Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Challenges from conservative parent groups and others targeted 1,651 different titles, the American Library Association said
Books for children and young adults containing themes of race, gender and sexual identity received an “unprecedented” number of challenges last year, the American Library Association (ALA) has said, reflecting a growing national trend of attempted censorship.
The challenges came from conservative parent groups and others. In some cases, the group says, librarians and elected officials were threatened with violence by members of the Proud Boys and armed activists at school board and library board meetings.
Major report finds poorer areas worst affected by deep cuts in government funding
Poorer areas have been hit disproportionally by a combination of cuts to neighbourhood services such as parks, libraries, refuse collection and children’s centres that have left English councils “hollowed out” since 2010, a major report into local government has concluded.
The study by the Institute for Government thinktank found that while some councils coped better than others, and reduced spending did not necessarily mean worse results, a lack of information made it difficult to learn lessons.
The Colombian Nobel laureate, who lived in the city from 1967-75, is to have a €12m building specialising in Latin American literature named after him
In the digital age, building a new library filled with old-fashioned printed books seems idealistic, almost quixotic.Not so in Barcelona. The city council is about to open a new €12m (£10m) library next month, the latest instalment in a programme that dates back 20 years.
The library, in the working-class district of Sant Martí de Provençals, has been named in honour of the Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez.
Door security error meant one of country’s largest city libraries was left open for hours, allowing hundreds to browse shelves
As New Zealand celebrated a national holiday, one of the country’s largest city libraries was closed, with staff and security given the day off. But an error with the automated door programming meant Tūranga’s doors opened to the public as usual – and the unstaffed and unsecured library was happily used by the public, who browsed and checked out books for hours before someone realised the mistake.
As well as its books, the library is home to a wide variety of artworks and sculpture – but staff say nothing was stolen, and there were no serious incidents to report.
The institution suffered a devastating attack by Islamic State in 2014. Eight years on, an international effort has seen it reopen as ‘a lighthouse of knowledge’
The university library in Mosul, which was bombed by Islamic State militants, has opened its doors again, describing itself as a “lighthouse of knowledge” which is “once again burning bright”.
Founded in 1921, the library was ransacked and bombarded by missiles during the IS occupation of the city, with an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 books and manuscripts destroyed. It was reopened on 19 February by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with financial support from Germany and book donations from around the world, including over 20,000 from the UK.
Former model Jack Guinness caught up in furore over Mississippi mayor’s attempt to withhold funding for library until ‘homosexual materials’ are withdrawn
A British writer, presenter and former model says he is shocked to find himself at the centre of an unprecedented wave of book banning in the US.
A Mississippi mayor has told the Madison County Library to remove LGBTQ+ books from its shelves or lose funding. One of the books singled out as an example was The Queer Bible, a collection of LGBTQ+ history essays edited by Jack Guinness. Ridgeland’s Republican mayor, Gene McGee, has refused to release funds to the library until “homosexual materials” are withdrawn.
Restoring and moving 750,000 volumes and ancient manuscripts expected to take five years
It is known as Ireland’s “front room”, where esteemed visitors including the Queen, Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been taken to get a sense of the “land of saints and scholars”.
Biden, vice-president at the time, was so moved by the atmospherics in the dimly lit, barrel-vaulted hall when he visited Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 2016 that he came back a year later to contemplate the history of its old library, known as the Long Room.
The famous diarist’s dedicated building, left to his Cambridge alma mater, could not be altered. So architect Níall McLaughlin created a magical solution
“My delight is in the neatness of everything,” wrote Samuel Pepys in his diary in 1663, “and so cannot be pleased with anything unless it be very neat, which is a strange folly.”
He was referring in part to the fastidious organisation of his magnificent collection of books. By the time of his death in 1703 he had amassed 3,000 of them, which he left to his alma mater, Magdalene College, Cambridge, to be housed in a dedicated building with his name above the door. He gave strict instructions that his library be kept intact for posterity, without addition or subtraction, its contents arranged “according to heighth” in the bespoke glass-fronted bookcases he had especially commissioned. The responsibility came with an added threat: if one volume goes missing, he instructed, the whole library must be transferred to Trinity.
The Zimbabwean writer joins authors including Margaret Atwood and Ocean Vuong who have agreed to lock away new writing in the Future Library
Tsitsi Dangarembga made the Booker shortlist for her most recent novel, This Mournable Body, the story of a girl trying to make a life in post-colonial Zimbabwe which was praised as “magnificent” and “sublime”. Her next work, however, is likely to receive fewer accolades: it will not be revealed to the world until 2114.
