There’s some seriously awesome, exciting, historic things going on right now. If I hadn’t already chosen a paper topic long ago, I’d be tempted to do one on these.
You see, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, and other occupations around the country have set up libraries. How do you run a library on the street? Especially in places that rain and soon snow will be falling?
Here’s a good introductory post about the Occupy Wall Street library:
The Occupy Wall Street Library
“A few days ago, Betsy, a trained librarian who lives in Brooklyn, came to the protest for the first time and found a short stack of books lying on the ground where everyone was camped out. She decided to go to one of the organizational meetings for the protests and ask if anyone else thought it would be a good idea to start a proper library. People did.”
The Wall Street library has a blog, a Facebook page, and an online catalog through LibraryThing. 3337 items in the catalog right now!
Because Boston is close to me, I’m watching them with interest as well.
Here’s an article that just came out a few days ago:
Occupying Boston and Beyond, With Tent Libraries for All
“The librarians have eschewed the Dewey Decimal System, concerned by historical accounts that portray Melvil Dewey, its inventor, as a racist and misogynist.”
Interesting, no?
And here’s the Occupy Boston library wikipage.
With Simmons College in Boston, they shouldn’t have a shortage of librarians and library students to help out. They’re even doing story times!
This is what a library looks like.
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