Monday morning I was out walking around downtown Bogota when I happened upon this lovely little library in the park. This stand makes part of the Paradero Para Libros Para Parques (PPP), a program created about 10 years ago to help promote literacy across the country. The program is part of Fundalectura in association with [...]

Today I went to visit a couple of the libraries that make up the BiblioRed in Bogota. BiblioRed is Bogota’s public library systems, and it’s composed of a number of large, and small libraries, as well as a bibliobus. Today I went to visit the Biblioteca Pública Parque El Tunal, and the Biblioteca Pública Virgilio [...]

While I was growing up in Colombia libraries were very scarce, the only library one ever heard mentioned was the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango (BLAA), which I finally got to visit.
While the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango is owned by the Banco de la República de Colombia, it is very much a public library, and open [...]

I arrived in Bogota last night and today I’m off to visit a few libraries, my first stop is the Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia. As Colombia’s national library, one of their main responsibilities is serving as the country’s legal deposit.
The collection includes monographs, journals, and a large music collection. The library’s music collection includes both [...]

Travesía is a website put together by Spain’s Ministry of Culture’s General Subcommittee on the Coordination of Libraries. Basically the sites aims at promoting collaboration among Spanish librarians, and offers them a space to work together.
Information on the site is divided into three main categories; 1) Documentation that will aid collaboration among Spanish Librarians; 2) [...]

The British Library is always up to something interesting; I just discovered their Database of Bookbindings. This is an entire online collection dedicated to the bindings of books held by the British Library, some of which date back to 1500! The collection also includes some items held by the National Library of Netherlands.
The collection includes [...]

My friend Alberto Martinez, who works at El Colegio de México, is always collaborating on great projects, the most recent one has resulted in free access to all the journals that the university edits!
The journals, which cover a wide range of topics, many of them relating to Mexican history can be accessed here. You can [...]

Here’s a slide show of the world’s longest outdoor bookcase. The bookcases were filled with books that visitors could swap with their own book, or which they could purchase for a donation to The Australian Literacy and Numeration Foundation.

Aquí hay una galería de fotos del estante de libros, al aire abierto, más grande del [...]

A couple days ago my father sent me this slide show from the BBC on the pirate book industry in Peru. The author comments that Peru has one of the worst cases of book pirating in all of Latin America, and that books from all over the world find their way into the industry. It [...]

The Latin American Briefing Series is part of the University of Chicago’s Center for Latin American Studies; they regularly invites guest to discuss a wide range of topics and issues, and kindly makes them available through their website for free!
Look through their online archive to find videos of previous events. Some of these include discussions [...]