Closed

Libros Schmibros will be closed tomorrow – Saturday, 1/14 – for a board meeting. But we’ll be back on Wednesday, 1/18, at noon!

Happy holidays

Happy Hanukkah!

This week, Libros is open Wednesday – Friday, 12 -6,  and Saturday, 12 – 3.

After Christmas Eve, we’re closed until the new year, when we reopen Wednesday, 1/4.

Come by and say hello!

Giving thanks

Libros Schmibros will be closed for Thanksgiving week, and will reopen Wednesday, 11/30.

Enjoy the holiday, everyone!

Events this week, 11/9 – 11/12

Libros Schmibros is closed this week and will reopen in Boyle Heights Wednesday 11/16, but we and our partners are staying busy with events this week!

THURSDAY, 11/10

Our partner organization, the East West Players in Little Tokyo, begins performing the play The Language Archive. 11/10 – 12/4, come catch this wonderful play about language, life, and love!

From the press release:

“Meet George, a linguist, a master of languages, who cannot express his love for his wife–and ends up losing her. Follow this whimsical and heartbreaking look at love and language that asks, “How do we save what is dying?” “

FRIDAY, 11/11

At 7PM in Mariachi Plaza, come catch a free screening of Aventurera – a Cine Negra classic about good women, bad women, and the men who love them.

Libros Schmibros is organizing this screening as part of Night and the City: LA Noir in Poetry, Fiction, and Film.

SATURDAY, 11/12

At noon in East LA, friends of Libros Schmibros Seite Books are organizing a free zinemaking workshop. Check them out!

Events this week, 11/2 – 11/5

WEDNESDAY, 11/2

A day of readings and celebrations!

From 11 – 4:30PM, visit Libros Schmibros – Westwood for readings of James Joyce, Hemingway, and children’s books.

At 4:30PM, we close at Westwood to caravan over for an evening of events in Boyle Heights.

Libros Schmibros – Boyle Heights will be open from 4 – 7PM. Near 7PM, staff will caravan over to the Breed Street Shul for Orale!: An Evening of Boyle Heights Stories. Valet parking is $15, or walk over from Soto Station on the Gold Line. We can’t wait to see you there!

FRIDAY, 11/4

From 11 – 1PM, writer Michael Jayme-Becerra pulls a guest worker shift at Libros – Westwood.

From 12 – 1PM, Libros Schmibros – Westwood will host a book group discussion of Reyner Banham’s LA: The Architecure of Four Ecologies.

SATURDAY, 11/5

Last chance to see Libros Schmibros at the Hammer! We’ll celebrate Guy Fawkes Day by collecting returned books and taking our leave of Westwood.

Come share your Boyle Heights stories!

Are you a past or present resident of Boyle Heights? Libros Schmibros wants to hear your story!

Come listen or tell your story on 11/2 at the Breed Street Shul as a part of Orale!: An Evening of Boyle Heights Stories.

Or, come to Libros Schmibros – Boyle Heights on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday (10/27-10/29) to tell your story for a documentary project.

More information on the documentary project is below. We can’t wait to see you!

Community Members (past and present) of Boyle Heights:

Come share your personal and community stories for inclusion in a documentary film project featuring Boyle Heights. The short documentary film is being produced in collaboration with Libros Schmibros Lending Library & Bookshop, the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Talcual Films, and Tilt.Shift Multimedia.

If you have an interesting story you’d like to share about growing up, studying, working, and living in Boyle Heights, we’d love to sit down and interview you!

We’ll have our cameras ready at Libros Schmibros the following days:

Thursday, the 27th & Friday, the 28th from 2-6 pm and Saturday, the 29th from 11am to 6pm

Libros Schmibros is located at 2000 E. First St. (corner of First / Cummings)

Tel: (323) 302-9408 

Bring your photos and keepsakes – we are looking forward to hearing your story!

For questions and additional info, please email Co-Producers, Gemma Cubero at talcualfilms@gmail.com or Dan Carino at dan@dancarino.com. Tel: (415) 630-0418

A Dia de los Muertos to remember at Libros Schmibros

Libros Schmibros, the Breed Street Shul Project, and the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California are teaming up for a Dia de Los Muertos to remember.

