Vintage maps at the Library of Congress

One of the tricky things about websites is they always have to start with a single page. And no matter how many buttons or pop-up menus are crammed into them, it can be hard to get a sense of depth, of how much content lurks behind that original page.

Take the Library of Congress. Its buildings in Washington impart the sense that its holdings are big -- really big. And while its website is perfectly fine -- nice homepage, clean, navigable -- it can't begin to indicate just how much of the massive collection has been put online.

Digging around, as if wandering off into the stacks someplace, I came across this map room. It's packed with historic maps -- of national parks, the Panama Canal, an 1884 hand-drawn map of telegraph lines and roads in Mexico, Civil War battles and much more. It's all rather esoteric, but cartography reveals how we think about place and power -- and it's also beautiful.

The image above came from a 1909 map of the city of Los Angeles. Rendered with amazing precision and detail, it can be appreciated with the somewhat awkward online viewer, or downloaded and gawked at on screen. There, at the corner of 8th and Broadway downtown, you can see a streetcar and palm trees. Buildings are labeled with clarity -- there are more than a few stables.

And those of us who know downtown Los Angeles will be amazed to see just how many big buildings were standing by 1909. We tend to think of this as a young, far-flung city, but 100 years ago, it was a jam-packed metropolis.

Sprawl hadn't yet arrived. The map's key has about 300 listings for apartment buildings and rooming houses, all on this central map. Such a huge portion of the population had chosen to live downtown.

The map barely stretches past Alvarado, to Westlake Park (now MacArthur Park), and off to the west and north lie stretches of open land. Fewer than 30 buildings stand along the long, lonely Sunset Boulevard. On Sixth Street, in what is now the Rampart district, the wealthy Van Nuys family estate sits alone on a large lot, just to the east of "Site of Crown Palace - 500 Rooms - Walter Raymond, Proprietor."

That's a moment of becoming: There are a few other sections of the map labeled with the name -- and in some cases, the contact information -- of the developer. While photographs reveal much about place, a map provides a window into how people lived and what they valued. A century ago, we had two private schools and two bee supply shops, new developments planned along the city's perimeter, all fed by five meat markets, four grocery stores and five breweries.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: Detail of 1909 Los Angeles map, Birdseye View Publishing Co., Grosse Building, Los Angeles.

Philadelphia's libraries scheduled to close starting Oct. 2 due to budget deadlock

In a dramatic move, the Philadelphia Free Library System announced today that it will close all branch, regional and central libraries as of Oct. 2. There will be no book loans, no classes, no programs for seniors or children, no outreach to the community, no more community meetings at library locations. Starting today, the library began truncating its loan period.

The library system of one the nation's oldest cities -- which authors Ben Franklin, R. Crumb, Edgar Allen Poe, Louisa May Alcott and Ezra Pound all called home -- stands on the brink of complete closure.

Pennsylvania has yet to pass a budget for this year, and the Philadelphia Free Library is just one of the institutions and services caught in the deadlock. If the state Legislature were to pass a budget, the closure would not, in all likelihood, come to pass.

"Even as we remain hopeful that the State Legislature will act and pass the enabling funding legislation," reads the announcement from Siobhan Reardon, the library's president and director, "we wanted to notify all of our customers of this very possible outcome."

Our hopes to a speedy budget resolution, and maintenance of library services for the people of Philadelphia.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: the Philadelphia Free Library branch in the Northern Liberties neighborhood. Credit: pwbaker via Flickr

Getting bookishly appy with the iPhone

Lately people have been asking me with excitement what apps I've got on my iPhone, and I shrug and change the subject. It's a phone, it plays music, it gives me directions, it lets me e-mail from as many accounts as I like, allows me to vet the comments on this blog, check Twitter. ... Do I really want it to do anything else?

Well, yes. Budd Parr of Chekhov's Mistress inspired me with his literary iPhone, particularly by shelling out the $49.99 for the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. The price might seem high if you don't know the charms of the Oxford English Dictionary, which goes down paths of usage both historical and linguistic, providing marvelous contextual examples. The full version is 12 CDs for $295, so this condensed version is a bargain, if pricier than most apps.

There are separate apps for many books in the public domain, either as stand-alones, like Bram Stoker's "Dracula," or organized by author, like Jane Austen. But if having a separate app for each book or author seems inefficient -- and it does to me -- you have a choice of several apps that let you download and organize lots of public domain books. One that people seem to like is Classics, which has a luxurious-looking interface, including illustrations, and costs just 99 cents. But so far it includes just 15 books, and while it does have the tragically underread "Flatland," the others are pretty greatest-hits ("The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," "The Call of the Wild").

By contrast, there are 20,000 free books available on the Eucalyptus app (inset, pictured). Its books all have a uniform cover design, with bars of color across the top and bottom and the title in the center on white (reminiscent of Penguin's midcentury covers). Its pages appear to have the texture of high-quality paper, the text appears in paragraph form like it traditionally does in print (paragraphs are indented and flow together, rather than the Web style you see here), and the pages turn beautifully. Through its search, you can download any English-language text from Project Gutenberg, reengineered for the application. It took just seconds to download all of "Swann's Way" by Marcel Proust; after books are downloaded you can access them by author or from a title/author list. At $9.99, it's not cheap, but it's currently a top-20 seller in the books apps section of the iTunes store, so others must have noticed its high-quality interface.

