in high school when I worked at a public library. I still work with books professionally, so this quilt seemed like a natural—especially since I wanted to try printing on fabric.
Archive Exhibit Celebrates More Than Just Itself
There are times when it’s OK to be totally self-centered.
This is exactly that time for the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection. All year, the folks at the Carter G. Woodson branch of the Chicago Public Library — where the collection is housed — have been celebrating the collection’s 75th anniversary with an exhibit on itself.
Over the years, the library has hosted at least a couple of exhibits annually on African-African history and culture — such as the one on Chicago’s role in the birth of gospel music. But the library has never turned the spotlight on its own baby. I have to tell you, it’s no shrinking violet.
This collection of African-American history and literature, believed to be the largest in the Midwest, is amazing.
BFI Endangered
The British Film Institute has been part of my life almost as long as I can remember [writes Colin MacCabe in Sunday's Observer]. In Sixties London it was the only place to learn the history of the cinema, to see retrospectives of Howard Hawks or Roberto Rossellini. In the Eighties I was incredibly lucky to work with Derek Jarman, Terence Davies and Sally Potter as head of the BFI Production Board. It has thus been extremely painful to see the BFI being destroyed over the last 10 years by government policy. Ever since New Labour was elected in 1997 it has shown no sign of valuing this very British organisation.
Nixon Library’s Changes Start with Watergate
“I can’t run a shrine,” says the man who ordered the demolition, Timothy Naftali, 45. Named last year as the library’s first federal director, the Harvard-trained historian is guiding the library’s shift from a privately run facility — the only modern presidential library not part of the federal system — to an institution that bears the National Archives’ imprimatur.
(Link)
From the comments
There were a few months in Chicago (before depression forced me to stay in my apartment and eat ice cream and smoke cigarettes for another few months) where I was a telephone reference librarian at the Harold Washington branch. It was superfun! I would sit in a phone bank with 3-4 other librarians and answer the amusing inquiries of the drunk, lazy, homebound, and/or otherwise indisposed to travel to the library. For example, an elderly and bedridden lawyer would telephone nearly everyday and ask a question the answer to which would be some sort of historical trivia (Who was Adlai Stevenson’s second running mate?). When you would deliver to him the correct answer, he would praise you in his charming Greek accent, “Bravo! I congratulate you!”
Posted by: Aaron Winslow | June 13, 2007 8:38 AM
Congratulations Mr. Renner!
I would like to be the first to offer my congratulations to our friend Cooper Renner on his imminent retirement from the public school system. Today around noon he will be set free, ready for his new life on the road. Perhaps he will say a bit more about the years of service he offered? About what it means to him to move beyond the library? He was a teacher at the high school I attended and I graduated in 1987. I’m sure he is very pleased to be moving on. Go ahead. Clap for him. He deserves it.
Bush Library
The likelihood that the George W. Bush presidential library will be located at SMU has not been welcome news for at least one segment of the university community. A letter, dated December 16, from “Faculty, Administrators, & Staff” of the Perkins School of Theology to R. Gerald Turner, president of the Board of Trustees, is now circulating not only on the SMU campus but also among a wider academic community, urging the board to “reconsider and to rescind SMU’s pursuit of the presidential library.”
Claire Holt Collection (Indonesian Dance & Related Arts)
Image: Battle dances, Mangkunagaran and Kraton, Surakarta. Danced battle (Pandji Andaga vs. Buginese warrior), Mangkunagaran, Solo, 1931. Digital ID: 1107087
Thousands of photographs of Indonesian costumes, theatrical performances, and dance movements taken by scholar Claire Holt and others, collected by her in travels through the region in the 1930s and later.
(from the NYPL Digital Gallery)
Librarian
To keep the gag rolling:
Eisenbraun and the Geiger Counter - The Librarian Song
My good friend wrote the song but it is about him not me.
Crace Collection of Maps of London
This is the essential guide through the history of London: some 1200 printed and hand-drawn maps charting the development of the city and its immediate vicinity from around 1570 to 1860. The maps were collected, mainly during the first half of the nineteenth century, by the fashionable society designer Frederick Crace.
A Bird’s Eye View of the Zoological Gardens, Regents Park [London Zoo]. 1854.
Kinda Weird
A saucy librarian search engine.
Cabinet National Library
Writers’ E-mails to Be Saved for Library Archive
The National Library of Scotland has revealed a plan to create an archive of blogs, journals and e-mails written by leading Scots.
Curators insist these could become the manuscripts of the 21st century and have secured a £1.8 million grant for the Scottish Executive to set up a “digital repository”.
Library Park
Weston Branch Library of the Broward County Libraries, FL, has gotten money to build a “library park” on a 5.8 acre site.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6363178.html
Winslow’s Influence on South Florida? Hmmm…..