Carnegie Library for Sale in Duluth

May 24th, 2010 by Larry T. Nix No comments »
For less than the cost of a small condo in a big city you can buy a restored Carnegie Library building in Duluth, Minnesota. The Duluth News Tribune reports in an article that the owners of the Carnegie Library building are offering it for sale for $862,000. The building generates revenue by renting office space. This sounds like a pretty good deal. All of the hard lifting has already been done. A listing for the property can be found HERE. A previous web article about the restoration of the building along with photographs can be found HERE. The former Carnegie Library building in Superior, Wisconsin just across the bridge from Duluth hasn't been so fortunate. It's a vacant building in search of a purpose. Thanks to Paul Nelson for a heads up on this story. Paul has an excellent blog which he calls Retiring Guy's Digest. Paul scours the Internet for stories on "libraries, publishing, technology, politics, social issues, and more". Click HERE for some of Paul's posts on Carnegie libraries. The postcard of the Duluth Carnegie Library which is shown above is from my collection.

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Manchester’s Historic Public Library Building

May 23rd, 2010 by Larry T. Nix 1 comment »
I find postcards depicting the interiors of libraries particularly appealing, especially when library users are shown. This postcard shows the interior of the Carpenter Memorial Library in Manchester, New Hampshire. It is unusual to see this many library users depicted on a postcard. The building still serves as the Main Library of the Manchester City Library. The building was dedicated as the Elenora Blood Carpenter Building in 1914 in memory of the wife of Frank Pierce Carpenter who funded its construction. A nice history of the library is located HERE. The history's location on the library's web site meets my "two click" criteria for online library histories. After reaching the library's web page, one click on "About" or "About Our Library" and one more click on "Library History". Every library should have a short history of the library on its web site.

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Lester K. Born and the Library of Congress

May 22nd, 2010 by Larry T. Nix No comments »
The envelope (cover) above was mailed to Dr. Lester K. Born in Berlin on November 30, 1948 while he was working with the Reparations and Restitution Branch of the Office of the Military Government, U.S. Zone. The return address on the back of the envelope indicates that it was mailed by Dr. Ulrich Wendland. Wendland served as the director of the Gdansk Archive in Danzig from 1941-1945 and is credited with helping to save parts of the archive in the last days of World War II. After his post-war work in Berlin, Born joined the staff of the Library of Congress where he held several important positions. Interestingly, however, an action which Born took while working for the Military Government in Berlin was responsible for an investigation of the Library of Congress in 1997 for possible acquisition of books and manuscripts that should have been restituted to the victims of the Holocaust. Born allegedly wrote a memorandum in the late 1940s while at the Offenbach Archival Depot in Germany which suggested that members of the Library of Congress Mission in Germany had inappropriately removed items from the Archives for the Library's collection. The result of the investigation was that the Library of Congress Mission had acted appropriately and that "the restitution of books to their proper owners was handled with diligence, care, and respect, and characterized by close attention to existing regulation". The investigation took place long after Born's career at the Library of Congress had ended. More on the investigation and the Library of Congress Mission in Germany can be found HERE. Born's positions at the Library of Congress included serving as Special Assistant on the Microfilm Program, Coordinator of Microreproduction Projects, and Head of the Manuscript Section of the Descriptive Cataloging Division. Born played an important role in the development of the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections at the Library of Congress.

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USF Book Club: The Archivist

May 20th, 2010 by Kelci No comments »

Thanks to the recommendation of one of my MFA classmates, I started reading The Archivist by Martha Cooley a few weeks ago. She was right to recommend it to me — it brings together my two worlds: poetry and libraries. Most of the novel centers around the letters between TS Eliot and his American confidante Emily Hale, which have been donated to the University for which the main character, Matt, works as the library archivist. With poetic mind and interspersing of poetic text, the novel illuminates Matt’s past and current relationships — romantic and familial — while also examining how religious faith affects each character’s world view. I’m looking forward to discussing it at book club!

We will meet in the USF Community Garden on Wednesday June 23, 2010, from 12 noon – 1 pm. If the weather is bad we will instead meet in the library.

To get the book through the library’s free service Link+, follow this link and request it using your University ID number.

We welcome all members of the USF Community, so take a break, soak up some rays, and join us for a fun discussion.


You can check out the book club online by visiting our wiki!


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Spofford’s Book Palace

May 19th, 2010 by Larry T. Nix No comments »

On a recent trip to Washington, D. C. I was able to make a quick visit to the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, one of many visits I have made over the years. The building never fails to be awe inspiring. The person most responsible for bringing about the construction of this magnificent building was Ainsworth Rand Spofford, the sixth Librarian of Congress. Spofford referred to the building as the "Book Palace of the American People". I scanned the first image shown above from the Harper's Weekly issue of February 27, 1897. It shows the crowded conditions in the old Congressional Reading Room in the Capitol just before the move to the new building. Spofford actually appears in the illustration. He is the tall bearded man walking from the right. The second image is the cover of a folder of postcards of the library. It calls the building "The World's Most Beautiful Building". The final image is a picture of the Great Hall which I took on my recent visit. It's a shame that at least one of the major buildings of the Library of Congress couldn't have been named for Spofford. After all, Spofford had more to do with making the Library of Congress the world's greatest library than did Jefferson, Adams, or Madison. More about the buildings of the Library of Congress can be found HERE.

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