For the Library Lover on Your Gift List!

John DeMotte, Atrium - Birmingham Public Library

Archival Pigment Print, 2013

Image is 11 x 16 1/2 printed on 17 x 22
Epson Fine Art Paper

Limited edition of 25

Library’s recognizable windows. For the Library Lover on Your Gift List!

Purchase a one-of-a-kind gift for someone on your holiday shopping list and donate to the Birmingham Public Library at the same time!

Birmingham artist John DeMotte has created this gorgeous limited edition print (there are only 25 prints available and they are going quickly) just for Birmingham Public Library supporters.

This photo print of the Central Library’s East Building looks out onto the corner of Park Place and Richard Arrington Jr. Boulevard toward the Tutwiler Hotel. The photograph beautifully conveys the contemporary architecture of the East Building as it blends with the historic landscape outside. The scene captures the bright light of the Alabama sun against the dark modern structure of the Central Library.

The photo print is available for donors of $1,000 and up while supplies last.

Make your donation and get your print by clicking here.

Civil Rights Fiction

The City of Birmingham, the Birmingham Public Library, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and the Birmingham Museum of Art, along with other local entities and agencies, have been commemorating the historic, local events of 1963 that fought for the recognition of equal rights for African Americans. Under the banner of “50 Years Forward,” and with that passage of time, it has become increasingly evident that these events in Birmingham, Alabama, have had a world-wide impact and have inspired countless individuals to pursue freedom and equality.

The Birmingham Public Library has been proud to do its part in offering a wide variety of programs and materials to its loyal patrons and other visitors to commemorate this unforgettable year. The Library thanks all who attended and participated in our special programming.

The materials we offer on this topic include music, film, audio, and books all available in numerous formats that have kept pace with the constantly changing technology of our current times. The books that have been promoted or displayed this year for the commemoration are for the most part historical accounts that are classified as nonfiction. Historical fiction depicting the Civil Rights era of the 1960s deserves attention as well.

Many fans of historical fiction hold to the idea that fictional accounts based on historical events and persons can be more dynamic and compelling than their nonfiction counterparts. Explore Civil Rights historical fiction and decide for yourself.

Here are some novel suggestions for those interested in viewing the Civil Rights era of the 1960s through the prism of fiction.


A Walk Through Fire by William Cobb
Streets of Fire by Thomas H. Cook
The Last Hotel for Women by Vicki Covington
Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
Bombingham by Anthony Grooms
Dreamer by Charles Johnson
Top Down: A Novel of the Kennedy Assassination by Jim Lehrer
Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund
Seduce the Unwary Mind by Harry D. Northrop


Submitted by David Blake
Fiction Department
Central Library

Calling All Authors: 2014 Local Authors Expo & Book Fair

Registration has begun for the 2014 Local Authors Expo & Book Fair at the Birmingham Public Library. This annual event provides an opportunity for authors from the Birmingham area to meet the reading public, autograph books, and network with other writers. The Expo will be held at BPL's Central Library at 2100 Park Place, Birmingham, Alabama, on Saturday, February 1, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The event is free for the public, but registration is required for authors who wish to promote and autograph their books.

In addition to hosting up to 100 authors at this year's event, there will be two presentations open to the general public: At 10:00 a.m., young adult author Anne Riley will discuss "How to Write While Having a Life," and at 1:00 p.m., a panel of authors from See Jane Write (Javacia Harris Bowser, Stephanie Naman, and Kathryn Lang) will talk about "How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Book."

So if you're a Birmingham author: Click Here to Register

The registration fee is $5. For an idea of what to expect, browse our photos of the 2013 Expo. For the general public to attend, no registration is required.

Final Program in MakingCents Series Covers How to Pay for College

Dr. Andreas Rauterkus

If you are interested in getting your financial life in order this fall, then the Central Library is the place to be! Dr. Andreas Rauterkus, Associate Professor of Accounting and Finance at UAB, will be leading a series of programs that will focus on a variety of issues related to personal finance and investing. This is the last program in the MakingCents series. We hope you have enjoyed and learned from these financial planning programs.

Paying for College
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
12:00 p.m.
Arrington Auditorium
A college education is a good investment, but is also a very expensive one. In this program, Dr. Rauterkus will discuss ways to make this process more manageable. Among the topics to be covered are evaluating college affordability, utilizing personal savings, and assessing the different forms of financial aid.

These programs are part of the MakingCents: Resources to make your money grow and Smart investing@your library® series, a partnership between the American Library Association and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation.

New Tool for Job Seekers and Students

Career Cruising is a comprehensive career guide that's fun and easy to use. It's the perfect tool for students planning for the future, graduates investigating job options, and adults looking for work or thinking about a career change. 

Career Cruising helps job seekers satisfy five key career guidance needs: self-assessment, career exploration, post-secondary education planning, work search, and portfolio development. Each section can be used on its own or in combination with others. You can learn more about your personal interests and find related careers and information about the necessary training, you can explore schools and find financial aid, you can explore occupations that interest you and find related jobs.

