This is a sad little library FAQ, at least the first four questions. It is only when you scroll to the bottom that you realize that the library may be cold and dark and have no elevators and few restrooms, but it does have wifi!
Category: libraries
Are Mao and Hoover the best you can do to advertise the library
Minneapolis Public Library’s friends group has a new campaign hyping the new library they’ll be opening next year. It features Mao and Hoover, assumedly because they were librarians. There’s an email campaign that finds the “edgy” approach these ads take bordering on offensive. From my inbox:
The Iibrary is supposed to stand for freedom of information, access to all, and democracy. Mao and Hoover are the antithesis of these things – both of them ruined many lives, prevented free speech, and used fear to gain power. Mao killed, tortured and imprisoned thousands of people. Hoover was instrumental in doing surveillance against people during the McCarthy era. He spied on Martin Luther King, and was a bigot, a homophobe, and a racist. In the 60’s, during the Berrigan brothers’ trial he even had a real librarian imprisoned because she refused to testify against them! Why then, use these people’s images – at all- when there’s so many better people to pick from?
Ranganathan applied to comics and elsewhere
Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science and how they might apply to comics by Dave Carter former Internet Public Library superstar. Click here if you are asking Rangawho? There’s a good Rangnathan blurb over on It’s all Good this week too.
All these books belong to you.
Tous ces livres sont à toi. A photoessay on the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec. [thanks aaron]
Nevermind in LoC.
What do Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, Fear of a Black Planet by PublicEnemy, and Nevermind by Nirvana all have in common? They’ve been added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. Here’s the full list. [thanks juanita]