Results tagged “library”

              

The long-awaited Silver Lake Branch Library is finally open. With hundreds packing it in at the grand opening ceremony this morning, the library soon cleared out leaving room for families in the kids corner, internet surfers, locals looking for books and at least one guy blogging on LAist (yes, there is WiFi here and outlets for laptop power).

As reported a couple weeks ago, Silver Lake is getting a library and that day is today. It will mark the 72nd branch for the city and was built to Gold LEED standards. Throughout the building, quotes from notable Silver Lake residents don the walls in a site-speciic public art project. A grand opening ceremony is set for 10 a.m.

Echo Park blogger Jenny Burman points out a great event tomorrow, via her local librarian: "We'll be having a frugality forum at the Edendale Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library this weekend. It will be an open discussion on doing more with less. Bring your money-stretching tips, your challenges, and your questions to ask." It goes from 1 to 3 p.m.

When Los Angeles' 72nd library branch opens in two weeks, it will be the first for Silver Lake. Located near the corner of Silver Lake and Glendale boulevards, the 13,600-square-foot facility was built to Gold LEED standards and includes new technology not seen before in L.A.'s system.

Apparently, the state's budget cuts has claimed UCLA's Arts Library, according to a petition that's getting some steam online. In fact, it was a tipster who works at the Museum of Modern Art who let LAist know. From the petition, which can be signed here: UCLA Library Management, behind closed doors and without consultation with the UCLA community has decided to close its Arts Library, potentially as soon as January 2010.

Martin J. Gomez was confirmed today as the new City Librarian, charging him with the duty to oversee a $129 million budget, 6 million books and 1,100 employees throughout the 71 branches. The UCLA grad started his 30-year career as branch librarian in San Diego, moving on to head up Oakland's system, then to work in Brooklyn and most recently San Mateo.

On Friday, UCLA announced a settlement with the student who was tasered over and over and over again back in November 2006. It was captured on video and YouTubed in what we still think is one of the most disgusting police videos ever (embedded below if you care to watch).

Many small libraries use web resource LibraryThing to help sort their inventory, as do readers all over the world who want to keep track of their tomes. The site is now urging users to form FlashMobs to catalog complete library inventories. They explain that the event usually entails a gathering where "LibraryThing members descend on some small library with laptops and CueCat barcode scanners, catalog their books in LibraryThing, eat some pizza, talk some talk and leave them with a gleaming new LibraryThing catalog."

A few people have been asking what happened yesterday morning downtown near Central Library where a large memorial with flowers sits today. A pedestrian was hit by a DASH bus at 5th and Flower around 6:35 a.m. in the morning.

Tonight at 7pm, McSweeney's Voice of Witness will be hosting a reading at ALOUD in the Central Library in support of their new release, Out of Exile: The Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan. Praised by humanitarian badass John Prendergast, the book is a collection of oral histories from the abducted and displaced citizens of Sudan. The event will be hosted by Craig Walzer, editor of Out of Exile, who compiled these stories during his travels through Sudan, Kenya and Egypt. Admission is free, but reservations are strongly recommended.

Over at Central Library, there's a new exhibit on historical maps of Los Angeles worth checking out. The LA Times looks into it and ends on this interesting note: "And what happened to the early downtown streets named Faith, Hope and Charity? Faith became Olive Street and Charity was renamed Grand Avenue. As Los Angeles grew and thrived, people didn’t want to live on faith, Creason said. And they certainly didn’t intend to live on charity." But blogdownton takes a deper look into the three three streets and finds that in order to believe that one of them is truly part of history, it will be a leap of faith.

Long Beach is facing a $16.9 million budget deficit and has proposed shutting down their downtown library. "Tell City Hall NO to the threatened closure! Long Beach residents and children deserve nothing less than access to a downtown library with ready access to books and programs to help them achieve their goals and aspirations," wrote author Ray Bradbury in a letter printed last week in the Press-Telegram. The LA Times takes a look at the controversy, including a group called Save Our Long Beach Public Library.

If it wasn't enough for Long Beach to lose Acres of Books, the city is facing a $16.9 million budget deficit and one of the better-known victims of that may be their Main Library. To help ease that closure is "extending hours at 11 branch libraries and opening a downtown satellite location," says the Long Beach Press-Telegram. They report the closure will not go without a fight. However, in an earlier report, it was said that the library "would be unsafe in an earthquake, needs $10 million in roof and pipe repairs and is expensive to heat and cool because of its aging, inefficient design."

It's Library Lovers Month and that makes me happy. I'm a lover of all things Library and in fact, a third-generation librarian (well, three credits short of my MLIS degree.) You don't need to be smart or even a book-lover to love libraries, as silly as that sounds. Libraries are of the people, by the people, and for the people. They are yours to use and enjoy. In honor of Library Lovers Month, check out this librarian who did some at-home curating.

ART: Downtown’s Art Walk happens the second Thursday of each month. The Art walk is a monthly, self-guided tour of the art exhibition venues in Downtown Los Angeles, which includes commercial art galleries, public museums, and nonprofit arts venues. Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand Ave (MOCA), Los Angeles Public Library Grey Goose, LA Artcore Center are just some of the places on the Walk.

