April 4, 2023
The Evanston Public Library is a vast and mysterious place filled with hidden treasures. How many can you find? Take our scavenger hunt and find out! (And don’t be afraid to ask us for help!) These sisters have been helping one another out for almost a century in the library. This is just a copy, […]
May 26, 2020
When you live through a significant moment in world history, you may feel an overwhelming need to document it in some fashion. But how? Do you write your descendants letters about it (“Dear Great-Grandchild, We had very little toilet paper…”)? Do you write in a diary every single day that you’re sequestered inside (“Today my […]
July 31, 2019
Ever since the Evanston Public Library ceased its regular book sale on the third floor, we’ve had to deal with the constant influx of donations we receive in new ways. To deal with the bulk of the donations, for example, we placed a large green Better World Books bin on the side of the building […]
April 24, 2019
When news breaks, the library is sometimes the first place people go. Take, for example, the recent fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The day it occurred the library created a display of all its books about or set at the Cathedral. Some of these were architectural in nature (and, admittedly, are probably now […]
March 27, 2019
Oh, this world is a topsy turvy place and there’s so little that stays the same year to year. Happily, there is one constant in this cruel, unfeeling universe on which you can depend: The peregrine falcons have returned to nest on Evanston Public Library. As they do every year, a pair of peregrines has […]
December 6, 2018
What criteria should a librarian use to determine how successful a library display truly is? Should you consider how often the books are removed? The quality of the literature displayed? The timeliness of the topic? The inventiveness? Or should we do it the way our forefathers and foremothers intended? That’s right. Twitter hits. Recently one […]
September 28, 2018
In the early summer the library switched to an entirely new interface. Not an event that would be call for much notice on the part of the public, but there were certain perks that came with the temporary inconvenience. Perks that I’m not sure you even know about. Perks that involve your library books. Right […]
September 13, 2018
About ten years ago I was working as a New York City librarian, doing my due diligence in a massive system. My first job was in the Jefferson Market branch, a gorgeous structure that began its days as a women’s courthouse (Mae West was tried there, amongst many others). When it was turned into a […]
March 16, 2018
Roughly ten years ago I worked for New York Public Library. 2008 was, as you might recall, a year of great economic strife thanks in large part to the housing market crash. The ways in which libraries responded to this emergency varied from state to state, but in the case of NYPL there was one […]
December 20, 2017
About two or three months ago I was wandering around the Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, when I was struck by this engaging little book display: As you can see, each shelf catered to a different personality type, seen through a Harry Potter lens. I was rather awed by it all. To create a display like […]
