The Losing of Libraries (Pt. 2)

 And Librarians
  In "The Losing of Libraries" I wrote about the disappearance of some local libraries. It is not just a local phenomenon and other examples are easily found.

The NASA Library
 "Holdings from the Library at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Which Includes Unique Documents From the Early 20th Century to the Soviet Space Race, Will be Warehoused or Thrown Out," Eric Niller, The New York Times, Dec. 31, 2025.

  "The Trump administration is closing NASA’s largest research library on Friday, a facility that houses tens of thousands of books, documents and journals — many of them not digitized or available anywhere else....
    The shutdown of the library at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is part of a larger reorganization under the Trump administration that includes the closure of 13 buildings and more than 100 science and engineering laboratories on the 1,270-acre campus by March 2026….

   The library closure on Friday follows the shutdown of seven other NASA libraries around the country since 2022, and included three libraries this year. As of next week, only three — at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. — will remain open."

Microsoft Libraries

Public Libraries
  The "library function" at many public libraries is now often a minor one and books are being removed to make room for more important things.

Key Details of the Incident:
Location: Croydon, south London, UK.
What Happened: Contractors cleared out a local building and left books piled on the ground outside.
The Context: The site was closed as a traditional library due to Croydon Council cost-cutting measures and repurposed into a community resource center.
The Aftermath: Mayor Jason Perry issued an apology on BBC News, promised to take action against the responsible contractors, and confirmed that local residents stepped in to collect the books from the pavement so they could be returned inside.
(The AI summary of the BBC piece.)

Hannah Arendt's Library

   I recently posted some photographs of the libraries of Eric Hobsbawn and William T. Vollman and here is another one. This one belonged to Hannah Arendt and it looks to be sizeable. I wondered what happened to those books.

  When she died in 1975 the books were acquired by Bard College. There were about 4,000 of them and "Of particular significance are the 900+ volumes containing marginal notes or lining, endnotes or ephemera, as well as many volumes inscribed to her by Martin Heidegger, Gershom Scholem, W.H. Auden and Randall Jarrell, among others."

Sources: 
  The photograph is found in a review of a new book about Arendt: "A Dense Life of Hannah Arendt Doesn’t Justify Its Prodigious Research," by Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times, Aug. 12, 2026. The book is: HANNAH ARENDT: A Life of the Mind, by Thomas Meyer.
  For more details see Bard's description of the Hannah Arendt Personal Library. 
"After Hannah Arendt’s death in 1975, her personal library was acquired by Bard College through the efforts of co-executors Lotte Kohler and Mary McCarthy;"

  While many university libraries are hollowing out, a few are still collecting books and other material with intellectual and/or aesthetic value.

The Bonus: 
  You will note sbove that a co-executor of Arendt's estate was Mary McCarthy. Her son was a retired Professor Emeritus who taught at UWO/Western University and passed away in June 2026.
  Another, more detailed review is provided by David Denby in The New Yorker: "The Uses of Exile," Aug. 17, 2026. In it McCarthy is said to be Arendt's "closest American friend", and supported her after she was attacked when Eichmann in Jerusalem was published. 

I Had Forgotten About Phillumeny

 
MATCHBOOKS
  If you are a phillumenist, you are a collector of matchbooks. My sister was and her collection was discussed under "Match Making" to attract readers. More was written about matchbooks in "Matchbook Memorabilia" in "Olde Post Addenda (2). 
  The subject is being raised again because matchbooks are both colourful and informative and I have found a huge collection at Pepperdine University. The collection also contains postcards and other things and it has been digitized. The 1,322  items can also be searched. This will give you something to do while I think about something about which to write.
   The collection is called the, Eric Wienberg Collection of Malibu Matchbooks, Postcards, and Ephemera, 1900-2013. Here is a description:

Summary:The collection consists of matchbooks, postcards, photographs and collectibles dating from the early 1900s up until 2013. It is arranged alphabetically by series and the files are sorted by subject and geography and put in alphabetical order. Items are related to the history of business establishments and sites in Malibu and surrounding areas in Southern California; the one exception is the Cliff House Restaurant Postcards file, which contains postcards from San Francisco, California.
Abstract: The Eric Wienberg Collection of Malibu Matchbooks, Postcards, and Ephemera chronicles the history of business establishments and sites in Malibu and the surrounding area. The collection covers a period between the late 19th century and the 1980s, and features matchbook covers, postcards, publications, and ephemera from restaurants, cafes, bars, hotels, motels, stores, and other businesses from Malibu, Topanga, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Culver City, Venice Beach and Catalina Island. The collection also includes publicity photographs, photojournalistic images, and candid snapshots from life in Malibu and Southern California.

 The Collection is made available via JSTOR and you will be able to access and search it. For another good description see, "Malibu in Matchbooks: Clues to a Lost Coast," by Alex Houston, JSTOR Daily, April 8, 2026.
Save this for a rainy day. 

The Losing of Libraries

   In Mulcahy's Miscellany I often write about books and the collecting of them and a few recent posts have focussed on the private libraries amassed by individuals. Some people still value printed books and I stumbled upon several shelves of them last week on an island in Georgian Bay. They had come from far away and then the books had to be transported by boat and carried over rocks to the cottage.



