It's an odd thing that libraries – by tradition temples to the unfleshly – can sometimes seem such sexy places. The Secret life of libraries.
posted by shakespeherian on May 3, 2011 - 37 comments

Stony Stratford, outside Milton Keynes, is facing the loss of its library as a result of crippling local budget cuts. Local residents weren't too happy about this, so they decided to take some books out. All 16,000 of them.
posted by dudekiller on Jan 15, 2011 - 72 comments

The Birmingham Central Library, one of the largest and most important public libraries in Europe, has often been vilified as one of the ugliest buildings in Britain. A prime example of Brutalism, English Heritage has (controversially) recommended that the structure should be listed. Others want it to go the way of Portsmouth's hated Tricorn Centre. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Jul 7, 2008 - 89 comments

Collect Britain 'presents 90,000 images and sounds from the British Library, chosen to evoke places in the UK and beyond.' Dialects, gardens, sketches, stamps, and all kinds of stuff.
posted by plep on Mar 4, 2005 - 4 comments

Can Dumbing Down Save Our Libraries?
An intersting story from The Sunday Herald that says libraries are facing a stark choice: modernize or die.
The author say we just can't win, if we put in a bank of computers we are accused of dumbing things down, if we demand silence in the reading rooms and purchase books that aren't "popular" we find ourselves charged with elitism.
He says the public library has an altruistic purpose of making knowledge freely available through the printed word. The trouble is that those high principles were undermined by the librarians themselves. Facing a revolution in communications, they tried to become all things to all people.
He focuses on England, but I think many of these issues are international. Are public libraries out of date?
posted by Blake on Aug 12, 2002 - 26 comments