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1 Billion Dollar Overhaul of the New York Public Library System-----Pilot Program To Expand Educational Programming

   

 

February 15, 2012

 by Robin Pogrebin,  Rebecca White contributed reporting

"Ambitions Rekindled at Public Library

The New York Public Library on Wednesday rekindled its ambitious $1 billion plan to overhaul its branches and renovate its Fifth Avenue flagship.

The plan, which will now involve selling two of the system’s best-known libraries — the Mid-Manhattan branch and the Science, Industry and Business Library — was announced in 2008, when it was expected to be substantially completed by 2014. But the plan languished because of the economic downturn and changes in the library’s leadership.

On Wednesday, though, the board gave the British architect Norman Foster approval to proceed with the next stage of designing a new circulating library inside the main branch to replace the Mid-Manhattan operation. It would be built below the Rose Reading Room, overlooking Bryant Park.

The board also approved a pilot program to expand educational programming at branch libraries.

“We are ready to re-engage toward executing our plans,” said Anthony W. Marx, who became the library’s president in July.

Plans for two new libraries, one in Upper Manhattan and one on Staten Island, which were to cost $40 million each, have been abandoned. But the overall cost of the project still hovers around $1 billion, which includes increasing the endowment.

About $300 million will go toward renovating the main branch; $150 million will come from the city and the rest from donations and the sale of properties, including the Mid-Manhattan branch on Fifth Avenue at 40th Street, the business library on Madison Avenue at 34th Street, and the Donnell branch on West 53rd Street, which closed in 2008.

The library has already agreed to sell five floors of office space it used in the business library building, a former B. Altman department store. Now it plans to also sell its library space on the first and lower levels.

Mr. Marx said the collections and services from the business and Mid-Manhattan libraries would be incorporated into the main branch and neither building would close until that reconfiguration was done.

The library in July sold the Donnell site to Tribeca Associates and Starwood Capital Group, which will build a hotel and condominium designed by Enrique Norten to include a library.

The plan has raised concerns among librarians about their jobs and among library patrons, who fear that creating a circulating library in the main branch, now a noncirculating research library, would result in fewer books being available.

There are two main storage areas in the main library. There will still be 1.5 million books in the stacks underneath Bryant Park, library officials said. The more than two million items in the noncirculating stacks, built in 1911 under the main reading room, will be moved elsewhere in the building or into storage in New Jersey. Mr. Marx said that any book requested from New Jersey would be available at the main branch within 24 hours by scanning or delivery.

“We’re going to have to make hard decisions about what should be kept there,” he said, referring to the main branch. “We want to ensure our unique and priceless collections are accessible.”

With the expansion the main branch will become the largest circulating library in the United States, Mr. Marx said, with publicly accessible stacks. “We need to provide the opportunity to browse for books at a time when bookstores are closing,” he said, adding that “scholars and researchers should be able to enjoy the serendipity of what they find on the shelf.”

But some patrons fear crowding at the main branch, where annual attendance is expected to rise to perhaps 4 million, from 1.5 million. “It won’t be O.K.,” said Donald Jones, 55, a Manhattan resident who uses the computers at the Mid-Manhattan branch several times a week. “One problem I already have is crowding with the computers.”

The plan also calls for turning second-floor offices in the main branch into workspace for as many as 400 writers and researchers and for keeping the library open until 11 some nights. (The latest it stays open now is 8 p.m. two days a week.) “We want this to be Writing Central for New York,” Mr. Marx said.

Some trustees had questioned the viability of such an expensive plan in an economic downturn. But now most seem comfortable with it. “I’ve never been more confident,” said Marshall Rose, chairman emeritus and a co-chairman of the building committee.

To some extent the project was also stalled by a changing of the guard — the departure of Paul LeClerc as president in July and Catherine Marron as chairwoman in September. Mr. Marx, though, said the timetable was not affected by his drunken-driving arrest in November, four months into his tenure. When he was arrested Mr. Marx was driving a library-owned car on a Sunday afternoon in East Harlem. He pleaded guilty in December, was fined $500, had his license suspended for six months and was ordered to enroll in counseling.

Library trustees say that Mr. Marx retains their full support.

“We’ve certainly all put it behind us,” said Neil L. Rudenstine, a former Harvard president who became the library’s chairman in September. Mr. Marx, he added, “is one of the best people I’ve ever worked with.”

Mr. Marx said he had visited 82 of the system’s 89 branch libraries and was enthusiastic about plans to expand their services.

“I grew up using the branch libraries,” said Mr. Marx, who was reared in the Inwood section of Manhattan. “They are a passion for me.”

