The dark and the light

Just began dimming the lights on the Los Angeles Public Libraries on Sundays. Incredibly sad, but a much better alternative than closing ANY branches. See this story by Kevin Roderick in his blog LA Observed. 

Roderick's been a bit of a library advocate recently. Also liked this commentary on Jaime Escalante and education, though a recent Times story hinted that Escalante's story helped push the drive toward high-stakes testing -- which gave me pause. A great teacher, nonetheless.




On a lighter note, I came across a great article about Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards' love of libraries in the London Times Online. Richards actually wanted to be a librarian -- let's see, rock star, librarian, rock star, librarian...tough choice for many.


An excerpt from the piece, written by John Harlow:


The guitarist started to arrange the volumes, including rare histories of early American rock music and the second world war, by the librarian’s standard Dewey Decimal classification system but gave up on that as “too much hassle.”


For more on Richards on personal and public libraries, click here.