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HIS month’s Mediawatching features a broadcasting great, making a long-awaited return to our television screens. Alan Partridge was back on the BBC in the magazine show This Time, looking at current affairs and topical issues. In episode five Alan heads to the British Library to look at the evolution of swearing in Britain. Standing on the steps of the British Library Alan says: “Some people say ‘What’s the point in libraries when we have Wikipedia? Why not turn this place into a car park or a big Laser Quest?’
“And however tempting the second one might be, I would argue that today we need libraries more than ever. For, to me, libraries are churches for the mind, or, to put it another way, libraries are cathedrals for the mind.” He then heads for a tour of the libraries state-of-the-art archives, where he is suitably impressed by the smooth mechanism of the roller stacks. (Find all episodes at
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ m0002v3d)
We stick with smooth operators in libraries and a piece from the Daily Mail supplied by Kate Eggleston. In a piece marking the anniversary of Giacomo Casanova’s birth in 1725, it is noted of the famous seducer that “His autobiography about his escapades was written while working as a librarian!
The Public with Emilio Estevez.
“Casanova’s motto was ‘Cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life’.”
Love and the library crops up again, thank to Jane Teather who was reading one of the Guardian’s Blind Date columns (
https://bit.ly/2U101Uo) and discovered the topic of conversation for daters James and Harry touched on “heartburn, our nervous waitress, librarians, his alter-ego.” The specifics of the conversation were omitted and left Jane wondering “What were they saying about librarians?”
Kate also sent in a piece from the Daily Mail’s Tom Leonard in New York, where he discusses the roles of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. In it he says: “Those who foresaw Meghan and Harry forging a more star-studded, international and high- profile for her and her husband than merely opening libraries and handing out bravery awards may be starting to think they are right.”
Kate adds: “Tom does not know that most libraries in GB are closing, not opening.”
Giacomo Casanova April-May 2019
Caroline Hunt has been in touch to talk about Elaine Paige’s Sunday morning BBC Radio 2 show, during which she spoke about World Book Day and her love of reading. “She went on to play A Trip to the Library from Bock & Harnick’s excellent She Loves Me – rife with stereotypes of the tweedy, specky librarian, however!
(Well, it was written in 1963...).” Actor and director Emilio Estevez’s latest film pitches him into the world of public libraries. In The Public, Estevez plays the fictional head librarian of Cincinnati Public Library, Stuart Goodson. There is a cold spell in the city – temperatures regularly drop to double digits below freezing. As the library is about to close for the evening, dozens of the city’s homeless refuse to leave, fearing the worst if they are forced onto the streets. Rolling Stone’s review (https://bit. ly/2Io0zkT) of the film recognises the importance real-life libraries play in reaching out to disadvantaged sections of the community, saying: “The film is not based on a true story — but the fact that it could be lights a socially conscious fire under the familiar beats of the plot.” It is not lost on Mediawatching that one of Emilio Estevez’s early career hits, The Breakfast Club, was also set in a library – where a group of school misfits sit out a detention and form an unlikely bond. Finally, the BBC website looks at how artists are being inspiring to create powerful images that shed a new light on big data. The feature looks at work from artists including Aaron Koblin, Takashi Kawashima, James Frost, Ryoji Ikeda, and Laurie Frick, amongst others. To find out what millions of data look like after artists have got hold of them visit
https://bbc.in/2HKl1f. IP
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