Thursday 31 March 2016

Tuesday 29 March 2016

Libraries lose a quarter of staff as hundreds close

Almost 8,000 jobs in UK libraries have disappeared in six years, about a quarter of the overall total, an investigation by the BBC has revealed.
BBC

Thursday 24 March 2016

Funky bookshelf

Designed to go against the wall or in the middle of the room as a divider with peek-through open cutouts. Even more funky, this bookshelf transforms to any space as it is created to stand horizontally or vertically with nine adjustable shelf fitting any which way.
Shiner

Thursday 17 March 2016

Pi Workstation

The Pi Workstation functions as a desk, bookshelf and occasional chair. In addition to these functions, there is the option to remove the bookshelf and transform the desk into a 2 top dining table.
Joe Manus

Tuesday 15 March 2016

Library in the shape of a book


A  library in the shape of an open book is expected to open next year in Dubai. The Mohammed bin Rashid Library in Al Jaddaf will hold more than 1.5 million volumes, 1 million audio books and 2 million e-books, making it the world’s largest electronic collection and the biggest library in the Arab world.
The National

Tuesday 8 March 2016

Literary Trumps


As well as running Bookshelf and Shedworking regular readers know that I have also published various books over the last half dozen years, the last two on Bookshelves and Improbable Libraries. This year, instead of a book, it's a game - Literary Trumps. I am hoping to crowdfund this via the excellent book publisher Unbound which crowdfunds all its titles (you may have read the best-selling Letters of Note or the Booker short-listed The Wake).

The game is played along similar lines to other Trump games you will have played in your youth, only instead of classic cars or dragsters, Literary Trumps is all about writers, their quotability, their ouptut and their speed. Please do click on the links above for more information and do consider making a pledge to fund it - the whole thing will only happen if 500 people generously put their hands in their pockets.

Friday 4 March 2016

What sex is your bookshelf?

What if my bookshelf is female and also male? And what do we mean by male and female books, anyway? Those written by women with female protagonists, or a style and substance beyond this which male writers have access to, or can assume?
Arifa Akbar in The Independent

Tuesday 1 March 2016

I Murdered My Library

What happens when you begin to build a library in childhood and then find you have too many books? From a small collection held together by a pair of plaster of Paris horse-head bookends to books piled on stairs, and in front of each other on shelves, books cease to furnish a room and begin to overwhelm it. At the end of 2013, novelist Linda Grant moved from a rambling maisonette over four floors to a two bedroom flat with a tiny corridor-shaped study. The trauma of getting rid of thousands of books raises the question of what purpose personal libraries serve in contemporary life and the seductive lure of the Kindle. Both a memoir of a lifetime of reading and an insight into how interior décor has banished the bookcase, her account of the emotional struggle of her relationship with books asks questions about the way we live today.
Kindle Single