Come listen to speakers who are Boyle Heights residents past and present, old and young, as they share their neighborhood stories. If you’re interested in being a speaker, please do send us an email to let us know!

Audience members can have their own stories recorded for posterity….. We will be videotaping the evening, and there will be space and staff to record  additional stories from audience members after the speakers finish – all set to become a part of the Breed Street Shul’s oral history archives. We welcome you to bring pictures and memorabilia to help share your favorite Boyle Heights memories, too.

 Orale!: An Evening of Boyle Heights Stories
November 2
7:30 – 9:30 PM
Breed Street Shul (247 N. Breed St., Los Angeles, CA 90033)

PLEASE make sure to RSVP, via Facebook or by sending us an email at info@librosschmibros.org. Watch our Facebook page, Twitter, or blog for more details, including parking information. We’d love for you to participate in this memorable night!

Events this week, 10/26 – 10/29

THURSDAY, 10/27

Guest worker and film-maker Michael Tolkin pulls a shift from 3 – 6PM at Libros Schmibros – Westwood.

FRIDAY, 10/28

From 12 – 1PM, Libros Schmibros – Westwood will host a book group discussion of Reyner Banham’s LA: The Architecure of Four Ecologies.

SATURDAY, 10/29

From 5 – 7PM, Libros Schmibros – Westwood will host guest worker Jenny Price, founder of the Urban Rangers.

 

Come visit us this and through our extended stay at both Libros – Boyle Heights and Libros – Westwood on Wednesdays – Saturdays, 11AM – 7PM through November 5th!

Events calendar for the Hammer Museum – extended by popular demand!

Remember, remember, the 5th of November. No, there is neither gunpowder nor treason afoot, but Libros Schmibros has events on deck through our remaining two weeks at the Hammer.

Through November 5th, we’re hosting events at both our temporary, pop-up location in Westwood, as well as at our original flagship location in Boyle Heights. Here’s the skinny on our events calendar:

• Friday, 10/28: Lunchtime Reading Group: Reyner Banham’s “LA: The Architecture of Four Ecologies” (HAMMER)
• Tuesday, 11/1: Noir Genius: Weldon Kees and Jorge Luis Borges (BOYLE HEIGHTS – MARIACHI PLAZA)
• Wednesday, 11/2: Dia de los Muertos Storytelling (HAMMER)
• Wednesday, 11/2: Orale!: An Evening of Boyle Heights Stories (BOYLE HEIGHTS – BREED STREET SHUL)
• Friday, 11/4: Lunchtime Reading Group: Reyner Banham’s “LA: The Architecture of Four Ecologies” (HAMMER)
• Saturday, 11/5: Guy Fawkes Day Leave-taking / Pop-up Shop Closing Day (HAMMER)

Shivering with anticipation? Curious what special guests might be coming into the shop? Check our Facebook page, Twitter, or this here blog for more news and updates.

The Life Cycle of a Book: Cataloguing and Shelving

Once a book enters our library several things happen, chief of which is cataloguing. We’re always asked about the yellow-dotted books that preponderate on our shelves. From a certain library perspective, they are books-in-waiting — books yet to be entered in LibraryThing.com, the ready-to-wear online catalogue that we make suit the hybrid needs of a lending library that’s also a bookshop. Library Thing can record the presence of a book in our system, and with some labor let us track its whereabouts.

All this doesn’t happen automatically. Like all of Libros Schmibros’ systems, it is hand-entered and labor-intensive. Chief among our cataloguers is Denise Villegas, below, UCLA Information Science graduate student and Libros family member extraordinaire. You’ve seen her at the Hammer, with her dainty fingers entering data almost as fast as we can read it.

Glad was the day early last spring when all 12,000 books had finally been entered. Since then our collection has exploded (thank you, Los Angeles!), but our need remains the same: track every book, so’s we knows what’s happened to them and where they go. Painstaking to create and in need of constant maintenance, our catalogue is yet another system behind the scenes. LibraryThing becomes an internal structure that keeps us going, a kind of endoskeleton to our visible shop.