[PDF] Books For Libraries eBook

Author : Susan Orlean
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 26,66 MB
Release : 2019-10-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1476740194

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Susan Orlean’s bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is “a sheer delight…as rich in insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in any local library” (USA TODAY)—a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution and an investigation into one of its greatest mysteries. “Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book” (The Washington Post). On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a “delightful…reflection on the past, present, and future of libraries in America” (New York magazine) that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In the “exquisitely written, consistently entertaining” (The New York Times) The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries; brings each department of the library to vivid life; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. “A book lover’s dream…an ambitiously researched, elegantly written book that serves as a portal into a place of history, drama, culture, and stories” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country.

Author : Christine Pawley
Publisher : University of Wisconsin Pres
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 38,15 MB
Release : 2013-09-13
Category : History
ISBN : 0299293238

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For well over one hundred years, libraries open to the public have played a crucial part in fostering in Americans the skills and habits of reading and writing, by routinely providing access to standard forms of print: informational genres such as newspapers, pamphlets, textbooks, and other reference books, and literary genres including poetry, plays, and novels. Public libraries continue to have an extraordinary impact; in the early twenty-first century, the American Library Association reports that there are more public library branches than McDonald's restaurants in the United States. Much has been written about libraries from professional and managerial points of view, but less so from the perspectives of those most intimately involved—patrons and librarians. Drawing on circulation records, patron reviews, and other archived materials, Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America underscores the evolving roles that libraries have played in the lives of American readers. Each essay in this collection examines a historical circumstance related to reading in libraries. The essays are organized in sections on methods of researching the history of reading in libraries; immigrants and localities; censorship issues; and the role of libraries in providing access to alternative, nonmainstream publications. The volume shows public libraries as living spaces where individuals and groups with diverse backgrounds, needs, and desires encountered and used a great variety of texts, images, and other media throughout the twentieth century.

Author : Richard Wendorf
Publisher :
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 29,3 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN :

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"Long Before the Establishment of public libraries in America, during the Colonial period and the early decades of the new Republic, thousands of "social" or membership libraries served as the primary venues for the circulation of books. This collection of sixteen essays represents the first attempt to provide, through individual histories of the largest surviving membership libraries, a composite portrait of this important movement in American library history. Although they sport different names - society library, library society, mercantile library, mechanics' institute, athenaeum - all of these institutions have played a significant role in the intellectual and cultural lives of their communities, which range from Boston, New York, and Charleston to Cincinnati, San Francisco, and La Jolla. Some continue to serve as the central library in their city, whereas others resemble large, independent research institutions. Each chapter in this book is intended to stand alone, and yet collectively these essays should suggest the evolution of a particular kind of American library during the past three centuries."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Matthew Battles
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 11,85 MB
Release : 2011-02-07
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0393078620

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"Splendidly articulate, informative and provoking....A book to be savored and gone back to."—Baltimore Sun On the survival and destruction of knowledge, from Alexandria to the Internet. Through the ages, libraries have not only accumulated and preserved but also shaped, inspired, and obliterated knowledge. Matthew Battles, a rare books librarian and a gifted narrator, takes us on a spirited foray from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries, from the Vatican to the British Library, from socialist reading rooms and rural home libraries to the Information Age. He explores how libraries are built and how they are destroyed, from the decay of the great Alexandrian library to scroll burnings in ancient China to the destruction of Aztec books by the Spanish—and in our own time, the burning of libraries in Europe and Bosnia. Encyclopedic in its breadth and novelistic in its telling, this volume will occupy a treasured place on the bookshelf next to Baker's Double Fold, Basbanes's A Gentle Madness, Manguel's A History of Reading, and Winchester's The Professor and the Madman.

Author : Samuel Swett Green
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 133 pages
File Size : 28,65 MB
Release : 2024-02-09
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 3385334683

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Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

Author : Roxie Munro
Publisher :
Page : 54 pages
File Size : 39,4 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 9780375844515

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Illustrations and brief text present all kinds of libraries, from bookmobiles and home libraries to the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress.

Author : J. Raven
Publisher : Springer
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 32,47 MB
Release : 2004-01-31
Category : History
ISBN : 0230524257

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This pioneering volume of essays explores the destruction of great libraries since ancient times and examines the intellectual, political and cultural consequences of loss. Fourteen original contributions, introduced by a major re-evaluative history of lost libraries, offer the first ever comparative discussion of the greatest catastrophes in book history from Mesopotamia and Alexandria to the dispersal of monastic and monarchical book collections, the Nazi destruction of Jewish libraries, and the recent horrifying pillage and burning of books in Tibet, Bosnia and Iraq.

Author : Patrick M. Valentine
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 29,20 MB
Release : 2012-09-27
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0810885719

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While the importance of writing has often been recognized, the role of books and especially that of libraries has just as often been slighted. Knowledge, once generated, has to be communicated, preserved, and accessible. Books in their varying formats—from clay tablets to scrolls and manuscripts to pixels—have been instrumental in spreading knowledge, although relatively little attention has been given to the story of books themselves. A Social History of Books and Libraries from Cuneiform to Bytes traces the roles of books and libraries throughout recorded history and explores their social and cultural importance within differing societies and changing times. It presents the history of books from clay tablets to e-books and the history of libraries, whether built of bricks or bytes. Following an introduction that sets the theoretical basis for the historical importance of books and libraries, chapters alternate between the history of the book and the history of libraries. Included within the chapters are short excursions on some particular development, such as book emblems or cataloging. Case studies are given as thematic illustrations of libraries everywhere. Patrick M. Valentine argues that social and cultural forces have been more influential in determining the nature and status of information, books, and libraries than has technology. But A Social History of Books and Libraries is far from a jeremiad against technology; rather it presents history within the subtle yet shifting context of time and place. Although written primarily for librarians and library students, it will also be of interest to a wider audience of scholars and those interested in books, libraries, and cultural history.