a sometimes blog about mostly libraries
Slate Magazine recently posed the question, "what sort of public library does the 'digital world' of Google, Wikipedia , and Kindle require?" Witold Rybczynski's brief photoessay covers a range of modern approaches to library design, with examples ranging from Chicago's (in my opinion, rather amazing) downtown library to the more recent Denver Public Library: As... Continue Reading →
It's just a concept, but this student-designed ebook reader looks a lot better than the competition: It could probably stand to be a little thinner, but the simple touchscreen user interface idea is nice. Plus, "the traditional stitched leather cover brings the feel, tactility and smell of old style books to LIVRE." I'm betting that... Continue Reading →
In case you don't keep up with the ever-useful Distant Librarian, you missed a writeup today that is guaranteed to warm the heart of anyone interested in library technology integration and user engagement. It highlights a post on ruk: peter rukavina's weblog, maintained by a nonlibrarian "superpatron" who regularly creates or brainstorms the types of... Continue Reading →
In the wake of the recent Harvard faculty decision to allow open access to their intellectual output and recent moves by some academic publishers (Columbia University Press, for example) to make electronic books freely available, the open access movement in higher education is definitely gaining momentum. Today's Inside Higher Ed features an article that considers... Continue Reading →
As a place where many students spend endless hours procrastinating, the library is often used as a vehicle for the quiet perpetuation of drama and intrigue. As such, I regularly find things of cryptic and anonymous interest on the ground. In the spirit of one of my favorite magazines/websites, I submit the following creative use... Continue Reading →
Just a little envy stimulation from Apartment Therapy: Is that two copies of Brave New World I see on the first row?
Many thanks to Lia at the Experiment for forwarding this Chronicle article on Aaron Swartz, co-creator of RSS and Reddit who now apparently is interested in the "modern library." His vision, the Open Library project, could be described as a user-generated mashup of WorldCat and Wikipedia - very promising. Judging from his track record, I... Continue Reading →
Now that hindsight is offering a bit of perspective, there has been a lot of discussion recently about the net effect of the Library 2.0 movement (and I don't think it's hyperbolic to describe it as such), focusing on the perceived platitudes of "twopointopians" as well as whether the new technologies being implemented in so... Continue Reading →
A Gadgetopia post I read the other day gave me the idea to investigate library website design of a decade ago using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, in order try to get a sense of the way libraries presented information in the earliest days of the web. If you are not familiar with how it... Continue Reading →
The Times of London reports that proposed British legislation seeks to require internet service providers to monitor and take action against illegal downloaders, who ultimately risk being "cut off" from internet access: "Users suspected of wrongly downloading films or music will receive a warning e-mail for the first offence, a suspension for the second infringement... Continue Reading →
info-mational 