When you know the goals of population demographics then you know what these jaunts to Las Vegas by US city officials during the year have as a mission. Las Vegas is where the rich of the world-----individuals looking for city property and foreign corporations looking to locate their global corporate campus partnered with an UnderArmour or Hopkins. This is the Uber global rich working for the Hyper-global rich. PUGH is simply a face to what Wall Street Baltimore Development and Hopkins has people to meet. While PUGH sends progressive bones of Maryland Assembly funding to FEED THE CITY----as any third world refugee structure provides----she is hobnobbing with the Uber-class that seek to enslave the citizens of Baltimore on these global corporate campuses and global factory sweat shops.
'Common Cause Maryland, a government watchdog group, commended Pugh for paying for the trip. But the organization's executive director said she was concerned about a businessman having such unfettered access to a public official. Tilley's company has done business with the state and won a share of a $240,000 contract with the city this month, online records show'.
When leaders in third world nations living in desperation seek to negotiate with global NGOs for food or employment they do so not having the education or resources to create those opportunities for themselves. When a developed nation called free and democratic have people supposedly election to serve the citizens doing the same as those leaders in desperate third world nations----begging for money and investment----we call that prostitution stance. Pugh has the power to bring Baltimore to a developed democratic Rule of Law local economy to bring wealth and employment stability to Baltimore citizens and she COULD CARE LESS.
We have always called folks on Wall Street money prostitutes----well, Wall Street now has our pols and that is their focus as well.
HOW MANY BILLIONAIRES AND UBER-RICH CAN BALTIMORE SECURE IN THIS MAD RACE TOWARDS MARKET DOMINANCE OF A 1%?
Catherine Pugh flew to Las Vegas on Md. businessman's jet, says she paid
Pictures of state Sen. Catherine Pugh, who is running for Baltimore mayor.
Michael DresserContact ReporterThe Baltimore Sun
Baltimore's Democratic candidate for mayor hitched a ride to Vegas on a private jet.When Baltimore's Democratic mayoral nominee Catherine E. Pugh visited Las Vegas last weekend, she didn't fly Southwest. She hopped a ride there and back on the private jet of a Maryland businessman and campaign donor.
Pugh said she asked Walter A. Tilley Jr., chief executive of Home Paramount Pest Control, for a ride to and from an international shopping center convention attended by many government officials.
The state senator said Thursday she was there to observe and do a little shopping but had to be back in Baltimore by Tuesday. She decided to ask Tilley for a ride after she heard he was making the trip.
Pugh said she paid $650 for the trip on Tilley's private jet, similar to the cost of a commercial round-trip flight on Southwest Airlines, the dominant carrier at BWI Marshall Airport. She said she will list the trip on her next ethics disclosure form.
"I paid for my flight," Pugh said. "I had to be in and out by a certain time."
She said she checked the state's ethics rules before taking the flight and determined that there was no conflict.
Baltimore recertifies primary election results, starting timeline for final challenges Common Cause Maryland, a government watchdog group, commended Pugh for paying for the trip. But the organization's executive director said she was concerned about a businessman having such unfettered access to a public official. Tilley's company has done business with the state and won a share of a $240,000 contract with the city this month, online records show.
"Where's the opportunity for citizens to have that same access?" Jennifer Bevan-Dangel said.
Tilley could not be reached for comment. Tilley and his wife Nancy each contributed $6,000 to Pugh's mayoral campaign — the most allowed by law. Home Paramount Pest Control gave $5,500 to her campaign as well.
Catherine Pugh defeats Sheila Dixon in Democratic primary of Baltimore mayor's race The annual RECon convention, staged by the International Council of Shopping Centers, draws tens of thousands of people to Las Vegas each year for a showcase of retail outlets. It is a magnet for elected officials, many of whom say they attend to attract businesses to their home states and cities.
Among those attending this year's RECon was Gov. Larry Hogan. Doug Mayer, a spokesman for the governor, said Hogan attended "to meet and speak with industry leaders from around the country about doing business in Maryland."
Mayer said Hogan took a commercial flight on Southwest at state expense.
Other elected officials who attended include Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young and Councilman Carl Stokes.
Records show the city paid $567 each for Rawlings-Blake and her deputy to take a commercial flight to Nevada. The city paid $456 each for Young and Stokes to fly. Spokesmen confirmed Thursday that that is how those officials traveled to Las Vegas.
Besides Tilley, Pugh's fellow passengers aboard the Sunday flight from Martin State Airport to Las Vegas and the Tuesday return trip included lobbyist John A. Pica Jr., who represented Baltimore in the General Assembly during the 1980s and 1990s, and Thomas L. Bromwell of Baltimore County, a former state Senate Finance Committee chairman who served a seven-year prison term on federal corruption charges.
Pugh said she did not know who, besides Tilley, would be on the flight before she boarded.
"It was a personal trip," said Pugh, adding that she did not discuss city or state business with fellow passengers. "I sat in the front by myself. I'm reading a book about Theodore Roosevelt."
