Montreal gets a big downtown library, to house the public library collection as well as Quebec’s National Library collection. Not as fancy outside as, say, Seattle Public, but pretty feature-rich nonetheless, lots of nice photos. [thanks aaron]
Category: libraries
outreach + inreach
A lot of librarianship is about meeting the needs of your users and your not-yet-users. Surveys help, acting on surveys helps more and letting users know what your survey results were and how you are acting on them is a very proactive way to interact with your community. Here is an example from the Bank Street College Library’s recent survey.
NHLA Conferences from days past
When I went to prowl around the Carpenter Memorial Library in Manchester, I saw some old photos of a previous NH Library Association Conference from, I think, 1924. Take a look at these librarians. Greg took a few nice shots of the library interior, love that octagonal reference desk!
why is it so cold in the library?
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!
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?