Harvard University finished in 1986 construction of the
Harvard Depository, a mysterious storage facility in a publicly undisclosed location 30 miles from campus where large tracts of land are less expensive than in Cambridge. While the facility was originally intended to store Harvard's least-used volumes, it is now home to 45 percent of Harvard's collections. David Lamberth, chair of the Library Implementation Work Group, calls it a "precise warehouse" for which the term "library" would prove inaccurate.
posted by stbalbach
on Apr 2, 2010 -
45 comments
Europeana is the new EU digital library. It gives multilingual access to two million digitized books and other items of cultural and historical significance held in over 1,000 institutions in the 27 EU states. There will be 10 million by 2010. Soon after its launch
the website froze, its servers overwhelmed by over "10 million hits an hour".
posted by stbalbach
on Nov 20, 2008 -
21 comments
The Worlds Best Books (1909),
One Hundred Best Books (1916),
One Thousand Books for a Village Library (1895),
The Book Lover, a Guide to the Best Reading (1889),
The Choice of Books (1905),
A Thousand of the Best Novels (1919),
Comfort Found in Good Old Books (1911),
A Guide to the Best Historical Novels (1911),
A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914), and
lots more..
posted by stbalbach
on Jul 13, 2008 -
15 comments
An obscure 1911 British law requires a copy of every published book, journal, newspaper, patent, sound recording, magazine etc.. to be permanently archived in at least one of five libraries around the country. The British Library has the most complete collection and is currently adding about 12.5km of new shelf space a year of mostly unheard of and unwanted stuff. A
new state-of-the-art warehouse is being constructed with 262 linear kilometers of high-density, fully automated storage in a low-oxygen temperature controlled environment. It is not a library, it is a warehouse for "things that no one wants." BLDG Blog
ponders on what it all means.
posted by stbalbach
on Dec 4, 2007 -
60 comments
The
Prelinger Library is a small privately owned "public library" in San Francisco with the
unique philosophy that browsing library stacks can reveal new knowledge, if the books are arranged for browsing. This is counter to most public libraries who rely on computer terminal searching, databases and the Dewey Decimal system to atomize books and subjects, with stack browsing a sort of random after effect, and in some places--like the Library of Congress--normally not even allowed. Now a (real) public library in Arizona has
joined the revolution and claims to be the first public library in the nation to drop the Dewey Decimal system. Instead, books will be shelved by topic, similar to the way bookstores arrange books. The demise of the century-old Dewey Decimal system is overdue, county librarians say: "People think of books by subject. Very few people say, 'Oh, I know Dewey by heart.' "
posted by stbalbach
on Jun 10, 2007 -
84 comments
