Library Love

Feelin' the library love today. Hope all y'all do too.

Speaking of Libraries...

I seem to be on a library kick this week, as I found this fantastic article via a new favorite Out of Print blog.

The article is all about Britain's Smallest Library - a library housed in an old red telephone booth! I can't help but be wildly jealous as I don't think red telephone booths really caught on in the States, nor were we apparently creative enough to come up with this idea on our own. How refreshing: a community enamored enough of books to create such a unique solution to their lack of library problem.

To sum up the article: when the mobile library service (novel idea!) was canceled in the community of Westbury-sub-Mendip, villagers banded together to set up the "old red phone box into a book exchange". There's a little bit of something for everyone, as titles from popular literature and cookbooks to children's books are in circulation.

Anyone have any suggestions for something similar that can be done in American communities that are sans-library? Maybe a permanently parked yellow school bus? Out-of-season baseball dugout?

Fantasy Library

I saw this on Twitter this morning (thanks to @readandbreathe, follow me @rebf):

In celebration of National Library Week (beginning April 12), author Laurie R. King is offering three spectacular prizes - two go to you, one goes to a library of your choice - in return for your library fantasy. Not a fantasy involving a library, but your fantasy library, your dream library, your "I never want to leave this spot/couch/chair/bear skin rug surrounded by these tall/short/stacks of books" library. Maybe you work in a library and want to redesign it. Maybe you already have your dream library in your home and want to describe it. Or maybe, like me, you constantly search for pictures of libraries online (visit here and here for some of my posts on this, and visit HERE for some truly stupendous libraries), and so now have countless images from which to pick and choose to make up the library of your dreams.

Whatever the case may be, head on over here to read Laurie's offer, and then submit. And if you want to post your submission here, too, that would be great.

I promise to post mine (as soon as I've written it).

Better hurry, you only have until April 9th to get this done.

Librarians, Is This True?

Apparently these are Things Librarians Fancy. Is this true? Across the board? Can other book-related but non-librarian people fancy these things too? Just wondering.