Branch in the news

Well, not exactly news. But we have gotten some nice coverage from local blogs. Here's a roundup:

Clinton Hill Blog

New York Times Local

Brokelyn

designing the temporary library

A few weeks ago, Architecture for Humanity New York (AFHNY) posted a Call For Ideas for Branch: how should we design a temporary, low-cost installation that would provide shelter for the library, and house shelving, tables, chairs, and space for program such as readings or performances. We got a bunch of great proposals; the three shown here demonstrated ways to use common, everyday, or local materials to create a new kind of space. Thanks to everyone who submitted ideas!

Week 3

Earlier this week, we put out a call for book donations--at our fundraiser (photos to come) and to our 250 members. People responded: we got three big boxes of books at the fundraiser, and yesterday at Branch, dozens of people from the neighborhood stopped by with bags and bags of books. One woman came by twice to donate books. Another group of families put two books on hold, a new service we hadn't even thought of until that moment.

That's been one of the fun things about the project. Everyone is improvising and getting by without a lot of resources or a set plan, but making good decisions on the fly. Seems like a fitting way to operate during a recession.

We're busy cataloging our new books this week. Sunday we'll stamp each one with the Branch logo and hopefully we'll be able to start lending books out. In the meantime, if anyone knows where we can get a lot of milk crates donated, please e-mail us! librarybranch@gmail.com

Week 2

Another busy Sunday: more than 250 people now have signed up as Branch members and received their library cards. One woman who stopped to talk asked us what the project is all about; when we said transforming unused public space, she said "We were doing that in the 1970s!" Branch is still a work-in-progress, but we're happy to be thought of as part of that long lineage of public space projects.

More updates tomorrow...

party for Branch!

Our fundraiser is next Wednesday, Sept. 16 from 7-10pm at Melville House, a book publisher in DUMBO. (Flier courtesy of our awesome graphic design partner Rumors.) Whatever we raise from the fundraiser is our budget for the rest of the project. Come on out--we've got great raffle prizes (Tickets to BAM! Tickets to 6 Flags!! $100 gift certificates for dinner!!!), lots of booze, and a very cool space, all for only $5 cover. Perfect place to donate books, too. (See our Branch 100 Books wishlist below.) Hope to see you there.

Branch 100 Books

We're building our book collection so that we can open the lending portion of the library by Sept 27. Our members specifically recommended the 100 books and authors below because they thought other people in the neighborhood would like them. (The first 4 titles/authors got multiple votes.) If you would like to donate any of these titles, please contact us at librarybranch@gmail.com. Thanks!

1. Thomas the Train (2)
2. Harry Potter books (2)
3. The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho (2)
4. Judy Blume books (2)
5. International policy books
6. Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein
7. Snow, Orhan Pamuk
8. The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
9. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
10. Go Dog Go!
11. Books about: robots, treehouses, Cob building, minerals
12. Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
13. Time and Again, Jack Finney
14. Curious George books
15. Los Tres Cerditos
16. 1984, George Orwell
17.  Girl with a Pearl Earring
18. Dreams of My Father, Barack Obama
19. Horton Hears a Who, Dr. Seuss
20. kids books about science—planets, seeds, castles, cooking
21. Jitterbug Perfume, ss
22. Introduction to Human Services (textbook)
23. Bloody Jack, L.A Meyers
24. The Seer & the Sword, Victoria Hanley
25. Eoin Colfer books
26. Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
27. The Life of Pi, Yann Martel
28. Graphic novels: Drawn & Quarterly; Watchmen; Spiderman
29. Roald Dahl books
30. Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
31. The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren
32. Phineas & Ferb
33. Spongebob books
34. Walter Mosley books
35. Foxfire, Joyce Carol Oates
36. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, Fannie Flagg
37. The Chosen, Chaim Potok
38. The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald
39. Michael Moore books
40. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Jeff Chang
41. Jacqueline Woodson books
42. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan
43. Whistle for Willy, Ezra Jack Keats
44. Jack London books
45. Jack Kerouac books
46. Grapefruit, Yoko Ono
47. Exploring the World of Lucid Dreams, xx
48. The Coldest Winter Ever, Sister Souljah
49. Romance novels
50. Victoria Holt books
51. Baby Beluga
52. Artemis Fowl series
53. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
54. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
55. Chuck Klosterman books
56. James Baldwin books
57. Wole Soyinka books
58. Ann Rand books
59. Ralph Ellison books
60. Monica Ali books
61. design magazines
62. Kam Khao children’s book
63. Douglas Adams books
64. Tom Clancy books
65. Haruki Murakami books
66. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
67. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
68. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
69. A Short History of Women
70. Stones from the River, Ursula Hegi
71. Forged by Fire, Sharon Draper
72. Tears by a Tiger
73. Judy Blume books
74. David Sedaris books
75. The Gunslinger, Stephen King
76. Sandra Boynton books
77. magazines (New Yorker, Brain, Child)
78. I’m Down
79. Simple Justice
80. The Prophet, Paulo Coelho
81. Board Books
82. Edwidge Danticat books
83. The Known World, Edward P. Jones [DONATED--thank you!]
84. Bridget Jones’s Diary
85. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
86. The Little Mermaid
87. Little Red Riding Hood
88. Native Son, Richard Wright
89. The Magic Tree House
90. The Diary of Anne Frank
91. Redemption, Emma Farry
92. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
93. Nostalgia, Mircea Cartarescu
94. Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem
95. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Jeff
96. International Publics
97. Arjun Appadurai books
98. Howard Zinn books
99.  Goosebumps
100. Damien, Herman Hesse

 

Branch opening day

Last January, the Brooklyn Public Library was forced to cut its Sunday hours throughout the borough. In response, a group of volunteers organized Branch, a temporary Sunday library free and open to all. We saw that people were being asked to accept budget cuts that affected all kinds of public space (libraries, parks, subways); Branch is about pooling resources to reclaim those spaces, in partnership with the people using them.

Back in August, we got an e-mail from the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, a nonprofit community organization in Clinton Hill/Fort Greene. They were organizing a month-long arts festival called Move About Myrtle that would close 7 blocks of Myrtle Avenue to car traffic, and they wanted to know if we could open Branch for their festival. We'd been looking for a vacant storefront all summer with no luck, and it didn't seem like there was anything available on Myrtle Ave. But there was an unused Citibank parking lot on the corner of Myrtle and Clinton.

That's where we were this past Sunday, setting up our first temporary installation for Branch. At the end of the day, more than 150 people signed up as members and received Branch library cards. We'd brought a suitcase full of discarded hardcover book covers, donated by a Boston-area printer; we asked people to write down the name of a favorite book or author on the book covers, and we installed over 100 of these on the fence around the site. (Councilmember Letitia James visited and recommended Simple Justice: A History of Brown v. Board of Education and I'm Down.) We set up a Quiet Zone, covering a 10' by 10' area of asphalt with a canvas sheet, and adding lawn chairs, plants, free Sunday newspapers, and earplugs.  We had to share the space with a few parked cars, but we're told that next week we'll have the lot to ourselves.

We'll be open again this Sunday (and every Sunday until the end of November)  to offer a workshop on planning and designing a larger installation. We'll also be showing drawings and images from local architects who've reimagined the space. Contact us at librarybranch@gmail.com if you want to volunteer or donate books.