Pica, Home Paramount's lobbyist, said there was no lobbying of Pugh. Pica contributed $500 to Pugh's campaign.
"We didn't discuss any business with Senator Pugh," he said. "In fact, she sat in a separate part of the plane and wasn't part of those discussions."
Bevan-Dangel called the Las Vegas event "nothing but a boondoggle for unfettered access to public officials."
"This shopping center event has been nothing but an ethics nightmare for years," she said. "The reason to go seems to be the parties and the schmoozing."
She noted the 2013 convention, when Rawlings-Blake officiated at the wedding of two prominent Annapolis lobbyists with many elected officials in attendance.
Pugh's opponents in the November general election criticized her decision to take the trip.
Republican nominee Alan Walden called Pugh's decision "at least unwise."
"If it gives the appearance of being improper, it should be avoided," he said.
Joshua Harris, the Green Party candidate, said he would leave it up to voters to decide whether the flight was proper.
"I don't think many private citizens are taking private [jet trips] from wealthy businessmen," he said.
Home Paramount is a large pest exterminator based in Forest Hill, with branches throughout the Mid-Atlantic and in Florida. It is a registered vendor with the state of Maryland and has won several contracts in recent years, including one for pest control at BWI.
The company won a contract this month to provide pest-control services to various city-owned properties, online records show. The company bid $135,000 for the work and was awarded a share of a $240,000 contract that will be divided among three companies. A breakdown on services to be provided by each was not immediately available.
Hogan named Tilley to the Maryland Port Commission last year. The former Marine previously owned York Printing and York Distributors.
State records show Pica has earned $36,000 as Home Paramount's lobbyist since May 2015, representing the company on such matters as pest-control legislation and state contracts.
Pica served one term in the House of Delegates and moved to the state Senate in 1983. Until this year, he held the distinction of being the only person to defeat Martin O'Malley in an election — a 1990 squeaker that Pica barely won. In a surprise move, he left the Senate midterm in 1996.
Bromwell was chairman of the Finance Committee from 1995 to 2002, when he resigned to head the Injured Workers' Insurance Fund.
In 2007, he pleaded guilty to racketeering and fraud after a federal investigation into his dealings with a contractor that stretched back to his time in the Senate. He was released in 2013.
Bromwell did not respond to a telephone call seeking comment.
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City planning creates public space and establishes community events geared towards civic engagement and unity. I have spoken for years of the privatization of all those places and today I want to look at a vital city asset being privatized away----OUR PRATT PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM.
I shared the image of our supposed Mayor PUGH flying with her employer to Vegas. While she was doing that I was at a Pratt Library Board meeting waiting for my 2 minutes to testify as a citizen in Baltimore. The Director of Pratt Library has done a great job for years ---it has been a wonderful asset to the city. As always happens when these leaders are pulled to leave this Director has spent these few years dismantling that strong public access on a march towards privatization. The Baltimore politicians present on this board are speaking about global education, placing job training and job application structures on our BOOKMOBILES while finally someone made public the PRATT LIBRARY funding from the state would end as will our K-12 and public university funding. This was known a few years ago but no one allows the public to know---these pols and leaders simply start installing the structures needed after public funding for libraries ends.
As with all public agencies and structures in Baltimore the Pratt system will now fall to corporate funding for support which means this board below does not answer to taxpayers----which I dare say they may not have been so inclined before----but now the same NGO/global corporate donor becomes the patron of our Enoch Pratt. Given the hostility to anything having to do with public education and information we will see a slow march toward our public library system becoming a business. The first sign is changing what was the original benefactor's expression----a collection of books and journalism as circulating library to all citizens in Baltimore. The changes already happening are subtle-----not many everyday library users notice but this change of mission to PRATT DOING in the communities rather than being a repository of books and journals predicates what will become a slow dismantlement of our great collection of books. The immediate issue for friends of our library-----the remodeling of the Pratt Central building and reallocation of space. The talk now is culling our strong collection of arts and humanities moving the library more and more towards a business site for job training, employment center, and social services for the community. ALL THIS JOB TRAINING WAS OUR MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, LICENSING, AND REGULATION. IT WAS THE JOB OF A CORPORATION'S HUMAN RESOURCES TO TAKE APPLICATIONS AND DO BASIC TRAINING. All those structures are gone and now the public structures for our social services and public health---and as with non-profit wrap-around services attached to our once public schools----the library will see more and more of its funding moving from book collections and management to simply providing services.
Many of the community services offered over decades are great---reading partnerships, bookmobile and community activities like plays ---this is cultural development. What is coming are more SOCIAL BENEFIT PROJECTS FROM NGOs.