CareerCruising features career guidance information, a database of schools, financial aid information, a portofolio tool, employment resources and self-assessments. This resource is perfect for students exploring future career options as well as college grads and job seekers. Create a CareerCruising profile to build a customized plan.

Career Cruising is available at all BPL branches and at home to any residents of the City of Birmingham with a valid library card.

Click Here to Begin!

The "Up Series"

In this era of reality television, the cinematic documentation of everyday people seems to have fallen by the wayside.  Instead, we are bombarded by c-list celebrities, rural eccentrics, and child beauty pageant stars. Reality television depicts these lives in a sensationalized manner and the spotlight of celebrity has warped almost all sense of reality on our television screens.

Of course there are still some documentaries and -- occasionally -- television programs that offer thoughtful insight into the world in which we live. The "Up Series” is a spellbinding example of this (unfortunately) rare phenomenon. These films are a documentary series that chronicle the lives of fourteen ordinary people in the United Kingdom.

In the fall of 1964, a camera crew from Granada television interviewed fourteen, seven year-old schoolchildren from around London. The children were from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds ranging from working class students to upper class boarding school students. They were all asked several questions about their lives as well as their thoughts on the future.
  

The documentary was titled 7 Up and was very well received by the British public.  One of the associate producers on the production  -- filmmaker Michael Apted -- came up with the idea of revisiting these fourteen individuals every seven years. The same children were visited as fourteen years old in 7 and 7 and most of the original fourteen participants have been visited every seven years since resulting in a series of documentaries directed by Apted with titles including 21 Up, 28 Up, and so on.

The films have become known as the “Up Series” and have developed quite a following around the world -- there have even been local versions of this series in most major film producing countries.  Roger Ebert called the series “…an inspired, even noble, use of the film medium“ and the films are usually listed among the greatest documentaries ever made. Every seven years the audience for these films grows with more enthusiastic viewers who have discovered the series during the intervening years.

Last year, 56 Up was released in theaters and the film has recently arrived on home video (and is available through the library system).  I would recommend that  anyone intrigued by the premise of this series to start with the first film and work their way forward. 

It is tempting to state that viewers really get to know the individuals incrementally documented in this series; however, the truth is that we do not really get to know them at all. Michael Apted frames a window in which we can glance at their lives every seven years and it is an incredibly compelling glance.

Perhaps most compelling in that the films make clear that any life can be profound if viewed through the right frame. I would also add that these films do a wonderful job of propelling the viewer to enter a frame of mind in which to examine the profound nature of their own journey through life.

2013 Holiday Happenings at Birmingham Public Library

Full size calendar available at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bpl/11195636946/sizes/h/in/photostream/

Celebrate the holidays at Birmingham Public Library! Click the link to see the list of programs scheduled at BPL locations throughout December. All programs are free and open to the public.

Dolores Hydock to Perform A Christmas Memory

The Christmas season doesn’t really begin until you have experienced Birmingham storyteller Dolores Hydock’s incredible one-woman performance of A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote's poignant reminiscence of his boyhood in rural Alabama. Dolores will perform this holiday classic on Tuesday, December 3, at 6:00 p.m., in the Arrington Auditorium at the Central Library.

There is always a full house for this performance, so come early and enjoy refreshments provided by the Friends of the Birmingham Public Library.

Book Review: The Crimson Petal and the White

The Crimson Petal and the White
Michel Faber

Sorry, but it doesn’t have anything to do with football, or Alabama, or even the last hundred years. It’s a novel set in 1870s London and it’s a picture of Victorian society the like of which you will almost certainly be unprepared for. Reviewers called it the novel a period novelist might have written had there not been censorship and this is not an overstatement. But even a Dickens without restrictions, for instance, wouldn’t have had a century plus of historical research and perspective that make this story so detailed and devastating. The seductive opening lines indicate as much:

Watch your step. Keep your wits about you: you will need them. This city I am bringing you is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before….The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether.

The novel follows Sugar, a prostitute from these mean streets, as she makes her way through life, meeting William Rackham, a wealthy businessman. She becomes his kept woman and, later, his governess. Through her eyes, and his (and still others) you see every level of London society, from lowest to highest. Connected to the main theme of prostitution are related themes concerning desire, lust, marriage, courtship and so on. In all of this you are intimately immersed into defining elements of Victorian morality, its vicissitudes, contradictions and hypocrisies. Far more importantly, and cutting to the core, it’s a book about love and how society usually thwarts it far more often than it supports it.

By the way, if you like it, don’t miss the DVD version, also at the library.



Submitted by Richard Grooms
Fiction Department
Central Library

Navigating the Holidays with Ease

The holiday season has come fast and has caught many of us off guard, but we need not fret because it’s still early enough to shop and plan without getting entangled with the chaos that seems synonymous with the holidays. Below, Real Simple provides seven tips to reduce holiday stress and save money. Following the tips are books provided by the Birmingham Public Library that will also help us navigate the holidays with class and ease so that we can celebrate and embrace them for what they mean to us without the distractions of stress.

