Literary social network Shelfari visited Sandman and Coraline author Neil Gaiman at his Minnesota home and snapped these pictures of his personal library. Gaiman's basement is entirely filled with books, awards, and a handful of tchochkes. You can see more, larger images of the library here, but if you just want to know what books Gaiman keeps handy, Shelfari is in the process of creating a digital bookshelf based on the photos.

These pictures were taken by Kyle Cassidy, whose pictures of writers' workspaces we previously featured, and is currently compiling a book based on the photos.

Neil Gaiman's Bookshelves [Shelfari via Digital Composting]

These books come from the American Library Association’s most frequently challenged books from 2000-2007:

Captain Underpants and The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby by Dav Pilkey
Position on the List: #10, #47
Why it gets Challenged: Ever since Dav Pilkey released his series about alien-empowered underage superheroes, they’ve topped the banned books list. Parents have complained about the language (which includes such linguistic horrors as “Poopypants” and “Booger Boy”) and that the protagonists routinely defy their nasty principal. Most parents, though, are just happy their kids are reading.

The Giver by Lois Lowry
Position on the List: #21
Why it gets Challenged: As frequently happens with challenged books, parents who complain about The Giver tend to miss the point. They cite features of Lowry’s initially appealing but ultimately dystopian society in their complaints, namely the low social status of biological mothers and the practice of infanticide and euthanasia. Then again, some just don’t like that main character Jonas feels “stirrings” when he sees a pretty girl.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Position on the List: #29
Why it gets Challenged: Predictably, Pullman’s interdimensional saga is frequently challenged for its portrayal of the Church and figures from Judeo-Christian tradition. Pullman, for his part, says that every banning of his books fills him with glee, since it tends to result in higher sales.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Position on the List: #37
Why it gets Challenged: In another instance of colossal misreading (or failure to read), Huxley’s work, one of the most banned of last century as well, gets challenged because the soulless, pill-popping world Huxley meant to criticize is such a downer.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Position on the List: #45
Why it gets Challenged: Violence? Check. Blasphemy? Strong language? Magic Fingers? Check. Not only has Slaughterhouse Five been challenged in school districts, just last year law enforcement in Howell, Michigan was asked to review the book to determine if any of its contents were illegal.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Position on the List: #72
Why it gets Challenged: Perhaps missing the humor in attempting to censor a book on censorship, challengers still go after Fahrenheit 451 because its firemen characters smoke, drink, and swear. And at least one complainant claimed its discussion of the Bible offended their religion.

Shade’s Children by Garth Nix
Position on the List: #85
Why it gets Challenged: That the titular children of Nix’s dystopic young adult novel grow up fast leaves a lot of parents anxious. Vulgar language and a post-apocalyptic key party keep it on the ban list.

Top 100 challenged books of 2000-2007 [American Library Association]

The building consists of 32,000 square feet including a reading room, an auditorium, a children's library, offices, and open space for hanging out.

From the outside, it looks like a giant pile of stones or firewood. Images by Nicolas Cabrera

Villanueva Public Library, Colombia [Dezeen]

These films join 475 others in the National Registry, although only 13 others are science fiction, including everything from Alien to The Nutty Professor. Even Groundhog Day is in there, trapping Bill Murray for all eternity in a regressive time loop. The Library itself chooses a few of the films, and the public nominates the others, which means you've got films like Fast Times At Ridgemont High sitting alongside Citizen Kane, so we're not clear on how auspicious an honor this is. But at least future generations will have access to topless Phoebe Cates.

Check out some of the cool features of the National Film Registry's Film Vault/Bunker:

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• It's built mostly underground, so a nuclear attack won't stop us from having fresh copies of Dances With Wolves at hand.
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• There are over 90 miles of shelves inside, which make browsing a real bitch.
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• A below-freezing vault keeps film masters, as well as Walt Disney's head, perfectly preserved.
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• They preserve digital film at the petabyte (one million gigabytes) level. Cell phones will catch up to that storage level around 2015.
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• It is fully equipped to playback antique film formats, even movies on Beta tapes.
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• It has high-quality fiber optic connections to Capitol Hill for when your congressman needs to run out and catch a few minutes of Do The Right Thing.
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Wuthering Heights Among 25 Top Films [Yahoo]