Free Library – Christopher Wink

Susan Davis teaches a library-science class at Drexel, where enrollment in the program has grown more than threefold since 2000. Retirements are opening jobs for librarians. Photo by DAVID M WARREN.

I try to tackle the contrast between contracting libraries in Philadelphia and a surge in library-sciences programs at regional colleges in a story for today’s Style & Soul section of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

You might think librarians are going the way of card catalogs.

After all, many of Philadelphia’s Free Library branches are on the chopping block come summer, and the number of public school librarians have dropped by half in the past 15 years.Yet local colleges tell a different story.

At a time when free access to Internet, books, movies and lectures is more important than ever, libraries across the country — where many librarians are graying and retiring — are seeking skilled information specialists, trained and college-educated in the library sciences. Library science programs here are filling the need. Read the rest here.

Go there, check out the story, comment and then come back here for the extras that didn’t make it into the full story.

Continue reading Inquirer: Why are there so many aspiring librarians?

Artists rendering of the completed expansion of the central branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. The project has been long delayed. — Artist's rendering of the completed expansion of the central branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. The project has been long delayed.

I covered the again-stalled addition to Philadelphia’s Free Library central branch for Philadelphia Weekly, and it ran online during the weekend as part of their growing Web presence.

Think of it as the library of the future.

At more than 300 computers, graphic designers work on new projects, musicians record and bloggers and authors write and research, using the quiet of old and the wireless of new. Arching skylights vault over glass walkways, and plate–glass windows open an 8,500–square–foot foyer to light and weather patterns. A Visual and Performing Arts Department lets visitors focus on music instead of books. A Teen Center brings resources to school–aged kids courtesy of tattooed librarians, while the Entrepreneurium offers those who dream of starting a business the tools to make it happen. It’s all designed by internationally acclaimed architect Moshe Safdie, and it’s called Parkway Central—one of the premiere libraries in the nation.

It’s also, for now, a fiction… Read the rest here.

Comment and then come on back for a few items I cut from the story – see them below.

Continue reading PW: Central library expansion on hold