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Kansas City Public Library

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Ara-anna
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Mon 11 Jan , 2010 7:19 pm
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Could have been, I can't think there are a bunch of library architects out there. Tinwe would know I bet.



I got to thinking about things, and I prefer to read outside when it's warm enough. Outside in nature, I love to take a book down to our nature park and sit and read. I prefer reading in nature over any buildings, must be my elf blood. Of course if I could live in Lothlorian I would, but hey one can't have everything. :shrug:

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Pippin4242
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Tue 12 Jan , 2010 10:29 pm
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Couldn't get into Ara-Anna's library much either, Nienna... maybe it's just a Brit thing? :shrug:

I was going to nominate my favourite library, but it was already on the list. :) I got to visit the Long Room at Trinity when it was closed for rewiring. My great-aunt had just passed away, and we visited Dublin to bury her ashes in the garden outside the library, which was also her garden (it was a courtyard). An old friend of hers appeared and offered to show us around. I guess this other old lady was in charge of the Long Room, since she had keys. Aunt Paul had been the Keeper of the Book of Kells, which would have been how they knew each other. Anyway, we got to be the only people in there, and that wasn't even the coolest part - Paul's friend took some of the books down to show us the ones which still had English bullets in them. :love:

This is my local library. ctrl+f for 'Aberystwyth'. :)

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elfshadow
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Wed 13 Jan , 2010 1:36 am
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I thought Ara's library was beautiful. Maybe it's a southwest US thing. ;) But I love that style of architecture.


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Jude
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Wed 13 Jan , 2010 1:50 am
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*E*V*E*N*S*T*A*R* wrote:
I'm pleased to see that the list includes the Parliament library in Ottawa. It's really worth taking the tour if you come here and are into libraries.

When I was a kid, the tour guide said that it contained every book published in the world. I doubt that that's still true. In fact, I doubt that it was true even then. :D Still, it's pretty impressive.

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nienna
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Wed 13 Jan , 2010 1:59 pm
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Jude wrote:
When I was a kid, the tour guide said that it contained every book published in the world. I doubt that that's still true. In fact, I doubt that it was true even then. :D Still, it's pretty impressive.

I'm sure it is true...most countries have a legal reuirement for all books published to be deposited in a national repository:
Quote:
In the United Kingdom the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 restates the Copyright Act 1911, that one copy of every book published there must be sent to the national library (the British Library); five other libraries (Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, Cambridge University Library, National Library of Scotland, the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, and the National Library of Wales) are entitled to request a free copy within one year of publication.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ent ... ed_Kingdom

Last edited by nienna on Wed 13 Jan , 2010 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Ara-anna
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Wed 13 Jan , 2010 2:33 pm
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Hey I'm just glad we have a library. I live in a part of the country that would just as soon burn the books.

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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Wed 13 Jan , 2010 3:10 pm
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I don't spend any time at all in my library. I reserve the books I want online, dash in when they are available, check them out and leave (after they figure out the inevitable confusion about where my last name is shelved :roll: You'd think librarians would have a convention about where to shelve people's names who start with "saint". :roll: But no, every time they end up looking in about 4 different places on the reserved shelves.) I don't even go through the stacks anymore, unless a book I want is available and I really want it the same day.

I wouldn't mind if the books were in a warehouse. The fancy building itself is a frivolous expense to me. And the brain scrambling carpet pattern doesn't help matters. Half the reason I don't spend any more time in there than I have to is because I get dizzy and nauseated if I look at the floor. Red and blue squiggly lines right next to each other do weird things to my optic nerves I guess.

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nienna
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Wed 13 Jan , 2010 3:56 pm
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MariaHobbit wrote:
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You'd think librarians would have a convention about where to shelve people's names who start with "saint". :roll:
We do:

Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACR2

and BS ISO 999:1996 Information and documentation. Guidelines for the content, organization and presentation of indexes

Quote:
The position of the entry in the index is determined by the surname and then by the forename if two or more entries share the surname. More unusual names are positioned according to usage: thus in ‘W. Somerset Maugham’ the surname is ‘Maugham’, whereas in ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams’ it is ‘Vaughan Williams’. ‘Walter de la Mare’ is treated as ‘de la Mare’; ‘Guy de Maupassant’ as ‘Maupassant’ .The prefixes M', Mc, S., St and Ste should be arranged as if spelt out in full as MAC, SAINT, SAINTE, e.g. McGREGOR arranged as if MACGREGOR.
The trouble is, most of the time, those people serving you behind the counter are not professional librarians... :shrug:

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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Wed 13 Jan , 2010 6:55 pm
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Well, that's reassuring. :)

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Ara-anna
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Wed 13 Jan , 2010 7:34 pm
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They could all be professional librarians, if there was enough tax dollars. Sadly libraries are not priority, police,firefighters and running water get the top dollars.

