Reading at heights

This is my kind of Bosun's Chair...! Great use of space - designer Sallie Trout turned an inaccessible stairwell into a book-heaven hideaway. Thanks to Miss Manly who sent it on from here.

Hope among the rubble

Twitter has been flooded by photos of libraries across Japan this week, showing scenes of chaos repeated in schools, universities and public libraries shaken by the earthquake. 
Why libraries? 
The New Yorker says: 'These are images of hope, as much as of disaster, and they speak to the idea that the things most fundamental to a culture—in this case, its codified knowledge — have not been lost'.
Top: The library of the Sendai Mediatheque, taken just after the quake by Eishi Katsura. Middle: the same library before the quake. Above: Library Kasama, Ibaraki Prefecture and Central Library, University of Tsukaba.

Homer's Odyssey

Check this out - a fragment from a papyrus manuscript of the Odyssey dating from the third to the second century BCE. The Odyssey is the second of Homer's major Greek epics and follows on from the Iliad, both of which were written around the ninth or eight century BCE, telling the story of the ten year siege of Ilium by a coalition of Greek states and the long journey home of Odysseus following the fall of Troy.
It may look like nothing but a scrap of reed to the uninitiated but this is literary gold - Homer's work is fundamental to modern literature, art and music. He was a pretty awesome dude.
This piece has been identified as part of Book 12.384 - 390.
It's one of a collection of treasures held by the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University. 
Apparently existing fragments from The Odyssey are far rarer than those still around from The Iliad, being outnumbered four to one.

Quite.

Truism:
[troo-iz-uhm]
-noun
a self evident, obvious truth.
Dictionary.com


Photo courtesy of Bookshelf Porn.

Your library needs you!

This means war. 

The Save Our Libraries campaign continues across Britain. And it's reaching fever pitch in some communities - check out these images by Phil Bradley, created from World War II posters.

People power

Love this story from a Buckinghamshire village in the UK. 
The people of Stony Stratford have spoken - emptying the town's library of all 16,000 of its volumes in protest against the miserly Milton Keynes Council's intention to close the library down.
In a Facebook campaign, each library user was urged to borrow their entitlement of 15 books, with the aim of emptying every single shelf by Saturday. So great was the response that the last book was borrowed 24 hours ahead of the target time.
Book lovers of Stony Stratford say the empty shelves represent the gaping void the closure of the library would leave in their community.
Until now, the town has only been famous for its two pubs - the Cock and the Bull - from which it is said the phrase 'a cock and bull story' originates.
Let's hope the bullying Milton Keynes Council admits its dastardly plan to shut the lending house is indeed a cock and bull story.

A bit of light reading...

What richer fodder could an occupation provide for a writer than the life of a lighthouse keeper? 
Think To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf; By the Seaside: The Lighthouse, Longfellow; the recent Australian film South Solitary; the children's story The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter, Arielle North Olson...
But what if you really were a lighthouse keeper, and you lived in a spiral tower on some godforsaken rocky outcrop battered by tempests with only passing seagulls, the odd shipwrecked sailor and thousands of miles of oceans for company...?
That's what it must have been like in the 1800s....and then someone came up with a brilliant idea. 
In 1876, the Light-House Establishment in America started distributing portable libraries to lighthouse keepers in remote off-shore stations. A system was set up for distribution via light vessels, exchange and updating of texts, so that once a box-load of books had been read by one lighthouse keeper and his family (if he had one) they were shipped off to the next recipient and replaced with a new delivery.
The books were largely fiction but technical volumes were included when requested. All books remained the property of the The Light-House Establishment and were marked in the front with an official bookplate.
Check out these crazy titles from a typical lighthouse library:
Lamont, James. SEASONS WITH THE SEA-HORSES; OR, SPORTING ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. New York. 1861. 282p. Describes sailing and sporting adventures in the northern latitudes. Illustrated.
Taylor, Bayard. AT HOME AND ABROAD - A SKETCHBOOK OF LIFE, SCENERY AND MEN. New York. 1893. 500p. Decorated cloth. With black and white engravings, etc.
Torpelius, Z. THE SURGEON'S STORIES - TIMES OF CHARLES VII. Chicago. 1884. 349p. Third in a series of six Swedish historical romances, translated from the Swedish.
Chaillu, Paul Du. MY APINGI KINGDOM: WITH LIFE IN THE GREAT SAHARA, AND SKETCHES OF THE CHASE OF THE OSTRICH, HYENA &c. New York. 1879. 254p. Beautiful brown decorated cloth. With black and white engravings, etc.



Images courtesy of the Michigan Lighthouse Conservancy.

Library graffiti

Interesting concept...not sure that it has legs as a serious literary collection. Quinn Dombrowski has taken over 700 images of graffiti in the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago.
'Song lines, love notes and maths problems' appear on the walls (presumably in the bathrooms...it doesn't specify) along with political statements, cultural asides and even a poll about the Ancients. It begs the question, who even thinks to take a pen into the loo?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's...a library

For the princely sum of £1 a blip on the British map built itself a library. 
The parish council of Westbury-sub-Mendip, Somerset, bought a red phone booth, the village residents hammered in a few wooden shelves, donated some books and voila - there you have it. A fully operating library. Open 24 hours a day (complete with light switch), titles from the Classics to cookbooks to kids books, and a reputation that has earned a following far and wide across England's greenest pastures.
After the county grapevine went into overdrive, Pommy telecommunication company BT received 770 applications from communities wanting to 'adopt a kiosk'.
Not since Superman has the humble phone booth promised such magic.


* Photos from The Daily Mail

Luscious libraries

Handelingkamer Tweede Kamer Der Staaten-Generaal, The Hague, Netherlands

Rennie Mackintosh Library, Glasgow School of Art, Scotland

Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil 

Wow! Check out these amazing libraries from around the world. Home to hundreds of thousands of treasured tomes and keepers of the literary faith, oh readers.
I reckon the image of the contemporary suburban library needs to be sexed up. It might help get people back into books. 
Who regularly visits their local library these days? Mums with kids; oldies looking for something to do; the odd student on a deadline? 
I plead guilty of neglecting my local library. I can't remember the last time I paid it a visit. Probably around the same time I last sent a fax. I resolve to visit libraries more often, they play a critical role in nurturing literacy in our communities and they deserve our patronage.
Manly Library may not quite have the history or grandeur of other, more striking bibliothecas, but any place dedicated to the humble book is hallowed ground to me.
If you've been to any awesome libraries I'd love to see a pic :)