Superpatron

Bloomfield Hills considering library millage

Bloomfield Hills, MI is considering a library millage; residents have been without library services since 2003.

On its website, the city of Bloomfield Hills touts itself as the nation's fourth wealthiest city, with 39 percent of its "stately homes" worth more than $1 million and an outstanding public school system.

What it fails to mention is that its elite, well-educated residents won't pay for an amenity enjoyed by 99.5 percent of Michigan residents: a neighborhood public library.

Why don't they have a library? A dispute over costs with the township.  From an account of a public meeting on the millage, as noted by the local newspaper "The Eccentric":

For years, the township library was the library for Bloomfield Hills residents, but several years ago, the library and city parted ways over what residents would pay to have full access privileges. That led to a lawsuit which went all the way to the state Supreme Court and a decision that essentially sided with the library. Some Bloomfield Hills residents have turned to the neighboring Troy Public Library, but that library is facing possible closure and has undergone service cuts. And it's farther away than the township library, which is at Lone Pine and Telegraph.

The case was Goldstone v. BLOOMFIELD TP. PUBLIC LIBRARY, 737 NW 2d 476 - Mich: Supreme Court 2007; it includes an account of a particularly nasty bit of professional librarianship, as expressed in one of the dissenting opinions.

*495 Moreover, it is the majority who now gives the green "incentivization" light for library boards to politicize their accessibility by creating regulations that reach far further than merely preventing nonresident book borrowing onsite. For example, when Bloomfield Township and the city of Bloomfield Hills could not agree on a price for the renewal of their library service agreement, which failure resulted in city of Bloomfield Hills residents' loss of borrowing and other privileges at defendant library, defendant commanded a "reciprocal agreement" with 90 other libraries in which those libraries agreed not to lend books to any city of Bloomfield Hills resident. Thus, despite that plaintiff was issued a MichiCard from the Pontiac Public Library, he was refused book borrowing privileges at the Baldwin Public Library and the West Bloomfield Public Library, even though both libraries belong to the network of libraries accepting the MichiCard. Those libraries informed plaintiff that under their agreement with defendant, they "cannot furnish borrowing services to Bloomfield Hills city residents unless they have a valid card from the Bloomfield Township Public Library." The majority allows this to continue, foisting on our citizens a public library system that is subject to calculated measures to deprive plaintiff and others like him of the full use of libraries. Surely this is not what our citizens envisioned when they ratified a constitutional amendment that was to broaden library availability. Indeed, to plaintiff, who is now denied book borrowing privileges by 90 libraries, libraries are "generally not available."

"Form follows funding."

 

 

Mad Men Reading List via NYPL

From the New York Public Library blog, "Mad Men Reading List"

If you follow The Battery Park City Library on Twitter then you've seen our tweets linking to books that have appeared in the hit television show Mad Men. These titles are a great way to gain insight into the episodes and the social and cultural times in which the series is set. Like the set and costume design, the literary choices of the show really add a stamp of authenticity. Dipping into these classics is also a great way to help with withdrawals while waiting for new episodes to air.

[needs photo of bookshelf or display]

ah, the New York Daily News did a feature story on librarian Billy Parrott:

The most in demand: "The Group," the 1963 Mary McCarthy novel about life after Vassar that Betty Draper, ex-wife of central character Don Draper, managed to keep from dropping in the tub.

"That's one that's constantly out. I can't keep it on the shelves," he said.

The Daily Beast in 2009 did some commentary and pulled a few book covers

Revolutionary Road 
by Richard Yates (1961).

A young married couple moves into a Connecticut bedroom town with a son and daughter in 1955 and then their lives fall apart. Sound familiar? Of course, the story is probably most familiar for moviegoers who saw Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet take star turns in the story last year. Show creator Matthew Weiner told The New York Times recently, “Revolutionary Road was given to me three years after I wrote the pilot.” He said if he had read the book, he probably wouldn’t have tried to write the show. “Yates was there. This is what he was writing about.”

An exercise for the reader: find a movie, assemble the reading list that goes with it. Which other videos inspire building a shelf full of books to go with them?

Omnivoracious asks: What's on your bookshelf?

Omnivoracious wants to feature your favorite or latest reads on our banner. Just snap a picture of your bookshelf and send it as a .jpg to omnivoracious at amazon.com. Accompany the photo with a list of the book titles in the body of the e-mail. Your submission should be around 1 MB in size or larger ... low-res photos don't work as well.

via www.omnivoracious.com

A lovely idea for a series of posts; if you find more bookshelf photos somewhere, I'll continue to collect pointers.

 

Rainbow Bookcase

Rainbow Bookcase
Originally uploaded by Eccentric Scholar

Photo from Flickr user "Eccentric Scholar". I found this in the Flickr group Rainbow of Books, which is full of books sorted by color (or sorted by colour, if you have enough English lit).

Book color distribution

Every so often, I like to sort our books by color. I find the process relaxing and it makes the bookcases less chaotic-looking. This time, I decided to make it even more enjoyable by estimating the distribution of colors. This is a sample of about 10% of our Amsterdam books. I was limited by the size of our dining table, so the long tail of orange (7%), purple (4%), pink (2%), other (2%) and unclassifiable (2%) isn't in the picture.

via www.pinkair.com

What's the color spectrum of your bookshelves?

Rock and Roll Public Library - Mick Jones

From the blog London Calling, here is Mick Jones's announcement of the five-week instalation of the Rock n Roll Public Library in London:

The Rock n Roll Public Library is Mick Jones’s (The Clash, B.A.D, Carbon Silicon) direct artistic challenge to the likes of the corporate 02 British Music Experience. Rather than let his creative legacy atrophy Jones is ’transforming’ his own archive of near 10.000 artefacts into one unique ‘guerrilla-library.’ Set under the Westway motorway in 3000 sq.ft of former office space, Jones’s five-week civic endeavour will also encourage visitors to enrol, interact with the archive-exhibition (Jones began collecting well before he formed The Clash in 1976 to eventual international success, as such it forms an invaluable guide to the influences that informed Jones as a pop-artist). Also uniquely by request users will be able to scan (courtesy Genus, U.K distributor of the Book2net Kiosk) certain objects and via memory stick carry them away. Please note visitors to the world’s first, resolutely alternative, Rock n Roll Public Library shouldn’t expect peace and quiet.

Note the scanning process for taking things away; would that more organizations had that as part of their mission, and not as something to be tacked on as an afterthought.