A piece of graffiti found in Amsterdam Noord. Roughly translated it means “you follow me on Twitter, but will cross the street when you meet me”. No idea who put it there, but it’s been there for at least a year or so. Thanks to my nifty new HTC Wildfire phone I finally could photograph it.
A nice new Dutch originated, but worldwide initiative to make October 1st #Followalibrary Day on Twitter. The video below explains who, what, how and why:
It’s good to see such a creative, low cost promotion for something often seen as stuffy and oldfashioned as a public library. Especially now, when libraries are under threat in America and the UK as an easy target to cut spending on. It’s all a little less gloomy here in the Netherlands, but even so, in an age when we’re supposedly getting all our information of the internet anyway, the library is no longer the self evident public good it once was. Libraries are very vulnerable to misguided cost cutting attempts right now. Nobody will die if a library closes or limits its opening hours and people might grumble, but won’t get passionate about it the way they would if a local hospital would close.