The branches are at the heart of the library’s mission, Mr. Marx said, as places where people can read, study and use computers free. That is why he is spearheading the educational pilot program to increase English and computer classes, after-school tutoring and homework help.

Mr. Rudenstine said the library hoped to bring its online catalog into public schools in a partnership with the city’s Department of Education; about 50 schools already have access through a pilot program.

Statistics show that more people go to public libraries in New York City than visit all sporting events and other cultural institutions combined. But Mr. Marx said, “We’re not satisfied that we’re meeting the needs of all New Yorkers.”

The library wants to hear “what New Yorkers want their library to look like in the future,” he said. To that end, starting Thursday the library is soliciting comments and suggestions on its Web site (nypl.org/yourlibrary).

Stephen A. Schwarzman, a trustee who donated $100 million to the library in 2008 (the main branch now bears his name), said he was glad to see the undertaking back on track. “The whole project has got enormous vitality,” he said. “When it’s completed, people are going to be dazzled.” 

Accessing Digital Resources Using Live-brary

Accessing the Live-brary Site to Download

•Kindle Books

•Adobe EPUB eBooks

•Adobe PDF eBooks

•OverDrive WMA Audiobooks

•OverDrive MP3 Audiobooks

•OverDrive Music

•OverDrive Video

Steps to Follow For Your Ipad

1.  Go to http://www.live-brary.com/

2.  Click on Free Downloads

3.  Click on Help, then select My Help

4.  From “What Do You Want To Do” Click on Read eBooks

5.  From What Do You Have?  Click on IPhone, IPad, IPod Touch 
6.  Click on View My Help

7.  In Set Up Now follow Steps 1, 2 (see instructions) and 3 (see instructions)
8.  In My Account on Livebrary select your public library and enter your barcode or username. You need to sign into this account when selecting and downloading items.

      Free Apps to Install

a.      Live-brary

b.      ITunes

c.      OverDrive Media Console and Adobe Digital Editions

Other Recommended Apps

Kindle Books (also establish an account with Amazon.com-- -e books are delivered to this site).

Google Books

Prezi Presentation-----Downloading Ebooks and Audio Books from the Public Libraries of Suffolk County

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February 7th is the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Charles Dickens

                                             “Dickens Dream,” by Robert William Buss

Click Here for Original Article

The New york Times
January 12, 2012, 2:51 pm Teaching Dickens With The New York Times

By KATHERINE SCHULTEN and SHANNON DOYNE

Updated | Feb. 7, 2012
"Today is the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth, and events are planned all over (though possibly fewer than for 100th anniversary when, according to The New York Times, there was “a worldwide celebration”).
Here are some ideas and resources for celebrating a writer with a “fierce reportorial eye and restless, prodigal imagination” (Michiko Kakutani in 2010) who “could always extract wisdom, pathos, humor from the most unlikely materials, and…never failed to read the man underneath all the strange wrappages that habit, speech and association might have flung around him” (Dickens’s Times obituary in 1870).
Because The New York Times has been publishing since 1851, just as Dickens was beginning the period of his life in which he wrote works like “Bleak House,” “Hard Times,” “Tale of Two Cities,” and “Great Expectations,” we have also included a number of archival articles that show how he was seen in his own day — as well as some that appraise him 100 years after he was born.
Do you teach Dickens? How? Are there resources we’re missing? Let us know, and we’ll continue to update this post."

Five Teaching Ideas

"Define ‘Dickensian’
Type the adjective “Dickensian” into the Times search field and you’ll see that it has been used to describe everything from the life of a 1930’s child star to shades of nail polish to Newt Gingrich’s thoughts on education reform. According to this Times Opinion piece it is defined as “reminiscent of the harsh poverty-stricken living conditions described in the works of Dickens.”
How would you apply the word today? What, whether you find it in the pages of The New York Times or somewhere in your own community, strikes you as truly Dickensian? Why?
Create a 21st-Century Dickens Event
How well does Dickens hold up 200 years later? How would you interest readers today in his works? Perhaps you’d create an app, a museum exhibit, a film or an amusement park with a Dickens theme? Write or sketch your own description of how you might make the milieu of Victorian London — and the Dickens characters who inhabited it — real to a 2012 audience, via whatever medium you choose. Or, just view some of the Dickens updates linked here and discuss which you think are most successful, and why.
Consider 19th- and 21st-Century Attitudes Toward Money and Class
In a 2009 review of a new version of “Little Dorrit,” Alessandra Stanley wrote about how timely the show was just after the Madoff fraud: “‘Little Dorrit’ is particularly apt and enjoyable at this moment in history because the story focuses intently on something deeper and more universal than real estate bubbles or bank runs: unfairness.”
We used her review in our 2009 lesson plan, Greed Is Good?, in which students consider the traits and actions of greedy characters in Dickens stories and other literature. Read it to find many ways to draw parallels between Dickens’s times and our own in comparing attitudes toward money, class, poverty and philanthropy.
Appreciate Dickens’s Characters
In 1995, The Times’s Op-Ed columnist Russell Baker wrote a piece about how he was reading “too much Dickens” but appreciating the character names:

