Tag: community

have you done your donut duty today?

Posted on by jessamyn

A quotation I liked from a blog I read frequently. Check out all the library posts.

“Show me a town that denies funding to a library, and I’ll show you a librarian who stays in the office. Show me a town that funds its library, and I’ll show you a librarian who takes donuts down to the fire department. Who goes down to the city hall and goes into offices asking if they need anything. You have to be proactive. It might come as a shock to some of you, but a large part of the success of that library is your personality and the way you treat people.”

tagswarming @ your library

Posted on by jessamyn

The Missouri Botanical Garden is tagging the illustrations in their collection using volunteers and a shared del.icio.us account. They call this approach TagSwarming. Here is their tag cloud, and here is the blog entry from the digital library guy who created this project. They are always looking for helpers, if this sort of project idea intrigues you.

the illiterate libraran, a community library in an impoverished Brazilian neighborhood

Posted on by jessamyn

The Community Library, 18th Street. A labor of love library in Sao Goncalo, Brazil.

The house has been christened, as the big, hand-painted sign on the roof proudly announces, the Community Library, 18th Street. On busy afternoons, it’s standing room only. Patrons vie for one of the mismatched chairs, which scrape along a floor lined with discarded tiles that Leite and his friends scrounged….

Brazilians are handicapped by lack of access. Government officials say that nearly 1,000 of the country’s 5,500 municipalities have no public library. Buying a book is even less of an option….

A study in 2001 estimated that 16% of the population owns nearly 75% of all the books in Brazil — hardly surprising considering that a standard paperback routinely sells for about $15, or one-eighth of the minimum monthly salary.

Moreover, illiteracy remains high; 16 million Brazilians older than 15 cannot read or write.

[thanks jesse]