ENOCH PRATT PUBLIC LIBRARY
Its establishment began on January 21, 1882 when long-time local hardware merchant, banking and steamship company executive (but born and raised in Massachusetts) and philanthropist Enoch Pratt, (1808-1896), offered a gift of a central library, four branch libraries (with two additional shortly thereafter), and a financial endowment of US $1,058,333 in a significant piece of correspondence to Mayor William Pinkney Whyte and the City Council of Baltimore. His intention was to establish a public circulating library that (as he described it): "shall be for all, rich and poor without distinction of race or color, who, when properly accredited, can take out the books if they will handle them carefully and return them." The grant was accepted by the municipal government and approved by the voters later that year in an election on October 25.[1]
Current
By the late 1920s, Old Central could no longer hold the library's continually expanding collection, even though an annex had been added at the rear.[5] Baltimore City voters approved a loan for $3,000,000 by an almost 3-to-1 margin on May 3, 1927. The Central Pratt Library's staff, services and 400,000 volumes were relocated to temporary quarters at the old Rouse-Hempstone Building at West Redwood Street and Hopkins Place (now the site of the Royal Farms Arena for a two-year stay during 1931-1933. At this temporary location, the Central Pratt was able to reorganize and plan for its future arrangements of departments and try out its soon-to-be famous "department store windows" displays[1] Along with several townhouses facing Cathedral Street (including a significant one formerly owned by Robert Goodloe Harper) it was razed in 1931.
The replacement structure occupies the entire block facing the "Old Baltimore Cathedral."[4] Construction began on June 1931, during the darkest, most difficult days of the financial "Great Depression" and along with other major construction projects occurring at that time with the building of a new U.S. Courthouse and Post Office at Battle Monument Square at North Calvert and East Lexington-Fayette Streets, and the new Municipal Office Building on Holliday Street, across from the old Baltimore City Hall and the new Federal Courthouse/Post Office, offered an important source of desperately needed employment to the hundreds of out-of-work citizens of the city.[1] The building was completed in January 1933, and opened to the public on February 3, with a record of not one day of suspended service since the original beginnings of "Enoch Pratt's Folly" on January 5, 1886.[6]
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As someone in love with the beauty of Baltimore's historic architecture----all these historic buildings in Baltimore are ending with occupancy of NGOs and corporate non-profits which will simply move all ownership away from the public. These original Pratt Library buildings are classic and the Central Library stands on what will be valuable downtown real estate.
2016 Boards of Trustees and Directors
Patricia J. Lasher, Chair (T/D)
Virginia K. Adams (T/D)
Kenneth S. Aneckstein, Esq. (D)
Stephanie M. Beran (T/D)
Edward J. Brody (T)
Calvin G. Butler, Jr., Esq. (D)
Mark R. Cheshire (T)
Mary H. DeKuyper (T)
Edward S. Delaplaine, II (D)
Nancy Dorman, Vice Chair, Board of Trustees (T/D)
Christine M. Espenshade (T/D)
Mychelle Farmer, M.D. (D)
Susan K. Gauvey (D)
Sandra P. Gohn, Esq. (T/D)
Nancy Hackerman (D)
Robert S. Hillman (T)
Jacob Hodes, Treasurer (D)
Allan D. Jensen, M.D. (T/D)
Verna Jones-Rodwell (D)
Edward N. Kane, Jr. (D)
Mark Kaufman (T/D)
Antonia Klima Keane (T/D)
Alexander W. Koff, Esq. (T/D)
Ava Lias-Booker, Esq. (D)
Darielle Dunn Linehan (D)
Sayra Wells Meyerhoff (D)
James Dabney Miller (T/D)
Elizabeth K. Moser (T/D)
James Piper III (T)
Kate Rawson Powell, Secretary (T/D)
Vernon A. Reid, Immediate Past Chair (T/D)
Benjamin Rosenberg, Esq. Vice Chair, Board of Directors (T/D)
George L. Russell III (T/D)
Paul S. Sarbanes (T/D)
Jeffrey H. Scherr (T/D)
Graylin E. Smith, Vice Chair, Board of Directors (D)
Robert L. Waldman, Esq. (D)
Anne Winter West (D)
Garland O. Williamson (T/D)
T = Trustee
D = Director
Meetings
- Wednesday, March 2, 2016
- Wednesday, June 1, 2016
- Wednesday, August 31, 2016
- Wednesday, December 7, 2016
A portion or all of each meeting may be held in a closed session in accordance with the Annotated Code of Maryland State Government Article 10-508 et seq.
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Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion did a great piece years ago about this same issue only it started with the grandest public library in the US----the NY Central Library. These structures were the platform built with our public school system from NEW DEAL FDR Federal infrastructure funding to create employment after the Great Depression. The building were done beautifully with quality and space meant to provide comfortable and welcoming places for citizens to meet, learn, and share knowledge. That is the mission of public libraries.
