libraries

What was once the preserve of the nightclub before pubs, bingo halls and supermarkets got in on the act is now being tried out in Swansea. Once a month - from 1800 BST onwards - Friday night is singles' night at the city's main library. It is open for business as normal, with organisers stressing that it is just an optional extra and nothing more than a bit of fun.

People will tell you grocery stores are the place to go if you’re a single man looking for someone to love, and they’re right, but libraries are good, too. Plus, there’s a much better chance that the women you meet in a library will be actually able to read, which is always a plus in my book.

Since [the war], Iraqis have once again tried to rebuild their library. The occupying powers have played along, but like so much about the Iraq War, their effort has been marked by ineptitude, hypocrisy and a cruel disregard for Iraqi people and culture.

Images from an abandoned library somewhere in Russia. NOOOOOO! Don't look!

What better way to make libraries relevant to the Google generation than to locate them in shopping malls and offer loyalty cards and cinema ticket rewards for visits? At least that’s the latest proposal in Britain.

Are books held in contempt? Lynn Wienck of The Chisholm Trail Bookstore in Duncan, Oklahoma thinks so. We create art and furniture from them; we recycle them into mulch and fireplace starter; copyright laws restrict the perusal and acquisition of them; and modern day libraries have become recreational centers for anything but reading them. No respect, says Wienck.

Book Wish Foundation, a new nonprofit devoted to providing reading relief for people in crisis, announces a project to help Darfur refugees and neighboring villagers in eastern Chad. Donations are needed for library construction, reading glasses, secondary school textbooks, dictionaries, English language course books, and school supplies.

Art Garfunkel’s library sounds like it might be an interesting place to spend an afternoon. His site lists every book he’s ever read since 1968.

http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library.html

The Library of Congress is putting more than 3,000 photos from 2 of its most popular collections on a new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist. Many photos are missing key information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr, it can enhance the quality of the bibliographic records.

Do you ever wonder what your neighborhood librarian actually does all day long? Like, maybe he or she is just sitting around, surfing the interwebs. Or emailing your teacher to concoct some kind of evil research project that requires 397 primary sources. Or maybe you just imagine your librarian somehow reading, knitting, and telling people to be quiet, all at the same time?