What Will Libraries of the Future Be Like?

I set my mind to answer this question at the beginning of the Covid-19 shelter-in-place orders. Here’s what came to me recently about how libraries might evolve through the pandemic. Four Categories of Libraries There are many kinds of libraries. However, librarians in the U.S. tend to categorize four major types of libraries: 1. academic libraries —these started in the 16th century with a few...

Citation Indexes Uses for Writers

Academic and large Public Libraries have long relied on Citation indexes to assist scholars. While many professors and college students learn “Who is Who” in their fields from their teachers, the experts in almost every field change over each decade.  Citation indexes in many scholarly fields attempt to weigh in on Who’s Who by showing who cites who in their scholarly papers.  While not a...

Drag Queen Story Hour at the Library

This week I was amazed to see a one-page article in my alumni magazine, InterCom, from University of South Carolina College of Information and Communication. The author was a sophomore named Shelby Johnson. Her article’s title was “Drag Queen Story Hour”. At the top of that article are two color photos: one showing a drag queen reading to children and the other, a toddler reaching out to...

Rebuilding a Library from Scratch

From Aramco World magazine July/August 2018 comes this rather surprising announcement about a Canadian museum exhibition that features an ancient library in the Middle East. The exhibit is titled 168.01 — A Library Rising from the Ashes. In 2003 The College of Fine Arts at the University of Baghdad lost its entire library of 70,000 books during the invasion of Iraq when looters set fire to the...

Even Famous Authors Self-Publish

Lawrence Block is an award-winning best-selling author of several book series and short stories. Block is most famous for his Burglar mysteries. Block’s Burglar books feature Bernie Rhodenbarr. Bernie is a bookseller by day and high-class thief by night.

This series of ten books began in 1977 with Burglars Can’t be Choosers, and seemed to end in 2004 with Burglar on the Prowl.

Then nearly ten years later, in 2013, The Burglar Who Counted Spoons came out as a self-published book by Block.