What we have with Wall Street and global corporate pols is ----get rid of all hard copy ---it takes too much space and libraries are now all going to be digital. Google of course has for over a decade been scanning every library book in the world preparing for when citizens will be told----you don't need that hard copy it is online. So, the NY Public Library started its culling of collections a few decades ago and Keillor told a great story of a huge line of tractor trailers in military style alignment traveling on interstate highways towards the mid west where these Wall Street shills would simply dump all those culled books into a massive pike and set them ablaze. Keillor was playing with the need to get far away from anyone seeing this action because BOOK BURNING IS ANTITHESIS OF DEMOCRACY. When books make their way to repositories----people no longer browsing through collections have that opportunity to stop and check if it meets interest.
I told my version of this story at Enoch Pratt's board meeting ----the idea of keeping old copy of books and news journals because they are the lives of our citizens----these give are communities connectivity through generations. When your goal is killing Baltimore as a city----and the US as a nation----you do not want history or connectivity---WE ARE MOVING FORWARD TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER SAY PUGH AND HOGAN WHO ARE GOING TO FIX BALTIMORE.
When civilizations are ransacked by invading enemies they always go after centers of learning.
New York Public Library Invites a Deep Digital Dive
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLERJAN. 6, 2016
Part of one of the “Tale of Genji” scrolls available for easy exploration now that the New York Public Library has released nearly 200,000 public-domain items from its special collections. Credit Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library
Mansion Maniac, a whimsical online toy created by the New York Public Library, may seem like envy bait for the real-estate have-nots. With the help of a Pac-Man-like icon, users can explore the floor plans of some of the city’s most extravagant early-20th-century residences, culled from the library’s archives.
But the game is what you might call a marketing teaser for a major redistribution of property, digitally speaking: the release of more than 180,000 photographs, postcards, maps and other public-domain items from the library’s special collections in downloadable high-resolution files — along with an invitation to users to grab them and do with them whatever they please.
Digitization has been all the rage over the past decade, as libraries, museums and other institutions have scanned millions of items and posted them online. But the library’s initiative (nypl.org/publicdomain), which goes live on Wednesday, goes beyond the practical questions of how and what to digitize to the deeper one of what happens next.
“We see digitization as a starting point, not end point,” said Ben Vershbow, the director of NYPL Labs, the in-house technology division that spearheaded the effort. “We don’t just want to put stuff online and say, ‘Here it is,’ but rev the engines and encourage reuse.”
PhotoMansion Maniac, an online game created by the library, lets users explore the floor plans of old apartments using a Pac-Man-like figure. Credit Courtesy of The New York Public Library
A growing number of institutions have been rallying under the banner of “open content.” While the library’s new initiative represents one of the largest releases of visually rich material since the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam began making more than 200,000 works available in high-quality scans free of charge in 2012, it’s notable for more than its size.
“It’s not just a data dump,” said Dan Cohen, the executive director of the Digital Public Library of America, a consortium that offers one-stop access to digitized holdings from more than 1,300 institutions.
The New York Public has “really been thinking about how they can get others to use this material,” Mr. Cohen continued. “It’s a next step that I would like to see more institutions take.”
Most items in the public-domain release have already been visible at the library’s digital collections portal. The difference is that the highest-quality files will now be available for free and immediate download, along with the programming interfaces, known as APIs, that allow developers to use them more easily.
Crucially — if wonkily — users will also have access to information from the library’s internal rights database, letting them know which items are free of what the library is carefully calling “known United States copyright restrictions.”
PhotoCovers of the Green Book, a guidebook published from 1936 to 1966 that listed hotels, restaurants and other establishments across the country that welcomed African-Americans. Credit Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library
“We are trying to make it so users can not only see things, but can make determinations about whether to use them in new ways,” said Greg Cram, the library’s associate director of copyright and information policy.
NYPL Labs, started in 2011, has been known for experimental projects aimed at spurring users’ own tweaks and remixes. One scholar used its What’s on the Menu? project, which enlisted library users to transcribe its collection of 45,000 New York City restaurant menus, to create a new “data curation” of the collection. An engineer at Google has created a Google Cardboard application for its Stereogranimator, a program designed to mimic the proto-3-D effects of old-fashioned stereogram viewers.
Items from the digital collections have also found their way into projects like Urban Scratch-Off, a “map hack” that lets users scratch an aerial photograph of New York, lottery-ticket style, to reveal aerial shots of the city in 1924, and Mapping Cholera, which tracks an 1832 epidemic using geodata harvested from maps belonging to the library.
The new release will “reduce friction and make it even easier for people to get their hands on out-of-copyright material” owned by the library, Mr. Vershbow said.
The library plans to offer Remix Residencies, which will provide financial support for projects using the public-domain materials. NYPL Labs staff members also spent the weeks before the holidays creating quick-and-dirty demonstration projects, which, like Mansion Maniac, are being posted along with the release.
PhotoStreet View, Then & Now allows users to compare current images along Fifth Avenue with wide-angle shots taken by the photographer Burton Welles in 1911. Credit New York Public Library
Street View, Then & Now allows users to wander up and down Fifth Avenue, comparing a current image of any location from Google Streetview with wide-angle shots taken by the photographer Burton Welles in 1911, a moment when groups like the Save New York Committee were already warning about the “wrong” sort of development.
