Category Archives: Libraries

The Art of the Hobbit

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, HarperCollins has just released The Art of The Hobbit edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. The sumptuous art book contains a complete collection of … Continue reading →

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Literature in the Digital Age

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

Lit Drift is a website with the daunting mission of making literature fun and accessible in the digital age. Run by writers, the site offers free e-books, articles, recommendations, writing tools, games and a series of sixty-second video versions of … Continue reading →

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Banned Books : the videos

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

This year to mark Banned Books Week more than 650 videos of people reading from notorious banned books were posted on YouTube. Between September 24 and October 1st, videos by authors, students, celebrities, bookstore staff and booklovers were recorded for the … Continue reading →

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Occupy Wall Street

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

As the Occupy Wall Street protests continue to to grow and spread, in their down-time hundreds of demostrators are reading books donated to the protest’s official outdoor library. If you’d like to donate reading material to the library, here’s the … Continue reading →

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Charles Dickens at 200

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

Charles Dickens fans should not miss the Morgan Library and Museum’s exciting bicentennial celebration of the author’s birth. With North America’s greatest permanent collection of Dickens manuscripts, books, letters and documents, the Morgan Library in midtown Manhattan is the perfect … Continue reading →

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Mappamundi

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

The glorious Fra Mauro Mappamundi was created between 1458 and 1459 by the Venetian monk/cartographer/sailor/explorer/adventurer Fra Mauro. The map was commissioned by Portugal’s King Alfonso V and produced at the Camaldolese Monastery of Saint Michael on the Venetian lagoon island … Continue reading →

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On The Beach

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

In this sad era of library closures and drastic funding cuts, one nation has found novel ways to reach out to library users. In the Netherlands, they’ve launched the world’s first airport library (at Amsterdam Schiphol) and now they’ve opened … Continue reading →

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Awful Library Books

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

Hat-tip to our friends at Any Amount of Books, London for this suggestion: Michigan librarians Mary and Holly have been compiling their hilarious, and sometimes scary, blog of Awful Library Books for almost four years. I know that booklovers and … Continue reading →

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A True Peake Experience

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) was a prolific and astonishingly original writer and artist, who touched at one time or another on almost every literary form. To celebrate the centenary of Peake’s birth, the British Library’s exhibition The Worlds of Mervyn Peake … Continue reading →

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Libraries Without Borders

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is probably the only cultural institution that’s bisected by an international border. That’s because the US/Canadian border slices right through the library’s Kenneth Baldwin International Reading Room. You enter the imposing turn-of-the-century building … Continue reading →

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