Bodleian acquires rare box dated to late 1400s, saying it reveals preoccupation with accessing information on the move is centuries-old

“Without a book, so often the child is alone,” says Antonio La Cava. The retired schoolteacher converted his three-wheeled van into a mobile library, the Bibliomotocarro. Driving the hills and mountains of Basilicata, Italy, La Cava is able to reach children in remote villages like San Paolo Albanese, which only has two children of primary school age. “I was strongly worried about growing old in a country of non-readers.” La Cava believes that it’s important to spread the joy of literature to as many children as possible: “carrying out such action has a value, not only social, not only cultural, but has a great ethical meaning.”

The generosity of Minnesotans reaches far and wide, now extending all the way to a library in Iraq. This week, thousands of books arrived at the library at the University of Mosul, a shipment organized by the Minneapolis-based Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project (IARP). The library was destroyed when ISIS militants occupied the city in 2014. The library had stood as a cultural and educational epicenter in Iraq until ISIS fighters demolished the building. They methodically destroyed almost all of the one million books, manuscripts and historic maps inside.

The mobile library bringing books to children in some of Jakarta's poorest neighbourhoods.

A pioneering public organisation is taking a stand against the growing problem of homelessness on the West Coast. In so doing, it is re-defining the very idea of a library.

It is known as the “fly’s eye Dante”: an 1878 edition of the Divine Comedy which is so small – just 11/4 by 13/4 inches – that it is said to have taken 11 years to print, and to have damaged the eyes of both its compositor and corrector. Bound in red leather embossed with gold, the world’s smallest edition of Dante’s classic poem, which was printed by the Salmin Brothers in Padua, is one of almost 50 officially designated miniature books housed in the London Library.

Mirror Image Writing.

The New York Times weighs in on an Authors Guild survey that shows a "drastic 42% decline in authors' earnings over the past decade. John Scalzi offers some important perspective.

Quentin Roberts doesn’t have to speed-read through books with his 8-year-old son anymore. Yeyco Avila can spend more time with his favorite films. And Faduma Mohamed says she can now rest easy, knowing she doesn’t have to worry about late fees. The St. Paul Public Library system eliminated fines for overdue books and forgave more than $2.5 million in accumulated fees on Jan. 1, after the City Council approved the policy change in December as part of the 2019 budget.

After the decline of feminist bookstores, there's a new trend emerging: mobile, black-owned book operations.

The first 24 hour automated library in the United States was installed in Norman at Irving Recreation Center.

Even the quietest of buildings can make a loud-and-clear design statement, as these libraries prove. Housed in architecturally ambitious structures, they are places that celebrate human achievement with awesome environments.

A Texas man had the book thrown at him when he failed to return an overdue study guide to a local library, resulting in jail time and a $200 fine, KWTX.com reported.

Sit at President Kennedy's Oval Office Desk and discover what it means to hold the highest office in the land. Click on the icons on the desk.

A study from the Library of Congress reveals for the first time how many feature films produced by U.S. studios during the silent film era still exist, what condition they’re in and where they are located.

The British Library announced yesterday that it has uploaded more than one million public domain photos from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries to Flickr. The move comes as part of an ambitious project that will crowdsource inventive ways to navigate the massive store of photos, foster research, and encourage users to remix and repurpose the images.

The Vatican Library and Oxford University's Bodleian Library put the first of 1.5 million pages of their precious manuscripts online Tuesday, bringing their collections to a global audience for the first time.

In a lapse that national security experts call baffling, a high-ranking FBI agent filed a sensitive internal manual detailing the bureau's secret interrogation procedures with the Library of Congress, where anyone with a library card can read it.

PW takes a look back at 10 big library stories of 2013, and a look ahead to what might be on the horizon in 2014.

On Saturday, about 14,000 people in Latvia's capital formed a human chain of book lovers to kick off Riga's year as a 2014 European Capital of Culture. The crowd braved icy temperatures to pass library books — by hand — from the old National Library to the new building 1.2 miles (2 km) away. As you can see from this video, there was much dancing and rejoicing

Several places are competing to be the host of the Obama library in Chicago.

A few individuals give new meaning to the idea of spending forever in the library—their skin binds three of the books in Harvard’s 15-million-volume collection. Without extensive genetic testing, Harvard librarians still do not have the “foggiest notion” of how many volumes wrapped in human hide exist throughout the system, says Director of University Libraries Sidney Verba ’53.

Around the turn of the 20th century—a golden age for libraries in America—the Snead Bookshelf Company of Louisville, Ky., developed a new system for large-stack library shelving. Snead’s multifloor stack systems can still be seen in many important libraries built in that era, for instance at Harvard, Columbia, the Vatican, and at Bryant Park in New York City. Besides storing old bundles of bound paper, Snead’s stacks provided load-bearing structural support to these venerable buildings.

Going to the library gives people the same kick as getting a raise does — a £1,359 ($ 2,282) raise, to be exact — according to a study commissioned by the U.K.'s Department for Culture, Media & Sport. The study, which looks at the ways "cultural engagement" affects overall wellbeing, concluded that a significant association was found between frequent library use and reported wellbeing.

Sarajevo's City Hall, a stately neo-Moorish edifice marked by the violence of two 20th-century wars, has returned to its old glory after being destroyed by Serb shelling during the siege of the city in 1992.

Discover 1,200 Romantic and Victorian literary treasures, new insights by 60 experts, 25 documentary films, 30 inspirational teachers’ notes and more.

The Internet's eyes turned to the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday, as the panel approved a plan to consider allowing Internet service providers to charge Web sites like Netflix for higher-quality delivery of their content to consumers. In the lead-up to the vote, tech companies, venture capitalists and even celebrities all expressed opposition to the proposal, arguing that it would effectively end the open Internet.

These libraries aren't just buildings for books. They are some of the most beautifully designed and classic buildings we have ever seen.

A book owned by Harvard University has been been bound in human skin, scientists believe. Des destinees de l'ame (Destinies of the Soul) has been housed at Houghton Library since the 1930s. Writer Arsene Houssaye is said to have given the book to his friend, Dr Ludovic Bouland, in the mid-1880s.

Visit some of the most beautiful historic libraries of the world. These amazing book deposits will boost your desire for reading.

The city of Leawood is using the full power of the law to protect property values from the threat of, uh, free cabinet-sized libraries. A municipal statute designed to ban all detached structures is being levied against Leawood residents Brian and Sarah Collins after their 9-year-old son, Spencer, worked with his dad and grandpa to build the Little Free Library as a Mother’s Day gift.

Amazon has launched the mooted read all you can manage service and called it Kindle Unlimited. It costs, sadly for the US only at present, $9.99 a month and gives unlimited access to some 600,000 titles. Various people have various ideas about all of this. My colleague Michael Humphrey points [...]

Wired ho confirma: Amazon ha llençat la seva oferta de subscripció il·limitada a una col·lecció de 600.000 ebooks per 9'99$ al mes. Encara no es pot subscriure fora del USA, però potser prest la tindrem a l'abast. Quin impacte tindrà això sobre el sector, tant dels llibreters com dels editors, com dels autors, o sobre les biblioteques?

- Liibook.com és una plataforma que ofereix l'autopublicació de ebooks i permet la seva venda. Es defineix com una combinació de biblioteca, editorial i llibreria

The "take a book, return a book" boxes are catching in even on places where Kindles and brick-and-mortar books abound.