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A kickboxing NYPL librarian? Believe it or not, it is true! Courtney Castellane, who is the Library Manager of the awesome Tottenville Library in Staten Island, was profiled in The New York Post this morning about her dual careers. As Courtney has said, by day she is working out people’s minds and by night she is working out their bodies! And just a little trivia about the Tottenville Library, did you know it is the oldest library on Staten Island?
Today would have been the 77th birthday for music icon and legend Roy Orbison. You want to read about Roy’s life? You want to listen to his solo albums? Or how about checking out the great Traveling Wilbury’s album that Roy was a part of? Well as Roy would say, YOU GOT IT! Or in this case, the NYPL has all of your Roy Orbison materials available at your local branch. Happy birthday Roy!
The NYPL has been nominated for a 2013 WEBBY Award in the Social Education & Discovery category for its social web presence (like this Tumblr!) and creating projects such as the fantastic What’s on the Menu? site. But in order to win this wonderful category The NYPL needs your help and vote! You can click here to vote and don’t forget to spread the word!
Happy 70th Birthday to the great Christopher Walken! In celebration our amazing librarian at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jeremy Megraw, wrote an awesome blog about Walken. Jeremy also uncovered some rarely seen photos of a VERY YOUNG Walken from The Library’s incredible Billy Rose Theatre Collection. The photo above is from Ronnie Walken’s (his birth name) 1955 acting resume. Our friends at Gothamist also shared some of these photos as well as some that they found as well…
It’s FLAMENCO time!!! Opening this week at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in the Vincent Astor Gallery is the free multimedia exhibition 100 Years of Flamenco in NYC . The exhibition featuresall things Flamenco including costumes, photographs, posters and video. Doing the Flamenco while visiting the exhibition is optional.
Lend me your ear and look at what’s here! It’s the NYPL’s first ever National Poetry Contest on Twitter! To enter, register and agree to the contest rules, follow @NYPL on Twitter, and submit three poetic Tweets in English as public posts on your Twitter stream between March 1 and 10, 2013. Three poetic Tweets constitute one entry and each poem must contain the @NYPL Twitter handle. Two of the poems can cover any topic you choose, but at least one of the three poems needs to be about libraries, books, reading, or New York City. All entries must be original, unpublished, and must not have won any award. Entrants may submit one entry per day. You can read about the prizes, rules and regulations here.
Look who visited The NYPL this morning! The Cat was a guest along with NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon as they - excuse me, Mr. Gordon - did a reading of the Dr. Seuss classic The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins which is celebrating its 75th Anniversary. So in honor of The Cat, what is your favorite Dr. Seuss book?
In case you missed it, on the front page of today’s New York Times is the amazing story of Kirsten the American Doll who has been in circulation with little girls at the Ottendorfer Branch of The New York Public Library for 8 years!!!! It’s an amazing story about a library, a librarian, and a community.
We just had to share this with you! While taking a look at the Library’s Timothy Leary archives with our good friends at The Verge (piece coming to a computer near you later this winter), we discovered that Mr. Leary had a nintendo wrist controller Power Glove (immortalized in the 1989 film The Wizard aka A 100 Minute Long Commercial for Super Mario Brothers 3)… and Adidas sneakers. Very clean, red-laced Adidas sneakers. This made us very happy.
Just a reminder that tonight at 6:30pm at The Seward Park Library there will be a free screening of the 1980’s classic DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN that will feature a Q&A with the film’s director Susan Seidelman!!! This screening is part of the new Lower East Side Heritage Film Series: The 80s. Seats are on a first come, first serve basis.
