April 5, 2010
Posted at 2:33 PM in Lost in the Stacks
On a wet Saturday a couple of weeks ago, my 7-year-old daughter reminded me that our local library was having its book sale. So she, her younger brother, and I piled in the car and headed over. After about 20 minutes, the kids settled themselves in a corner with a stack of books more than a foot high. I kept browsing. By the time we were ready to settle up, we had picked out 14 books, which set us back a whopping $9.
None of what we bought was rare: some Magic Treehouse adventures , a few Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, H.A. Rey's The Stars: A New Way to See Them. My daughter turned up a relic from the 1960s: a book on Indian crafts and how to make them, which turned out to be perfect, 40 years later, for her 2nd-grade class's study of Native Americans. The serendipitous joy of finding it was worth every modest penny. The point is that there was readers' gold to be found on all those tables of random paperbacks and obscure hardcovers.
The prize of the day was a 2,000-page Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary (unabridged) from the 1950s, which I found for a buck on the "Last Chance" table. The words "Last Chance" brought out the side of me that wants to adopt every dog and cat at the animal shelter every time I visit. Luckily for my household, a massive dictionary is a lot easier to care for than a mastiff or a mongrel. The Webster's has been living on our coffee table, delighting the children and their elders with its heft and erudition. And I got it for a buck. A buck! Time was you'd have shelled out a lot more than that for such a thing. Sure, everybody looks everything up online now, but there's still a lot of joy to be had from browsing a 10-inch-thick guide to the weird wonders of English. So many words one never knew and will never have occasion to use. And those thumbnail sketches have a certain whimsy to them.
Who knows what gems and rarities we will find at the library sales of the next few years? My friend Jim and I traded a few thoughts about this via Twitter. We agreed that it could be a golden age, as the bound book loses some of its luster and libraries shuffle old tomes out to make room for...whatever the libraries of the future consider essential. There will be some good stuff to be snapped up. "For a while, there will be a boom, as everyone offloads their old books," Jim said. "But eventually, will there be cardboard boxes full of cracked and yellowed old Kindles and iPads, for a buck each?" And after that? "A hellish Mad Max existence where gangs of savages burn old copies of Harry Potter to run their cars in the outback," Jim said.
Last chance! Get 'em while they last!
March 14, 2009
Posted at 12:26 PM in Lost in the Stacks
Greetings from Seattle. Yes, it's raining. (To be fair, it was sunny yesterday.) I'm here for the Chronicle, covering the 14th biannual conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries. What's on the minds of 3,000 academic librarians? Quite a lot. Read my first report here. (You all do realize that reporters don't usually get to write their own headlines, right?)
Substance-related foonote: I'm still looking for a good cup of coffee, having vowed not to set foot in a Starbucks while I'm here. Coffee-shop recommendations from Seattle aficionados would be welcome. If you have ever been to a conference, you know that caffeine (not too much, not too little) is critical to the experience.
August 29, 2008
Posted at 10:07 AM in Lost in the Stacks
Is there anybody who isn't covering the Democratic convention? Even the Library of Congress has a correspondent there. She's photog Carol M. Highsmith, and she's been filing images (copyright-free) from the Mile-High City. She'll be filing from Minneapolis-St. Paul, too.
Highsmith has already donated a large (also copyright-free) image archive to the LOC:
The online presentation of the Carol M. Highsmith Archive features photographs of landmark buildings and architectural renovation projects in Washington, D.C., and throughout the United States. The first 23 groups of photographs contain more than 2,500 images and date from 1980 to 2005, with many views in color as well as black-and-white. Extensive coverage of the Library of Congress Jefferson Building was added in 2007. The archive is expected to grow to more than 100,000 photographs covering all of the United States.
August 5, 2008
Posted at 2:23 PM in Lost in the Stacks
Greetings from the Blue Hill Public Library, which luckily for me has free wifi. (The inn where we're staying is a Net-free zone, and I had to file a book review that, in a moment of bad planning, I failed to turn in before we hit the road.) This may be the swankest public library I have ever been in. It even has a separate area for young adults, with signs posted asking grown-ups to make way for YAs. They have loaner laptops and so much polished wood everywhere I feel like I'm on board somebody's yacht. Fittingly, there's a piece of wood on the wall from the deck railing of Robert Peary's ship Roosevelt, built in Verona, Maine--so the sign says--for his Arctic explorations. Kind of great that it's hanging between shelves of YA fiction, like some talisman of boys-adventure books of yore. Peary to the Pole! We won't dwell on the frostbite etc, although it is chilly up here in the north.
July 28, 2008
Posted at 12:04 PM in Lost in the Stacks
I'm talking rodents, not computer peripherals. Does your local library have a cat? Also check this out.
(Via LIS News.)
April 23, 2008
Posted at 3:53 PM in Lost in the Stacks
Harvard has acquired Norman Mailer's mistress's papers, including two unpublished manuscripts with scenes describing their intimate encounters. I kid you not. Read a tasteful overview here.
April 3, 2008
Posted at 2:56 PM in Lost in the Stacks
The Library of Congress defends its commitment to scholarship and research in a statement posted today on its website. This comes after scholars protested the Library's decision to boot the European Reading Room out of its current space to make room for an Abraham Lincoln exhibition. Read the Chronicle's news-blog coverage here.
March 26, 2008
Posted at 3:43 PM in Lost in the Stacks
The Library of Congress wants to turn its European Reading Room into display space for an exhibit in honor of Abraham Lincoln. (2009 is his bicentennial.) Scholars do not think this is a good idea. Not only do they like the space--and it really is a knockout--they like the multilingual research support they get there. Does the proposed move mean that the Library now cares more about tourism than it does about research? Read more here (subscription required) and here.
