Librarian who tried to stop patron’s arrest in Kansas City, Mo., acquitted

New England Prep School Tosses it Library Collection

Story in School Library Journal Cushing Academy, the nation’s oldest co-ed boarding school, hopes to be a model for 21-century learning by getting rid of its entire library print collection. The 144-year-old school, located near Boston in Ashburnham, MA, is giving away or tossing its 20,000 book collection for 18 digital readers, enhanced electronic databases, flat-screen TVs, and laptop-equipped study cubicles—at a cost of about $500,000. Cushing headmaster James Tracy explained that the library is the "nicest space on campus" and that bookshelves wasted precious space that could be put to better use. The library will be transformed into an interactive learning center, faculty lounge, with a $50,000 cyber café and $12,000 cappuccino machine. "Students never open a book in the library," Tracy told School Library Journal, pointing to an in-house study that shows an average of 48 books in circulation on any given day, 30 of which are juvenile books checked out by the ...

I need a smoke...

Where was this Kent cigarette ad found? In this 1974 paperback. If you had asked me yesterday when cigarette ads were last placed in books I would have guessed mid-1960s. The color ad was a single page with a different Kent ad on each side. The ad was bound into the book.

Roger Ebert's 4 Star Movie Guide and Serendipity

In the late 1980's BASF had a package of videotapes that included a book of movie reviews by Roger Ebert. The guide had the same dimensions as a videotape. What I like about Ebert reviews, actually more than like - but am amazed by, is how in a relatively short review there is meaningful insight. Sometimes the insight is into the movie or an actor but sometimes it is about life, the world, or people. Found books have always interested me. The serendipity of books beguiles me. How many people have been influenced or changed by a found book? Numerous people bought these tapes wanting the book. But then others were exposed to the book because of the purchase. Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker , was one of the people that found and was influenced by the book. Excerpt from his article Learning From Ebert - In the nineteen-eighties, when I was in high school, my parents bought a VHS player, and, with it, an Ebert video guide, in which various of his Chicago Sun-Time...

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