Speaking of high-quality interfaces, I have to turn to Stanza. 

Goodreads book swap with Lisa See in Mar Vista on Thursday

The social-networking-via-books site Goodreads has teamed up with the Mar Vista Public Library and author Lisa See for a book swap at 8:15 p.m. Thursday. The event is free, but RSVPs are required — so far, more than 100 people plan to attend.

Although space is limited, having a capacity crowd is good for book swappers — and for the library.

The way it works: Everyone brings books that they're willing to part with. Could be that kids have outgrown them, they will never get read, there's no room or maybe you're one of those who have decided to purge Kerouac. All the books are arrayed so they can be reviewed. And then, the swapping. Attendees browse and take any books they like, free.

All books that aren't taken away by Goodreads members and other swappers will be donated to the library.

The chic L.A. Public Library support group Young Literati is involved, and it is hosting a reading by Lisa See earlier in the evening (details here). See will be sticking around to sign copies of her book "Shanghai Girls" as the swap gets underway.

— Carolyn Kellogg

Photo by Flickr

Library graffiti at the University of Chicago

Song lyrics, lovelorn notes and math problems  appear on the walls of the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library, all graffiti left there by students. In some, like the photo above, a chain of comments was left that may not have been seen by the original defacer — but probably served to amuse those who came after. Sometimes the graffiti is literary.

Perhaps the students who read this thought of Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five." Or maybe they just thought it was kind of profound. Or recognized Shakespeare in this, below.

There is graffiti in Arabic, Greek, Russian, Latin, Hindi. There are warnings — "Never take a class by Edward Wallace" — and declarations, like the one below, that get high marks from a reader ... who has spelling anxieties.

Nerd storage ... after the jump.

A century of British newspapers goes online

More than 2 million pages of newspapers go online today, courtesy of the British Library. Dating from 1800 to 1900 and including lushly illustrated papers like the Graphic, the database includes 39 media outlets and is easily searchable. Many of the newspapers can be viewed for free.

I found an account of a banquet held in Charles Dickens' honor as he left for a trip to America -- but while I could see that many sentences were interrupted by cheers, the best parts were too illegible to decipher. Who knows -- maybe the newspaper smudged, a copier got jittery, a microfilm camera was tricked by a big black image on the pages' reverse side. It's impossible to tell exactly where the technology went wrong, but not everything online is perfect.

But what I did find is Dickens' farewell speech in New York, given as his American trip was concluding, which was printed in the Penny Illustrated paper on May 9, 1868. He spoke at Delmonico's to members of the press.

When I received an invitation from a private association of working members of the press of New York to dine with them to-day, I accepted that compliment in grateful remembrance of a calling that was once my own and in loyal sympathy towards a brotherhood which, in the spirit, I have never quitted ('Good! Good! and applause). ...

I have for upwards of four hard winter months so contended against what I have been sometimes quite admiringly assured was 'a true American catarrh [gob of phlegm]' (Laughter) -- a possession of which I have throughout highly appreciated (Renewed laughter), though I might have preferred to have been naturalized by any other outward and visible signs (Shouts of laughter). ...

Even the press, being human (laughter), may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed, and I rather think that I have, in one or two rare instances, known its information to be not perfectly accurate with reference to myself (Laughter and applause). Indeed, I have now and again been more surprised by printed news that I have read of myself than by any printed news that I have ever read in my present state of existence (Laughter). Thus, the vigour and perseverence with which I have been for some months past been collecting materials for and hammering away at a new book on America have much astonished me (Renewed laughter). ...

What Dickens thought of America ... after the jump.

Book destruction, thefts at University of Kansas library

Books dating back to 1819 recently were vandalized at Watson Library on the University of Kansas campus, causing $5,000 worth of damage. One folio contained images of the archeology of Greece's ancient Delphi (the Apollo Temple is pictured above); another was about Julius Caesar.

Two sets of covers with all the contents cut or ripped out were found May 28, one in a women's bathroom and another on a hallway bench in the university library in Lawrence, Kan. Since then, the library has found four additional books that are missing pages. Many of the library's rare books are housed in a separate facility, but the library's communications director, Rebecca Smith, noted that "making these collections accessible" is important to the library. "It’s really unfortunate and incredibly rare that something like this would happen."

Library staff said there didn't seem to be a pattern to the pages that were stolen; Kansas police are in touch with art dealers and booksellers in the area. One bookseller was skeptical that the plates held much value, but library staff said they could garner a "hefty price."

That's assuming it was a thief or thieves who vandalized the books.

