The current building of the Exposition Park - Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Regional Library is an LEED Gold Certified (environmentally sustainable design) structure built in 2008. Renamed in 1973, the…
With locations all over the city, and lots of books and other materials devoted to local history, libraries are a perfect springboard for exploring Los Angeles. This is the second in a series of blog…
The Vermont Square Branch Library is one of three extant Carnegie libraries in the Los Angeles Public Library system. Six Carnegie buildings were erected from 1913-1916 (Vermont Square, Arroyo Seco…
The Looking at Art - In the Street program series celebrates artists and art historians who create and preserve open space street art in Los Angeles. Headline for article by Arthur Millier, published…
With locations all over the city, and lots of books and other materials devoted to local history, libraries are a perfect springboard for exploring Los Angeles. This is the first in a series of blog…
Art in public spaces can serve as a means of shared identity, of connecting residents and visitors to the community, and creating a sense of ownership and respect in a shared space; to spark…
President Joseph Biden may have put it best in his 2021 proclamation on Jewish American Heritage Month: “The Jewish American experience is a story of faith, fortitude, and progress. It is a…
I dislike the question “how do you like retirement?” I mean, this is like asking “how do you like breathing?” Life is a one-way street and there are no U-turns on the way toward the great unknown. So…
While scouring microfilm in the History & Genealogy Department at Central Library a few months back, I was startled to see a name that seemed entirely out of place in a particular publication. The…
The Los Angeles Public Library has seven and a "half" branches dedicated to extraordinary women. Let’s take a look at these women and their namesake libraries for Women’s History Month. Vermont Square…
In order to showcase the technology available in the Octavia Lab, celebrate the diversity of Los Angeles, and demonstrate how library resources, such as Tessa, the library's online digital archive…
112 years ago a remarkable event took place on Dominguez Hill in what is now the City of Carson, Los Angeles County. A scant six years after the Wright Brothers’ historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North…
One of the most colorful figures of the Chicano Movement of the late 60s and early 70s was Oscar Zeta Acosta, a.k.a. the Brown Buffalo. A radical, hard-living lawyer and activist, Acosta helped lead…
A few words come to mind about my practice as an Art Librarian with roots in both academic and studio experiences—scribe, space, and light. I work in the Los Angeles Central Library. Every day Bertram…