There are Hancock & Flobby, the dry-goods people; Uriah Heep, the pious hypocrite; Sir Mulberry Hawk, the seducer of innocent girls; Ebenezer Scrooge, the soul of greed; Mister Murdstone, the brutal stepfather; Mister Micawber, the eternal debtor; Josiah Bounderby, the loutish mill owner; Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking of the Circumlocution Office, and on, and on.
Because of reading too much Dickens lately, I am amazed at how many real people are going around in Dickensian names.

He then proposed a contest: “Compose a list of 10 well-known living people whose names would have caught Dickens’s eye. Describe the character Dickens would have created for each name. If you feel cocky, fit all 10 into a single plot Dickens might have written, and send to me.” Two months later, he announced the winners.
Take Mr. Baker’s challenge yourself today. Or, try something else similarly simple to appreciate the imagination Dickens lavished on even the least of his characters: Read some of the descriptions he wrote for some of his 989 named characters, and use them as models for describing people you know or invent.
Observe Dickens’s Writing Process
Would you like to see the handwritten changes Dickens made as he wrote the 66 pages of ”A Christmas Carol” in 1843? In 2009, The New York Times put the whole manuscript online and challenged readers to choose the most interesting edit.
For example, writes Alison Leigh Cowan, on Page 3, he inserted ”his eyes sparkled” to amplify the portrait of Scrooge’s nephew, whose beneficence is crucial to the plot, and on Page 12, where Scrooge takes Marley’s ghost to be evidence not of the supernatural, but of his own indigestion (“more of gravy than of grave”), he converted the offending bit of food from being a ”spot of mustard” to a less digestible ”blot of mustard.”
Use Dickens’s writing process to inspire your own. What can you add, take away, move or otherwise change to make your writing stronger?"

Ms. Debbie Meek-----Dramatic Personae of the Odyssey Project

Ancient Greek Ruins of a Greek Ampitheatre in Sicily
Library Resources
Gale Student Resource Center Junior

Virtual Reference Collection
ABC CLIO World History/Ancient and Medieval Eras
Literature Resource Center
Proquest Learning Literature

Proquest K12
World Book Online
Online Catalog

Academic Intergrity
NoodleTools Citations System
Citation Machine
MLA In-text (Parenthetical) Citations

Passwords are available in the Information Center

Websites
Internet Public Library-Greek Mythology
Encyclopedia Mythica
Encyclopdia of Greek Mythology

Dramatic Personae of The Odyssey Project

Goal: To become an expert on the life and personality of a key figure related to Homer’s Odyssey, and to share that knowledge with the class.

Research:
Due: Wed. February 8, 2012

Knowledge needed:

Life of the character 

Family ties

Passions (including people, events, goals, including kleos, timệ, xenia***)

Relationships with other characters in The Odyssey

Relationships with gods or men

Role in The Odyssey

Annotated Works Cited:
Due: Wed. February 8, 2012

Sources: 3 minimum. 1 must be from School Library Online Database.

School Library Online Database ***

Website (check that it is a reputable site; Wikipedia does not count)

Book, video,  

Format: Noodle Tools plus Class Handout

Writing: Greek Character Bio Poem
Due: Fri. February 10, 2012

See Class Handout for Details

This assignment insures you have the necessary information for your monologue.

Writing: 1-2 page “Dramatic Monologue”
Peer Review: Thursday, February 16, 2012

See Class Handout for Details
Final Due: Thursday, March 1, 2012

1st Person: You will become your character and tell your story.

Voice: remember to evoke the emotions connected with your character’s personality

Unity: Open and close powerfully. Create an impression. Leave an impression.

Literary Techniques- 6 minimum

Invocation ***

Homeric epithet***  

Anecdote 

3 of your choice

Greek Cultural Elements:

kleos, timệ, xenia ***

Presentation: Dramatic Monologue using Note Cards
Date: Tues. March 6, 2012

You present as your character

Use bulleted note cards NO READING

Talk to the audience; be passionate about who you are, your goals, your passions, your affronts Consider adding costuming or props

*** These terms will all be explained to you by Ms. Meek

Go to the Gelinas JHS Library Blog
http://gelinaslibrary.blogspot.com/