The Library has approved a proposal for a Maryland Center for the Book that will be affiliated with the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. It will be located at the Howard County Library in Columbia, Md. Pat Bates, the library's adult program coordinator, will serve as coordinator for the new Maryland center.
"We are delighted that the Howard County Library has taken this initiative and will be pleased to work with Pat Bates, who is one of the most experienced humanities programmers in the country," said John Y. Cole, director of the Center for the Book.
Howard County Library Director Norma Hill said, "Becoming the home of the Maryland Center for the Book reaffirms our commitment to the importance of books in the lives of our citizens, even as technology changes how libraries do business. We look forward to providing this service to our state."
The goal of the Maryland Center for the Book at the Howard County Library is "to bring the world of ideas fostered in books into the thoughts and minds of Marylanders." It will pursue this goal through statewide programs in libraries, senior sites and work sites; by celebrating the state's literary heritage; and by recognizing the contributions made by Maryland authors, publishers and others involved in the book arts and the book trade.
The Maryland Center for the Book's advisory committee will include authors, librarians, humanities scholars, book sellers, publishers, corporate sponsors and other Marylanders interested in promoting books, reading and libraries.
For information about the new center, contact Pat Bates, Howard County Library, 6600 Cradlerock Way, Columbia, MD, 21045, telephone (410) 313-7768.
Richard Bolles to Speak on Nov. 22
As part of its "Books & Beyond" lecture series, the Center for the Book will sponsor a presentation on Nov. 22 by Richard Bolles, author of What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Guide for Job- Hunters and Career Changers. It will be held at noon in the West Dining Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building. The talk is free and open to the public.
What Color Is Your Parachute?, the most popular job-hunting book in the world, is a publishing phenomenon. More than 24,000 people a month purchase the book, which is now revised and updated annually by the publisher, Ten Speed Press in Berkeley, Calif. In its lifetime, it has been on The New York Times best-seller list 288 times. The book has been translated into seven languages, and more than 5 million copies are in print.
Richard Bolles's background is in engineering, physics, theology and career counseling. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the General Theological (Episcopal) Seminary in New York City. He has been an ordained Episcopal priest for the past 43 years.
"New Tools For Reading and Writing" to Be Discussed on Nov. 15
Graziella Tonfoni, professor of linguistics at the University of Bologna, Italy, and author of Writing as a Visual Art (1994), will present an informal talk and presentation about "traditional" book reading and "new" technology navigation at the Library on Nov. 15. It will be held at noon in Classroom 654-AB, adjacent to the Mumford Room, on the sixth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building. The talk is free and open to the public.
Professor Tonfoni, the author of more than a dozen books and internationally known for her research in the fields of communications, textual theory and cognitive science, has been a visiting scholar at MIT and Harvard University and has presented her research work at many U.S. universities and research centers.
Center for the Book Hosts U.S. Celebration of International Literacy Day
On Sept. 9, in cooperation with the International Reading Association (IRA), the Center for the Book welcomed 60 participants to a program and celebration of International Literacy Day 1996. The event took place in the Madison Building's Mumford Room. The program included a panel discussion among U.S. literacy leaders about the topic "Literacy's Role in Creating a Civil Society," moderated by Center for the Book Director John Y. Cole; a talk by U.S. Senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.), a strong supporter of literacy and library programs; a message about International Literacy Day 1996 from President Bill Clinton and read by Andrew Hartman, director of the National Institute for Literacy; and announcements of the 1996 UNESCO Literacy Awards, including IRA's $15,000 literacy prize, which was awarded to the Mini-Schools Project in the La Saline District of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The award, which will support a project that has already established 175 minischools with 900 instructors who serve 25,000 students, was accepted by Claude Ambroise of the Haitian embassy.
The day was described by John Micklos Jr., editor of IRA's bimonthly newspaper Reading Today: "A few steps from a beautifully mounted exhibit about Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, a representative of the Haitian government stood to give her thanks for an award that helps people in her country acquire the most basic, essential literacy skills. People from the richest and poorest nations of the world gathered [for an event] that reflected the continuum of literacy's benefits: from the rarefied pleasures of Neruda's poetry to the basic skills more and more necessary for people in Haiti or anywhere else to exist with comfort and dignity."
Speakers on the panel about "Literacy's Role in Creating a Civil Society" were Tom Keehn, senior adviser to the American Forum for Global Education; Jack Pilulski, professor of reading education at the University of Delaware and president-elect of the International Reading Association; Andy Radolf, a member of the UNESCO staff, representing UNESCO Director-General Frederico Mayor; John Comings, president of the U.S. Coalition for Education for All; and Dan Wagner, director of the National Institute for Adult Literacy.
In his remarks, Sen. Simon described how he first became concerned about America's literacy problem and one of the results: he became a sponsor of the National Literacy Act of 1991. The problem is still acute, he noted, citing these statistics: there are approximately 3 million adults in the United States who do not recognize their names in print and 23 million who cannot read newspapers or fill out employment forms. About 20 percent of the U.S. population, he said, reads at or below the fifth-grade level.
Other UNESCO International Literacy Day prizes included the Noma Prize, given this year to the State Crusade for Adult Education of the government of the Mexican state of Hidalgo; and the King Sejong Literacy Prize, which went to literacy projects sponsored by two recipients: the Culture and Education Department of the Armed Forces in Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Defence and Aviation, and the UNESCO Club Dibwa Dia Ditumba in Zaire.
