Get Lost in the Library With Desiree Palmen

"I'd like people to consider what it means to let the government control our daily lives. When we are controlled we hand over our individual responsibilities to the state. I wanted to make a suit for the non-criminal citizen whose house is being watched 24 hours by street surveillance cameras. I'm also responding to a wish to disappear."

Desiree Palmen

Carnegie Library, Lambeth

The Bookseller magazine this month reported Lambeth Council's Property Performance Report stated that Lambeth has a £35m backlog of building repairs. Comments on individual libraries included that the Carnegie Library in Herne Hill, donated by Andrew Carnegie, "would be ideal for sale for a private residential flat conversion", and that Minet Library, North Brixton, "could be closed." A Council spokesman said that, “Anyone who visits our libraries will know some of the buildings are old and need replacement.”

If you look at the Lambeth Council website now you will read, 'As part of the London Open House weekend, Carnegie Library will be hosting tours on the hour on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 September 2009. Tours will be on first come basis and will include public areas, despatch room and the garden. Carnegie Library is a picturesque Grade II listed building, combining framework with Tudor style mullioned and leaded windows.'

Mobile libraries

Living in countries glutted with books and swarming with virtual realities, it's easy to take reading for granted. I've been checking out these wonderful mobile libraries. If anyone knows of others, please let me know.


The Probigua library bus in Guatemala




The RAM VAN (Buffalo, USA)




A camel library in Kenya




A donkey library in Ethiopia




A donkey library in Colombia.

sniff it and see

"The source of inspiration for many great literary figures may have been nothing more than a quick sniff of the bouquet of mouldy books," wrote Dr. R.J. Hay, one of England's leading mycologists and Dean of Dermatology at Guy's Hospital in London.

In The Lancet, (1996), Dr. R.J. Hay, one of England’s leading mycologists, wrote that "fungal hallucinogens" in old books could lead to "enhancement of enlightenment."


http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/media/psychoactives_media2.shtml

Cookie Monster takes a trip to the library - Sesame Street

The ghost library

Finding Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries has stirred up a vivid memories of the day I passed my interview at the British Library and entered the circular Reading Room. The rustle of pages being turned was punctuated by the dull thud of heavy, leather-bound catalogue books being placed on counters echoing round the pale blue dome...

Inspired by the domed Pantheon in Rome, the Reading Room was closed in 1997 and the Library moved to King's Cross. In 1996, while the new library was being built, workmen heard clanking sounds and a civil servant saw a “weeping man in 18th-century dress,” according to the Sunday Times, May 19, 1996.

The old Reading Room was reopened in 2000 and anyone can walk in now, but it's a like a mausoleum. In the sanitised Great Court where the library stacks used to be there's a carved quote , 'and let thy feet milleniums hence be set in the midst of knowledge" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

The Capuchin Classics Blog: MONSTERS IN THE LIBRARY

The Capuchin Classics Blog: MONSTERS IN THE LIBRARY

Librarygate

I have bought many wonderful books for 10 or 20p as a result of Lambeth Council's policy of selling a library book if it hasn't been issued for two years. But it's so sad to go in to the library and find whole sections of shelving as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard. So I resorted to taking my favourite books home, not to read, but just to save their status as library books by getting them date stamped.

After a few years of my library book rescuing efforts, I read in the Streatham Guardian of three temporary 'information hubs' Lambeth Council set up. In six weeks, they issued a handful of books at a cost of over £70,000 - just to raise their ranking prior to an audit. One 'ghost library' issued no books at all, but each 'hub' cost £12,700 to install and £5,325 to run per month. Crazy. For that money they could have filled all the empty shelves in the Borough's libraries with books AND raised Librarians' wages.

An Audit Commission spokeswoman later said the library opening hours were not even taken into account in the cultural services inspection and did not affect the Council’s score.