Check Out Some New People: The
Human Library is an innovative method designed to promote dialogue, reduce prejudices and encourage understanding.The main characteristics of the project are to be found in its simplicity and positive approach. Started in Copenhagen, Denmark 12 years ago, it has since
Spread, and new libraries continue to pop-up
All Over the
Place.
posted by Blake
on Jan 26, 2012 -
6 comments
Where Libraries Went Wrong; a great blog post / article diving deep into some of the issues that face public libraries today. It's centred on UK libraries, but deals with issues facing public knowledge bases everywhere.
posted by ChrisR
on Dec 2, 2011 -
28 comments
What Middletown Read. Robert and Helen Lynd's immersive studies of early 20th century Muncie, Indiana, published as
Middletown (1929) and
Middletown in Transition (1937), are classics of American sociology. Ball State's
Center for Middletown Studies has created a database of the circulation records from the Muncie Public Library from 1891-1902, providing a rare glimpse of the reading habits of turn-of-the-century middle America.
Slate examines the project and what it reveals.
posted by Horace Rumpole
on Nov 17, 2011 -
7 comments
Library Science is an exhibition at New Haven (Connecticut) libraries that contemplates our personal, intellectual and physical relationship to the library as this venerable institution—and the information it contains—is being radically transformed by the digital era. Some examples:
Untitled (Suburban Homes) by Erica Baum,
Hurricanes by Chris Coffin, and
Chinese Library No. 46 by Xiaoze Xie.
posted by carter
on Nov 15, 2011 -
2 comments
I don’t believe in dissing books I used to love, and I always suspect the moral judgment of people who sneer at the taste of the reader they used to be: “I know thee not, old book.” Six writers talk
what's on their shelves.
posted by villanelles at dawn
on Nov 12, 2011 -
72 comments
ShelvAr: an augmented reality app for shelf-reading library stacks, from Miami University Augmented Reality Research Group (
MU ARRG!).
posted by steef
on Apr 19, 2011 -
25 comments
Library Rights Are at Stake in New Supreme Court Copyright Case Article by Marc Parry appeared in: "Chronicle of Higher Education" March 8, 2011, 4:12 pm
Does Congress have the right to restore copyright protection to foreign works that have fallen into the public domain?
That issue is at the heart of a major copyright case that the Supreme Court agreed to hear yesterday. Its resolution could have implications for libraries’ ability to share works online, advocates say.
posted by naight
on Mar 9, 2011 -
27 comments
Harper Collins is putting a cap on the number of times their books can be loaned out from libraries. From a letter to customers from
Overdrive CEO, Steve Potash:
[W]e have been required to accept and accommodate new terms for eBook lending as established by certain publishers. Next week, OverDrive will communicate a licensing change from a publisher that, while still operating under the one-copy/one-user model, will include a checkout limit for each eBook licensed. Under this publisher's requirement, for every new eBook licensed, the library (and the OverDrive platform) will make the eBook available to one customer at a time until the total number of permitted checkouts is reached.
posted by snwod
on Feb 26, 2011 -
143 comments
The greedy ghost of market fundamentalism. Oxfordshire county council is planning to close just under half of all of its libraries, and has invited locals to set up new ones on a voluntary basis. Philip Pullman, ironically criticised for having a profit motive, objects.
posted by Summer
on Jan 25, 2011 -
111 comments
What the Heck is Shadow DOM? Browser developers realized that coding the appearance and behavior of HTML elements completely by hand is a) hard and b) silly. So they sort of cheated. They created a boundary between what you, the Web developer can reach and what’s considered implementation details, thus inaccessible to you. The browser however, can traipse across this boundary at will.
posted by netbros
on Jan 18, 2011 -
38 comments
Libraries are, for many of us, the public places where we bring our most private selves, our fears and our dreams, so long buried and so studiously unspoken. The librarian checking out a stack of books may be for many of us, the equivalent of the first person we’ve told a secret to. Which brings me to the real reason I chose the profession that I did for my narrator: Even more than libraries, I love librarians.As Others See Us: An Author On Why She Loves Librarians
posted by carsonb
on Nov 24, 2010 -
30 comments
Coming soon to a library near you,
outsourcing.
LSSI is now the 5th largest library services provider in the US. The ALA is surprisingly
neutral on this issue. "In general, there is no evidence that outsourcing per se has had a negative impact on library services and management. On the contrary, in the main outsourcing has been an effective managerial tool, and when used carefully and judiciously it has resulted in enhanced library services and improved library management. Instances where problems have arisen subsequent to decisions to outsource aspects of library operations and functions appear to be attributable to inadequate planning, poor contracting processes, or ineffective management of contracts."
posted by Xurando
on Sep 28, 2010 -
45 comments
Stanford's library was running out of space for printed books and journals, so they've built a new space ... with even less room for printed titles and issues. It's hastening the move to a digital library.
NPR reports.
posted by anothermug
on Jul 8, 2010 -
75 comments
This Book is Overdue (link to a PDF of the first chapter from the author’s site:
here) is a non-fiction
work published in February of 2010. It’s a study of the modern library, and by extension,
the modern librarian. Primarily the place that each of these things has in a world that is
increasingly moving to a world of
digital
information. The book is divided into a few different sections...
[more inside]
posted by codacorolla
on May 18, 2010 -
22 comments
A letter by Rene Descartes, stolen in 1840s, recovered in 2010 by online detective work. The letter was stolen by Guglielmo Libri, inspector general of the libraries of France, who stole thousands of valuable documents and fled to England in 1848. Since 1902 it's been in the collection of Haverford College, its contents unknown to scholars, and nobody there realized that it was an unknown letter. But because they had catalogued it and recently put their catalogue on line, Dutch philosopher Erik-Jan Bos found it "
during a late-night session browsing the Internet". (A Haverford undergraduate thirty years ago had translated it and written a paper on it, in which he recognized that the letter was unknown -- but nobody followed up and the letter had sat in the library since then until it was listed online.) The letter includes some last-minute edits to the Meditations, and some thoughts on God as causa sui.
Haverford, whose president was a philosophy major, is returning the letter to the Institut de France.
posted by LobsterMitten
on Feb 26, 2010 -
21 comments
Book of the Month is a feature that the University of Glasgow Library has been running for over a decade now. The format is simple, a single book is selected from their collections, written up and accompanied by pictures, maps and photographs scanned from the books. With over a 100 books to select from, it's hard to know where to start, but anywhere is good because they're all lovely. Still, here are a few,
Charles Darwin's The Expression of the emotions in man and animals,
a beautiful 15th century illuminated copy of Livy's Roman history,
Treatises on Engines and Weapons,
Valentines and Dabbities,
The Birds of Australia,
Facts and Observations on the Sanitary State of Glasgow,
Ibn Jazla's The arrangement of bodies for treatment and finally,
The Curious Case of Mary Toft,
MetaFilter superstar.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 18, 2009 -
6 comments
Bobbie E. Burnett is suing her employers, the Free Library of Philadelphia, for discrimination. She's been employed there for nearly 20 years, but transitioned to a female gender identity in 2001, at which point she says discrimination set in.
"Slurs hurled at Burnett by some staffers include 'freak,' 'man in woman’s clothing' and 'nigger,' according to the suit. On one occasion, when Burnett expressed wishes for a nice weekend to a coworker, the employee responded with, 'Burn in hell,' according to the lawsuit."
[more inside]
posted by booknerd
on Nov 5, 2009 -
63 comments
