Shared by Jonathan Aubrey….
Future & Present Librarians,
I went down to Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park last week to find a well run free library, which had been set up by a librarian on day one of the demonstrations there, over a month ago. Users can take books, and return them when and if they can. Donations are encouraged, though they have too much fiction and would prefer more works on politics, economics, and history. Their collection contains hundreds of books, of all kinds, for all readers, and they have some periodicals, ‘zines, CD’s and such. LibraryThing has given them a lifetime account, and they process and catalog items with it by ISBN, using an iPhone scanner, when possible.
Anyone can volunteer at the OWS Library. It’s a very satisfying experience, and a cool, bustling place to be. The Library is at the northeast corner of Zuccotti Park, at the intersection of Broadway and Liberty Street.
More info on the Occupy Wall Street Library can be found at their website – http://peopleslibrary.wordpress.com/
Does the library still exist?
I stopped by the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park during the first week of October and was surprised to find that they had their own community library. Extrapolating from my 701 class I reasoned that: they had a centralized population, economic development, and political stability. It was really quite extensive already and even had a children’s section. They had 4 librarians, one of whom is apparently a trained librarian, the others were all grad students of various majors. By the time the police cleared the park, they had a tented area and were a fulling functioning library. On my blog I’ve been trying to cover some aspects of the OWS movement that the press has been ignoring. http://michaellorenzini.com/blog
Is the OWS library still open?
It’s great to see that books are still considered such an important medium and such a valuable way to share view points and inform readers, no matter what the environment.
Not sure if you are interested in the progress of the library, but it has been destroyed TWICE now. Currently they are working on an OWS poetry anthology.
It was ammazing that OWS had a library which was giving us free books, each shows how powerful a librarian and contribute in the society.
[...] us up to speed. Elsewhere Scott Voth shared another link to Occupy Wall Street’s ‘People’s Library‘ down in Liberty Plaza. It sounds like the police have been threatening to shut the library [...]