Autumn 2011 Volume 25 - No 3 - BC BookWorld

More documents

Recommendations

Info

26 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 Annual Non-Fiction Contest* $1500 in prizes available, plus publication! $34.95 entry fee includes 1 year of EVENT 5,000 word limit Contest Judge Zsuzsi Gartner Deadline April 15, 2012 Visit event.douglas.bc.ca for more information photo by Mark Mushet wilderness & wildlife matters Purchase a Wilderness Committee calendar and be part of our campaigns to protect threatened wilderness and wildlife. Only $15.95 Check out our beautiful greeting cards, books and posters online. call 604-683-8220 today! Bulk orders available! WILDERNESS C O M M I T T E E Visit WildernessCommittee.org Mention this ad when you call us and receive a discount!
27 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 LIBRARIES, eBOOKS & YOU COMMISSIONED WORKS don’t always engage a wider audience. The Library Book: A History of Service to British Columbia (BC Library Association $50) is a welcome exception. To mark the 100th anniversary of the B.C. Library Association, Dave Obee has told a fascinating tale of banned books, anti-communist witch hunts, skirmishes between libraries and dedicated souls who have served the province’s book-lovers. This is a large format book by and for book people, with plenty of illustrations, including incidental cartoons by Adrian Raeside. Better still, The Library Book has pictures of bookmobiles. Lots of ’em. There are bookmobiles wheezing up dirt roads in the Fraser Valley, edging along a snowy John Hart Highway (between Prince George and Dawson Creek) and stopped in the middle of nowhere, flagged down by eager readers. When the Okanagan Regional Library retired its mobile unit in 1992, the North Shuswap hamlet of Celista took off the tires, put a flower box on the hood and made Shane McCUNE it a permanent branch. As a boy I loved Fraser Valley Bookmobile, 1940s, from The Library Book Shane McCune reviews The Library Book by Dave Obee to mark the 100th anniversary of the BC Library Association books and I loved trucks, so the bookmobile was second only to the ice cream truck in the pantheon of wheeled heroes. Maybe Obee and book designer Roger Handling felt the same way. ✍ ALONG WITH 2,500 OTHER COMMUNITIES in the English-speaking world, Vancouver, Victoria and New Westminster launched their first true public libraries with seed money from U.S. tycoon Andrew Carnegie, who spent the last years of his life giving away some of the fortune he had amassed by paying steelworkers $10 for an 84-hour week and housing them in slums. In an echo of that paternalism, the earliest lending libraries in remote parts of the province were often small book collections provided by employers in company towns and work camps. It took the baroquely named Ethelbert Olaf Stuart Scholefield, B.C. provincial librarian at the beginning of the last century, to start the march toward organized public libraries throughout the province. The B.C. Library Association was launched at a meeting in his office. He died in 1919, the year the Public Library Commission was created. It soon heard from book-hungry library trustees in Nanaimo, Duncan, Alberni and Sidney. All borrowed books from the Victoria library, to be exchanged four times a year, for a charge of $65 for every 100 books. When Victoria’s city council demanded more money from neighbouring municipalities for use of its library, Saanich and Esquimalt balked, and their residents were cut off. Monitors were posted to make sure interlopers from the suburbs didn’t slip into the reading room. THE FUTURE IS Honey, you smell like Shakespeare According to the hype, the eccentric designer Karl Lagerfeld, as creative director for Chanel and Fendi, has announced a fragrance called Paper Passion. No, it won’t smell like a musty, mouldy old paperback. The goal is to replicate the odour of a freshly printed hardcover. Here at BC BookWorld, we’ve never CENTURY 1 Such internecine sniping dogged the fitful growth of library networks for decades. The PLC’s decision in late 1929 to launch the world’s first regional library network in the Fraser Valley angered other regions, especially the Okanagan ALREADY Karl Lagerfeld: Ooo-la-la, books are sexy. and Vancouver Island. The 1960s saw turf wars between the Greater Victoria board, which claimed dominion over all lands south of the Malahat, and the Nanaimo-based Vancouver Island Regional Library, which planted its flag as far southwest as Colwood. Richmond was the biggest contributor to the Fraser Valley system until it pulled out in 1975, sparking a feud that took six months, a court action and a $100,000 payment to settle. Surrey soon withdrew as well, though with less rancour. But infighting among libraries has often been overshadowed by conflicts with municipal politicians. The most notorious example of this was the firing of John Marshall, to which Obee devotes an entire chapter. In 1954, with red-baiting at a fever pitch, the Victoria Public Library Board fired Marshall two months after he had been hired to launch a mobile book service. No reason was given, but it soon emerged that some “public spirited citizens” told the board that Marshall had continued on page 28 PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY BOOK In 1951, after the Burns Lake library moved to a new home, the original library still had its sign above the door. HAPPENING heard of him either. But supposedly this guy has a personal library of 300,000 books. So, of course, Paper Passion will be marketed inside a hollowed book. Get out your Kindle, fondle your iPad. Sniff your partner. In the Dark Ages, a book was an exotic item. Welcome to the New Dark Ages.
Page 1 and 2: 2 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011
Page 3 and 4: 4 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 WHO’SW
Page 5 and 6: 6 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 WHO’SW
Page 9 and 10: 10 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 feature
Page 13 and 14: 14 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 reviews
Page 15 and 16: 16 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 reviews
Page 17 and 18: 18 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 NEW fro
Page 19 and 20: 20 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • AUT
Page 21 and 22: 23 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 LIBRARI
Page 23: 25 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011
Page 27 and 28: 29 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 ARSENAL
Page 31 and 32: 33 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 No Tame
Page 35 and 36: 37 BC BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2011 people

Autumn 2011 Volume 25 - No 3 - BC BookWorld

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?