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Author Archives: John Mark Ockerbloom
Support the IMLS
If you’ve found useful the many mid-20th century serials that are now freely readable online through The Online Books Page, you can thank the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The IMLS (as it’s generally known) funded the completion in … Continue reading
Not by accident, but by action
I didn’t mean to create a sexist library collection when I set out to build one. But in 1994, when I showed Mary the catalog of online books I’d started the previous year, one of her first questions was “Where … Continue reading
Posted in libraries, online books, people, Uncategorized
Tagged Books, reading, writing
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Some important library values
In challenging times, it’s good for organizations to remember what they exist to do, and what values drive what they do. They may be expressed in a variety of ways, but there are often common threads going through them. There … Continue reading
Readings for people working for the government
A key reason I got involved in digital libraries years ago was the promise of reliable information empowering people to be more knowledgeable and responsible in their actions. One of the oldest digital library sites on the Web is Cornell’s … Continue reading
Posted in libraries, people
Tagged constitution, history, law, politics, supreme-court
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Let us sing a song of cheer again
The depths of the Depression would seem an unpromising time to revive the 1929 song “Happy Days Are Here Again”. But after it was played at the 1932 Democratic convention, it caught on as a song of hope for better … Continue reading
It’s a dead man’s party
The Disney studio had a productive year in 1929. Along with releasing 12 new Mickey Mouse cartoons, it began a series of one-shot musical cartoons with animation designed to fit the music, instead of the other away around. The “Silly … Continue reading
Comfortable neutrality is not an option
“I was so happy. I was so safe,” laments Lois Farquar to a suitor late in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September. But from the book’s start, as she and her fellow Anglo-Irish gentry enjoy parties and dances, their Irish neighbors … Continue reading
A pioneering American graphic novel
Lynd Ward’s Gods’ Man is a novel without words (apart from chapter titles) about an artist who makes a Faustian bargain with a masked stranger for artistic success. Told in 139 woodcuts, it was the first of 6 wordless novels … Continue reading
Making a scene
Elmer Rice’s boisterous Street Scene wasn’t easily staged. Though set in front of a single tenement, it required over 30 actors, prompting many producers to turn it down. Rice eventually had to direct the first production himself. But that had … Continue reading
“A classic in the field of Jewish music”
In 2010 Israel Katz called Abraham Zevi Idelsohn “the undisputed pioneer-scholar of Jewish music”. Part of Idelsohn’s claim to fame is his comprehensive survey Jewish Music in its Historical Development, written while he was cataloging the Eduard Birnbaum Collection of … Continue reading
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