Louisiana Saves the Library


Book Description

For Louisiana Richardson, desperate times call for crazy-like-a-fox measures. As the new librarian at Alligator Bayou Parish's struggling library, she’s returning to her Southern roots and facing trouble hotter than fresh cornbread out of the oven. Somehow, she's got to draw readers back in and prove the library is still vital—even as domineering parish board head Mrs. Gunderson plans to shut it down for good. If that means Louise has to resort to some unconventional methods—like outrageous inter-library Zumba classes, and forming a book club that’s anything but Oprah-approved—well, it wouldn’t be the first time she went out on a limb... Soon Louise is doing everything she can to rally the whole community. Before she knows it, she's sparking welcome changes—and uncovering surprising secrets—throughout her new town. And between glasses of sweet tea, bowls of mouth-watering gumbo and the warmth of a tantalizing new love, the newly single Southern mom might find a life she never imagined—and a place to finally call home. Emily Beck Cogburn crafts a novel full of charm, delight and acres of heart about the enduring joys of storytelling and the ways hope can write life's most extraordinary moments.




Louisiana Saves the Library


Book Description

For Louisiana Richardson, desperate times call for crazy-like-a-fox measures. As the new librarian at Alligator Bayou Parish's struggling library, she's returning to her Southern roots and facing trouble hotter than fresh cornbread out of the oven. Somehow, she's got to draw readers back in and prove the library is still vital--even as domineering parish board head Mrs. Gunderson plans to shut it down for good. If that means Louise has to resort to some unconventional methods--like outrageous inter-library Zumba classes, and forming a book club that's anything but Oprah-approved--well, it wouldn't be the first time she went out on a limb. . . Soon Louise is doing everything she can to rally the whole community. Before she knows it, she's sparking welcome changes--and uncovering surprising secrets--throughout her new town. And between glasses of sweet tea, bowls of mouth-watering gumbo and the warmth of a tantalizing new love, the newly single Southern mom might find a life she never imagined--and a place to finally call home. Emily Beck Cogburn crafts a novel full of charm, delight and acres of heart about the enduring joys of storytelling and the ways hope can write life's most extraordinary moments.




Ava's Place


Book Description

Sometimes starting over is the best way home... Most days, divorced mom Ava Olson is just trying to keep it all together. With three school-age children and only a part-time job at a local newspaper, she barely has time to juggle the small stuff, much less stand back and consider the big picture. Besides, dreaming about what-ifs is a dangerous habit, especially when her real concern should be the competition from a much younger new editor....That is, until she meets Ford, a café owner who wins her over with his warm smile and delicious po’ boy sandwiches—and makes her wonder if there could still be more to life than work and kids. Then a new opportunity opens up, and suddenly Ava is making big changes. Like moving eighty miles away to New Orleans, working full-time—and discovering just how sweet a future in the sultry Louisiana city might be—even if she has to explore it on her own. When Ava begins investigating a story that promises huge headlines, she’s ready for the front page....But can she rewrite the story of her own life, complete with a love interest and a very happy ending? Insightful, humorous, and down-to-earth, Emily Beck Cogburn’s new novel celebrates the possibilities of change, the courage it takes to make our most heartfelt dreams come true—and the joy of finding your place in the world. Praise for Emily Beck Cogburn’s Louisiana Saves the Library “Readers who enjoy rooting for the underdog will ardently cheer on Cogburn's plucky, courageous library heroines.” —Booklist “For book and library lovers, this endearing tale will particularly appeal...A fast-paced, pleasant read.”–RT Book Reviews













Managing Change in Academic Libraries


Book Description

Declines in funding for education and in the purchasing power of libraries, plus the explosion of new information technology have made it impossible for academic libraries to maintain the status quo. Nine contributions offer guidance with regard to changing roles and missions.




Performance and Cultural Politics


Book Description

Performance and Cultural Politics is a groundbreaking collection of essays which explore the historical and cultural territories of performance, written by the foremost scholars in the field. The essays, exploring performance art, theatre, music and dance, range from Oscar Wilde to Eric Clapton; from the Rose Theatre to U.S. Holocaust museums. The topic includes: * Sex Play: Stereotype, Pose and Dildo * Grave Performances: The Cultural Politics of Memory * Genealogies: Critical Performances * Identity Politics: Passing, Carnival and the Law In the concluding section, `Performer's Performance', performance artist Robbie McCauley offers the practitioner's perspective on performance studies. Interdisciplinary, thought-provoking and rich in new ideas, Performance and Cultural Politics is a landmark in the emerging field of performance studies.




Spreading the Gospel of Books


Book Description

In 1925, Essae Martha Culver, a California librarian, arrived in Louisiana to direct a three-year project funded by the Carnegie Corporation that aimed to introduce public libraries to rural populations. Culver purchased a round-trip ticket, but she never used the second half. Instead, she stayed in Louisiana the rest of her life, working tirelessly to see libraries established in every parish by 1969. In Spreading the Gospel of Books, Florence M. Jumonville chronicles the impressive, colorful history of Louisiana parish libraries and the State Library of Louisiana. She draws upon Culver’s journals and library reports, in addition to correspondence, scrapbooks, and State Library internal documents, and includes photos from five decades, many never before published. The campaign to persuade individual parishes to financially support a library of their own was a long, uphill pull through poverty and politics, flood and famine, discouragement and depression, war and bureaucracy, ignorance and prejudice. Culver credited success to the citizens, whose thirst for books and embrace of the idea of a library inspired perseverance. In time, Culver’s Louisiana plan served as an exemplar of library development elsewhere in the United States as well as abroad. Culver touched the lives of generations of Louisianians who have never heard her name. Spreading the Gospel of Books is her story, along with that of colleagues and supporters, of making the dream of library service come true for all.




Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans


Book Description

Winner, 2009 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History, The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Historical Association A microcosm of exaggerated societal extremes—poverty and wealth, vice and virtue, elitism and equality—New Orleans is a tangled web of race, cultural mores, and sexual identities. Jennifer M. Spear's examination of the dialectical relationship between politics and social practice unravels the city’s construction of race during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Spear brings together archival evidence from three different languages and the most recent and respected scholarship on racial formation and interracial sex to explain why free people of color became a significant population in the early days of New Orleans and to show how authorities attempted to use concepts of race and social hierarchy to impose order on a decidedly disorderly society. She recounts and analyzes the major conflicts that influenced New Orleanian culture: legal attempts to impose racial barriers and social order, political battles over propriety and freedom, and cultural clashes over place and progress. At each turn, Spear’s narrative challenges the prevailing academic assumptions and supports her efforts to move exploration of racial formation away from cultural and political discourses and toward social histories. Strikingly argued, richly researched, and methodologically sound, this wide-ranging look at how choices about sex triumphed over established class systems and artificial racial boundaries supplies a refreshing contribution to the history of early Louisiana.