Bookworms, Unite! Return to Library Land Quiz

Answer: Burned

English satirist Tom Brown (1662-1704) always bemoaned the fact that his books were overlooked by the British public and felt that there were too many works being published solely for entertainment. Brown was often vicious and a bit smutty when penning his critiques of everyday society and was called "coarse and scurrilous" in the 1911 Encylopedia Britannica.

His snotty reference to the City of London fire refers to the disasterous blaze of 1666.

Answer: Mao Zedong (Mao Tse Tung)

Mao was the Assistant Librarian to a very influential man, Li Dazhao, who would mentor his young worker in the doctrines of Karl Marx, starting him on the path that eventually led to his selection as Chairman of the Chinese Community Party.

Answer: London

Created by Thomas Carlyle in 1841, the million-plus books in the London Library are available to anyone willing to part with a small 'subscription' fee. In 2012, the adult fee was £445, there were no overdue fines, and patrons just might check out a book that had been handled by Charles Dickins or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Answer: Nineveh

King Ashurbanipal was a true bookworm. He was also a bit of a tyrant and countries surrounding his Assyrian Empire would gladly send him copies of their books in order to keep him out of their backyards. In 612 B.C., a fire destroyed the library, but in 1845 British archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard discovered many books (partially baked clay tablets) including "The Epic of Gilgamesh", a literary classic from Mesopotamia.

Answer: "And where's the book you stole away?"

You did not want to get on the bad side of medieval librarians since most of them were clergy who could call hellfire and brimstone on those who lost, misplaced, or damaged a book. Seriously though, if you follow Abbie Hoffman's sardonic 1970 request to "Steal This Book" consider that US public libraries have between $50,000 and $75,000 worth of books stolen every year!

Answer: No

Oh, pul-eeze, J. Edgar, give it a rest. Yes, you once worked at the Library of Congress in 1913, but you never created or improved on the Library of Congress Classification System that had been in use years (1897 to be exact) before you ever showed up. Your brief stay at the Library did give you inspiration to develop a classification system consisting of cards containing information on all of your enemies...real or imagined.

Answer: "Dewey? Phooey!"

"Bob the Alien" was written by Martin Haake in 2010 and tells of a little green exterrestrial who wants to find a book on spiders. Josephine Carr wrote about spinster Alison Sheffield discovering passionate love in the stacks in her 2003 magnum opus, "The Dewey Decimal System of Love". Finally, the "Truman" book is a collection of library cartoons. No "Dewey? Phooey!" as of June 2012, but with the system under attack by many librarians, it might not be long before such a tome appears.

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

Considering that Thomas Jefferson is the 'father of the Library of Congress' and a famous bibliophile, it's not surprising that he made this quote in 1809.
Another president who believed in the value of libraries was John F. Kennedy who said in 1963 "The library is not only the custodian of our cultural heritage but the key to progress and the advancement of knowledge". Thank you, Mr. Presidents.

Answer: Andrew Carnegie

Born in Scotland in 1835, Carnegie would become a U.S. steel magnate, rivaling John D. Rockefeller in wealth. He never forget his early days in Allegheny and the kindness of Col. Anderson. In his 1920 autobiography, Carnegie wrote "It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library in a community which is willing to support it as a municipal institution".

Answer: The outside of the building looks like giant books on a shelf

The spines of several classic titles, including "Catch-22", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Silent Spring", and "Charlotte's Web", have been recreated in a 9 by 25 foot rectangle on the garage's exterior wall. The total cost of the garage, plus a re-modeling of the library, cost more than $50 million and the parking structure has become a popular tourist attraction.