Book briefs: Baltimore libraries keep their doors open

Welcome to your weekly roundup of book news and literary highlights from The Thread.

This week, Baltimore's public libraries stay open when the city needs it most, and untranslatable words get their time in the spotlight.

In Baltimore, baseball is closed but the libraries stay open

Amidst the turmoil in Baltimore, the Orioles will play the White Sox Wednesday in front of an audience of zero. Camden Yards will be closed to the public. The city's schools and many other businesses are closed, too. The city's libraries, however, remain open.

"It's at times like this that the community needs us," Roswell Encina, the library's director of communications, told MTV News. "That's what the library has always been there for, from crises like this to a recession to the aftermath of severe weather. The library has been there. It happened in Ferguson; it's happening here."

Your book-buying habit? There's a word for that.

Last September, Ella Frances Sanders introduced the world to words lost in translation. Her illustrated collection featured the untranslatable — words in one language with no counterpart in others.

She illustrated everything from the Norwegian palegg — anything and everything you can put on a piece of bread — to the Japanese komorebi — the sunlight that filters through tree leaves.

Then there's the word all book lovers need in their vocabulary: tsundoku. It's Japanese for "leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other unread books."

Police files confirm Federico Garcia Lorca was killed on official orders

The exact circumstances of Garcia Lorca's death during the Spanish civil war have long been a mystery. The revered poet and playwright was one of the most well-known victims of the conflict, targeted for his political and cultural beliefs.

He was last seen in August of 1936, when military officials arrested him at the house of a friend. He was thought to have been killed later by firing squad, but new records obtained by The Guardian suggest he never made it that far.

The records show that military officials drove Garcia Lorca to an unknown location where he was "executed immediately after having confessed, and was buried in that location, in a very shallow grave, in a ravine." There are no details about what was in the confession, however.

Over the decades there have been many attempts to locate his remains. The new details revealed in the records may help in the search.

The Guardian noted that these papers mark "the first ever admission by Franco-era officials of their involvement in the death."

School Library Journal reviewers are overwhelmingly white and female

Most of the old librarian stereotypes can be discarded — the uptight matron with the thick glasses and a penchant for "Shhh!". The profession, however, remains predominantly white and female. According to a 2014 study, 87.1 percent of American Library Association members were white, and 81 percent were female.

When it comes to the School Library Journal, those trends carry over, too. The journal, which publishes reviews read by librarians across the country, just released its own demographic study. It found that its contributing reviewers are 88.8 percent white and 95 percent female.

With recent pushes to increase diversity in children's literature, the demographics of the reviewers matter, too. Kiera Parrott, the reviews editor for the journal, said they are focusing on recruiting a more diverse range of reviewers — not just in terms of ethnicity and gender, but also in geography.