On a less nostalgic note, Navigating the Green Book allows users to map a road trip using the Green Book, a guidebook published from 1936 to 1966 that listed hotels, restaurants and other establishments across the country that welcomed African-Americans.
If someone wants to “extract more data” from the guidebooks and improve his team’s stab at the digital navigator, Mr. Vershbow said, bring it on.
Phrases like “extract more data” may fall hard on traditionalist ears. But Mr. Vershbow said the spirit of the enterprise was nothing new.
“It’s the old library mission: Take it and run, and make it your own,” he said.
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“My library,” said Enoch Pratt, “shall be for all, rich and poor without distinction of race or color.”
We wouldn't think of taking these precious valuable historical items in a collection------just this one to pay for keeping the library open----just this one to assure maintenance on this branch.
Baltimore pols on the board say----DON'T WORRY---THERE WILL BE PLENTY OF JOB TRAINING, APPLICATIONS FOR JOBS, EDUCATING ON HOW TO BE A GLOBAL MARKET ENTREPRENEUR!
May 1, 2015
Enoch Pratt Library’s special collections vault
Robert Hamilton 0 Comment Photo essays, The Baltimore Sun Barbara Haddock Taylor, Edgar Allan Poe, Enoch Pratt Free Library, H. L. Mencken
1 of 10 Photos
“My library,” said Enoch Pratt, “shall be for all, rich and poor without distinction of race or color.” The Enoch Pratt Free Library central branch, at Cathedral and Franklin Streets, was built during the Great Depression and opened in 1933. Over the next few years, it will be completely renovated into a library for the 21st century. Except for one important item. On the library’s second floor, a fireproof steel vault, made by York Safe and Lock company of York PA, keeps many of the library’s treasures from its special collections safe and secure. The vault will be left as it is, although the items inside will be stored in a safe location during the renovations.
This is the central hall of the Enoch Pratt Free Library central branch. The Enoch Pratt Free Library central branch, at Cathedral and Franklin Streets, was built during the Great Depression and opened in 1933. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
Roswell Encina, the Director of Communication for the Pratt Library, stands in the library’s special collections vault at the library’s central branch. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
Roswell Encina, the Director of Communication for the Pratt Library holds locks of hair from Edgar Allan Poe and his wife, Virginia, displayed in a golden frame in a vault located in the Enoch Pratt Free Library vault. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
This is a detail of a piece of Edgar Allan Poe’s coffin that is kept in the vault at the Enoch Pratt Free Library central branch. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
This is a detail of old ledger books in the vault at the Enoch Pratt Free Library central branch. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
This is a detail of a first edition of “The Great Gatsby,” autographed for H.L. Mencken, that is kept in the vault at the Enoch Pratt Free Library central branch. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
This is a detail of a first edition of “The Great Gatsby,” autographed for H.L. Mencken, that is kept in the vault at the Enoch Pratt Free Library central branch. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
Roswell Encina, the Director of Communication for the Pratt Library, looks at a book in the vault at the Enoch Pratt Free Library central branch. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
A shelf stocked with old books resides in the special collections vault at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
Roswell Encina, the Director of Communication for the Pratt Library, looks at Mr. Pratt’s walking stick, which is part of the library’s collection that is housed in the vault at the Enoch Pratt Free Library central branch. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)Inside its sturdy walls there are locks of hair from Edgar Allan Poe and his wife, Virginia, displayed in a golden frame, as well as a wooden nail from his coffin. Other items include a first edition of The Great Gatsby, autographed for his friend H.L. Mencken, and a walking stick that belonged to Enoch Pratt.
There are poems from 1773, written by Phyllis Wheatley, the first ever published African-American poet. Other rare items include a Babylonian cuneiform tablet from 572 B.C. and a 1796 almanac by Benjamin Banneker.
Items from the collection can be viewed by calling the library’s special collections department to set up an appointment.
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What will happen to it most likely mirror what happened to our private liberal arts colleges and THEIR LIBRARIES-----our music and arts colleges. Both having their own grand collections of our history in liberal arts. Now, who is the most global corporate privatized get out of my way corporation in the US? JOHNS HOPKINS. IT DOES NOT SHARE. We all know in not too many years these libraries on all Hopkins campuses will stop allowing the public general entrance. It does so now because it receives a trillion dollars in Federal funding and hopes to get another trillion this next decade.
The important issue is this consolidation of history, public assets, and control over what is kept, what is dumped, what is sold for how much. One can see Enoch Pratt's collection on arts and humanities----while maybe not as classic as our private liberal arts----making their way to these libraries and out of the purview of the Baltimore citizens AS ENOCH PRATT BEQUEATHED.
It's like watching Saddam Hussein trying to rebuild the original Garden of Eden in Iraq----people having no moral, ethical, legal ethos should never control a city's arts, humanities, and history.