Picasso. Giacometti. Kandinsky. Klee. Brancusi. So begins a list of 20th century artists whose works are part of the largest single donation to LACMA in over 40 years. Private LA art collectors Henri Lazarof, a composer, and his wife Janice, a daughter of the late S. Mark Taper, gave 130 paintings, sculptures, and other modernist works to LACMA this week. The gift is valued at an estimated $100 million plus according to the LA Times....

Did you know LACMA has a research library? Well, they do. It is open to the public by appointment, and materials don't circulate. They do what museum libraries do best -- serve the curatorial staff, provide information about items in the museum's collections, and help collectors research the art market. This Thursday and Friday, December 13th and 14th from 12-4 p.m., the LACMA Research Library will be holding its first annual holiday book sale....

TALK: Pulizer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold moderates a Zócalo discussion that focuses on “The Mexican Restaurant in Los Angeles.” Joining in on the roundtable are Gilberto Cetina of the Yucatecan restaurant Chichen Itza, Martin del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu of La Casita Mexicana, and Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger of Border Grill. 7 pm // Central Library – Mark Taper Auditorium // 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles // Free. (Reservations are recommended.)...

Who has been the most potent force in filmmaking over the last twenty years? Steven Spielberg? Tom Hanks? Tom Cruise? Joel Silver? How about John Lasseter? His Pixar films have enjoyed unparalleled critical and commercial success since the debut of Toy Story in 1995. Tonight at the Egyptian you can see the whole story of Pixar unfold when the American Cinematheque screens The Pixar Story. Featuring never-before-seen material from the Pixar library, archival animation...

Robert Hass presents Time & Materials 7pm @ Central Library

We at LAist love Zocalo's Public Square Lecture events (especially when they're either about porn or food porn) and we know lots of you love Mexican food. So we're excited about their event coming up on Tuesday December 11th called The Mexican Restaurant in Los Angeles, which will be moderated by Jonathan Gold, L.A. Weekly Restaurant Critic and idol-worthy food writer. The scoop and the lineup, from their website:Zócalo has gathered together some of the...

Mike Watt & The Missingmen @ Westside Eclectic Johnette Napolitano @ Roxy José González, Cass McCombs @ El Rey Jill Sobule @ Largo Honeycut, The Library @ Knitting Factory Gym Class Heroes, Plain White T's @ Long Beach Arena The Color Fred, Dear & the Headlights @ El Rey The Dirges, Disk Jockey Full of Bourbon @ Safari Sam's Head of Destiny, Killing Jonis, Killing Bees @ The Scene So So Glos, The Black...

Monday Eliot Tiegel presents The Latinization of America 6:30pm @ Book Soup Judith Freeman discusses and signs The Long Embrace 7pm @ Vroman's Roz Chast discusses Theories of Everything 7pm @ Central Library Robert Kuttner in conversation with Arianna Huffington about The Squandering of America 8pm @ James Bridge Theater, UCLA Tuesday Cesar Millan presents Be the Pack Leader 7pm @ Borders, Pasadena Frank McCourt presents Angela and the Baby Jesus 7pm @ Borders,...

Memorial Reading for Mutanabbi Street with Chris Abani, Beau Beausoleil, Laila Lalami, Suzanne Lummis, Majid Naficy, Marisela Norte, Sholeh Wolpe & Terry Wolverton 7pm @ Centraly Library

Monday Dave Isay, from StoryCorps, presents Listening Is an Act of Love 7pm @ Vroman's Johan Lehrer presents Proust Was a Neuroscientist 7pm @ Dutton's Nigella Lawson presents The Domestic Goddess 7pm Borders, Torrance Tom Brokaw presents Boom! Voices of the Sixties 7:30pm @ Temple Emanuel Tuesday Clive Barker presents Mister B. Gone 7pm @ Vroman's Gregory Rodriguez presents Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans & Vagabonds 7pm @ Central Library Susanne Daniels presents Season Finale 7pm @...

This is why we do all of our Christmas shopping online: first the FBI reported possible terrorist threats to Chicago and Los Angeles malls this holiday season, then took it back. Hey kids! You too can grow up to be a pervert with a social conscience! Dov Charney just signed on for a deal with American Apparel's partner company that could net him millions per year. A Small World it's not: Disneyland is remodeling...

Monday Shalom Auslander presents Foreskin's Lament 7pm @ Vroman's Valerie Plame Wilson presents Fair Game 7pm @ Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Long Beach Barbara Firestone presents Autism Heroes 7pm @ Dutton's Slash presents Slash 7pm @ Borders, Torrance Lawrence Wright presents The Looming Tower 7:30pm @ UCLA Tuesday David Plante, with host Mark Danielewski, presents ABC 7pm @ Book Soup Michael Lent presents Christmas Letters from Hell 7pm @ Vroman's Tommy Lasorda & Bill Plaschke...