Last week we were contacted by Wordery who have put together an infographic of the Most Beautiful Libraries in the world, all found by collating Instagram hashtags. From their information, they have created a list of the 25 most beautiful libraries in the world.
Scroll down to see the full list, and click around the infographic to get all the information within. It’s a fascinating list and will surely inspire some literary wanderlust in you! Many thanks to Wordery for sharing with us, and allowing us to share this fantastic infographic with you. Read More
As Londonist reports, 28 books have been discovered during a research effort lead by Paul Spedding. They were seemingly used by Stoker as he researched his now classic book Dracula in 1897. Stoker was a businessman living in Chelsea at the time and and joined the library in 1890 at the proposal of Hall Caine, whom Stoker dedicated Dracula to. The gothic horror novel may now be considered a classic, but it seems Stoker wasn’t highly praised for his writing prior to Dracula’s publication. “Stoker was a dreadful writer. His other stuff is dreadful,” said Spedding. Read More
CEO of Calgary Public Library, Bill Ptacek, said: “It really is quite spectacular — a cultural hub of learning and innovation. It will be the experiences that people have in this space that will determine if they keep coming back … we want that to include elements of discovery, mystery and wonder.
“And every floor has that, multiple ranges of experiences that speak to different people in different ways.”
Librarians used to deal with all the strange, creepy, interesting, and outrageous questions the general public had to ask- and you will not believe some of the stuff people are willing to ask a stranger.
Many prominent authors such as Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, Malorie Blackman and Joanne Harris have added their names to the petition, which aims to ringfence government funding to assure libraries stay open. Rowling retweeted the petition last weekend, but the petition needs more signatures if it’s to make a difference.
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The Orange City Public Library has been receiving donations from across the United States after a man protested a gay pride festival by burning LGBTQ children’s books outside the Prairie Winds Events Center, which lies about a mile away from the library. Read More
Human libraries have started appearing, and they’re places where you loan out people rather than books. People can volunteer there to be ‘books’ and ‘readers’ are encouraged to freely ask them questions and receive honest answers in return. There’s no room for judgment and no queries are off limits.
Eventually he got right behind the movement, setting himself a goal to create 2,150, which would beat the number of Carnegie libraries in the USA, less than a decade later and there are 75,000 tiny libraries on the front lawns of houses of eight-eight countries in the world.
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To celebrate the week, a library in Rumford, Maine created a display featuring books that have, and continue to be, banned in various parts of the world. As you can imagine, books focusing on the topic of same-sex relationships are heavily censored, and thus the display featured several LGBT books such as Kabi Nagata’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness and David Lev’s Two Boys Kissing. Both books have been released to great acclaim from critics but also face heavy resistance, with Two Boys Kissing being the fifth most banned book of 2016. Read More