Meet Paul and Joe DeGeorge, who have been performing as Harry and the Potters for the last six years, singing songs like "Save Ginny Weasley" and "This Book Is So Awesome" in a sort of stripped-down Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers vein. (Listen to the tracks on their MySpace page or watch the concert performance of "The Human Hosepipe" and you'll see what I mean.) They're coming to the New York Public Library to play a free concert on May 10, with tickets available on a first-come, first-serve basis the day before.

Are they a sanctioned tribute band? Heck no; as the duo told MTV News in late 2005, "What kind of punk rocker would ask permission?" And, you know, this is just my personal feeling on the matter, and I Am Not A Laywer and all, but if these guys can flourish—and even Pitchfork says "the Decemberists wish they could lit-rock like this"—what's the big deal about a lexicon or two?

The Peterborough Town Library in New Hampshire is celebrating its 175th Anniversary today. This marks 175 years of library operation, highlighting the Peterborough Town Library as the oldest tax-supported library in the world. Evidently they'll be serving up a full line of events along with birthday cake for all!

This makes for a great kick off for National Library week. For fifty years, National Library Week (April 13-19, 2008) has been celebrated by libraries of all types all across the country. This year, ALA brings the celebration to Second Life with a week of "in world" activities.

All activities will take place on the ALA Island, ALA's virtual space, and will be hosted by Tina Coleman, ALA member specialist, whose Second Life avatar name is Kay Tairov or Val Hawkins, ALA library reference specialist, whose Second Life avatar name is ALALibraryVal Miles.

The ALA Island/ALA Main Stage is located at 128, 107, 29. In Second Life, teleport there directly here

Irish writer and theatrical producer Josephine Hart's famous poetry evening came to United States for the first time last night featuring Tony Award-winning actor Brian Dennehy (Death of a Salesman) and Olivier Award-winning actor Mark Strong (Twelfth Night) reading selections from Robert Frost and Robert Lowell at The New York Public Library.

This is the first time Ms. Hart has brought her sold-out poetry evening to the United States and it coincides with the publication of her new book Catching Life by the Throat: How to Read a Poem and Why just published by Norton. The book also comes with a companion CD featuring several talents including Ralph Fiennes reading Auden, and Roger Moore reading Kipling, Rudyard Kipling. Ms Hart was kind enough to donate 200 copies of her book to the NYPL.

The performance was for the Conservators Program, which directly supports the Library's Annual Fund.

In keeping with the theme of the evening, I have written a poem about it that you can read after the jump.

Photo Credit: Ken Levinson

continued...

When I wrote Friday morning's post about the $25 million George W. Bush wants to take from RIF, I didn't realize that another line in his proposed budget would freeze funding for America's school libraries, keeping it at the same $19.1 million amount that was earmarked for 2008.

"Although the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries program was authorized at $250 million in 2001, funding has never been appropriated at that level," reports School Library Journal's Debra Lau Whelan. "Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, the federal program provides funding to public school libraries to update collections, expand Internet connections, buy new technology, provide professional development for media specialists, and extend library hours. The program was funded at $19.5 million in FY 2006 and 2007, slightly more than its current level."

At least Bush is planning to put some more money into public libraries, but if we're serious about finding ways to keep America's young people engaged as readers as they hit middle school and beyond, I would think that school libraries would have a vital role to play, don't you?

Earlier this week, the Pew Internet and American Life Project, in collaboration with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, released "Information Searches That Solve Problems," a report whose main revelation would appear to be that people will sooner look up information on the Internet than ask experts or family members for advice, but which also has some interesting statistics about library usage. First let's note that 62% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 30 say they've been to a library in the last year, along with 59% of the 31-42 bracket, and 57% of the 43-52 crowd. Then there's this:

"Those who visited libraries in the last year tend to be younger adults, with higher incomes, who have graduated college. There are no signficant differences in library usage by race or ethnicity... 59% of those with incomes of more than $40,000 a year say they have visited a public library; by contrast 48% of those with incomes of less than $40,000 a year say they have gone to the library. Some 61% of those who use the internet have gone to libraries in the last year, compared with only 28% of those who do not use the internet."

We all know that public libraries offer a lot more than books for pleasure reading; in fact, a later chapter in the report goes into detail about the ways people of all ages use libraries in a problem-solving manner to find information about higher education, starting one's own business, and other major life situations. (And 68% of those patrons are using computers when they're there.) But pleasure reading remains, or ought to remain, a core part of the public library mission, so how can the publishing industry benefit from the situation as reflected in this report, and foster its growth?

Over the weekend, I was forwarded an email from Julie Bennett, an acquisitions manager at Ten Speed Press, in which she shares the story of her volunteer work with Room to Read, a philanthropic foundation created by John Wood, the former Microsoft exec who left the company to build schools and libraries in rural communities throughout Asia and Africa. (You may recall hearing about him last year, when HarperCollins published Leaving Microsoft to Change the World.) When Bennett heard Wood speak at the non-profit's annual fundraiser, she told her readers, "I... was blown away by how much his organization accomplishes with relatively small amounts of money—roughly $250 to educate a girl for an entire year, and about $10,000 to construct a library AND fill it with books, puzzles, games, and furniture."