One famous case of literary vandalism wasn't theft at all but an ongoing prank. Young playwright Joe Orton and his partner Kenneth Halliwell were so annoyed by the lousy books they found at their local library -- "Libraries might as well not exist; they’ve got endless shelves for rubbish and hardly any space for good books," Orton later said -- that they took out books and defaced them, changing text and images. One book, "The Great Tudors," ended up with a monkey instead of a king on its cover. Orton would sometimes go to the library to watch unsuspecting patrons encounter his handiwork.

Orton and Halliwell also removed illustrated plates from books -- more than 1,600 were decorating the walls of their flat when police arrested them in 1962. The books left behind by Halliwell and Orton are now valuable enough to make up their own collection, housed in London's Islington Local History Centre.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Apollo Temple at Delphi. Credit: inyucho via Flickr

Steve Martin's banjo-picking library benefit

"I'm very sorry for the late start," Steve Martin said as he took a seat on stage Monday night. "If I were you, I'd hate me by now."

Judging by the burst of laughter, I'd say all was forgiven. It was the first time the L.A. Public Library held a fundraiser at downtown's LA Live entertainment district, and the proceedings were a bit bumpy: VIPs stuck on the sidewalk, all but missing the pre-party; crowds bottlenecked at entryways; that 30-minute show delay. But people had come to see Martin talk and then play banjo, and they weren't going to let a few snafus ruin the evening.

Before Martin was joined by the Steep Canyon Rangers for a musical set, he sat with author and columnist Dave Barry for an interview. Perched on a folding chair with his hands on his knees, shoulders hunched under a shiny gray suit, Martin looked a bit uncomfortable — or maybe he was playing at looking uncomfortable. Barry, who may be America's funniest Pulitzer Prize winner, read from prepared cards, feeding Martin straight lines and bouncing lively jokes his way. The exchange between the two felt as much like a good comedy routine as an interview, little jokes piled on top of each other, building to a general ball of hilarity.

At one point, Barry asked an atypically serious question about Martin's many creative pursuits, which include writing books, plays and screenplays, acting in and directing films, writing music, playing the banjo and collecting fine art.

SM: That's a serious question, Dave.

DB: [suddenly shouts a curse directed at Martin, tossing his card aside]

SM: [laughing] That card really said [the curse].

Much laughter — except from behind me, where a tense voice whispered, "This is for the library. Please."

The event did make for an unusual intersection of cultures and expectations. Martin is a serious writer, art collector and musician, but he's also the guy who did stand-up wearing a plastic arrow through his head. He is a smart man who has always excelled at being silly; he's an author, but he's a performer, too.

About the musical performance — after the jump.

Library thieves

L.A.'s Central Library, it was reported yesterday, is the site of more thefts of personal property than any other single site in the L.A. Police Department's central division. Which means when you go downtown to borrow a book, hold on to your Blackberry.

But wait. In 2008, there were 31 total theft reports filed: stolen items include bicycles, wallets and electronic gear. That's about 2.5 thefts a month. Is that so much?

By contrast, at the downtown Macy's, a few blocks away, police arrested an average of more than seven shoplifters per month in the same period. Apparently, theft and shoplifting are two different categories for the LAPD, even if in both cases someone has taken something that doesn't belong to them. In any event, the library doesn't seem to have been the first choice for thieves.

What's more, there are more than 7,000 people who visit the main branch of the L.A. public library each day. That's a pretty big number — and the space is big, more than half a million square feet. It's not hard to find a place to sit quietly, uninterrupted, for hours. I've done this, and I've seen others doing it, some of whom look as if the library is a respite from the filth and hazards of living on the street. When I'm there doing research, I haul my backpack (as much a drag as it is) with me when I take a break.

It's only sensible. If I were at Macy's, I wouldn't leave my purse in the middle of the floor when I ran to the bathroom.

The news of the thefts is sad — nobody's stuff should be stolen, and nobody should be desperate enough to steal purses from empty library carrels — but it's not as sad as I thought when I first read the headline. Because my initial fear was that people were going to the library to steal books. Now that would really be bad news.

— Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: Carolyn Kellogg

How to get your library fees waived? Ask Sully.

Pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger is not just an aeronautic hero; he's a library patron.

Sullenberger is the man who was behind the controls of the U.S. Airways flight that safely crash-landed in the Hudson River in January. The remarkable landing brought Sully immediate acclaim, with a spontaneous fan club on Facebook rapidly reaching 10,000 and his hometown Danville, Calif., holding a celebration in his honor. These demonstrations of affection were due, in no small part, to the fact that the pilot made sure every single passenger got off the airplane safely.

But he left one thing behind: a library book.

Borrowed through a local Danville branch library, the book -- reportedly on professional ethics -- belonged to CSU Fresno. Realizing that the book was now swimming with the fishes, Sullenberger asked if the fees could be waived.

The library, sensibly, said why yes, they could do that for him.

Which means the next time you have late fees at the library, if you've got a good reason -- a really, really, good reason, like successfully ditching an engineless plane in a near-freezing river and saving more than 150 lives --  they might be forgiven. 

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Brendan McDermid / Reuters