Tag Archives: Summer Fun Library Tour

Day Thirteen of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

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You have had “those” days – the days when things keep going wrong, disasters just follow you around, and you get to the point where you just want all the bad things to just stop.

Summertime is filled with fun things, but can still add stress to your life!

The Internet is here to help you!

This is a very low-stress site, easy to use, and will help you to feel better right away: click the Make Everything Okay button, and just wait.

Feel better? Us too!

Check out the tag “Summer Fun Library Tour” on our site to read our entire fun series!

 

Day Twelve of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

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Giovanni Leardo, Venice, 1452 Mappamundi (Map of the world); The map depicts the parts of the world known to Europeans in the late Middle Ages. It is considered the finest example of a medieval mappamundi preserved in the Western Hemisphere

There are so many different kinds of libraries across our profession, it is always interesting to hear about new ones. One of those is the American Geographical Society Library, at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee!

“The American Geographical Society Library (AGSL), one of the premier collections of its kind in North America, contains over 1.3 million items supporting instruction, research and outreach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and around the world.

The collection contains maps, atlases, books periodicals, film media and digital data files. Its scope is worldwide with coverage from the 15th century to the present. Its resources have been used to produce an ongoing series of digital collections, including an award winning website on Afghanistan, a comprehensive site on world transportation and collections featuring unique photographic documentation of such places as Tibet, the Republic of Georgia, Korea and World War II Poland. The AGSL offers scholarly programs for the campus and local community throughout the year and welcomes visiting scholars from across the US and the world.”

Some of the collection:

  • The AGS Library contains over 520,000 maps of all types covering the world at a wide range of scales
  • many items that are extremely rare and valuable
  • over 11,000 atlases ranging from 15th Century editions of Ptolemy’s Geographia to the most modern compilations in paper or digital format
  • over 135 globes, most on permanent display
  • over 300 maps, including a large assortment transferred from the UW-Milwaukee Department of Geography in 2005
  •  nearly 584,000 photographs and slides

Day Eleven of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

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When we have some time, as we generally do over the summer, it’s good to take a moment to reflect back on our history and all the accomplishments we have made. This includes the advances we have made in our profession!

Today we look at an American woman who helped to create and modernize libraries in China: Mary Elizabeth Wood.

“Wood’s first major library project in China consisted of the establishment of the Boone School Library, and she acted as the chief advocate and director of this institution. Construction began on June 1, 1909, and was completed with the library’s opening in 1910.[2]The collection initially consisted of a mixture of secular and religious works, as well as photographs, with 3,000 volumes total in Chinese and English.[2] Under Wood’s leadership, the library rapidly developed, and within several years the collection had grown to 12,000 volumes total, with 5,000 in English and 7,000 in Chinese, as well as approximately 60 serial publications.[2]

Not content to serve only Boone School’s small academic community, Wood expanded her library outreach efforts by opening the library’s reading rooms to the general public and offering its auditorium as a venue for public lectures.[2] These lecture series, which covered “science, history, and current events,” were a major attraction, drawing hundreds of attendees in the area.[2] With the assistance of her student Shen Zhurong, who acted as interpreter,[3] Wood also started a set of traveling book collections of English works translated into Chinese for use in Chinese government schools.[2] Shen and Wood became focused on disseminating library resources as widely as possible; their “mobile libraries” expanded access to neighboring cities, serving a combined population of 1.3 million, and they even hired workers to carry books up to mountain resorts popular with missionary families.[3]

Despite these efforts, the general public reaction to library advocacy in China remained tepid, and Wood determined that the key to advancing the cause was the professionalization of librarians within China. Since there were no library schools in China at the time, in 1914 Wood sent Shen abroad to receive library training at the Library School of the New York Public Library.[3] Another of her students, Hu Qingsheng, was to follow Shen’s path in 1917.[3] Wood hoped that training Chinese students in Western principles of modern librarianship would spark a revolution of the profession in China, with American-educated professionals returning to share their experience and knowledge with their peers. Upon completing their degrees, both Shen and Hu joined Wood in her next endeavor: establishing a library school within China.”

(I have taught for many years at Simmons College in Boston, one of the library schools Wood attended; and her picture was hanging on a wall to commemorate her achievements!)

Day Ten of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

Parking lots may seem boring, but as we know about libraries already: there is always the opportunity for something wonderful!

The Kansas City, KS Public Library is home to the most interesting parking garage I’ve ever seen! I was on a library research trip a few years ago, and this was one of the libraries I visited. (It’s great, by the way – definitely worth a trip!) But I didn’t know about this feature, so it was a fantastic surprise!

Library District Parking Garage

The Community Bookshelf is a striking feature of Kansas City’s downtown. It runs along the south wall of the Central Library’s parking garage on 10th Street between Wyandotte Street and Baltimore Avenue. The book spines, which measure approximately 25 feet by 9 feet, are made of signboard mylar. The shelf showcases 22 spines which list 42 titles, reflecting a wide variety of reading interests as suggested by Kansas City readers and then selected by The Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees. Their final selection was made on March 16, 2004. The bookshelf was completed between March and the fall of 2004.”

 

 

Day Nine of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

The sharing of knowledge is our mission, but sometimes can be..kind of icky.

Houghton Library contains countless curiosities. Perhaps the most disturbing example is Arsène Houssaye’s Des destinées de l’ame (FC8.H8177.879dc), bound in human skin.

In the mid-1880s, Houssaye (1815-1896) presented his recent book, a meditation on the soul and life after death, to his friend Dr. Ludovic Bouland (1839-1932), a noted medical doctor and prominent bibliophile. Bouland bound the book with skin from the unclaimed body of a female mental patient who had died of a stroke.”

While books bound in human skin are now objects of fascination and revulsion, the practice was once somewhat common. Termed anthropodermic bibliopegy, the binding of books in human skin has occurred at least since the 16th century. The confessions of criminals were occasionally bound in the skin of the convicted, or an individual might request to be memorialized for family or lovers in the form of a book.

Although this is the only known example of an anthropodermic book in Houghton’s collection, Harvard libraries hold one other example: the Countway Library’s Center for the History of Medicine holds a French translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Lyon, 1597) which may have an anthropodermic binding.”

 

Libraries are amazing places. Sometimes you find things that are fascinating, sometimes they are kinda gross. Information is always important to have and to share; this is just another example of the huge breadth of ideas, materials, and services that exist in the library profession!