Fact of the Week #1

Since starting at The Reader Organisation in March as a Research Intern I have had an ever-changing and expanding list of research tasks. Despite the flexible nature of the list there is one thing I must do each and every day: e-mail Jane with a 'Fact of the Day'.

These bits of trivia have concerned a diverse range of topics including books (obviously), the history of the Easter egg, Jimi Hendrix's influences, the healthy properties of tea and the fact that a colleague had never heard of the 90s TV programme Gladiators.

Jane recently told me it was a shame that more people did not get to read these facts, reaching the decision that there should be a related blog post. So here we are with Fact of the Week.

The first fact in the series is as follows:

Argentinian artist Marta Minujin has created the 'Tower of Babel' - a tower standing 25 metres high made out of approximately 30,000 books of various languages. Many of the books came from 50 diffrerent embassies.

The tower is based in the Plaza San Martin in Buenos Aires. The unveiling of the structure of literature coincides with the Buenos Aires Book Fair, with the city being UNESCO's World Book Capital 2011.

On 28 May the structure will be dissembled with people invited to take a book home each, with the remaining books being used as stock for a new multilingual library - 'The Library of Babel'.