Welcome to the George Peabody Library
Interior of a Crystal Palace Tunnel Book, 1851
19th Century Baseball Book
H.L. Mencken Collection
View from the Third Floor
‹ ›George Peabody Library: Read All About It Here
About the Peabody Library
The George Peabody Library is a remarkable research library housed in a remarkable building. The brainchild of the philanthropist George Peabody, the goal of the library was to create a publicly-accessible collection that contained the best and latest literature in all branches of knowledge except law and medicine.
The George Peabody Library, formerly the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, dates from the founding of the Peabody Institute in 1857. In that year, George Peabody, a Massachusetts-born philanthropist, dedicated the Peabody Institute to the citizens of Baltimore in appreciation of their "kindness and hospitality." Begun in 1860, the library collection contains over 300,000 volumes largely from the 18th and 19th centuries. Notable collection strengths are archaeology, British art and architecture, British and American history, biography, English and American literature, Romance languages and literature, Greek and Latin classics, history of science, geography, and exploration and travel including a large map collection. We continue to add books to the collection.
The Peabody Library building, which opened in 1878, was designed by Baltimore architect Edmund G. Lind, in collaboration with the first provost, Dr. Nathaniel H. Morison. Renowned for its striking architectural interior, the Peabody Stack Room contains five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies, which rise dramatically to the skylight 61 feet above the floor. The ironwork was fabricated by the Bartlett-Robbins Company. The architecture of the Peabody Library is discussed in James D. Dilts and Catharine F. Black's Baltimore's Cast-Iron Buildings & Architectural Ironwork (1991).
Maintaining the provisions of Mr. Peabody's original gift, the George Peabody Library is a non-circulating collection open to the general public, and we encourage the use of its collections. The collection is represented online in the JHU Catalog. You can also peruse the library's pioneering printed catalog, Catalog of the Library of the Peabody Institute. Issued in 1883 and 1896, these detailed dictionary catalogs described books as well as articles within journals held by the library. Copies are available on site and in many research libraries. For more information contact Paul Espinosa at pespino3@jhu.edu or 410-234-4943.
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We know these bookmobiles will be the only source as branches are closed in underserved communities----we can also look to see these vehicles are most likely tied to the global VEOLA/TRANS DEV transit fleet.
Baltimore Bookmobile Hdqtrs.
Contact Information
Baltimore Bookmobile Hdqtrs.
2001 N Wolfe St
Baltimore, MD 21213
Contact:Carlotta Young
Title:Manager
Phone:410-396-0995
Website:
There are 2 Companies located at 2001 N Wolfe St, Baltimore, MD 21213
Map
View larger map
Business Description
Baltimore Bookmobile Hdqtrs. is located in Baltimore, Maryland. This organization primarily operates in the General Public Libraries business / industry within the Educational Services sector. This organization has been operating for approximately 9 years. Baltimore Bookmobile Hdqtrs. is estimated to generate $99,000 in annual revenues, and employs approximately 3 people at this single location.
Sector:Educational Services
Category:Libraries
Industry:General Public Libraries
SIC Code:8231
Name:
Baltimore Bookmobile Hdqtrs.
Year Founded:
2007
Location Type:
Single
Revenue:
$ 99,000
Employees:
3
Facility Size:
N/A
* Revenue & Employees are estimates
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'Pratt Neighborhood Libraries'
City planning that includes the public would have a sense of secured funding from our city if not state as the only way towards keeping these branches opened. I am sure the board members and librarians at this Pratt board meeting understood this. When a private entity becomes a patron there will be efficiencies----lose of equity in access----staff will now be targeted for wages and time. WE KNOW THIS IS COMING AND WE KNOW THEY WILL NOT BE EXTENDING HOURS.
One has only to look at the city center community development plan to see many of these branches will not remain in a Baltimore Library system. The city limits will basically become the boundary of the global corporate campuses so around Druid Hill Park down city center with Hopkins controlling all the real estate in East Baltimore. Fells Point library was made non-profit years ago as was Charles Village. Great investment in the Hopkins campus Pratt library for its soon to be exclusive Dunbar High School for Advanced students so we know that one will remain open. Reisterstown, Hamilton, and Govans will no doubt no longer be in Baltimore City limits and will leave this system. Westport and Pennsylvania as well as more are square in the sights of a global corporate campus and its expansions. I bet all branches will soon be closed or pushed to corporate non-profit.
The middle-class love their public libraries while the low-income communities and citizens depend on them as a lifeline to computer access, school assignments, and simply having public space to meet friends and groups. As always none of these pols and community leaders are shouting out---and they know----to start this fight now. They are simply passing the laws in Maryland Assembly allowing all this to happen---sending the funds to outsource and privatize, and POSE PROGRESSIVE PRETENDING THEY ARE FIGHTING FOR OUR COMMUNITY ENOCH PRATT CENTRAL LIBRARY AND BRANCHES.
