Library for poor Brazilians—how to help?
A kind user sent me this inspiring October 2 LA Times story, "This Illiterate Brazilian's Home Speaks Volumes," about a poor Brazilian who, basically, started a library in his house.
I'd love to find somewhere to point people so they can donate. I'm sure even small donations would go a long way. If nobody official is collecting—some library association perhaps?—I'll set up a collection page here.
There'd be nice symmetry there. LibraryThing has seen a lot of Brazilians since being profiled in two papers there.
I'd love to find somewhere to point people so they can donate. I'm sure even small donations would go a long way. If nobody official is collecting—some library association perhaps?—I'll set up a collection page here.
There'd be nice symmetry there. LibraryThing has seen a lot of Brazilians since being profiled in two papers there.
posted by Tim at 9:25 PM
12 Comments:
Wow. From the story, it sounds as though they need both space and money as much as they need more books... try to contact that reporter, perhaps. He'd know who to talk to, I bet. I think people might be interested in donating books and/or money.
A follow-up thought or two: Reporter. Media. People helping people. Reporters like stories like that. Hmm... People from LibraryThing helping people... might that turn into some media attention?
P.S. I like your flexible definition of time. :) Was the button red?
Ha. Yes, it was red. Never try to make something faster at the wrong time...
Have fun and get some sleep sometime tonight. (I needed the excuse to take a break from entering books anyways... the stacks just don't look like they're getting any smaller... and if they weren't books, it'd be depressing.) Gee... I know what I'll do! I'll go READ before bed. (Something has been distracting me from that lately...)
Ummm. Under "users with Shawna's books", the users all have numbers in parenthesis that are in the thousands? (I'm pretty sure even oakesspalding hasn't entered the 17789 that it's trying to tell me when both have.)
Getting the same problem as Shawna. It says I share 310 with oakesspalding but when I click on the link there are only 10. Same with several other users.
Another quirk I have just noticed. I saw that I was sharing They die strangers by Mohammad Abdul Wali with a lot of users. I was surprised so many had this not particularly well-known book. I checked their catalogues and saw that they did not, in fact, have it. So why does it show that we share it?
I'd love to do something, but I agree that from the sounds of it, he doesn't need books. What about having a book sale via ebay or something of the sort, and donating the moneoy to him?
I didn't say I didn't think he needed more books... more books are always a good thing. I just think he may need a better place to put them, first.
This puts me in mind of two related things.
First, I'm bad about buying duplicate books. A lot of books I use for research have very similar sounding titles, and... well, let's just take the fifteen minute justification for my carelessness as read; the point is, I have a fairly healthy stack of "things I bought and already owned." If we can get an address to ship stuff to, I think I'd much rather the duplicates go somewhere they'll be appreciated, rather than to the local charity shop, where they're likely to just languish because they aren't children's books or romance novels.
Second, I'm bad about buying duplicate books, and Amazon.com is bad about telling me when I've bought a book used, or another edition of the same book. It would be really, really, really useful if somehow the bookmarklet could be expanded to query my library (even just by author and title-- doing it by ISBN won't solve the different edition problem) and warn me if the book I'm looking at is already in there.
This post is right up my alley! I donate 10% of my income to philanthropic projects and since books have been SUCH an important part of my life, most often it's the literacy initiates and projects building libraries that move me...
BookAid International is a good one to donate through.
Also the Peace Corps Volunteer Projects Page almost always has a few projects that are building libraries in seriously underdeveloped areas. scroll down and click on some for more details.:)
-avaD, new member of LibraryThing
Seems to me that if this man were to receive more donated books he would need them in his own language. Books in English would be of no use to him. What is the language that they speak in Brazil, Portugeese or Spanish?
kaykwilts
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