Arts Funding in Peril
This spring the Trump administration walloped the arts community when it slashed federal funding for literary arts and culture, taking major steps to dismantle the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA),…
The Atlas Obscura Podcast The Biblioburro
In a small rural town in Colombia, one man mounts books on the backs of donkeys and takes to the hills. This is how he operates his bookmobile, aka “Biblioburro.”
Weeding is Fundamental Revisited
Libraries get rid of books all the time. There are so many new books coming in every day and only a finite amount of library space. The practice of freeing…
How the Public Library Became an American Civic Institution
Free For All: The Public Library tells the story of the quiet revolutionaries who made a simple idea happen. From the pioneering women behind the “Free Library Movement” to today's…
Q&A: Stewart Battles Book Bans at PRH
In September 2024, during Banned Books Week, Penguin Random House (PRH) expanded its Intellectual Freedom Taskforce, a group dedicated to protecting the freedom to read, by naming Rosie Stewart senior…
Carnival Collection
Tulane university library catalog
A Library Grows in Norway
On the outskirts of Oslo, just beyond the point where the city dissolves into forest, one thousand spruce saplings reach feathery green fingers toward the sky. Just over ten years…
This Savvy Librarian Was the True Force Behind New York’s Iconic Morgan Library
It fell to Belle da Costa Greene, a Black woman whose racial identity was kept secret for decades, to catalog J.P. Morgan’s immense collection of books and art Toward the…
Libraries are Punk
Layne McCaleb
Big publishers think libraries are the enemy
The recent Second Circuit decision in Hachette v. Internet Archive is only the latest battle in the war on libraries and the freedom to read.