Bonjour, toute le monde!
I just returned from a vacation in France, and when in Paris, I stumbled across a most intriguing bookstore named “Shakespeare &Co.” It is in the heart of the city, on the left bank, just across the Seine from Notre Dame Cathedral. I was browsing displays of books on the street when I heard strains of excellent jazz piano, and followed the sound into this dusty and disheveled bookshop. As I followed the music through small rooms receding into gloom, I realized the music was not recorded as I had thought, but live, and very accomplished. Way in the back I found a young man, pack on his back, leaning over an upright piano in a dingy hall, playing this wonderful music on his feet. Abruptly he stopped and wandered off among the many alcoves, soon to be replaced by another. I realized that the musicians were standing because there was no room in the tiny hall for a piano stool.
The shop was endless, at least three floors of tiny rooms and halls, crammed with books, photos, and memorabilia. I spent an hour in there, unable to break away, and I barely scratched the surface. Here’s a virtual tour for you to get a taste of it.
This shop was opened in 1951 by George Whitman, a man from Salem, Massachusetts who traveled the world, mostly on foot. Whitman’s good friend, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, started City Lights Bookshop in San Francisco about the same time. In his 90s now, he calls it his “rag & bone shop,” and has passed the nuts and bolts of its management on to his daughter, Sylvia. For all you book lovers, Shakespeare & Co’s staff picks are worth a look. Next month, Shakespeare & Co will co-sponsor TRAVEL IN WORDS: A Four-Day Literary Celebration in Paris (15-18 June 2006), the third one that Whitman’s daughter has organized to great acclaim.
By Jay
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May 19, 2008 – 12:28 pm
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On the first three Tuesdays of each month; at 10:30 am, Stories and Songs for toddlers; at 1 p.m., Stories and Songs for 3-5 year olds; and at 3 p.m., Story Time for home schoolers ages 6-9.
By Jay
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May 9, 2008 – 4:09 pm
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Recently I stumbled across this article in Library Journal (3/1/08)
The Library of Congress (LC) has joined photo-sharing site Flickr to make available 3000 photos for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist, even though the library doesn’t own copyright. The goal: community tagging for segments of the George Grantham Bain Collection, one of America’s earliest news picture agencies (1910–20), and color photos from the Great Depression and World War II (1939–44) from the U.S. Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information (example at right).
As LC’s Matt Raymond explained on the LC Blog, “many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.”
As part of this pilot, Flickr has created The Commons, a new model for publicly held photographic collections. “For the time being on Flickr, this new usage is being contained to the Library of Congress account,” Flickr explained. If the pilot works, other interested cultural institutions may join in.
I love it that the Library of Congress is availing its august institutional self of web 2.0 opportunity. If the Library of Congress approves of and utilizes community tagging, and is spearheading a new model for publicly held photographic collections, then 2.0 is truly on the map for libraries and other large institutions. The doors are swinging open to collaboration.
By Jay
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April 23, 2008 – 11:51 am
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Hello Everyone,
Yesterday, April 16th, we upgraded the website with a new look and some new bells and whistles. Can’t you tell that we were picking out the colors in snowy February? Easter egg colors looked beautiful to us after the winter we’ve had.
Unfortunately some elements went awry in the conversion to the WordPress upgrade so bear with us. We’re working to fix the snafus as soon as we discover the problems. Please let us know if you find something wrong or missing by sending us a comment. Also tell us what’s right! We like to hear that too.
By Jay
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April 17, 2008 – 10:54 am
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There are some great photo-sharing and photo-manipulating opportunities out there on Web 2.0
Here’s a link to a colleague’s blog (Brian Herzog @ Chelmsford Library) which lists some good ones.
By Jay
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April 9, 2008 – 11:58 am
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The Material Girls are a group of quilters who came together in 1999 in Mount Washington Valley under the direction of Gail McClure (Gail’s quilt is to the left.) They get together once a month to create quilts for various charities. Their second meeting of the month is their social “show and tell” afternoon. The group falls under the RSVP (Retired Senior and Volunteer Program) umbrella, and is dedicated to quilting for not only this community, but for anywhere in the world there is a need for the comfort and nurturing quilts can bring.
By Jay
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April 9, 2008 – 11:54 am
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While answering a reference question from a patron about our art book collection, I wanted to share what we discovered. If you type “artists” as a search term, and then click on “artists” as a subject when prompted, you get 209 results. But notice that if you scroll down looking at the margin on the right side of the page, you can break down your search further by choosing a more specific subject like history which then searches for all titles with art AND history in the subjects. Likewise art appreciation or drawing or juvenile literature or biography.
By Jay
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April 9, 2008 – 11:51 am
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Looking through a file of clippings I throw things into, I found an interview with David McCullough the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian. When asked by Jonathan Soroff, “What is a library’s role in a democracy?,” he said the following,
Without a doubt, public libraries are one of the greatest of American institutions, and if you’ve ever lived or worked abroad you’ll know this. Free access to literature, history, philosophy, mathematics, the works - civilization’s entire treasure house of ideas - is open to everyone. It’s pure democracy at work. The portals of a great library are the portals to freedom. Thomas Jefferson said, “Any nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was and never will be.” There’s no excuse to be ignorant in a community where there’s a public library, and there’s one in virtually every community in the land. I like to tell people that if you get down about the state of education, learning, the arts, etc. in our country today, remember that there are still more public libraries than there are McDonalds….We must never, ever take our public libraries for granted. People just assume that these things are looked after properly, but they’re not. I’m not blaming anyone. We’re all to blame, and we must change it.
There are 16,220 public libraries in the U.S., including branches. 95% provide public access to the Internet. Americans check out an average of more than six books annually. They spend approximately $25.25 a year to support their public libraries, less than the cost of one hardcover book.
By Jay
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April 3, 2008 – 11:26 am
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Robert Frost cultivated the image of a rural New England poet with a pleasant disposition, but he was a bit of a curmudgeon, and born on March 26th, 1874 on the west coast, in San Francisco. His personal life was full of tragedy and mayhem, and he suffered from dark depressions.
According to Writer’s Almanac 3/26/08:
He graduated from high school at the top of his class but dropped out of Dartmouth after a semester and tried to convince his high school co-valedictorian, Elinor White, to marry him immediately. She refused and insisted on finishing college first. They did marry after she graduated, and it was a union that would be filled with losses and feelings of alienation. Their first son died from cholera at age three; Frost blamed himself for not calling a doctor earlier and believed that God was punishing him for it. His health declined, and his wife became depressed. In 1907, they had a daughter who died three days after birth, and a few years later Elinor had a miscarriage. Within a couple years, his sister Jeanie died in a mental hospital, and his daughter Marjorie, of whom he was extremely fond, was hospitalized with tuberculosis. Marjorie died a slow death after getting married and giving birth, and a few years later, Frost’s wife died from heart failure. His adult son, Carol, had become increasingly distraught, and Frost went to visit him and to talk him out of suicide. Thinking the crisis had passed, he returned home, and shortly afterward his son shot himself. He also had to commit his daughter Irma to a mental hospital.
And through all of this, Robert Frost still became one of the most famous poets in the United States. He said, “A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching out toward expression, an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the word.”
And, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
By Amy
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March 26, 2008 – 3:01 pm
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I know it snowed a bit last night and that more snow is forecast for the weekend, but really, winter is almost over. Another few weeks and the snow will be gone. It’s already melting - just look at these pictures taken in early March. I’m sure we have less snow now. I’m sure of it. And underneath the snow, there is grass waiting. And flowers. We just have to be patient. 
By Jay
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March 26, 2008 – 2:17 pm
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