KNOW WHAT IS CHEAPER THAN MAINTAINING PUBLIC BUILDINGS FOR LIBRARIES SAYS WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT? SENDING BOOKMOBILE BUSINESSES AROUND INSTEAD.
This will see an attack on our librarian professionals
LocationsPratt Neighborhood Libraries
- Map of All Locations
- Wheelchair-Accessible Branches
- Brooklyn Branch
- Canton Branch
- Central Library
- Cherry Hill Branch
- Clifton Branch
- Edmondson Avenue Branch
- Forest Park Branch
- Govans Branch
- Hamilton Branch
- Hampden Branch
- Herring Run Branch
- Light Street Branch
- Mobile Library Services (Bookmobiles)
- Northwood Branch
- Orleans Street Branch
- Patterson Park Branch
- Pennsylvania Avenue Branch
- Reisterstown Road Branch
- Roland Park Branch
- Southeast Anchor Library
- Walbrook Branch
- Washington Village Branch
- Waverly Branch
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Baltimore is so anti-education we will see more and more of our librarian professional eliminated with all other public employees. We only need research libraries tied to corporate R and D with funding brought from patent-mill university structures. We see good efforts at making books available but it is a centralized collection that builds curiosity in learning, thinking skills over how to find information and solutions that are not only a result of an internet search engine. If your pols are posing progressive in keeping school libraries open while installing the most private profit-driven global education system geared to vocational tracking only -----WAKE UP-----
THIRD WORLD NATIONS DO NOT HAVE A PUBLIC WITH CITIZENS IDEAS IN PRINT---THEY HAVE HISTORIES FULL OF RULERS AND GLOBAL CORPORATE FAMILIES.
School Libraries Are Under Attack
By Debra Kachel
July 13, 2015
From coast to coast, elementary and high school libraries are being neglected, defunded, repurposed, abandoned, and closed.
The kindest thing that can be said about this is that it’s curious; the more accurate explanation is that it’s just wrong and very foolish.
A 2011 survey conducted with my graduate students of 25 separate statewide studies shows that students who attend schools with libraries that are staffed by certified librarians score better on reading and writing tests than students in schools without library services. And it is lower-income students who benefit the most.
This clear empirical evidence has had little impact on budget cutters, however. They act—mistakenly—as though there is no link between libraries and educational achievement.
Here are the numbers and the arguments to which they need to pay attention.
A dramatic decline in school libraries and librarians
The number of school libraries in New York City has dropped from nearly 1,500 in 2005 to around 700 in 2014.
Over a recent five-year period, 43 percent of school librarian positions in the Houston Independent School District evaporated.
Ohio has lost more than 700 school library positions over a decade.
California has hemorrhaged school librarians to the point where it now has the worst ratio--1-to-7,000 librarians-to-students—of any state in the nation.
And, finally, in my own home state of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia provides a dramatic story. In 1991, there were 176 certified librarians in Philadelphia public schools. Today there are 10. It appears that 206 out of 218 classroom buildings in the school district of Philadelphia have no librarian. Two hundred Philadelphia schools do not have a functional library book collection. A majority lack the technology to access necessary e-resources. And 85 percent of these children come from homes in poverty.
Proven impact
This is happening despite the fact that we know school libraries are highly effective.
A 2011 study using data from the National Center for Education Statistics revealed that “..states that gained librarians from 2004–2005 to 2008–2009—such as New Jersey, Tennessee, and Wyoming—showed significantly greater improvements in fourth grade reading scores than states that lost librarians, like Arizona, Massachusetts, and Michigan.”
So why, in the face of readily available evidence, are so many budget cutters targeting school libraries?
A vulnerable institution
One reason they cut is because they can.
For example, look at my state of Pennsylvania, where schools are not required to have libraries. Prisons must have them. Barber and cosmetology schools must have them. They are compulsory in nursing programs. But in public schools they are optional.
Or consider the city of Houston, Texas, where decisions on school staffing for certain positions, including certified librarians, are left to the discretion of school principals. It is not alone in that.
Also at work in the minds of budget cutters may be the hoary falsehood that the internet has made the need for libraries obsolete.
But those who think that the internet replaces a library must think it is okay to use WebMD instead of going to a doctor.
Librarians teach information literacy—how to separate the useful from the less useful, the credible from the inaccurate, and how to navigate the internet safely.
Capitol Hill to the rescue?There is some hope, however, and it comes from legislation unanimously passed on July 8 by the US Senate.
In a bipartisan amendment—sponsored by Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Thad Cochran (R-MS)—to Senate Bill 1177 that reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act/No Child Left Behind (renaming it the ESEA), school districts would be authorized to use federal funds “…to develop and foster effective school library programs…programs with certified school librarians at their core.”
The Pennsylvania School Librarians Association and the Pennsylvania PTA, who have been active on this issue, lobbied both of their state’s senators aggressively. But presumably party pressure played a factor, as 100 percent of the senators voted unanimously for the amendment.