That inspired her to create her own fundraising venture within Room to Read's larger infrastructure, and now she's hoping to inspire others to contribute enough to build a library in Vietnam and provide it with enough resources to cover the first three years of operation. It's easy for you to get involved:

"Go to http://www.roomtoread.org/involvement/donate.html and make a donation (big, small, or otherwise). In the 'Special Instructions' portion of the online or mail-in form (and in the memo section of your check, if donating that way), please write 'Julie Bennett's Build-a-Library Project' so the donation gets applied to our library."

You can also send new children's books directly to Bennett to be added to the donation being put together by Ten Speed's children's imprint, Tricycle Press. Or you could join a roster of publishers that includes Scholastic, Chronicle, HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Reader's Digest who have already established their own donation cycles with Room to Read. "Once we've raised this money," Bennett promises, "Room to Read will send me updates on the construction of our library, including photos, which I'll share with everyone." I'll look forward to running one of those pictures on my blog.

Kathye Fetsko Petrie, the author who successfully predicted Oprah's interest in Marquez, says that in addition to the claims of the Library Company and Redwood Library mentioned earlier this morning, Philadelphia's Darby Free Library, founded in 1743, bills itself as "America's oldest public library," which is not the same thing as being the nation's oldest lending library.

While we're on the subject, anybody know if some library has a really old bookmobile on display?

In one of yesterday's items, I referred to Philadelphia's Library Company as "the first lending library in the United States." That prompted an email from Chris Offutt, who mentioned that he had once visited the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, because he had heard that that was the oldest library in the United States—which I dimly remembered from my own childhood, when my grandfather would take my brother and I to Redwood while he picked up his summer reading. So I had to figure that out before I could get any sleep last night...

The Redwood web site describes the library, founded in 1747, as "the oldest lending library in America, and the oldest library building in continuous use in the country." On the other hand, Benjamin Franklin founded the Library Company in 1731, which makes it "America's first successful lending library and oldest cultural institution." I think I've figured out the conflict, though: Today, the Library Company currently holds "an extensive non-circulating collection," while, as mentioned above, members can still check books out of Redwood. So the first lending library is no longer the oldest, but Philly's still got a 16-year headstart on Newport on the cultural institution front.

UPDATE: Michael Lowenthal emailed to remind me about Cape Cod's Sturgis Library, which has "the oldest building housing a public library in the United States" on its property. Although the library itself didn't open until 1867, the building it was housed in was constructed in 1644.

Last year, I managed to get some good mileage out of And Tango Makes Three, as the children's book spurred protests in the spring and in the fall from parents who were aghast that the real-life story of two male penguins who hatched an abandoned egg and raised the chick together was advancing the gay agenda right into their children's impressionable minds. That was just the tip of the iceberg, according to Hillel Italie, who spoke with the American Library Association and discovered that Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell topped the 2006 list of the most challenged books in our nation's libraries. He also notes a more recent development in Massachusetts involving the book—the details on that case are worth tracking down the School Library Journal report to read, as an elementary school principal apparently tried to strongarm one of her librarians without even waiting for a parent to complain: "Hopefully you will take this matter seriously and refrain from disseminating information that supports alternative styles of living," ran the principal's letter, suggesting that if she didn't comply, she might find herself out of a job.

(The big surprise Italie unveils, though, is that there are no actual, confirmed reports of challenges to The Higher Power of Lucky, the scrotum-baring Newbery winner that sparked a big fuss among librarians back in February.)

To be honest, when I first looked at Wednesday's NYT story on why Harry Potter hasn't made kids more engaged readers, I shared my partner's assessment that it was just Monday's Boston Globe feature all over again, only without the complaints from independent booksellers who say they can't compete with the massive discounts the major chains are offering on Deathly Hallows. But one sharp-eyed reader emailed us to point out what she considered a real howler amidst all the doom and gloom from educators: Stanford professor Michael L. Kamil's suggestion that our culture has "overemphasized" the need for "stories and literature" to children, when so much of the stuff they'll need to read for their grown-up jobs contains "zero narrative."

Kamil's serious about this: Back in 1997, he wrote a paper explaining why first-graders need less narrative and more information when learning to read, because, among other things, stories don't teach kids how to figure out truth from lies, or how to find the nut graf. When you put it that way, maybe it doesn't sound quite so wacky after all—if the American people could re-elect George W. Bush, after all, clearly our public education system had major problems instilling critical thinking skills in at least two generations of voters—but on her Free Range Librarian blog, K.G. Schneider remains rather skeptical. "Education shouldn't be some some artsy-fartsy waste of the taxpayers' dollars, teaching kids dumb stuff like cultural appreciation, empathy, and the power of art," she mockingly summarizes Kamil's position. "It's about preparing a workforce of Silicon Valley drones."