Un-redacted text from released documents began circulating on social media on Monday evening
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Calcium, vitamin D levels essential for bone health in older adults.
Kangaroos fix their posture to save energy at high hopping speeds, study shows PhysOrg. An IgNobel candidate?
Can Bibliotherapy Heal the Pain of the World?
Literary Hub – “As a librarian, I’ve often felt like a part-time therapist. People confide in librarians the way they do with bartenders; we form bonds with our regular customers, listen to their troubles and serve up more than just books.
After I learned the word “bibliotherapist,” during library school 20 years ago, I became curious about both casual and serious uses of the word. Was bibliotherapy any kind of soothing literary experience? Or did it require a licensed mental health practitioner? Art, music and drama therapy all have graduate degree programs and a place in the mental health landscape, but I never heard much about bibliotherapy.
I kept wondering, When will “book medicine” have its big moment? That moment may be now, as bibliotherapy has a leader, Emely Rumble, LCSW, author of the new book Bibliotherapy in the Bronx (Row House, April 2025). Rumble’s book isn’t an academic tome with an audience limited to social workers, but a lyrical, unpretentious guide for book lovers.
As Rumble shows, book medicine is hardly a new concept. In ancient Egypt, one of the very earliest libraries welcomed visitors with a sign on the door reading “The House of Healing for the Soul.” The term bibliotherapy first appeared in a 1916 Atlantic Monthly piece, “A Literary Clinic” by Samuel McChord Crothers.
This satirical advertisement describes Dr. Bagster’s availability to prescribe books to treat “Tired business men,” “Tired business men’s wives,” and “Tired mothers who are reading for health.” During World War I, the Library of Congress and American Library Association circulated nearly 720 books and prescribed reading for therapeutic purposes to troops at home and abroad.
Librarians debated about whether patients should avoid reading books about their conditions, and whether or not reading should offer escapism or a chance to reflect on one’s problems. “What genres make the best medicine?” is a question posed in a blog from the University of Connecticut Archive website on wartime hospital libraries. Librarians in these clinics generally wore medical uniforms and worked closely with doctors and nurses in prescribing books…”