However, in the narrowly passed reauthorization of its version of ESEA (the Student Success Act), the House of Representatives included no language about school libraries or librarians.
When the Senate finishes its deliberations and (presumably) passes S1177, a conference committee will need to meld the House and Senate versions together.
Will the language supporting school libraries and librarians survive this process?
In his State of the Union Address, President Obama said that “In the 21st century, one of the best anti-poverty programs is a world-class education.”
The research is clear. School librarians are an integral part of a world-class, 21st-century education.
Congress needs to step upIt is time for a rethinking and redirection of federal policy in education. Former President George W Bush and President Barack Obama have called education the civil rights issue of our time.
However, allowing each state and each school district to decide how funds should be expended to educate students and provide library services has brought about huge inequities particularly in impoverished communities with resource-starved schools.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the now 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) pumped millions of dollars into building school library collections for school students. Since then, only a few competitive grant programs have been available from the federal level to fund any improvements to school library programs.
With the defunding of the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries program in 2011, today there are no federal programs for school library funding. Clearly, the states, taking the lead from the feds, continue to ignore the funding of school libraries.
Yet, until now, federal education policy and legislation have neglected to support the role of school librarians. That needs to change. We need a national agenda and our elected officials to take a stand and ensure equity of library services and certified school librarians to teach the next generation to find and apply information to solve problems, think critically, and develop innovations.
Until such time, we shortchange our students and our future.
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Academic Librarians Are under Attack
By Wayne Peters
This is not the first time the above headline appears in this forum. My predecessor, Penni Stewart, penned an article for the Bulletin with the same title in December 2009. While the headline was certainly true then, it is disturbingly more so today. We cannot ignore the troubling circumstances facing academic librarianship at our universities and colleges and the need for all academic staff to vigorously defend this integral part of the academy.
Professional academic librarianship has become prey to bean-counting managers who see technology not as a tool to enhance our institutions’ teaching, scholarship and research but as a money grab, even when it contributes to the destruction of our libraries and academic librarianship. At a time when we are flooded with streams of information coming at us in all forms and from all sources, it is extremely odd and contradictory that librarians would be deemed less than essential.
In her article, Penni cited a number of ways in which attacks on academic librarians occur. Their jobs are being deskilled, unbundled and, often, simply eliminated by library administrators. In the process, much of the work generally recognized as the responsibility of professional academic librarians is being reassigned to lesser-trained staff or is being outsourced to external agents. There are attempts to devalue the specialized skills typically held by academic librarians and to treat them as “generalists” in an effort to increase management flexibility within the organization.
Library administrators typically point to two motivations as rationale for this transformation. The first is the need to cut budgets. The second is the availability of new information technologies that can be used to transform how libraries operate. When challenged to move their institutions forward in this information-intensive age, administrators are generally quick to employ new technologies in pursuit of enhanced service offerings.
The troubling reality though is that the implementation of such technologies is almost always seen as providing desirable opportunities to reduce budgets. To this end, administrators seize the chance to use technology to justify the widespread deskilling and unbundling of professional academic librarian work.
This then allows them to either reassign work to lower-paid, non-academic librarian staff or eliminate tasks from academic librarians’ normal responsibilities. Either way, the end result is that our institutions end up with far fewer academic libra-rians on staff who are providing much less expert support to the institution’s teaching, scholarship and research and contributing much less of their own academic work to the greater academic good. For our institutions, though, the budget-cutting goal is accomplished.
Of course, both information and our libraries are evolving with technology but the fundamental principles which underpin professional academic librarianship remain the same; they transcend technology platforms. All information is for use. It must be made available to as many users as possible and with as few barriers as possible while saving the user time and effort. It must be
adaptable to new carriers and formats. It must be provided with an understanding of any biases. And, in all of this, it is the work of academic librarians which helps describe, retrieve and manage this information for the benefit of the academy.
It seems now that the discussions occupying library directors are more about using technology to fit corporate and marketing interests while aiming to increase traffic through library doors, yet ignoring the quality of service provided. The technology is driving the discussion to focus more on the packaging and delivery of the information than on the content, which is what academic librarians provide and, more important, what they understand.
This technology-over-librarians mentality ultimately has disastrous impacts on the quality of the academy. Academic librarians are integral to all of its teaching, scholarship and research, both in support of academic staff right across our campuses and in pursuit of their own teaching, scholarship and research efforts as trained academics.
Academic staff associations must work hard at the bargaining table to achieve language to protect academic librarianship. A critical piece of this is language that recognizes academic librarians as full members of the academy with all the rights and protections afforded to other academic staff colleagues. Associations must work even harder to defend this language at all times.
Most important, it is incumbent on every non-librarian, academic staff member to rethink how librarians are perceived and portrayed on our campuses. Do we see them as information agents whose sole role is to support our students and our work? Or do we see them as academics in their own regard who serve the academy as our colleagues?
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