Showing titles in Library & Museum Studies

In December 2008, twentysomething Jill Grunenwald graduated with her master’s degree in library science, ready to start living her dream of becoming a librarian. But the economy had a different idea. As the Great Recession reared its ugly head, jobs were scarce. After some searching, however, Jill was lucky enough to snag one of the few librarian gigs left in her home state of Ohio. The catch? The job was behind bars as the prison librarian at a men’s minimum-security prison. Talk about baptism by fire.

Libraries today are more important than ever. More than just book repositories, libraries can become bulwarks against some of the most crucial challenges of our age: unequal access to education, jobs, and information.

At the height of the Syrian Civil War, deep beneath the shattered streets of rebel-held Darayya was a secret library. This basement room filled with thousands of books, rescued under constant sniper fire from gutted buildings, was an oasis of normality in a country at war with itself. Here, despite a devastating four-year siege, people risked their lives to read. Over a period of more than a year, Mike Thomson heard their extraordinary stories via tenuous Skype calls, emails, social media messages, and audio diaries recorded on their mobile phones.

Art today is defined by its relationship to money as never before. Prices of living artists' works have been driven to unprecedented heights, conventional boundaries within the art world have collapsed, and artists now think ever more strategically about how to advance their careers. Artists no longer simply make art, but package, sell, and brand it. Noah Horowitz exposes the inner workings of the contemporary art market, explaining how this unique economy came to be, how it works, and where it's headed.

Py-Lieberman reflects on the profound connections between even outwardly dissimilar objects and offers insight and stories from Smithsonian experts. The book explores artworks, scientific specimens, historical artifacts, airplanes, spacecraft, plants, and so much more, contemplating how each item represents different facets of humanity and resonates with cultural meaning in surprising ways. Whimsical, affecting, and insightful, The Object at Hand offers an intimate and exclusive tour of the Smithsonian collections.

The dream of capturing and organizing knowledge is as old as history. From the archives of ancient Sumeria and the Library of Alexandria to the Library of Congress and Wikipedia, humanity has wrestled with the problem of harnessing its intellectual output. The timeless quest for wisdom has been as much about information storage and retrieval as creative genius. In Cataloging the World, Alex Wright introduces us to a figure who stands out in the long line of thinkers and idealists who devoted themselves to the task.

Libraries have existed for millennia, but today many question their necessity. In an ever more digital and connected world, do we still need places of books in our towns, colleges, or schools? If libraries aren't about books, what are they about? In Expect More, David Lankes, winner of the 2012 ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature, walks you through what to expect out of your library.

In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France's Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Packing up his enormous, 35,000 volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between books and readers, books and collectors, order and disorder, memory and reading.

The Western museum is a battleground—a terrain of ideological, political, and economic contestation. Almost everyone today wants to rethink the museum, but how many have the audacity to question the idea of the universal museum itself? In A Programme of Absolute Disorder, Françoise Vergès puts the museum in its place. Exploring the Louvre's history, she uncovers the context in which the universal museum emerged: as a product of colonialism, and of Europe's self-appointed claim to be the guardian of global heritage.

Using information in its everyday, nonspecialized sense, Michael Buckland explores the influence of information on what we know, the role of communication and recorded information in our daily lives, and the difficulty (or ease) of finding information. He shows that all this involves human perception, social behavior, changing technologies, and issues of trust.

Horace Everett Hooper - a volatile, self-assured, impulsive, and optimistic American, an autodidact and natural-born salesman - got into the book business at age 16, moved to the Western frontier and on to Chicago, and became hugely successful. With a brilliant adman named Henry Haxton as his partner, he went about buying publishing rights to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a work incredibly distinguished by entries from Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus, Sir Walter Scott, and more.

At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the Western world, his armies were seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. He had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised. A special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Monuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture.

Journey into the heart of South Sudan’s Nuer tribe with The Individual: The First Societal Unit, a captivating tale that weaves the rich fabric of African culture with the universal quest for identity and belonging. In this evocative narrative, follow Panyim, a young Nuer man standing at the threshold of adulthood, as he navigates the sacred rites and communal responsibilities that will define his place within his tribe. With each line etched on his forehead during the Gär ceremony, Panyim’s personal journey becomes deeply entwined with the collective destiny of his people. Guided by ...

Este libro pretende ser un homenaje a todos ellos, los millones de hombres y mujeres que han hecho perdurar la sabiduría popular a través de los años mediante los refranes. También es un modo de difundir el español a través de las paremias. No pretende ser un libro de refranes más, ya que no están —ni de lejos— todos los que son, pero sí son todos los que están. La idea es presentar algunos de los proverbios más populares y comentarlos desde la humilde opinión de quien escribe. La otra pretensión de la obra es que los dichos de estos hombres y mujeres perduren con los años...

El estallido de la guerra civil no solo trastornó radicalmente la vida y destino de todos los españoles, sino que provocó un auténtico terremoto en el patrimonio histórico y artístico del país. Además de detallar los destrozos provocados por las propias acciones bélicas, el autor recuerda los incendios y desmanes que, en zona republicana, sufrieron las instituciones religiosas y se detiene en la oscura historia del Vita y las piezas del Museo Arqueológico.

Buried in information? Cross-eyed over technology? From the bottom of a pile of paper and discs, books, e-books, and scattered thumb drives comes a cry of hope: Make way for the librarians! They want to help. They're not selling a thing. And librarians know best how to beat a path through the googolplex sources of information available to us.

Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone, is possibly the greatest writer in television history. His work has been seen by many around the world for the last half century. This audiobook aims to give the casual viewer or Serling enthusiast some insight into the legendary television scribe's career and probe into how and why he got the reputation he has.

Este libro pretende ser un homenaje a todos ellos por haber hecho perdurar la sabiduría popular a través de los años mediante los refranes. También es un modo de difundir el español a través de los refranes. No pretende ser un libro de refranes más, ya que no están —ni de lejos— todos los que son, pero sí son todos los que están. La idea es presentar algunos de los refranes más populares y comentarlos desde la humilde opinión de quien escribe. La otra pretensión de la obra es que los refranes de estos hombres perduren con los años y no caigan en el olvido. No es un libro ...

Este libro recopila las frases, consejos y citas de algunas de las personas más ricas de los últimos tiempos. Exactamente 18 multimillonarios. Sería un craso error no aprovechar la sabiduría que les ha llevado al éxito. WARREN BUFFETT (BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY) HENRY FORD (FORD MOTOR COMPANY) JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER (STANDARD OIL COMPANY) RAY KROC (MCDONALD'S) AMANCIO ORTEGA (INDITEX) WALT DISNEY (THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY) CONRAD HILTON (HILTON HOTELS & RESORTS) JEFF BEZOS (AMAZON) MARK ZUCKERBERG (FACEBOOK) STEVE JOBS (APPLE) BILL GATES (MICROSOFT) JACK MA (ALIBABA GROUP) DONALD TRUMP (THE TRUMP...

A good art collection is always much more than the sum of its parts. This applies with especial force to collections of contemporary work. A collection of this kind, whether the collector intends it to be so or not, is always a portrait - a reflection in the mirror of a particular epoch, and, willy-nilly, a self-portrait of the person who takes the trouble to bring it together.