Lonely? Just call the library!

Phone

This is Janie from Library Garden making an appearance as a guest blogger for TTW (and am quite honored to be included). I will be back with something a little more thoughtful at a later point, but I just came across this article and had to post it here because it is HOT — and I so wanted a reason to use that word legitimately while guest blogging for Michael 😉

It is all over the news tonight — the main public library in Vienna, Austria is fundraising with a hotline to erotica! Oh yeah… that is HOT alright! What an innovative twist on dial-a-story. It will be interesting to see the conversation that may or may not develop around this unique idea.

Here is the article as it appeared in the Chicago Tribune:

Library Line lets callers check out erotica
May 9, 2007
VIENNA, AUSTRIA — This isn’t the typical whispering you might expect to hear at a library.

Vienna’s City Hall has launched a “sex hot line” to raise money for the capital’s main public library, officials said Tuesday.

It’s unusual, but it’s not extremely raunchy: Callers pay 53 cents a minute to listen to an actress read breathless passages from erotica dating to the Victorian era.

City Hall set up the hot line earlier this month to help the library raise cash for planned remodeling and expansion, Austrian news media reported.

Anne Bennent, an Austrian stage and film star, reads passages from the Vienna library’s collection of 1,200 works of erotic fiction from the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries, the library said.

Officials said the hot line would be operational through May 31.