Director’s Corner
Somewhere Towards the End
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The title of this column comes from Diana Athill’s book, a memoir she wrote at 89. She wrote with wry humor of her life and what it is like to grow old and face death.
Director’s Corner
Dangerous Libraries
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During Banned Books Week which occurs in September since 1982, librarians routinely prepare a list of books whose contents are considered by some to be so controversial that the books are banned from libraries, schools, communities, and even countries. It is scary when books, the repository of much of our knowledge and deemed by most to be fun, educational or classics, are deemed subversive and contaminating. Throughout the history of books, challenges to their contents have been frequent. But, interestingly, a book scare in the 19th and early 20th century was prompted not by content, but by another factor, a book’s physicality. At a time when public libraries were opening throughout the United States (the Kent Memorial Library opened in 1899), diseases were also rampant.
Director’s Corner
To Lexicography
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Dictionaries have been around a long time, perhaps beginning on cuneiform tablets around 2300 BCE (or BC if you prefer) in the area of modern-day Syria. In 1604, the first English alphabetical dictionary was published.
Director’s Corner
Warren Platner, The Architect of the Kent Memorial Library (1919-2006)
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The Kent Memorial Library is unique. It is the only free-standing public building designed by Warren Platner.
Director’s Corner
Blood and Tears
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I recently read Sam Fuller’s account of how the library on 50 North Main Street came to be. The building’s inception was awash in what Sam called “blood and tears.”
Director’s Corner
Librarian Spies?
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I have toted home a few books on spies for my husband which got me thinking. Many writers were spies – but were there librarian spies? I could only find three. Vasili Mitrokhin was a KGB librarian. For 10 years, from 1975 to 1985, he logged the names of KGB officers, their agents and informants.
Director’s Corner
Happy Birthday
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April is a busy literary month. It is National Poetry Month. It also contains National Library Week, National Bookmobile Day, Poem in Your Pocket Day, and a whole host of other literary holidays few people will celebrate.
Director’s Corner
Mad as a March Hare
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Do you know that March 25 was once the start of the New Year? Julius Caesar abolished the complicated Roman calendar and created a new one.
Director’s Corner
Love in the Library
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Love is all around me since my daughter got engaged on New Year’s Eve. We have visited wedding venues, tasted food, kissed and sighed over happily ever after.
Director’s Corner
“Please look after this bear. Thank you.”
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This bear is Paddington, whose story started on Christmas Eve in 1956, at Selfridges in London. Michael Bond, searching for a present, pitied a forlorn toy bear sitting alone on a shelf and took it home. He wrote more than 70 stories about his much-loved bear. Today, over 30 million Paddington books have sold worldwide. The bear is so famous that when the Chunnel opened, a Paddington bear was the first item to enter France.