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nienna
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Wed 13 Jan , 2010 9:53 pm
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Ara-anna wrote:
They could all be professional librarians, if there was enough tax dollars. Sadly libraries are not priority, police,firefighters and running water get the top dollars.

Tell me about it... :( It's the same over here, and especially bad in schools...funding for professional staff only begins at High School level. :shrug:

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Ara-anna
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Thu 14 Jan , 2010 12:53 am
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I think it's important for people have private libraries, even if it is a bookcase full of books. My grandmother has tons of hard back old books that I grew up reading. Having a public library is nice but sadly I don't think they are to be counted on as the only sorce of reading materials much any more. I would suspect with the on set of the kindle and the increase in internet abilities libraries may fade in the future to nothing more than storage areas.

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Pippin4242
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Thu 14 Jan , 2010 1:45 am
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My town has just 20,000 residents, when you account for 8,000 full-time students. I know that skews our demographic a lot, but I still think it says a great deal that the town maintains a small library, a copyright library with four miles of shelving, and a three-story concrete monstrosity on the campus. They're always full. Not full full, but there are always a lot of people in each of them. Old men reading the paper in town. Academics requesting old Celtic manuscripts in the National Library. Students trying to hide their coffee behind a stack of peeling textbooks, the day before the essay's due, trying to avoid the constant murmer of noise in the Hugh Owen campus library.

We also have the Old College library, the out-of-town Llanbadarn campus library, Julian Shelley's bookshop, Waterstones bookshop, a WHSmiths that mostly sells books, an Oxfam bookshop, a second-hand L-space bookshop that I don't know the name of, and probably a dozen shops selling books as a side, in both languages.

I think there's hope for readers yet. :)

*~Pips~*

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Thu 14 Jan , 2010 5:27 am
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Our local library is awesome. We have two branches here in Centerville/Washington Township. The one I use the most (within a short walk of my house) is always busy. It does a brisk business in videos and DVDs, and they also have lots of the latest and greatest innovations, including Playaways (like mp3 players). They have a lot of books on CD or tape. Plus, we have a really awesome digital collection that we can access (two of them, in fact). These can go on iPods (which is very handy for Sarah!), and I think some of them can go on Kindles. IOW, I think our library is a model for others and doesn't plan to go out of business any time soon. :Wooper:

http://www.wclibrary.info/

(Oh, yes, you see Tolkien on the homepage! :D)

We have an awesome reproduction of the Book of Kells. :love: "One of only 1,480 copies of a rare and beautiful limited edition virtually indistinguishable from the original." It's kept under glass, and one page is displayed each week, like the original.

The sculptures outside:

http://www.wclibrary.info/sculptures/index.asp

A fun program they had in conjunction with the Book of Kells:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/washington ... 704021355/

(Not that I expect anyone to look at all of those; I'm just bragging on my library a bit. ;) It's not a beautiful, old building, but it's a beautiful, new building. And I think they're doing a great job being cutting edge.)

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nienna
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Thu 14 Jan , 2010 8:22 am
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Pips - of course your university is well-known for its Librarianship degree course...I was tempted when I was choosing my course, but North Wales just seemed too remote for me in those days! (I've been there on holiday since, of course!) But I opted for the low budget option of staying at home to do my degree, since my local University, at Falmer, Sussex, had just upgraded their degree course to a BA (Hons) in Library and Information Studies and we were the first year to take the new course.

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*E*V*E*N*S*T*A*R*
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Thu 14 Jan , 2010 10:28 am
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I think this is also book porn:

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Btw, snopes.com listed all the titles from the Kansas City one.




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Estel
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Thu 14 Jan , 2010 11:14 am
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Ara-anna wrote:
I think it's important for people have private libraries, even if it is a bookcase full of books. My grandmother has tons of hard back old books that I grew up reading. Having a public library is nice but sadly I don't think they are to be counted on as the only sorce of reading materials much any more. I would suspect with the on set of the kindle and the increase in internet abilities libraries may fade in the future to nothing more than storage areas.

