[Small Chirp] Four Famous Fictional Libraries

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Whitney Magruder

Authors, I’m sure, are no strangers to their local libraries. What better place to gather inspiration for their own stories than the homes of thousands of others? It’s not surprising that now and then, authors like to pay homage to libraries by writing one into their books.

This week, April 8-14, is National Library Week! To celebrate this literary week, I composed a list of four famous fictional libraries.

1. The Hogwarts Library, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

The Hogwarts Library, infamous for its Restricted Section, is the key element to solving Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s mystery of the philosopher’s stone.

This magnificent library has thousands of books upon thousands of shelves, with each book being protected by both special charms and the indefatigable Hogwarts librarian, Madam Pince. Continue reading →

I Just Finished Book X: Now What?

Posted on April 11, 2012 by piratecanary

So you’ve just finished The Hunger Games, or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, or the very last of the Discworld novels. What’s next?

To the library, of course! Besides being an obvious (and free!) source of reading material, libraries have more resources than ever to help book lovers find the next great novel (or memoir, or graphic novel…)

In celebration of National Library Week, I turned to my own local library, the Woodlawn branch of the fantastic Baltimore County Public Library system (BCPL, for those in the know) and talked with Nancy Cadigan, one of the librarians on staff. Here are the top three ways to find that next book to rave about: Continue reading →

Small Chirp: The Book as Artifact

Posted on February 28, 2012 by librarycanary

From the desk of Melissa, the Library Canary:

There’s so much talk about the future of books lately. As readers turn increasingly to electronic alternatives to paper and the internet book-trade, the usual fingernail-nibbling questions emerge. What will happen to the book? What will happen to brick-and-mortar libraries and bookstores?

Maybe books will become our bricks and mortar.

A recent trip to Vancouver, BC had me pondering the idea of the book as artifact. In Vancouver, book-oracles seemed to whisper from every street corner, prophesying the destinies of our discarded, unwanted and remaindered books. Here is what they showed me: