“
Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff –
”
”
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
“
Bad libraries only build collections. Good libraries build services (and a collection is only one of many). Great libraries build communities.
”
”
R. David Lankes (Expect More: Demanding Better Libraries For Today's Complex World)
“
Police argue that residents in high-crime communities often demand police action. What is left out is that these communities also ask for better schools, parks, libraries, and jobs, but these services are rarely provided.
”
”
Alex S. Vitale (The End of Policing)
“
The room was a compact, informal library. Books stood or were stacked on the shelves that ran along two walls from floor to ceiling, sat on the tables like knickknacks, trooped around the room like soldiers. They struck Malory as more than knowledge or entertainment, even more than stories or information. They were colour and texture, in a haphazard yet somehow intricate decorating scheme.
The short leg of the L-shaped room boasted still more books, as well as a small table that held the remains of Dana's breakfast.
With her hands on her hips, Dana watched Malory's perusal of her space. She'd seen the reaction before. 'No I haven't read them all, but I will.And no I don't know how many I have. Want coffee?'
Let me just ask this. Do you ever actually use the services of the library?'
Sure, but I need to own them. If I don't have twenty or thirty books right here, waiting to be read, I start jonesing. That's my compulsion.
”
”
Nora Roberts
“
I’m sorry, buttercup,” he murmured, cuddling her spent and trembling form against his. “You deserve time and privacy, and consideration. Not to be fondled in the library over the tea service.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels, #6))
“
I tramp the perpetual journey
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the
woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public
road.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.
Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten
forth,
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand
on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded
heaven,
And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs,
and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we
be fill'd and satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue
beyond.
You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.
Sit a while dear son,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss
you with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress
hence.
Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every
moment of your life.
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout,
and laughingly dash with your hair.
”
”
Walt Whitman (Song of Myself)
“
A zoo is a cultural institution. Like a public library, like a museum, it is at the service of popular education and science. And by that token, not much of a money-making venture for the Greater Good and the Greater Profit are not compatible aims.
”
”
Yann Martel (Life of Pi)
“
Every writer on the Orient (and this is true even of Homer) assumes some Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which he refers and on which he relies. Additionally, each work on the Orient affiliates itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions, with the Orient itself. The ensemble of relationships between works, audiences, and some particular aspects of the Orient therefore constitutes an analyzable formation[…]whose presence in time, in discourse, in institutions (schools, libraries, foreign services) gives it strength and authority.
”
”
Edward W. Said (Orientalism)
“
About 20 years ago I told an Exec to tell her friend, an Exec at a big entertainment company that they should develop a video library where anyone can pull up a film or tv show when they want to, from home. This was before Video On Demand. Before Netflix went streaming. Before Amazon Video and Hulu. That entertainment company I told about my vision for a VOD-type of service to was Blockbuster. But because I was a very young Executive, a woman, and Asian; they didn't listen. Look where Blockbuster is now. - Don't take Good Advice for Granted. Futurist - Kailin Gow
”
”
Kailin Gow
“
Does the gospel we preach produce disciples or does it produce consumers of religious goods and services?
”
”
Bill Hull (The Complete Book of Discipleship: On Being and Making Followers of Christ (The Navigators Reference Library 1))
“
Bloody Tories,' Mrs. B said. 'We know what you're up to here, destroying public services with a hundred little cuts so you bring in privatization and volunteerism.
”
”
Freya Sampson (The Last Chance Library)
“
When feelings run deep, and impulses high, it helps to have calm, secure places to retreat to.
”
”
Isabella koldras
“
I thought about that while he made his next calls, while I kept on with the newsletters. I thought about it during Sunday service at Word of Life, and during study hours in my room, with the Viking Erin and her squeaky pink highlighter. What it meant to really believe in something—for real. Belief. The big dictionary in the Promise library said it meant something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held conviction or opinion. But even that definition, as short and simple as it was, confused me. True or real: Those were definite words; opinion and conviction just weren't—opinions wavered and changed and fluctuated with the person, the situation. And most troubling of all was the word accepts. Something one accepts. I was much better at excepting everything than accepting anything, at least anything for certain, for definite. That much I knew. That much I believed.
”
”
Emily M. Danforth (The Miseducation of Cameron Post)
“
In a great library, you get into society in the widest sense. . . . From that great crowd you can choose what companions you please, for in these silent gatherings . . . the highest is at the service of the lowest with a grand humility. In a library you become a true citizen of the world.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham
“
Altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only moral justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty. The political expression of altruism is collectivism or statism, which holds that man's life and work belong to the state - to society, to the group, the gang, the race, the nation - and that the state may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.
”
”
Ayn Rand (The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (The Ayn Rand Library Vol. V))
“
It has a price, though. In the service of my will, I have emptied myself.” Steve
”
”
Scott Hawkins (The Library at Mount Char)
“
Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
“
It was one of life’s rules – Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff –
”
”
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
“
And naturally I was reading in the library a few days later from a book about the Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna, and I stumbled upon a story about a seeker who once came to see the great master and admitted to him that she feared she was not a good enough devotee, feared that she did not love God enough. And the saint said, "Is there nothing you love?" The woman admitted that she adored her young nephew more than anything else on earth. The saint said, "There, then. He is your Krishna, your beloved. In your service to your nephew, you are serving God.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
The Six-Fold Definition of Being Conformed to Christ's Image
130
1. Transformed Mind: Believe What Jesus Believed
130
2. Transformed Character: Live the Way Jesus Lived
135
3. Transformed Relationships: Love as Jesus Loved
139
4. Transformed Habits: Train as Jesus Trained
142
5. Transformed Service: Minister as Jesus Ministered
144
6. Transformed Influence: Lead the Way Jesus Led
”
”
Bill Hull (The Complete Book of Discipleship: On Being and Making Followers of Christ (The Navigators Reference Library 1))
“
Trees constitute the environmental quality committee—running air and water purification service 24-7. They’re on every task force, from the historical society picnic to the highway department, school board, and library. When it comes to civic beautification, they alone create the crimson fall with little recognition.
”
”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
“
...a library is not just a reference service: it is also a place for the vulnerable. From the elderly gentleman whose only remaining human interaction is with library staff, to the isolated young mother who relishes the support and friendship that grows from a Baby Rhyme Time session, to a slow moving 30-something woman collecting her CDs, libraries are a haven in a world where community services are being ground down to nothing. I've always known libraries are vital, but now I understand that their worth cannot be measured in books alone.
”
”
Angela Clarke
“
Libraries are, at heart, helpful and kind providers. It is hard for those who perhaps don't feel the need to visit their local libraries to understand what a vital service they provide for communities and individuals who do - and those who do are often the most vulnerable.
”
”
Robert Popple
“
Every day, librarians enforce copyright policies that we may disagree with and that, in some ways, run contrary to the values of our profession. Every day, librarians must decide between a desire to preserve the privacy of our community members and offering services our communities demand. Every day, librarians must make a choice between doing what’s easy, doing what’s right, and determining what’s right in the first place. No textbook or mission statement or policy document can relieve us of the necessity to make those decisions, nor remove the complexity of those decisions. That’s why we are librarians and why librarians are professionals, not clerks. That’s why we are stewards within the communities we serve, not servants to them. That’s why we must shape the missions and the work of our organizations and communities, and not simply accept them.
”
”
R. David Lankes (The New Librarianship Field Guide (Mit Press))
“
I do not write every day. I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passions. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing is a spiritual practice. A small bowl of water sits on my desk, a reminder that even if nothing is happening on the page, something is happening in the room--evaporation. And I always light a candle when I begin to write, a reminder that I have now entered another realm, call it the realm of the Spirit. I am mindful that when one writes, one leaves this world and enters another.
My books are collages made from journals, research, and personal experience. I love the images rendered in journal entries, the immediacy that is captured on the page, the handwritten notes. I love the depth of ideas and perspective that research brings to a story, be it biological or anthropological studies or the insights brought to the page by the scholarly work of art historians.
When I go into a library, I feel like I am a sleuth looking to solve a mystery. I am completely inspired by the pursuit of knowledge through various references. I read newpapers voraciously. I love what newspapers say about contemporary culture. And then you go back to your own perceptions, your own words, and weigh them against all you have brought together. I am interested in the kaleidoscope of ideas, how you bring many strands of thought into a book and weave them together as one piece of coherent fabric, while at the same time trying to create beautiful language in the service of the story. This is the blood work of the writer.
Writing is also about a life engaged. And so, for me, community work, working in the schools or with grassroots conservation organizations is another critical component of my life as a writer. I cannot separate the writing life from a spiritual life, from a life as a teacher or activist or my life intertwined with family and the responsibilities we carry within our own homes. Writing is daring to feel what nurtures and breaks our hearts. Bearing witness is its own form of advocacy. It is a dance with pain and beauty.
”
”
Terry Tempest Williams
“
She had so many things to be grateful for: two eyes to see the splendors of this wonderful world, two legs to explore it all, food on her table each night at a time when billions have empty bellies. And a roof over her head for ample shelter. She had wise books to read in her library, work that fed her creativity and, as the billionaire said so often, an opportunity to achieve outright mastery not only to benefit herself but also in service of society. And
”
”
Robin S. Sharma (The 5AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life.)
“
The fact that our most heroic social justice movements won on the legal front but suffered big losses on the economic front is precisely why our world is as fundamentally unequal and unfair as it remains. Those losses have left a legacy of continued discrimination, double standards, and entrenched poverty—poverty that deepens with each new crisis. But, at the same time, the economic battles the movements did win are the reason we still have a few institutions left—from libraries to mass transit to public hospitals—based on the wild idea that real equality means equal access to the basic services that create a dignified life.
”
”
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate)
“
an aristocracy come to power, convinced of its own disinterested quality, believing itself above both petty partisan interest and material greed. The suggestion that this also meant the holding and wielding of power was judged offensive by these same people, who preferred to view their role as service, though in fact this was typical of an era when many of the great rich families withdrew from the new restless grab for money of a modernizing America, and having already made their particular fortunes, turned to the public arena as a means of exercising power. They were viewed as reformers, though the reforms would be aimed more at the newer seekers of wealth than at those who already held it. (“First-generation millionaires,” Garry Wills wrote in Nixon Agonistes, “give us libraries, second-generation millionaires give us themselves.”)
”
”
David Halberstam (The Best and the Brightest)
“
It was a common complaint amongst the Arts students that their library was in dire need of refurbishment. To call the old building shabby chic was being kind. It didn’t have automated stacks or self-service machines like the Management and Sciences library the other side of campus and the carpets and bookcases looked like they were probably the Victorian originals.
But on days like this one, where the springtime sunshine streamed in through the high windows and set the dust motes dancing, Harriet sincerely felt that those BSc lot could stuff their vending machines and state of the art study pods. The Old Library was clearly suited for those who had poetry in their souls, rather than numbers in their heads.
”
”
Erin Lawless (Little White Lies)
“
Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff
”
”
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
“
Many programmers would prefer to mock in their client library specs, but doing so could result in the service and client passing all specs with hidden failures.
”
”
Paul Dix
“
It was one of life’s rules – Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff
”
”
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
“
I cannot sufficiently celebrate the glorious liberty that reigns in the public libraries of the twentieth century as compared with the intolerable management of those of the nineteenth century, in which the books were jealously railed away from the people, and obtainable only at an expenditure of time and red tape calculated to discourage any ordinary taste for literature.
”
”
Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward: 2000-1887)
“
Defending the library service from the predations of ideologically-motivated public schoolboys who had immensely privileged childhoods isn’t ‘whining,’ it is the pursuit of passionately held beliefs.
”
”
Alan Gibson
“
In 1973, the library even added a service called the Hoot Owl Telephonic Reference, which operated from nine P.M. until one A.M., long after the library was closed. Dialing H-O-O-T-O-W-L connected you to a librarian who could find the answer to almost any question. The Hoot Owl slogan was “Win Your Bet Without a Fight.” Apparently, in the late evening, people all over Los Angeles did a lot of betting on trivia such as the correct names of the Seven Dwarves. The service got a call every three minutes, adding up to about thirty-five thousand a year. Hoot Owl was a favorite target of conservative groups, who believed it catered to “hippies and other night people.” But the library persisted, and Hoot Owl operated every weeknight until the end of 1976.
”
”
Susan Orlean (The Library Book)
“
Anyone would think we were some kind of free education service,' grumbled Joyce, having disposed of the child and returned to her central eyrie.
'That's just what we are,' said Helen.
Joyce shot her a look in which surprise and indignation were nicely fused.
”
”
Penelope Lively (Passing On)
“
Libraries are, at heart, helpful and kind providers. It is hard for those who perhaps don't feel the need to visit their local libraries to understand what a vital service they provide for communities and individuals who do - and those who do are often the most vulnerable.
”
”
Richard Popple
“
You have it in you already. You just sort of need to be exposed to these things and provide yourself an education. The library assumes the best out of people. The services it provides are founded upon the assumption that if given the chance, people will improve themselves.
”
”
Eric Klinenberg (Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life)
“
The most successful students are those who know that they can do better than grasp at the closest source of information. Reference librarians, who spend their days learning what is available in a broad range of fields and how to search for it, provide a great service for students and other library patrons.
”
”
John Palfrey (BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google)
“
To what object are my views directed?” he asked. “Am I grasping at money, or scheming for power?” Yes, he was amassing a library, but to what purpose? “Fame, fortune, power say some, are the ends intended by a library. The service of God, country, clients, fellow men, say others. Which of these lie nearest my heart?
”
”
David McCullough (John Adams)
“
Loken tried to imagine the future, but the image would not form. Death would wipe them all from history. Not even the great First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon would survive forever. There would be a time when Abaddon no longer waged bloody war across the territories of humanity.
Loken sighed. That would be a sad day indeed. Men would cry out for Abaddon’s return, but he would never come.
He tried to picture the manner of his own death. Fabled, imaginary combats flashed through his mind. He imagined himself at the Emperor’s side, fighting some great, last stand against an unknown foe. Primarch Horus would be there, of course. He had to be. It wouldn’t be the same without him. Loken would battle, and die, and perhaps even Horus would die, to save the Emperor at the last.
Glory. Glory, like he’d never known. Such an hour would become so ingrained in the minds of men that it would be the cornerstone of all that came after. A great battle, upon which human culture would be based.
Then, briefly, he imagined another death. Alone, far away from his comrades and his Legion, dying from cruel wounds on some nameless rock, his passing as memorable as smoke.
Loken swallowed hard. Either way, his service was to the Emperor, and his service would be true to the end.
”
”
Dan Abnett (Horus Rising (The Horus Heresy, #1))
“
It is a veritable revolving door of jobs between the USDA and Big Ag and Big Food. Americans should insist on the establishment of a new Department of Food run through the Department of Health and Human Services, which is paying for the consequences of harmful dietary recommendations through Medicare and Medicaid. In
”
”
Mark Hyman (Eat Fat, Get Thin: Why the Fat We Eat Is the Key to Sustained Weight Loss and Vibrant Health (The Dr. Mark Hyman Library Book 5))
“
I get it right away. Those guys come in guns blazing, Jesus the shit out of everything, maybe even spray a bit of holy water here and there, chant some jazz from the Book of Occasional Services and shoot off. It's hit or miss with them: sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. But if there's something strange in your postcode, who you gonna call?
”
”
T.L. Huchu (The Library of the Dead (Edinburgh Nights, #1))
“
The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, as old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled. They wrestled with mysteries and transformed them into myths which coded the world and helped the community to live through one more darkness, with eyes wide open and hearts set alight.
"I can see them now, the old masters. I can see them standing on the other side of the flames, speaking in the voices of lions, or thunder, or monsters, or heroes, heroines, or the earth, or fire itself -- for they had to contain all voices within them, had to be all things and nothing. They had to have the ability to become lightning, to become a future homeland, to be the dreaded guide to the fabled land where the community will settle and fructify. They had to be able to fight in advance all the demons they would encounter, and summon up all the courage needed on the way, to prophesy about all the requisite qualities that would ensure their arrival at the dreamt-of land.
"The old masters had to be able to tell stories that would make sleep possible on those inhuman nights, stories that would counter terror with enchantment, or with a greater terror. I can see them, beyond the flames, telling of a hero's battle with a fabulous beast -- the beast that is in the hero."
"The storyteller's art changed through the ages. From battling dread in word and incantations before their people did in reality, they became the repositories of the people's wisdom and follies. Often, conscripted by kings, they became the memory of a people's origins, and carried with them the long line of ancestries and lineages. Most important of all, they were the living libraries, the keepers of legends and lore. They knew the causes and mutations of things, the herbs, trees, plants, cures for diseases, causes for wars, causes of victory, the ways in which victory often precipitates defeat, or defeat victory, the lineages of gods, the rites humans have to perform to the gods. They knew of follies and restitutions, were advocates of new and old ways of being, were custodians of culture, recorders of change."
"These old storytellers were the true magicians. They were humanity's truest friends and most reliable guides. Their role was both simple and demanding. They had to go down deep into the seeds of time, into the dreams of their people, into the unconscious, into the uncharted fears, and bring shapes and moods back up into the light. They had to battle with monsters before they told us about them. They had to see clearly."
"They risked their sanity and their consciousness in the service of dreaming better futures. They risked madness, or being unmoored in the wild realms of the interspaces, or being devoured by the unexpected demons of the communal imagination."
"And I think that now, in our age, in the mid-ocean of our days, with certainties collapsing around us, and with no beliefs by which to steer our way through the dark descending nights ahead -- I think that now we need those fictional old bards and fearless storytellers, those seers. We need their magic, their courage, their love, and their fire more than ever before. It is precisely in a fractured, broken age that we need mystery and a reawoken sense of wonder. We need them to be whole again.
”
”
Ben Okri (A Way of Being Free)
“
I walked down the empty Broad to breakfast, as I often did on Sundays, at a tea-shop opposite Balliol. The air was full of bells from the surrounding spires and the sun, casting long shadows across the open spaces, dispelled the fears of night. The tea-shop was hushed as a library; a few solitary men in bedroom slippers from Balliol and Trinity looked up as I entered, then turned back to their Sunday newspapers. I ate my scrambled eggs and bitter marmalade with the zest which in youth follows a restless night. I lit a cigarette and sat on, while one by one the Balliol and Trinity men paid their bills and shuffled away, slip-slop, across the street to their colleges. It was nearly eleven when I left, and during my walk I heard the change-ringing cease and, all over the town, give place to the single chime which warned the city that service was about to start.
”
”
Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited)
“
There’s no question that libraries are wonderful, but nostalgia is too thin a reed for librarians to cling to in a time of such transition. Nostalgia can actually be dangerous. For one thing, thinking of libraries as they were ages ago and wanting them to remain the same is the last thing we should want for them. For another, our nostalgic view doesn’t give libraries enough credit. Libraries offer a whole slew of services that we ignore when we just focus on pleasant reading rooms.
”
”
John Palfrey (BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google)
“
Szabo reckoned that the future of libraries was a combination of a people’s university, a community hub, and an information base, happily partnered with the Internet rather than in competition with it. In practical terms, Szabo felt the library should begin offering classes and voter registration and literacy programs and story times and speaker series and homeless outreach and business services and computer access and movie rentals and e-book loans and a nice gift shop. Also, books.
”
”
Susan Orlean (The Library Book)
“
Today Is A New Day/New Beginning
1. Send a food hamper to a less fortunate family
2.Tutor a neighborhood child at no cost
3.Give an elderly or disabled neighbor a ride to church
4.Buy a birthday gift for a less fortunate child
5. Donate school supplies to a nearby school
6.Donate to a Children’s charity
7. Donate new books to a library
8.Send military care packages to deployed Service members
9.Send cards to the sick in a Nursing Facility/Shut-ins
10.Cook and serve meals at a Homeless Shelter
”
”
Charmaine J. Forde
“
Massive changes may have occurred in libraries in recent years, with new digital resources and services supplementing the old traditional resources and services, the dog-eared card catalogues ripped up and destroyed, workstations suddenly everywhere, but one essential aspect of “libraryness” has not changed: libraries remain places dedicated to storage. Books continue to be published in greater and greater numbers – so great in fact that there are no accurate figures as to exactly how many are published: some say one every thirty seconds, others four thousand per day, others a million per year – and somehow, whether through the off-site storage of the physical books themselves, or microfilm copying, or digital scanning, we remain obliged to keep up with or afloat in this vast deluge of paper. Even the new, high-tech rebranded libraries opened to great fanfare in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the 1990s could not get away from this essential fact of paper hoarding: they were called “Idea Stores.” - p.56
”
”
Ian Sansom (Paper: An Elegy)
“
The historical record often neglects certain kinds of stories. For example, in the Library of Congress, OSS veterans helped catalogue the OSS records; this was a good service to the country, but they often catalogued the names of men and not the names of women. In memoirs that men wrote about the war years, the names of women are, likewise, often absent – they’re “a shapely analyst.” Say or “a woman from Harvard.” I’m grateful to have a way to fill in the stories of figures who, despite their importance, don’t receive their due space in the archives.
”
”
Elyse Graham (Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II)
“
We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.
”
”
Philip Yancey (Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?)
“
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a library,—aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.
”
”
Henry David Thoreau (Walking)
“
But the last forty years had witnessed the professionalization of property management. Since 1970, the number of people primarily employed as property managers had more than quadrupled.8 As more landlords began buying more property and thinking of themselves primarily as landlords (instead of people who happened to own the unit downstairs), professional associations proliferated, and with them support services, accreditations, training materials, and financial instruments. According to the Library of Congress, only three books offering apartment-management advice were published between 1951 and 1975. Between 1976 and 2014, the number rose to 215.9 Even if most landlords in a given city did not consider themselves “professionals,” housing had become a business.
”
”
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
“
The rise of loneliness as a health hazard tracks with the entrenchment of values and practices that supersede any notion of "individual choices." The dynamics include reduced social programs, less available "common" spaces such as public libraries, cuts in services for the vulnerable and the elderly, stress, poverty, and the inexorable monopolization of economic life that shreds local communities.
By way of illustration, let's take a familiar scenario: Walmart or some other megastore decides to open one of its facilities in a municipality. Developers are happy, politicians welcome the new investment, and consumers are pleased at finding a wide variety of goods at lower prices. But what are the social impacts? Locally owned and operated small businesses cannot compete with the marketing behemoth and must close. People lose their jobs or must find new work for lower pay. Neighborhoods are stripped of the familiar hardware store, pharmacy, butcher, baker, candlestick maker. People no longer walk to their local establishment, where they meet and greet one another and familiar merchants they have known, but drive, each isolated in their car, to a windowless, aesthetically bereft warehouse, miles away from home. They might not even leave home at all — why bother, when you can order online?
No wonder international surveys show a rise in loneliness. The percentage of Americans identifying themselves as lonely has doubled from 20 to 40 percent since the 1980s, the New York Times reported in 2016. Alarmed by the health ravages, Britain has even found it necessary to appoint a minister of loneliness.
Describing the systemic founts of loneliness, the U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy wrote: "Our twenty-first-century world demands that we focus on pursuits that seem to be in constant competition for our time, attention, energy, and commitment. Many of these pursuits are themselves competitions. We compete for jobs and status. We compete over possessions, money, and reputations. We strive to stay afloat and to get ahead. Meanwhile, the relationships we prize often get neglected in the chase."
It is easy to miss the point that what Dr. Murthy calls "our twenty-first-century world" is no abstract entity, but the concrete manifestation of a particular socioeconomic system, a distinct worldview, and a way of life.
”
”
Gabor Maté (The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture)
“
The Obama administration warned federal employees that materials released by WikiLeaks remained classified—even though they were being published by some of the world’s leading news organizations including the New York Times and the Guardian. Employees were told that accessing the material, whether on WikiLeaks.org or in the New York Times, would amount to a security violation.21 Government agencies such as the Library of Congress, the Commerce Department and the US military blocked access to WikiLeaks materials over their networks. The ban was not limited to the public sector. Employees from the US government warned academic institutions that students hoping to pursue a career in public service should stay clear of material released by WikiLeaks in their research and in their online activity.
”
”
Julian Assange
“
As already suggested, when the individual first learns who it is that he must now accept a his own, he is likely, at the very least, to feel some ambivalence; for these others will not only be patently stigmatized, and thus not like the normal person he knows himself to be, but ma also have other attributes with which he finds it difficult to associate himself. What may end up as a freemasonry may begin with a shudder. A newly blind girl on a visit to The Lighthouse [probably the Chicago Lighthouse, one of the oldest social service agencies in Chicago serving the blind or visually impaired] directly from leaving the hospital provides an illustration:
„My questions about a guide dog were politely turned aside. Another sighted worker took me in tow to show me around. We visited the Braille library; the classrooms; the clubrooms where the blind members of the music and dramatic groups meet; the recreation hall where on festive occasion the blind play together; the cafeteria, where all the blind gather to eat together; the huge workshops where the blind earn a subsistence income by making mops and brooms, weaving rugs, caning chairs. As we moved from room to room, I could hear the shuffling of feet, the muted voices, the tap-tap-tapping of canes. Here was the safe, segregated world of the sightless — a completely different world, I was assured by the social worker, from the one I had just left….
I was expected to join this world. To give up my profession and to earn my living making mops. The Lighthouse would be happy to teach me how to make mops. I was to spend the rest of my life making mops with other blind people, eating with other blind people, dancing with other blind people. I became nauseated with fear, as the picture grew in my mind. Never had I come upon such destructive segregation.“ (p.37)
”
”
Erving Goffman (Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity)
“
Second, the production of RNA Messages was coordinately regulated. When the sugar source was switched to lactose, the bacteria turned on an entire module of genes-several lactose-metabolizing genes-to digest lactose. One of the genes in the module specified a "transporter protein" that allowed lactose to enter the bacterial cell. Another gene encoded an enzyme that was needed to break down lactose into parts. Yet another specified an enzyme to break those chemical parts into subparts. Surprisingly, all the genes dedicated to a particular metabolic pathway were physically present next to each other on the bacterial chromosome-like library books stacked by subject-and they were induced simultaneously in cells. The metabolic alteration produced a profound genetic alteration in a cell. It wasn't just a cutlery switch; the whole dinner service was altered in a single swoop. A functional circuit of genes was switched on and off, as if operated by a common spool or a master switch. Monod called one such gene module an operon.
The genesis of proteins was thus perfectly synchronized with the requirements of the environment: supply the correct sugar, and a set of sugar-metabolizing genes would be turned on together.
”
”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene: An Intimate History)
“
The only word these corporations know is more,” wrote Chris Hedges, former correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, and the New York Times. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies. There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave. To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet. To be innocent in times like these is to be a criminal.
”
”
Jim Marrs (Our Occulted History: Do the Global Elite Conceal Ancient Aliens?)
“
The charge of heartlessness, epitomized in the remark that William H. Vanderbilt, a railroad tycoon, is said to have made to an inquiring reporter, "The public be damned," is belied by the flowering of charitable activity in the United States in the nineteenth century. Privately financed schools and colleges multiplied; foreign missionary activity exploded; nonprofit private hospitals, orphanages, and numerous other institutions sprang up like weeds. Almost every charitable or public service organization, from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to the YMCA and YWCA, from the Indian Rights Association to the Salvation Army, dates from that period. Voluntary cooperation is no less effective in organizing charitable activity than in organizing production for profit. The charitable activity was matched by a burst of cultural activity—art museums, opera houses, symphonies, museums, public libraries arose in big cities and frontier towns alike. The size of government spending is one measure of government's role. Major wars aside, government spending from 1800 to 1929 did not exceed about 12 percent of the national income. Two-thirds of that was spent by state and local governments, mostly for schools and roads. As late as 1928, federal government spending amounted to about 3 percent of the national income.
”
”
Milton Friedman (Free to Choose: A Personal Statement)
“
If there was anything really wrong with Shady Hill, anything that you could put your finger on, it was the fact that the village had no public library – no foxed copies of Pascal, smelling of cabbage; no broken sets of Dostoevski and George Eliot; no Galsworthy, even; no Barrie and no Bennett. This was the chief concern of the Village Council during Marcie’s term. The library partisans were mostly newcomers to the village; the opposition whip was Mrs Selfredge, a member of the Council and a very decorous woman, with blue eyes of astonishing brilliance and inexpressiveness. Mrs Selfredge often spoke of the chosen quietness of their life. ‘We never go out,’ she would say, but in such a way that she seemed to be expressing not some choice but a deep vein of loneliness. She was married to a wealthy man much older than herself, and they had no children; indeed, the most indirect mention of sexual fact brought a deep color to Mrs Selfredge’s face. She took the position that a library belonged in that category of public service that might make Shady Hill attractive to a development. This was not blind prejudice. Carsen Park, the next village, had let a development inside its boundaries, with disastrous results to the people already living there. Their taxes had been doubled, their schools had been ruined. That there was any connection between reading and real estate was disputed by the partisans of the library, until a horrible murder – three murders, in fact – took place in one of the cheese-box houses in the Carsen Park development, and the library project was buried with the victims.
”
”
John Cheever (Collected Stories (Vintage Classics))
“
The Clintons’ last act before leaving the White House was to take stuff that didn’t belong to them. The Clintons took china, furniture, electronics, and art worth around $360,000. Hillary literally went through the rooms of the White House with an aide, pointing to things that she wanted taken down from shelves or out of cabinets or off the wall. By Clinton theft standards $360,000 is not a big sum, but it certainly underlines the couple’s insatiable greed—these people are not bound by conventional limits of propriety or decency. When the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee blew the whistle on this misappropriation, the Clintons first claimed that the stuff was given to them as gifts. Unfortunately for Hillary, gifts given to a president belong to the White House—they are not supposed to be spirited away by the first lady. The Clintons finally agreed to return $28,000 worth of gifts and reimburse the government $95,000, representing a fraction of the value of what they took. One valuable piece of art the Clintons attempted to steal was a Norman Rockwell painting showing the flame from Lady Liberty’s torch. Hillary had the painting taken from the Oval Office to the Clinton home in Chappaqua, but the Secret Service got wind of it and sent a car to Chappaqua to get it back. Hillary was outraged. Even here, though, the Clintons got the last laugh: they persuaded the Obama administration to let the Clinton Library have the painting, and there it hangs today. In Living History, Hillary put on a straight face and dismissed media reports about the topic. “The culture of investigation,” she wrote, “followed us out the door of the White House when clerical errors in the recording of gifts mushroomed into a full-blown flap, generating hundreds of news stories over several months.”17
”
”
Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
“
The United States over the last thirty years has seen a growing gap - indeed, a deepening gulf - between rich and poor. The gap is significantly greater than in any other developed nation. Moreover, the growing gulf between rich and poor is the result of social and economic policy, not because some classes of people worked harder and others slacked off over the last thirty years (all of us, according to most studies, are working harder). The differences among countries generate the same conclusion: social policy, not simply individual effort, is responsible for the distribution of wealth. Our recent social policy may not have been intended to produce this result, but it has. The consequence is increased suffering and desperation among the poor and potentially grave consequences for the society as a whole.
Moreover, many people in the middle, who are most often struggling financially, support the individualistic ideology underlying our social policy - namely, the notions that we each have worked hard for what we have and ought to be able to keep all of it, that government is bad (or at least inefficient and wasteful - and hungry for our tax dollars), and that things will be better for all of us if we let the wealthiest people in our country make and keep as much money as possible. Many of us seem not to realize that the people who benefit the most from our politics and economics of individualism are the wealthiest 10 percent, especially the top 1 percent. People will support a tax cut that saves them $300 a year, without considering that the same tax cut will save the very wealthy tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands a year, with significant damage to the social fabric, including not only decreased help for the poor and disadvantaged but also cuts in services such as public schools, road repairs, parks, libraries, and so forth.
”
”
Marcus J. Borg (The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith)
“
And if someone can lead me to him?” Malaki asks.
“Report back to me first. I don’t want to chance losing him. Oh and by the way—” Des’s eyes inadvertently land on Temper, “be discreet.”
“Why are you looking at me?” Temper’s voice is several octaves louder than everyone else’s.
The Bargainer arches an eyebrow.
“I’m as motherfucking discreet as they come,” she says.
I’m trying really, really hard not to laugh, but the struggle is real.
Malaki manages a sharp nod. “We will be discreet,” he assures Des.
The sorceress huffs. “Y’all need to get your heads checked. I am not the problem.” She turns on Malaki. “And you don’t need to go making promises for me. I never even said I was coming along.”
“And you don’t need to.” The Bargainer stands. “But if you imagined staying behind so that you could have fun with Callie, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. The future Night Queen has official business that will take her away from the palace.”
It takes me a second to realize Des is referring to me.
“Wait,” I say, “I haven’t agreed to be queen.”
“Yeah,” Temper agrees, “my girl hasn’t agreed—what?” She turns on me. “Bitch, have you lost your mind? Take that crown and wear that shit like it’s your birthright.”
Ignoring Temper, Des’s gaze falls on me, his features sharp. “I apologize, the Night King’s consort has official business that will take her away from the palace.”
I narrow my eyes at my mate. I might not have jumped onboard with this whole queen business, but I sure as hell don’t want to be known simply as someone else’s consort.
“Hoooo!” Temper whoops, falling back into her seat. “You better sleep with one eye open, Desmond. I’ve seen my girl make men pay for less.”
He’s still staring intensely at me. “That’s odd. For as long as I’ve known Callie, she’s the one who’s paid for my services. I admit, it’ll be nice to not be the prostitute in our relationship for once.”
Temper snickers, appraising Des all over again. “Fuck one eye. Sleep with both eyes open.”
I shake my head at Des as I stand, my eyes slitted. “It’s time to go.”
We give curt goodbyes to Temper and Malaki, then slip out of the library.
“You do realize how close you were to getting glamoured, don’t you?” I say as we head down the hallway.
Des’s eyes seem to be laughing at me. “You say that like I’d mind.
”
”
Laura Thalassa (Dark Harmony (The Bargainer, #3))
“
Assign a file or paper tray to collect single-side printed paper for reuse. Boycott paper sourced from virgin forests and reams sold in plastic. Cancel magazine and newspaper subscriptions; view them online instead. Digitize important receipts and documents for safekeeping. Digital files are valid proofs for tax purposes. Download CutePDF Writer to save online files without having to print them. Email invitations or greeting cards instead of printing them (see “Holidays and Gifts” chapter). Forage the recycling can when paper scraps are needed, such as for bookmarks or pictures (for school collages, for example). Give extra paper to the local preschool. Hack the page margins of documents to maximize printing. Imagine a paperless world. Join the growing paperless community. Kill the fax machine; encourage electronic faxing through a service such as HelloFax. Limit yourself to print only on paper that has already been printed on one side. Make online billing and banking a common practice. Nag the kids’ teachers to send home only important papers. Opt out of paper newsletters. Print on both sides when using a new sheet of paper (duplex printing). Question the need for printing; print only when absolutely necessary. In most cases, it is not. Repurpose junk mail envelopes—make sure to cross out any barcode. Sign electronically using the Adobe Acrobat signing feature or SignNow.com. Turn down business cards; enter relevant info directly into a smartphone. Use shredded paper as a packing material, single-printed paper fastened with a metal clip for a quick notepad (grocery lists, errands lists), and double-printed paper to wrap presents or pick up your dog’s feces. Visit the local library to read business magazines and books. Write on paper using a pencil, which you can then erase to reuse paper, or better yet, use your computer, cell phone, or erasable board instead of paper. XYZ: eXamine Your Zipper; i.e., your leaks: attack any incoming source of paper.
”
”
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
“
In 1973, the library even added a service called the Hoot Owl Telephonic Reference, which operated from nine P.M. until one A.M., long after the library was closed. Dialing H-O-O-T-O-W-L connected you to a librarian who could find the answer to almost any question.
”
”
Susan Orlean (The Library Book)
“
In the service of my will, I have emptied myself.
”
”
Scott Hawkins (The Library at Mount Char)
“
Kids who read become students who do well in school. Students who do well in school go to college. College students graduate to good jobs and pay higher taxes. Libraries don’t service only left-wingers or right. They don’t judge by class, race or religion. They service everyone in their community, no matter their circumstances. Rich or poor; no one is denied. Libraries are not simply part of our guarantee to the pursuit of happiness. They are a civil right. If we lose our libraries, we risk losing our communities, our families and ourselves.
”
”
Alan Bennett (The Library Book)
“
During the early 1980s, the overall black unemployment rate stood at 15.5 percent—“an all time high” since the Great Depression—while unemployment among African American youth was a staggering 45.7 percent. At this point Reagan chose to slash the training, employment, and labor services budget by 70 percent—a cut of $3.805 billion.90 The only “ ‘urban’ program that survived the cuts was federal aid for highways—which primarily benefited suburbs, not cities.” In keeping with Lee Atwater’s mantra that “blacks get hurt worse than whites,” Reagan gutted aid to cities so extensively that federal dollars were reduced from 22 percent of a city’s budget to 6 percent. Cities responded with sharp austerity measures that shut down libraries, closed municipal hospitals, and cut back on garbage pickup. Some cities even dismantled their police and fire departments.91
”
”
Carol Anderson (White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide)
“
He took it in for a moment. No internet. No phone service beyond the front desk. No television. No news. No information flow at all. Just a music collection and, somewhere, a library he evidently had to be medically fit to browse. It was quiet. It was actually quiet. He couldn’t even hear other people. This little room was as close to sensory deprivation as he’d experienced since … when? Childhood?
”
”
Warren Ellis (Normal: Book 1 (Normal, #1))
“
Today, elite cities often attract tourists, upper-class populations working in the highest end of business services, and those who can service their needs, as well as the nomadic young, many of whom later move on to other locales. This increasingly ephemeral city seems to place its highest values on such transient values as hipness, coolness, artfulness, and fashionability. These
”
”
Joel Kotkin (The City: A Global History (Modern Library Chronicles Series Book 21))
“
Librarians have proven over and over that the profession is capable of extraordinary collaboration. More than forty years ago, a group of major libraries in Ohio recognized the importance of shared computing resources and established a partnership called the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), which is now referred to primarily by its acronym. OCLC calls itself “the world’s largest library collaborative.” The library data and services provided by OCLC to 70,000 libraries around the world enables libraries to avoid a great deal of redundant work.
”
”
John Palfrey (BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google)
“
Librarians have proven over and over that the profession is capable of extraordinary collaboration. More than forty years ago, a group of major libraries in Ohio recognized the importance of shared computing resources and established a partnership called the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), which is now referred to primarily by its acronym. OCLC calls itself “the world’s largest library collaborative.” The library data and services provided by OCLC to 70,000 libraries around the world enables libraries to avoid a great deal of redundant work.9 The OCLC partnership has reduced the need for every library to create its own catalog record for every book or item it collects, creating enormous efficiencies. OCLC’s WorldCat system, for instance, allows anyone with web access to search across the catalogs of a large number of libraries to locate books wherever they are in the country. WorldCat is simple, but it has proved that implementing even the simplest of systems can be remarkably useful to library patrons.
”
”
John Palfrey (BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google)
“
OverDrive is the digital service that provides public library books.
”
”
Quick Guides (All-New Kindle Paperwhite: User's Guide)
“
3) Chrislam is an Obvious False Teaching that Has Entered Christianity:
Marloes Janson and Birgit Meyer state that Chrislam merges Christianity and Islam. This syncretistic movement rests upon the belief that following Christianity or Islam alone will not guarantee salvation. Chrislamists participate in Christian and Islamic beliefs and practices. During a religious service Tela Tella, the founder of Ifeoluwa, Nigeria’s first Chrislamic movement, proclaimed that “Moses is Jesus and Jesus is Muhammad; peace be upon all of them – we love them all.’” Marloes Janson says he met with a church member who calls himself a Chrislamist. The man said, “You can’t be a Christian without being a Muslim, and you can’t be a Muslim without being a Christian.” These statements reflect the mindset of this community, which mixes Islam with Christianity, and African culture.
Samsindeen Saka, a self-proclaimed prophet, also promotes Chrislam. Mr. Saka founded the Oke Tude Temple in Nigeria in 1989. The church's name means the mountain of loosening bondage. His approach adds a charismatic flavor to Chrislam. He says those bound by Satan; are set free through fasting and prayer. Saka says when these followers are set free from evil spirits. Then, the Holy Spirit possesses them. Afterward, they experience miracles of healing and prosperity in all areas of their life. He also claims that combining Christianity and Islam relieves political tension between these groups. This pastor seeks to take dominion of the world in the name of Chrislam (1).
Today, Chrislam has spread globally, but with much resistance from the Orthodox (Christians, Muslims, and Jews). Richard Mather of Israeli International News says Chrislamists recognize both the Judeo-Christian “Bible and the Quran as holy texts.” So, they fuse these religions by removing Jewish references from the Bible. Thereby neutralizing the prognostic relevance “of the Jewish people and the land of Israel.” This fusion of Islam with Christianity is a rebranded form of replacement theology (2) (3). Also, traditional Muslims do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore, they do not believe Christ died on the cross for the sins of the world. Thus, these religions cannot merge without destroying the foundations of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
References:
1. Janson, Marloes, and Birgit Meyer. “Introduction: Towards a Framework for the Study of Christian-Muslim Encounters in Africa.” Africa, Vol. 86, no. 4, 2016, pp. 615-619,
2. Mather, Richard. “What is Chrislam?” Arutz Sheva – Israel International News. Jewish Media Agency, 02 March 2015,
3. Janson, Marloes. Crossing Religious Boundaries: Islam, Christianity, and ‘Yoruba Religion' in Lagos, Nigeria, (The International African Library Book 64). Cambridge University Press. 2021.
”
”
Marloes Janson (Crossing Religious Boundaries: Islam, Christianity, and ‘Yoruba Religion' in Lagos, Nigeria (The International African Library))
“
The American Library Association (ALA) lists eleven core values of librarianship: access, confidentiality/privacy, democracy, diversity, education and lifelong learning, intellectual freedom, preservation, the public good, professionalism, service, and social responsibility.
”
”
Kenneth J. Varnum (The Top Technologies Every Librarian Needs to Know: A LITA Guide)
“
The associate dean of libraries was talking about “innovation” again, tossing around terms like “digital humanities,” “digital transformation,” and “virtual reality.” The library staff had grown numb to these speeches, in no small part because the talks were usually accompanied by a lack of follow-through. The associate dean would get all hot and bothered when some new project came around, only to stop giving it attention and resources when he got bored and hopped onto the next new thing. The library had completed three strategic plans in about as many years. The staff eventually realized that performing being innovative was the way to reach their boss and started keeping a lexicon of terms that would be more likely to sway him. Wouldn’t your project be better with virtual reality? they would suggest. Meanwhile, the work of keeping the library going and providing services was often ignored. This library tale—an amalgam of stories we’ve heard from professional librarians around the country—highlights how maintenance work can be overlooked and under-resourced in professional settings.
”
”
Lee Vinsel (The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most)
“
The choice of words and the connotations of those words are often overlooked. Although it may appear to be quite trivial, replacing the word library with library team in our oral and written communication may have a much larger effect than we might think. While the phrase library team creates a shared sense of purpose and unity, it also replaces the concept of “library as building” with “library as a group of people” in a similar way that “community college” elevates the term “college.” Perhaps intentionally using library team whenever referring to library staff and leaving the word library to refer to the physical building and space could be of great service. Additionally, making a concerted effort to gently admonish those outside of the library to try and do the same could create a better realization of how these terms differ. It also has the added advantage of taking the word librarians out of the hierarchy of internal library discussions which may leave other library workers feeling excluded or marginalized.
”
”
Jo Henry (Cultivating Civility: Practical Ways to Improve a Dysfunctional Library)
“
Excellence requires growth.
Growth requires learning.
Learning requires change...
Change is inextricably imbued with risk.
Risk implies that failure is possible, if not likely.
But, Great & Good frontload the risk.
”
”
Courtney Greene McDonald (Putting the User First: 30 Strategies for Transforming Library Services by Courtney Greene McDonald (2014-08-04))
“
I can envision a future where libraries are one of many institutions leading the way toward communal compassion. Where libraries are still needed, but not essential to so many people for basic care and survival. A future where more people understand the many ways we - all of us - need each other. Where people advocate for more library-like services in their communities.
”
”
Amanda Oliver (Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library)
“
service my undercarriage
”
”
Nora Everly (Architecture and Artistry (Green Valley Library #11))
“
Rather to Ulf’s surprise, she also read books on popular science, although she was undiscriminating as to their date of publication. This meant that she would sometimes talk about what she described as exciting new possibilities well after those possibilities had been translated into reality. Thus she had excitedly told Ulf that she had read a book predicting that one day man would undoubtedly set foot on the moon. “It’s hard to believe,” she said, “but apparently there’s a good chance of it happening. I was just reading about it.” Ulf had replied that he thought it was just possible that this had already occurred. “Oh, I don’t think so, Mr. Varg,” she said. “I was reading that it’s still at the planning stage.” The book had been produced to show him—a tattered-looking volume, discharged after long service in the local library, that she had picked up from a church bazaar. From the biographical note on the back cover, Ulf ascertained that the author had been born in 1897.
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (The Department of Sensitive Crimes (Detective Varg #1))
“
He could still search his soul over which path to follow. “To what object are my views directed?” he asked. “Am I grasping at money, or scheming for power?” Yes, he was amassing a library, but to what purpose? “Fame, fortune, power say some, are the ends intended by a library. The service of God, country, clients, fellow men, say others. Which of these lie nearest my heart?
”
”
David McCullough (John Adams)
“
A couple of generations ago, a gathering like this would have been virtually unheard-of. Many landlords were part-timers: machinists or preachers or police officers who came to own property almost by accident (through inheritance, say) and saw real estate as a side gig.7 But the last forty years had witnessed the professionalization of property management. Since 1970, the number of people primarily employed as property managers had more than quadrupled.8 As more landlords began buying more property and thinking of themselves primarily as landlords (instead of people who happened to own the unit downstairs), professional associations proliferated, and with them support services, accreditations, training materials, and financial instruments. According to the Library of Congress, only three books offering apartment-management advice were published between 1951 and 1975. Between 1976 and 2014, the number rose to 215.9 Even if most landlords in a given city did not consider themselves “professionals,” housing had become a business.
”
”
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
“
207, 2nd Floor, 3rd Main Rd, Chamrajpet,
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560018
Call – +91 7022122121
Kannada Books Purchase: Where to Buy Kannada Books? Finding a good place to buy authentic, diverse, and high-quality Kannada books is essential for readers. Veeraloka Books is a beacon for readers who are enthusiastic about Karnataka's extensive literary heritage. Veeraloka Books is a reliable resource for all things Kannada literature, including contemporary fiction, poetry, and academic titles.
Why literature in Kannada?
One of India's oldest languages, Kannada has a rich and varied literary tradition. The world of Kannada literature is vast and rich, from epics like Pampa Bharata to contemporary works by Jnanpith award winners like Kuvempu and U.R. Ananthamurthy. Whether they are interested in folklore, spiritual texts, history, or contemporary novels, readers of all ages and interests can find books that pique their interest.
It is difficult to locate a dependable and dedicated platform for Kannada Books Purchase in the digital age of today. Veeraloka Books, with its extensive collection of Kannada literature for book lovers, emerges as an essential destination in this area.
Veeraloka Books – Your Reliable Source for Kannada Books Veeraloka Books is more than just a bookstore; it is also a gathering place for Kannada literature enthusiasts looking for a wide range of books in one location. The goal of the platform is to make high-quality Kannada books available to readers in Karnataka and elsewhere. Veeraloka Books has books for everyone, whether you're looking for new releases, classics, or rare books.
Characteristics of Veeraloka Books:
Complete Collection: Veeraloka Books takes great pride in its extensive collection of Kannada books. The platform ensures that readers have access to a diverse selection of options, ranging from literary works to academic publications, children's books to biographies, and everything in between.
Support for Authors in the Area: Veeraloka Books is focused on advancing neighborhood writers and distributers. Veeraloka Books not only helps readers discover new voices but also supports the development of Kannada literature by providing a platform for upcoming authors.
Titles that are hard to find: Veeraloka Books is a good option if you want to buy rare Kannada books or are a book collector. They make it easier for readers to complete their collections or discover long-lost literary treasures by curating rare and difficult-to-find books.
Easy-to-Use Online Purchase: Convenience is essential in the fast-paced world of today. Veeraloka Books makes it simple to buy books online. You can browse, select, and purchase your favorite Kannada books with just a few clicks, and they will be delivered to your door.
A focus on the customer: Customer satisfaction is a top priority at Veeraloka Books. They make sure that customers have a pleasant and easy shopping experience with their dedicated customer service. Their team is always ready to help, whether you need advice, have questions, or run into problems.
Why Shop at Veeraloka Books for Kannada Books?
Platforms like Veeraloka Books are crucial to the preservation and promotion of Kannada literature in a time when mainstream content frequently takes precedence over regional literature. You are not only adding to your personal library by purchasing Kannada books from Veeraloka, but you are also supporting the ongoing development of Kannada literary culture.
In addition, Veeraloka Books provides competitive pricing, making it possible for readers from all walks of life to purchase their preferred books without breaking the bank.
In conclusion, Veeraloka Books is your one-stop shop if you want to buy Kannada books. Veeraloka Books makes purchasing Kannada literature a pleasurable and enriching experience with a large collection, a strong emphasis on author promotion, and a simple platform.
”
”
Kannada Books Purchase
“
Although we don't tend to think of libraries as media technologies, they are. The public library is, in fact, one of the most important and influential informational media ever created—and one that proliferated only after the arrival of silent reading and movable-type printing. A community's attitudes and preferences toward information take concrete shape in its library's design and services. [...] The library provides, as well, a powerful symbol of our new media landscape: at the center stands the screen of the Internet-connected computers; the printed word has been pushed to the margins.
”
”
Nicholas Carr (The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains)
“
I slept on a sofa bed in Michael’s library. Each night before retiring, I would go through a shelf or pile of books (his only filing system) filled with letters and reviews and notes. Every night brought a new revelation. A few letters from Mary Welsh, Hemingway’s fourth wife, whom Michael had known in the war, were tucked into Hemingway books. In a debunking biography of Michael’s hero, Aneurin Bevan, founder of the National Heath Service, I read Michael’s comment on the flyleaf, which began “read with rising anger ...
”
”
Carl Rollyson (A Private Life of Michael Foot)
“
She smiled and said, “Agent Davenport? I’m Alice Green. Ms. Grant is waiting for you in the library.” Which sounded just slightly snotty. Lucas thought, I’ve got a library, too, and then Green turned away from him and he saw the semiautomatic pistol clipped to the back of her slacks. Lucas said, “You’re security?” “Yes,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “I can stay with Ms. Grant where men can’t. Like ladies’ rooms.” “Ex-cop or something?” “Secret Service,” she said. “La-di-da,” Lucas said. Green tilted her head back and laughed and said, “Yes,” and her reaction made Lucas like her.
”
”
John Sandford (Silken Prey (Lucas Davenport #23))
“
To illustrate: online, chat, and IM reference services may or may not represent an improvement in library service—the use of the human record—but do not affect its content or onward transmission. Also, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and videogames may enrich and enliven the lives of many (including many library workers and users), but they scarcely add to the store of knowledge through which understanding and wisdom are gained. This is not to say that libraries are wrong in using social media, encouraging videogaming, installing 3-D printers, or engaging with their communities in any way, technological or otherwise; just that they should not confuse these activities with the task of facilitating human interaction with the human record. Our central concerns are with content, not the means of communicating that content, and certainly not with modes of communication that are peripheral to the human record.
”
”
Michael E. Gorman (Our Enduring Values Revisited: Librarianship in an Ever-Changing World)
“
Libraries can offer important alternatives to the services provided by the corporate sector, which will always have incentives to offer biased, limited, and costly access to knowledge.
”
”
John Palfrey (BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google)
“
Africa had free markets and a thriving entrepreneurial culture and tradition centuries before these became the animating ideas of the United States or Western Europe. Timbuktu, the legendary city in northern Mali, was a famous trading post and marketplace as far back as the twelfth century, as vital to the commerce of North and West Africa as ports on the Mediterranean were to Europe and the Levant. In Africa Unchained, George Ayittey offers myriad examples of industrial activity in precolonial Africa, from the indigo-dye cloth trade of fourteenth-century Kano, Nigeria, to the flourishing glass industry of precolonial Benin to the palm oil businesses of southern Nigeria to the Kente cotton trade of the Asante of Ghana in the 1800s: “Profit was never an alien concept to Africa. Throughout its history there have been numerous entrepreneurs. The aim of traders and numerous brokers or middlemen was profit and wealth.”2 The tragedy is what happened next. These skills and traditions were destroyed, damaged, eroded or forced underground, first during centuries of slave wars and colonialism and, later, through decades of corrupt postindependence rule, usually in service to foreign ideologies of socialism or communism. No postcolonial leader in Africa who fought for independence has ever adequately explained why liberation from colonial rule necessarily meant following the ideas and philosophies of Karl Marx, a gray-bearded nineteenth-century German academic who worked out of the British Library and never set foot in Africa. At the same time, neither should we have ever allowed ourselves to become beholden to paternalistic aid organizations that were sending their representatives to build our wells and plant our food for us. Nor, for that matter, should we have relied on the bureaucrats of the Western world telling us how to be proper capitalists or—as is happening now—to Party officials in Beijing telling us what they want in exchange for this or that project. It was this outside influence—starting with colonialism but later from our own terrible and corrupt policies and leaderships—that the stereotype of the lazy, helpless, unimaginative and dependent African developed. The point is that we Africans have to take charge of our own destiny, and to do this we can call on our own unique culture and traditions of innovation, free enterprise and free trade. We are a continent of entrepreneurs.
”
”
Ashish J. Thakkar (The Lion Awakes: Adventures in Africa's Economic Miracle)
“
A clear trend in the growth of ebook circulation over a four-year period can be seen in the figures supplied by the service provider OverDrive: 4 million ebook checkouts in 2010 grew to 16 million in 2011, 54 million in 2012, and 79 million in 2013.
”
”
John Palfrey (BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google)
“
I am SAM, and this is my first mission. Wish me luck. Actually, don’t bother. I’m that good. I need to move fast, but I have to be careful too.This high-tech fortress disguised as a middle school has security systems like Hershey, Pennsylvania, has chocolate. My biggest concern (and archnemesis) is Jan I. Tor. He’s the half-human, half-cyborg “cleaning service” they use for “light security” around here. Yeah, right. Tor’s definition of “light security” is that he only kills you once if he finds you. So I wait in super-stealthy silence while Tor hovers past my hiding spot with his motion detectors running, laser cannons loaded, and a big dust mop attachment on his robotic arm. He’s cleaning that floor to within an inch of its life, but it could be me next. As soon as Tor’s out of range, I slip off my tungsten gripper shoes. Believe me, once he’s been through here, you do not want to leave footprints behind. That would be like leaving a business card in Sergeant Stricker’s in-box. Stricker is the big cheese who runs this place, and she’s all human, but just as scary as Tor. I don’t want to rumble with either one of those two. So I program the shoes to self-destruct and drop them in the trash. FWOOM! The coast is clear now, and I sneak back into action. I work my way up the corridor in my spy socks, quiet as a ghost walking on cotton balls. Very, very puffy cotton balls—I’m that quiet. What I need is the perfect place to leave the package I came here to deliver. That’s the mission, but I can’t just do it anywhere. I have to choose wisely. Bathroom? Nah. Too echoey. Library? Nah. Only one exit, and I can’t take that risk. Main lobby? Hmm… maybe so. In fact, I wish I’d thought of that on my way in. I could have saved myself one very expensive pair of tungsten gripper shoes. Once my radar-enabled Rolex watch tells me the main lobby is clear, I slide in there and get right to work. I enter the access code on my briefcase, confirm with my thumbprint, and then pop the case open. After that, it takes exactly seven seconds and one ordinary roll of masking tape to secure my package to the wall. That’s it. Package delivered. Mission accomplished. Catch you next time—because there’s no way you’ll ever catch me. SAM out!
”
”
James Patterson (Just My Rotten Luck (Middle School #7))
“
Library users tell survey researchers that they want access to more ebooks and they want libraries to offer more technologically up-to-date services.
”
”
John Palfrey (BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google)
“
One day June took some papers down to the army personnel office that was processing Louis’s classification. When she left, he had been exempted from the service, but she had been sworn in! She was very patriotic and just got carried away. As a WAC she studied electronics at Northwestern University and learned trigonometry and calculus and God knows what else. She had to do it by intensive tutoring, because she had no special aptitude for higher mathematics. But that’s the sort of person she was; no challenge was too big for her. If she didn’t know something, she’d burrow into library books and find out. June
”
”
Ray Kroc (Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's)
“
A recurring theme in the book is instinct versus articulation. Although teen services people may know and understand issues on an instinctive level, they must be prepared to articulate these ideas in the face of threats to teen services.
”
”
Jennifer Velásquez (Real-World Teen Services)
“
considerably when Lord Kitchener assumed that post in 1911. Quickly coming to regard Storrs as his most trusted lieutenant—the Oriental secretary had been instrumental in torpedoing Curt Prüfer’s appointment to the khedival library directorship, for example—Kitchener had maintained their relationship even after his appointment to war secretary in August 1914. Since he fully intended to return to his Egyptian post once the war was over, Kitchener had left his protégé behind in Cairo to serve as his eyes and ears. But there was rather more to it than that. In Kitchener’s service, Ronald Storrs was the crucial conduit in a game of political intrigue so sensitive it was known to only a handful of men in Cairo, London, and Mecca, the possessor of perhaps the most dangerous secret in the Middle East.
”
”
Scott Anderson (Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East)
“
CIOs must shift focus from internal customers to external customers. IT must shift focus from providing service to providing value. Everything is moving to the cloud; CIOs must assume a “cloud first” mentality. Innovation is more than new technology—it's also about change management, enabling new processes, and hiring the best talent. CIOs need to work closely with the business to create innovation that drives real value. CEOs expect more from their CIOs than ever before. CIOs must deliver on a higher set of expectations, or they will be replaced. CIOs must shift from a measurement mentality to a value creation mentality. CIOs must shift focus from historical data to real-time information. Today, IT is all about creating real business value. All business is digital. All business. When IT has a bad day, the business has a bad day. IT still matters. It matters to the top line and to the bottom line. IT matters more than ever because IT is everywhere in the business. Without IT, you're out of business. CIOs need to step up, raise the bar, and elevate their game to meet the challenges of the big shift. I hope you enjoy reading this book and find it a useful addition to your library. It's the fourth book I've authored on the topic of
”
”
Hunter Muller (The Big Shift in IT Leadership: How Great CIOs Leverage the Power of Technology for Strategic Business Growth in the Customer-Centric Economy (Wiley CIO))
“
When we entered the library we were surprised to see two other people. They were friends of Joan who would also be guests here for a part of the holiday. Their first names were Helen and John and after that the only thing I heard was that she was the Justice of the Peace in Sherwood Forest and he was the Sheriff of Nottingham. I looked at Tim first who was straight faced as usual, then at Marguerite and we both managed to suppress a grin or a laugh. I almost said, “Ok, Ok, this shit has gone on long enough, SO we’re not gonna ask if Robin Hood will be here as well.” Thank heavens I didn’t, because they were deadly serious and it was all true.
”
”
W.R. Spicer (Sea Stories of a U.S. Marine Book 3 ON HER MAJESTY'S SERVICE)
“
Although the Library of Congress contains a wonderful law library and major universities have rich law school collections, there is no comprehensive map that shows where legal materials are preserved for the long run. One problem is deciding who exactly is going to do the preservation—and determining whether that party is doing it properly. Another big problem that collaborators need to address is how to locate and provide access to materials in archives, large and small, across the country. Once located, librarians can focus on providing the context and service that they are so good at.
”
”
John Palfrey (BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google)
“
The only real downside to all of this was not to appear for another thirteen years. In the brave new, and very middle-class, alternative world, mainstream politics were rather neglected. By the time anyone realised, it was too late. The wallflowers, who had been left out of all the fun in the Sixties, got their own back during the 1980s by gaining control of the country and vandalising the health service, education, libraries and any other cultural institutions they could get their hands on.
”
”
Nick Mason (Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd)