6 Cities, 6 Photos: What Public Libraries Mean to Communities. San Francisco-based photographer Robert Dawson has visited and snapped images of hundreds of public libraries across the United States.
Now he’s turned the work of decades into a book, the recently released The Public Library: A Photographic Essay. The roots of the project go back to Dawson’s childhood. “I came up as a young teenager in the 1960s, the Vietnam War period,” he explains. “It was a very divisive time with lots of anger and hatred. I always wanted to find ways to bring us together rather than divide us.” He learned that people in every nook and cranny of the country saw similar meaning in their libraries. Why that embrace? All of Dawson’s photographs are gorgeous and powerful, but I asked if he would share some that show libraries that were particularly significant to the communities in which they stood.
The Public Library: A Photographic Love Letter to Humanity’s Greatest Sanctuary of Knowledge, Freedom, and Democracy. By Maria Popova “When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.”
“A library is many things,” E.B. White once wrote in a letter to the children of a little town to inspire them to fall in love with their new library. How a public library set me free. Slide Show: American Public Libraries Great and Small. Peterborough Town Library; Peterborough, New Hampshire, 2009.
Established in 1833, this is the first tax-supported library in the United States. Willard Library, Evansville; Indiana, 2011. Built in 1885, this is the oldest public library in Indiana. Housed in a spectacular Victorian building, it is rumored to be haunted. Caitlin Moran: Libraries: Cathedrals of Our Souls. This piece was previously published in The Times of London, and is included in Caitlin Moran's new book, Moranthology ($14.99, Harper Perennial).
Why libraries deserve to be hip. This afternoon, I’m picking up my younger daughter from school and I’m taking her someplace special.
It’s a place she and I can look at works by local artists, where we can read quietly together, where we almost always run into friends. It’s one of best places in the world. You’ve probably got something like it where you live too. It’s called the library. Libraries are not terribly fashionable. I should not have to sell anybody on the idea that libraries are awesome. When you’re a mother desperate to entertain young kids and the winter afternoons are long, dark and cold, those preschool story times are the bomb. Public Libraries Are Better Than Congress, Baseball, and Apple Pie, Say Americans - Robinson Meyer. Every so often, a grave and concerned person will ask (as, in fact, the New York Times asked last year): “Do We Still Need Libraries?”
Hasn’t the Internet kind of, you know, ended all that? Aren’t libraries falling behind? Tellingly, the Times could find no one to argue against libraries, and that mirrors American sentiment pretty much exactly. Kyle Cassidy photographs librarians at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting (PHOTOS). Kyle Cassidy When you think of a librarian, what image comes to mind?
Photographer Kyle Cassidy ventured to the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia in January to explore that question. Library Of The Future. Forget what you know about the library of the 20th century.
You know, those dark places with clunky microform machines fossilizing in the basement and with rows of encyclopedias standing, perfectly alphabetized, in denial of their obsolescence. The library as a warehouse of information is an outdated concept. Good News for Public Libraries. Henry Rollins: Empowerment Through Libraries. Click to enlarge [Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Sunday KCRW broadcast.]
See also: Henry Rollins: What Lou Reed Meant to Me I have come to regard November as the older, harder man's October. I appreciate the early darkness and cooler temperatures. It puts my mind in a different place than October. The Doctor Agrees: Libraries Are Cool. Next Time, Libraries Could Be Our Shelters From the Storm. So here’s an out-of-the-box suggestion: Let’s build more branch libraries.
That thought came to mind while talking with Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University, who wrote a book about the 1995 heat wave in Chicago, which killed hundreds. Mr. The Ongoing Importance of Libraries. Interior plan for the new library of Birmigham (image via mecanoo.nl) OAKLAND, Calif. — Take a stroll downtown or to your nearest shopping center, and you’ll see firsthand that big bookstores are on the decline. When You Love the Library, You Never Stop Learning.
Students, school's back from summer, and the time has come to sit in classrooms across the country and learn things that will matter in your life and so much that will be totally irrelevant. It's not easy being a student today. The pressure is on to succeed. You need some relief -- try Learning-For-The-Sake-Of-It which can discovered and nurtured by...books!