Artists transform vandalized library books into art
In 2001, librarians and staff at the San Francisco Public Library started finding damaged books, mainly related to gay, lesbian, and HIV/AIDS issues, shoved under shelves. The vandal was caught and ultimately charged with a hate crime.
“Rather than discard the damaged books, the Library distributed them to interested community members in the hope of creating art.” The artistic responses comprise “Reversing Vandalism,” an exhibition of more than 200 works of art.
Images, via Reversing Vandalism: Online Gallery :: San Francisco Public Library: Altered book pieces by Mary Bennett (top) and Gretchen Schermerhorn and Eric Bu.
In case you missed them: Unconsumption’s collection of library-related posts can be found here; books here.
When the University of Iowa Libraries retired its decades-old physical card catalog in 2004, librarians and library staff hoped to “find as many creative uses as possible for the salvaged card catalog cards and generate a sense of community among those who love the card catalog.” They offered cards to artists and students, among other people, who responded by crafting the 3” x 5” cards into works of art.
Pictured, from the cARTalog digital collection: Matt Pollard’s flip book, Gregory Galloway’s collage, and Sandy Brandes’s illustrated piece.
More: cARTalog - Iowa Digital Library
Other libraries, such as University of South Carolina’s, have commemorated their beloved, yet obsolete card catalogs in creative ways.
See also:
Books from a “defunct U.S. Navy base library” form Colombian artist Miler Lagos’s impressive, self-supporting igloo-like sculpture. (via A Dome of Books | Colossal)
See also: Earlier Unconsumption book-related posts here.
P.S. Remember it’s National Library Week!
![Continuing our celebration of National Library Week:
Jackson [New Hampshire] Public Library partnered with the local historical society to re-erect the Trickey Barn, which dates to the 1850s but was dismantled in 2008, for use as the new library building. It replaces an 800-square-foot facility that lacked plumbing. The new structure offers Wi-Fi, plenty of seating, and is accessible to people with disabilities.
Architect: Denis Mires, P.A. The Architects
(via American Libraries Magazine)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2765i0vaE1qzv12bo1_400.jpg)
Continuing our celebration of National Library Week:
Jackson [New Hampshire] Public Library partnered with the local historical society to re-erect the Trickey Barn, which dates to the 1850s but was dismantled in 2008, for use as the new library building. It replaces an 800-square-foot facility that lacked plumbing. The new structure offers Wi-Fi, plenty of seating, and is accessible to people with disabilities.
Architect: Denis Mires, P.A. The Architects
Weapon of Mass Instruction
Built from a welded frame atop a 1979 Ford Falcon, Raul Lemesoff drives around the streets of Buenos Aires distributing free books to anybody who wants to be assaulted with some serious learnin’.
(via: make / laughingsquid)
A mobile library (art car) that’s helping to foster an interest in both reading and sharing books in Argentina? Auto-reblog for Unconsumption’s celebration of book-things during National Library Week.
(via gillianmae)
Happy National Library Week — the annual celebration, led by the American Library Association, of all things library! This week, in honor of Library Week, we’ll feature a series of library- and book-related posts.
Today, the Unconsumption spotlight is on Little Free Libraries: community book exchanges — located in places like your neighbor’s front yard, and on college campuses and in hospitals — where library cards aren’t needed. The libraries’ basic concept is: “Take a book. Leave a book.”
Most of the “libraries,” which hold 20-30 donated books, are made from reclaimed materials. Each library, which has an official caretaker who builds and maintains it, is registered by the Little Free Library (LFL) project, with its location noted on the LFL Web site. So far, more than 200 little libraries have opened in 34 states and 17 countries.
The libraries not only provide a way for people to pass along books they no longer want, they also help foster a sense of community. In this NPR story on the Little Free Library project, a library user says: “there are all of these nice, little serendipitous connections that happen with your neighbors.” A library caretaker mentioned meeting, via her free library, neighbors who live a block away — neighbors she hadn’t met previously.
Through the non-profit project, LFL co-founders Todd Bol and Rick Brooks aim to promote literacy and love of reading; they also hope that more people (you, perhaps?) will contact them about opening free little libraries in their own communities!
See also:
- Earlier Unconsumption posts on various community-driven book swaps, including several operating out of old phone booths, plus other swapping-related projects and services here.
- More on sharing and the sharing economy / collaborative consumption, libraries, and books.