Institutional Libraries
  The books prized by bibliophiles and kept by casual readers, who like Anthony Powell know that Books Do Furnish a Room, are more highly valued in many homes than they are in our public libraries and universities. I suppose the complaints about collections of books by partners or spouses are more easily parried than those coming from administrators at institutions, but the complaints are increasingly hard to counter when all of the content can be captured on a thumb drive.
  I thought of the article containing the photo above when I returned home and then saw the cover of the August issue of The Atlantic which contains only these few words in very large print: "The Age of Reading Is Over." Then, I happened to see the image below which is found on the website of Western Libraries. It relates to a curious collection that was placed in the Weldon Library at the end of the last century. 

  Although the Pride Library is only closing for the summer and it is stated clearly that, "The Space Itself is Not Moving or Closing Permanently", my guess is that it will only be a sanctuary of sorts, and that there will be continuing pressure to use the space for something other than the storage of books and periodicals, even though the material is of some importance to those found in this initialism - LGBTQIA2S+.  My guess may be wrong and you can decide for yourself after reading: "The Pride Library: Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Temporary Closure."

  I used to work in some of the Western Libraries and there are now fewer of them. I have chronicled the loss of some and lamented the removal of books from the ones that remain (see, e.g. "Library Lamentations - Stackless Universities").
   I also wrote about another loss - one of the colleges/universities affiliated with Western University - Brescia University College (see, "Bad News From Brescia"). I did not note, however, that the Brescia Library also was closed. You can learn more about that lost library in the article below from Western News. The expansion was completed in 2006, but priorities do change. 

   The space is now a Pavilion which would probably satisfy the late philanthropist who passed away in 2008. She and her husband both contributed much to London and UWO (see, "Mr. Richard Ivey").

There were almost 50,000 items in the Brescia Library and they were absorbed by the other Western Libraries or placed in storage. (For the details see: "Brescia Library Integration FAQ")

  There are still two affiliated colleges attached to Western (Huron and King's) and they both have libraries which were curated over many years. I worry that their years are numbered.

The Bonus: 
  A few years ago I published a post about "Edward Gorey's Library". When I  checked to see if the Western Libraries had many books relating to Gorey, I found that they did and that several were in the Pride Library and had been donated by "Empress II Madison Hart, Royal Imperial Sovereign Court of London and of Southwestern Ontario"!!
  For more information about the Pride Library, see Pride Library.

London's Bicentennial (Snippet 39)

 The Other Drake - Dr. Charles Drake - 1980

    Performs Brain Surgery on the Singer Della Reese

The Source: 
"Notes on People" Positive Response," Judith Cummings and Albin Krebs, The New York Times, Oct. 16, 1980.
 Reese was flown to London to have emergency surgery by Dr. Drake. Here is related background from the Wikipedia entry: 
 "While singing "Little Boy Lost" on a taping of The Tonight Show, being guest hosted by Richard Dawson, in October 1979, Reese suffered a brain aneurysm. According to Reese, she was taken to two Los Angeles hospitals, which assumed she had a drug "overdose" because she was "Black and an entertainer". Reese's son, a psychiatrist, sent for her physician who "came immediately" to prove there were no drugs in Reese's system. A test officially revealed the aneurysm and Reese was sent to a brain surgeon at a London, Ontario hospital. The surgeon ultimately performed a five-hour surgery on Reese before she lost vision in her left eye. She ultimately made a full recovery and credited her spiritual faith in helping her recover."
Reese died in 2017 at the age of 86.
Dr. Drake died in 1998.

For a good profile of Dr. Drake see, "Dr. Charles Drake: Medical Miracleworker," which was originally published in The Forest City News, May 31, 1994. (Do you remember that paper?)
The photograph is from that source.

London's Bicentennial (Snippet 38)

Known Londoners - Frank Colman -1983 

From Colman's Wikipedia entry:
 "The son of Frederick and Harriet Colman, who operated a shoe store on Hamilton Road in London, Ontario, Colman joined the London Majors of the senior Intercounty Baseball League in the mid-1930s. There, he won the batting title as a pitcher, Most Valuable Player award, and a championship in 1936.....

Before Colman died of cancer in 1983 at the age of 64, he had been working at the University of Western Ontario in the maintenance department. He was cremated, and his ashes were inurned in London at Woodland Cemetery...."
He is in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and in 2005 was inducted into the London Sports Hall of Fame.

London's Bicentennial (Snippet 37)

 Known Londoners - Kate Nelligan -1979

Source:
The Globe and Mail, Feb. 1, 1979. 
(A dozen years later she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Prince of Tides.)
  This is from the most recent article relating to Nelligan found in The London Free Press:
"KATE NELLIGAN An Oscar and four-time Tony Award nominee, Nelligan, 74, began her career on the stage in London, England in the 1970s. Her theatre career flourished and she moved to Broadway in the early 1980s. Her film resume includes Eye of the Needle, Frankie and Johnny and the Prince of Tides, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. One of six children, Nelligan born in London in 1950 and raised here by a mother she once told People Magazine suffered from alcoholism and related mental-health issues. Nelligan, an elite amateur tennis player in her teens, attended South secondary school. Her most recent film role was 2007's Premonition, alongside Sandra Bullock."
From "Forest City Film Festival to Honour Mystery Star," Jane Sims, July 25, 2024.