I don't know. Books are one thing where having a paper copy to read might stay very important. The Kindle, for instance. I'm not one of those people who refuses to get one on principle. I just have no interest. It would be good for travel, or for students who live in small dorm rooms, etc

The thing is, kids are exposed to books younger than they are to any other social media other than music, so it's almost ingrained to have a physical copy. By exposed, I mean that they are allowed to control. We have soft books for babies. Picture books for the very young. I just don't see a parent giving a kindle to a 2-3 year old rather than a paper book. Nor to I see an electronic book having the same fascination as a paper book for a child of that age, especially since it's impossible for an electronic book to be a pop-up book ;) By the time kids are old enough to read word only books, they've been so overly exposed to physical copies, that it just seems right and normal to have a paper copy.

On top of all of that, even people who don't read much tend to use books to decorate. Plus, we have a centuries old attitude ingrained within our culture that having a home library is a sign of wealth - the more books in it, the better.

As for public libraries... in smaller towns they tend to be a community center type place. Reading time for young kids, lectures for older people, etc etc. This is especially true as the secular part of the population grows. Rather than using a church as a place to congregate, the library is used. This is something I noticed especially in very small towns with populations of only one to two thousand people. Added to that, libraries tend to be the places where free internet is given, there are computer labs, and computer classes are given for community members.

Using libraries for recreational reading is something that is going down, I agree. However, most people who want to be librarians go to school for Library and Information Studies - they're not just learning how to archive books anymore. Just as society is evolving technologically, so too are libraries evolving along side.

For obsessive readers, there's nothing like a good book.... a paper copy, that is ;) I can't ever imagine preferring to show people my book collection by showing a list on my kindle. Much better to walk into a room full of books - the smell of the paper, the colours of the spines... A library is a place full of magic that technology and electronic copies can never hope to replicate.


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nienna
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Thu 14 Jan , 2010 11:31 am
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Those poor books...that's just vandalism ;)

Lali, your library looks very vibrant and outreaching. You are right, it's a great model for other library services to aspire to. I love the scupltures, particularly the boy and girl reading back to back - isn't that similar to a famous library mural - is it the Norman Rockwell one in New Rochelle?

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*E*V*E*N*S*T*A*R*
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Thu 14 Jan , 2010 11:33 am
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Estel wrote:
even people who don't read much tend to use books to decorate... I can't ever imagine preferring to show people my book collection by showing a list on my kindle.
That's how I feel about CDs and DVDs (also their technological forefathers, I just don't own as many). An ipod squished full of computer files is great, but looking at towers of band names and movie titles is by far the bigger ego massage for me. ;) I like photos of the artist, liner notes and thank you's. I like featurettes and commentaries.

I miss being a book worm, but I still purchase them often. :lol: Reading is a physical issue for me - I hate looking at a screen all day, but I hate trying to hold thick books open while lying in bed. Whoever solves that gets my vote, I guess. Also, I can never shelve them correctly - everything is in different sizes. Pfft!




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nienna
Post subject: Re: Kansas City Public Library
Posted: Thu 14 Jan , 2010 1:34 pm
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Estel - missed your post in my hurry to get to work...I agree 100% with all your points.

Estel wrote:
Quote:
However, most people who want to be librarians go to school for Library and Information Studies - they're not just learning how to archive books anymore. Just as society is evolving technologically, so too are libraries evolving along side
Quite right...we have had to move with the times. We are information scientists now, of course ;) I have been out of the profession for 15 years - you can imagine how much has changed in that time with the amazing advances that the internet has wrought. Selective dissemination of information is now something people can do on their own, with all the various search engines, cutting out the librarian "middle man."

I also agree that there is nothing like the feel and the smell of a book and the way information is so much more pleasingly presented - I find I much prefer to look at a two page spread of a tangible object, and flick through physical pages, picking out information at a glance, than to have to scroll down through pages of text on a limited size bowser window on a computer screen. Books give us information that is accessible at arms reach without having to rely on electricity, or waiting for the computer to boot up, etc. They can also be works of art, objects that are aesthetically pleasing to look at and often valued old friends...I can't see Google ever being referred to in the same way!

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