Tips
1. Make a List
Write down everyone you plan to buy a gift for, no matter how small the gift may be. Include ideas of what to give each person, along with the maximum amount you’re willing to spend.

2. Start Early
Don’t wait until after Thanksgiving to start buying holiday gifts. Keep your eyes open all year round for items friends and family would like.

3. Do Online Research
If you’re unsure of which specific item to buy, search for reputable online reviews.

4. Hit Up Black Friday (If You Dare)
If you’re looking for great deals and aren’t afraid of battling large crowds, the day after Thanksgiving is a shopping must. Get a head start on fellow shoppers by checking a website like Blackfriday.org before the big day.

5. Take Advantage of Cyber Monday
A spin-off of Black Friday that debuted in 2005, Cyber Monday is reputedly the biggest online shopping day of the holiday season—and accordingly, many online retailers will offer special discounts on their products. It takes place the Monday after Black Friday, though you can find online bargains all year long at Cybermonday.com, the official Cyber Monday website. On the actual day, the site will feature extra discounts and hourly specials to further entice online shoppers. To stay even more in the know during the holidays, sign up to receive emails from your favorite stores to get advance notice about sales and insider-only deals.

6. No-Cost Holiday Shipping
More than 1,000 online merchants, like Best Buy and L.L.Bean, will offer free shipping with delivery by Christmas Eve. (Go to freeshippingday.com for details.)

7. Do It Yourself
If you’re creatively inclined, avoid mall madness altogether and bake a batch of cookies, sew personalized tote bags, or make beautiful earrings for friends and family.

Source: http://www.realsimple.com/holidays-entertaining/holidays/holiday-guide-00100000090734/index.html.

Books
Debt-proof Your Christmas: Celebrating the Holidays Without Breaking the Bank by Mary Hunt

Holiday Blues: Rediscovering the Art of Celebration by Herbert Rappaport

Saving Dinner for the Holidays: Menus, Recipes, Shopping Lists, and Timelines for Spectacular, Stress-free Holidays and Family Celebrations by Leanne Ely

Classic Crafts and Recipes for the Holidays by the Editors of  Martha Stewart Living

Submitted by Karnecia Williams
Inglenook Library

BPL Hits Tumblr!

"What is Tumblr?

"Before there was social networking, there were blogs. And in an effort to muddle things, at one point in time the concept of blogging without trying too hard became known as microblogging. Tumblr is part microblogging, part social networking."

"If you want to write a several-thousand-word opus about something, Tumblr isn’t the place to do it. If you want to share a moving picture of a little kid acting like a detective as quickly and easily as possible, Tumblr is a good place to do it. That’s the microblogging aspect to Tumblr. Then, other Tumblr users who like moving pictures of little kids acting like detectives can follow you on Tumblr so they’re sure to see every moving little-kid-acting-like-a-detective picture you post. That’s the social networking aspect to Tumblr."
From time.com

So, where can you find Tumblr?

Learn more about what's going on at BPL, find book reviews, funny memes, and most importantly, FOLLOW US at http://www.tumblr.com/blog/bhampublib! We can't wait to connect with you!

Limited Edition Photo Print By Local Artist Available For BPL Donors

Donors to BPL's Annual Campaign May Receive a Limited Edition Photo Print by Local Artist John DeMotte

The first 25 donors of $1,000 and up to BPL's annual campaign will receive a beautiful limited edition photo print by local artist John DeMotte (www.johndemotte.com). The photo is in an edition of 25, donated to BPL by the artist. It captures the Central Library's glass windows, which rise from the first floor atrium to above the fourth floor, looking across the intersection of Richard Arrington Jr. Boulevard and Park Place toward the Tutwiler Hotel. The Central Library's "East Building" was constructed in 1984, is a modern counterpart to the 1927 Linn Henley Library. Its pyramid-like glass atrium has made it a recognizable downtown Birmingham landmark.

The BPL Foundation hopes to raise $50,000 before January 1, 2014 to supplement and expand the library's collection. One hundred percent campaign donations will be used to acquire library materials for BPL's 1.7 million annual visitors. Specifically, funding will allow BPL to:

• Purchase current and sought-after books and ebooks in all genres
• Purchase magazines, journals, and newspapers for both research and enjoyment
• Purchase databases like Ancestry.com, Reference USA, and Morningstar

For benefits of giving at all levels, and to donate online, please go to www.bplonline.org/foundation.

And remember to celebrate #GivingTuesday with us. If you donate any time from now through December 3rd, we will enter you into a drawing for books and dinner.

John DeMotte, "Atrium - Birmingham Public Library"
Archival Pigment Print, 2013
Image is 11 x 16 1/2 printed on 17 x 22 Epson Fine Art
Paper
Edition of 25

BPL Closed November 28 to December 1 for Thanksgiving Holiday

All locations of the Birmingham Public Library will be closed November 28 to December 1 for the Thanksgiving holiday.