October 6, 2011, Greencastle, Ind. — "As the Occupy Wall Street protest movement has held firm and spread since its inception September 17, the northeast corner of Zuccotti Park (renamed Liberty Plaza by the protesters) in lower Manhattan has become the home for the budding revolution's People's Library," begins a Library Journal report. "The library already has a website, which proclaims that 'information is liberation'," and yesterday put out a "call for librarians."
Michael Kelley writes, "One librarian who responded even before the call went out is Mandy Henk, an access services librarian and assistant professor at the Roy O. West Library at DePauw University in Indiana. She made the 12-hour drive to New York last week to volunteer after seeing a posterboard sign with a list of things the library needed, including librarians."
"If these brave young people (and not so young people) were asking for members of my profession to come and help build and maintain a library, how could I refuse?" Henk tells the publication. "If my professional skills could do some good for people sleeping outside in the cold and rain to affect the kind of change I want to see, why wouldn't I go? What excuse did I have?"
The text notes, "The library is run by volunteers like Henk and stocked through donations which are arriving at the clip of about 30-50 books a day."
Access the complete story at the Journal's website.