My cousin Ivelisse Pabón does genealogical research on our family's African ancestors. She doesn't publish her work so I wanted to share a recent find.
The image is the cover of an article from the provincial #library in Cádiz #Spain. It shows the brand that was burned into the skin of people trafficked by La Companía Gaditana de Negros in 1765 to show that the transaction had paid the duties to make it " legitimate".
Pointing out that @everylibrary has joined the fedi.
If you care about US public and school libraries -- if you want to see library censorship stop -- give 'em a follow, and some spare bucks if you have 'em.
#Deichman Bjørvika, the spectacular main building of #Oslo public #library truly is a marvelous place. Spaciness seems to have been one guiding principle. Another one, the great attention to detail when placing pieces of art such as Simone Hooymans' video installation "Talking plants" (2020).
I forgot to post yesterday with all the excitement, but I got a really interesting haul from my small, local library. A good mix, I think:
Blindness - Jose Saramago
Sad Little Men: How Public Schools Failed Britain - Richard Beard
Battersby Hats of Stockport - Rupert Battersby
East West Street - Philippe Sands
In the Castle of my Skin - George Lamming
Taxi For Kiev - Stephen Deponeo
Constable Along the River Bank - Nicholas Rhea
A Death in the Parish - Rev Richard Coles
The Tiger's Wife - Téa Obreht
I am Not Your Eve - Devika Ponnambalam
However, it's not going to help with getting through the to read pile I have already.
I forgot to post yesterday with all the excitement, but I got a really interesting haul from my small, local library. A good mix, I think:
Sad Little Men: How Public Schools Failed Britain - Richard Beard
Battersby Hats of Stockport - Rupert Battersby
East West Street - Philippe Sands
In the Castle of my Skin - George Lamming
Taxi For Kiev - Stephen Deponeo
Constable Along the River Bank - Nicholas Rhea
A Death in the Parish - Rev Richard Coles
The Tiger's Wife - Téa Obreht
I am Not Your Eve - Devika Ponnambalam
However, it's not going to help with getting through the to read pile I have already.
I live rurally and my library has been part of a consortium of 24 libraries across this part of the state where they all share a catalogue and patrons can borrow from all of them. Recently, courier costs have become too much and they’ve cut into blocks of 5 or so libraries for delivery (I honestly just thought they’d hired someone whose job it was to continuously circuit through the 24 libraries, collecting and returning books).
The other cost-cutting measure is that they no longer return books to the originating library. So I’m seeing “New to this library” bookmarks on quite a few books now.
One of the librarians casually told me that patrons still have membership in the full 24-library network. So that if I were to, say, visit one of the big towns now outside our small delivery block, I could, maybe, borrow books directly from there — and I could, you know, conveniently return it via my own library.
And then my library gets to keep it.
They’re very quietly deploying their readers to raid the bigger libraries 😂
I am reading the cutest middle grade novel right now. It's called The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass and it's about a boy, a little free library, a couple ghosts, and Mortimer, the library cat. Highly recommend for readers age 8-12.