RSS FeedThe Big Read & Changes At The DC Public Library
We’re a week late on this, but it is still worth mentioning. The DC Public Library is once again participating in the National Endowment for the Art‘s The Big Read. This year they’ve chosen one of our favorite novels, Carson McCullers The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
McCullers was famously only 23 years old when she penned her debut novel, part coming of age story & part melancholy look at the interactions between people in a small southern town. While the book follows several characters it is centered on both deaf-mute John Singer and heroine Mick Kelly. We’ve reported on The Big Read for the last several years, but this is the first years we’re going to read along with the program. Love this book, and DC even has a Facebook page devoted to discussing it.
The Big Read runs April 6th through May 23rd. The DC Public Library Big Read is being chaired by local author (another of our favorites) George Pelecanos.
There has been other exciting news at the DC Public Library over the last few months. Read more after the jump.
The biggest change you’ll notice if you haven’t been in the DC Library recently is the removal of the metal detectors. Did these things make anyone feel safer? This is such a nice change; the entrance to the library is so much more open and inviting now.
Another change, according to the Federation of Friends of the Public Library, “The Mayor is proposing to keep funding for the library stable at 2009 levels while cutting the entire Library Police force in favor of using the security services provided in other District buildings.”
And finally, perhaps least importantly, but still fun: back on January 26th, 2009, DC Public announced that they had launched the first free library iPhone application in the nation. We’ve got it downloaded on our phone, it’s not great, but it does work reasonably well for searching their catalog.
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Thanks for the kind words!
Our iPhone app is continually being developed and will have a bit more functionality and polish in upcoming releases.
I’m *super* excited about the big news we can start talking about tomorrow! We’ll be sure to post about it at our DCPL Labs blog and on twitter.
Aaron Schmidt
Digital Initiatives Librarian, DCPL
503.200.4200
AIM: XXagentcooperXX
http://dclibrarylabs.org/amino
http://twitter.com/dcpl
http://flickr.com/photos/dcpubliclibrary