Rock & Roll Public Library

Mick Jones contributed his personal collection for this exhibition at the Subway Gallery in London. in March 2012...

The rock 'n Roll Public Library page, with more pix, here


Sabotage Times article


The Clash blog

Vandalism and barbarism continues

This piece by Maggie Gee was first published on Thursday (in The Guardian) and pops up in The Week in Books in today's issue.

Midnight Library raid (read the whole thing)

On Monday morning, between 2am and 3am, when most people were asleep, Brent council sent in a team to remove thousands of books in cardboard boxes from London's Kensal Rise library, which local people, ably backed by household-name writers such as Philip Pullman and Zadie Smith, have been fighting to keep open since November 2010.   [...]


The Kensal Rise pop-up library. Photograph: David Levene

   [...]
However, the library service has never stopped operating. On the day of the closure, after one round of our expensive legal battle was lost on 13 October 2011, we opened our own Kensal Rise Pop-Up Library within the library's perimeter wall.

Apologies for use of excerpts without permission.

Carnegie research on libraries

Although CarnegieUK Trust are no longer involved in providing library services, they have recently created a detailed research report on the current state of play, with recommendations for the future.

http://carnegieuktrust.org.uk/publications/2012

In Cardiff we still have two branch libraries originally founded by Carnegie, as you can see in this article from The Guardian (Aug 2010)

"The library on Cowbridge Road East and Library Street, is one of two Carnegie libraries in Cardiff (the other is in Cathays) – founded by Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie as one of 2,500 across the globe. "


Cathays Carnegie Library opened 1907



Come with a story, leave with another

I love the Mighty Optical Illusions page.

Here's a link to a library campaign, Come with a story, leave with another.

The vandals and barbarians are still at the gate

Kensal Rise library campaigners gain another day

Gonna retire sooner or later...

A sad decline in standards

Before I joined the library as a member of staff, I had a beard and ponytail, from my time in the circus, playing a pirate in Treasure Island! Here you can see us doing a group apple juggling routine, with me on the left...
When I got the job in the library I still treated it as a 'performance' job, so shaved and cut my hair short, to try to look like a librarian.

After the first couple of years I managed to get a job backstage, in the computer maintenance team. At this point I was still pretty clean and tidy, waistcoats and all.

I even wore a tie most days, even though I didn't meet the public that much...
And although it was a serious job, we also got to play with things like webcams...

I kept up appearances because I helped run training courses for staff and so on...



And would spend any wet lunch hours in The Stacks. As you can see, my hair started to grow out in what I considered a kind of 'Archivist' look.
When we moved into the temporary library in John Street, our original 'public internet access' experiment solidified into a cybercafe, and somehow the techie look seemed to allow a ponytail, so long as it was tidy, etc.
In fact, according the Wim Wenders, in Wings of Desire, 'library angels' all have ponytails...
And the technology carried on changing, with our RFID tag and reader...
Somehow the combination of library work and computers got me into writing a novel in a month, just for the craich.
And then, getting a Print On Demand copy or two from Lulu - just for the hell of it!
By the time we had moved into our state-of-the-art library, and became the universal computer support guy, I had a beard, the hair, and a bad attitude to uniforms, compulsory second language and other limitations... As the politicians try to eliminate libraries completely...

A bit of good news for a change

A [Conservative] council that had its library restructuring plans quashed in the high court spent more than £70,000 fighting the judicial review.

The review at the high court in November decided it was unlawful for Somerset county council to withdraw funding for 11 libraries because the cuts did not comply with "public sector equality duties" owed to vulnerable social groups.

Full Story at The Guardian

"In support of Libraries, Books, Words and Ideas...."

I don't seem to visit this blog much any more - but this wonderful contribution to the Save the Libraries movement came to my attention, and I like to pass on such life-enhancing ideas.

Ten mysterious paper sculptures turned up in various Edinburgh libraries, with the only explanation in notes which read (in part):

"...In support of Libraries, Books, Words and Ideas...."

See the full set of pictures, and accompanying story, here.

Here's an article in The Guardian for August 2011

lucid defence of libraries

As I have said before - I let this blog slip when the library I work for set up its own blog, Twitter and Facebook outlets.

However, I really liked this article about the true value of libraries to a community - as a public space.