Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.
Irish Lives Remembered
The summer issue of this free online magazine is now available.
My Library Editorial in Friday’s Ottawa Citizen
Putting the Lie to Libraries, by Ken Whyte
200 years of collecting newspapers
Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Christine Jackson, Elizabeth Vincent, Gail B., Glenn Wright, Ken McKinlay, Teresa, and Unknown.
Fantastic editorial! I grew up in Crystal Beach and we were fortunate to have a car so my mum did drive us to the Centennial Branch once a week, plus the bookmobile visited. But I’m sure there were many others in our community who could have benefitted from the wider library services you cite (well, no wifi in the 70s), but had no easy way to access them.
As an adult I lived in Bells Corners (10 minute walk to Centennial Branch) and then Kanata (20 minute walk to Beaverbrook Branch), but those were neighbourhoods that OPL clearly favoured. It’s reprehensible there’s no library branch in Riverside.
I hope OPL reconsiders and adds branches in underserved communities – now more than ever, we all need libraries.
BTW, I tried to read Kenneth Whyte’s article, but saw red within about 10 seconds, so, for the sake of my blood pressure, closed the tab. Clearly this person has never spent time in a library observing all the different ways in which they serve the community. And, if people WANT to read Jacqueline Susann, why should we deny them those books? Though, I do wish, for the sake of our crowded stacks, that James Patterson and Danielle Steel would cut back to one release per year *g*…