Arts & Culture · Sports

With book-spine poetry, libraries duel on

Bob CollinsBob Collins Oct 28, 2015
9

It’s somewhat comforting to know that the book-spine trash talking between libraries didn’t end after the Toronto and Kansas City playoff series.

Now that the Royals have advanced to the World Series, we’ve been waiting for the New York Public Library to, as Captain Kirk would say, engage.

It did.

If you talk trash with a New Yorker, you have to bring your “A” game. The Kansas City Public Library did not disappoint.

That might’ve staggered a lesser literary outfit. But the Metropolitans were up to the task.

This is the second World Series in a row for the team from Flyover Country. And it shows.

It took 14 innings for last night’s game to be decided with a Kansas City walk-off win.

But New Yorkers have seen tougher times.

The Kansas City Public Library’s effort is the work of Liesl Christman, the library’s digital content specialist, who started the exchanges with the San Francisco Library in last year’s World Series.

“Sometimes we have the phrase in mind and go searching the catalog for books that fit that,” she told me in an email. “Other times I’ve been browsing and came across a wonderful book and let that direct what we say. Right now we have a book cart (and a tabletop) full of books set aside just for this. We also have many of our librarians sending their own ideas and favorite books to include. It’s been very much a group effort.”

Even presidential libraries have gotten into the World Series exchange. First, the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, KS

Only to get a response from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, NY

update 10/29 7:26 a.m. – The Royals are making things easy for their hometown library.

https://twitter.com/KCLibrary/status/659567062730207233