The Zimbabwean writer is the eighth author selected for the Future Library project, an organic artwork dreamed up by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson. It began in 2014 with the planting of 1,000 Norwegian spruces in a patch of forest outside Oslo. Paterson is asking one writer a year to contribute a manuscript to the project – “the length of the piece is entirely for the author to decide” – with Margaret Atwood, Ocean Vuong and Karl Ove Knausgård already signed up. The works, unseen by anyone but the writers themselves, will be kept in a room lined with wood from the forest in the Deichman library in Oslo. One hundred years after Future Library was launched, in 2114, the trees will be felled, and the manuscripts printed for the first time.
Novel, which weaves together the stories of Mexican migrants with those of a US family on a road trip south, was picked for the prize by a Barcelona library
Earlier this year, a library in Barcelona submitted a nomination for its favourite book of the year: Mexican author Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive. On Thursday, thanks to Biblioteca Vila De Gràcia, Luiselli was named winner of the world’s richest prize for a novel published in English, the €100,000 (£86,000) Dublin literary award.
“It’s a beautiful, relatively small library in Barcelona who nominated me,” said Luiselli. “I’m going to kiss its rocks one day, because I probably won’t be able to kiss its librarians because of Covid.”
Protesters from University of Queensland Liberal National Cub – disendorsed by the LNP – yell at performers, leaving children in tears
A rightwing University of Queensland student group has been caught on film attacking a drag queen storytelling event at a Brisbane library.
In videos posted online on Sunday, the small group of students can be heard yelling “Drag queens are not for kids” at the event at the Brisbane Square library on Sunday morning. The event was organised with Rainbow Families Queensland and was hosted by two drag performers, Queeny and Diamond.
The project earned criticism for its price tag, but it is being seen as a positive sign for the health of New York libraries
Strategically positioned on the bank of the East River, across the water from the United Nations headquarters, New York city has a shimmering new addition to its skylines.
Unusually for such prime real estate set among parkland, panoramic views of Manhattan and convenient transport links, this $40m development in Queens is neither an upscale apartment block, exclusive members club or the offices of a huge corporation.
Other schools look to follow after Tàber school takes out one-third of its collection, deeming the books ‘highly stereotypical and sexist’
Several schools across Barcelona are considering purging their libraries of stereotypical and sexist children’s books, after one removed around 200 titles, including Little Red Riding Hood and the story of the legend of Saint George, from its library.
The Tàber school’s infant library of around 600 children’s books was reviewed by the Associació Espai i Lleure as part of a project that aims to highlight hidden sexist content. The group reviewed the characters in each book, whether or not they speak and what roles they perform, finding that 30% of the books were highly sexist, had strong stereotypes and were, in its opinion, of no pedagogical value.
A new public art fund will also be established as part of the sale of Kerry James Marshall's Knowledge & Wonder which currently hangs in the Legler branch Mayor Rahm Emanuel today joined Chicago Public Library Commissioner Brian Bannon and Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Commissioner Mark Kelly at the Legler Branch Library, located at 115 S. Pulaski, to announce its transformation into a regional library for the west side. The first-ever public art fund will also be established to support public art projects in underserved communities.
Dressed in a yellow gown and rainbow cape, drag queen Topsie Redfern reads a story to a group of young British children about a little girl who likes herself - even when she develops "stinky toes" and "purple polka-dotted lips". "It is really important to remember we are all different and it is good to like ourselves for what makes us different from each other," Redfern told about 20 children aged one to five at a central London pre-school.
Thanks to Marin County's chief librarian the only public library in San Juan, Puerto Rico will be getting a new roof. Sara Jones, director of Marin County Library Services, has raised $5,000, most of it on Facebook, to pay for the work.
Getting lunch at the library might seem a bit unusual, but the historic building in downtown Liberty is now part of USDA's summer feeding program. Union County to offer free lunches for kids at schools, library Getting lunch at the library might seem a bit unusual, but the historic building in downtown Liberty is now part of USDA's summer feeding program.
By 1875, the ever-expanding Congressional Library in the Capitol Building had outgrown its shelf space, which forced librarians to store incoming books, maps, music, photographs, and documents in stacks on the Library floor, as well as in dozens of separate locations throughout the Capitol-including cellar crypts. Eventually Congress approved a plan to move its Library into a new structure that would be built across from the Capitol, and by the end of the summer of 1897, all 800,000 books and other documents had been moved into the newly opened Library of Congress building, which is known today as the Jefferson Building.
Tom Putnam , who worked for many years at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum and later served as director of presidential libraries, has been named the Edward W. Kane Executive Director of the Concord Museum. The appointment, announced by the museum's board of governors, follows a nationwide search for a replacement for Margaret Burke , who is retiring after leading the museum for seven years.
Librarians, policymakers and other experts gathered Thursday in Washington, D.C., for a panel discussion on the legislation and the needs of tribal communities. Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn told the group that investing in broadband infrastructure is critical because those investments increasingly determine which cities, towns and tribal nations thrive.