Maschine Maschine is a music controller and sequencing software package by Native Instruments that can be used for creating and performing musical arrangements. It includes 16 pressure-sensitive pads for live performance or sequencing, as well as a “smart strip” that enables slides and pitch bends. The Maschine controller can function as a stand-alone device to … Continue reading Local Music Remix
More than 40 current and former New York Public Library staffers and their friends helped create NYPL Sings! Songs for Our Children, an album that has found a ready audience in fellow librarians, early childhood educators, parents, and kids. Here, three of the album’s chief contributors explain how this project came to be. The idea … Continue reading Sing a Song of … Early Literacy
You share some intensely personal experiences in Homecoming King about being the child of an immigrant. Was it hard deciding what to codify into comedy? In a comedy special you have only 70 minutes, so a lot of times you’re working with coffee and you need to boil it down to comedy espresso. I’m trying to … Continue reading Newsmaker: Hasan Minhaj
Richland Library in Columbia, South Carolina, needed a better way to reach its African-American community. Quincy Pugh, film and sound manager, explains how the decision to celebrate black history year-round and start “I Have a Problem with That”—a series of panel discussions that address challenging social issues—has boosted program attendance and engagement among its target … Continue reading Every Month Is Black History Month
Copeland is author of Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina (Simon and Schuster, 2014); Firebird (Putnam, 2014), with illustrator Christopher Myers, which won the 2015 Coretta Scott King Book Illustrator Award; and Ballerina Body: Dancing and Eating Your Way to a Leaner, Stronger, and More Grateful You (Grand Central Life and Style, 2017). She spoke with … Continue reading Newsmaker: Misty Copeland
There are so many ways to promote reading and literacy. How did you decide to set up Imagination Library this way so that children get free books in the mail that they can keep? It started out with a simple dream, and a very personal one, 22 years ago. My father was a brilliant man, … Continue reading Newsmaker: Dolly Parton
It’s one of three murals in the library’s entryway, painted by artist John Theodore Jacobsen when the art deco building opened in 1934. Jacobsen was also a preeminent architect, helping lay the groundwork for Pacific Northwest modernism. But the mural was almost lost forever to water damage following a storm that hit the library during … Continue reading Saving Our Murals
Goodbeer—a 2007 graduate of Indiana University’s master’s programs in music and library and information science—is a Braille music transcriber. According to the Library of Congress, which certifies music transcription in Braille, fewer than 100 people are listed as having such a skill. “It was an uphill climb at first,” Goodbeer says of learning the work, … Continue reading Bookend: Feeling the Music
For kids, a library card is often their first entry to membership in grown-up society as individuals who are independent of their families. Library cards represent belonging for adults as well. For new immigrants, a library card may be the first material sign of membership in their wider new community. Whether one is a first- … Continue reading Sharing Our Cities, Towns, and Natural Places
I live in Portland, Oregon, which has a thriving music scene with many artists achieving national recognition. Local music has great value to the cultural fabric of a city or town, and libraries can play an important role in collecting, supporting, and promoting it. The D.C. Public Library’s D.C. Punk Archive not only preserves artifacts and … Continue reading Beautiful Music Together
What started as an archive to document Washington, D.C.’s fabled punk music history evolved into wider support of the city’s current music scene, including hosting basement shows—a punk staple—in the library itself. Librarians Michele Casto, Bobbie Dougherty, and Margaret Gilmore of D.C. Public Library (DCPL) explain how this unconventional venture increased visibility not only for … Continue reading Punk at the Library
Don’t ask Brunsdale to name a favorite item; instead, “it’s the stories that draw me in,” she says, such as the contents of a 1907 letter from circus magnate Otto Ringling to his brothers, suggesting that they purchase the rival outfit of Barnum & Bailey. Among other highlights of the collection: an elephant harness and … Continue reading Bookend: Not Clowning Around
