tracking changes/changing tracks

07 May 2009 10:05 am

This goes nicely with the current “The Book as Art” exhibit at BC’s McMullen Museum, but maybe a marketing opportunity for the library, as well?
http://offbeatblog.projo.com/2008/10/a-smart-new-loo.html

Ken LissCategory: Uncategorized

28 Apr 2009 08:51 am

Libraries and a Culture of Innovation

Stephen Abrams points out the relevance to libraries of a business newsletter’s list of “A Dozen Ingredients for a Culture of Innovation.”

Check out his quick recap. It’s worth a look, and get more details in the original piece.
http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2009/04/libraries_and_a.html

Ken LissCategory: Uncategorized

03 Apr 2009 01:00 pm

Library in the NY Times Media Cloud

I just read about a tool from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard called the Media Cloud. It lets you visualize, in various ways, the frequency of terms in news stories from media outlets that you select. One option is to enter a term and see what other terms appear most frequently in articles with that term in it.

On a whim, I entered the term “library” and the publication New York Times. The top 10 terms occuring with “library” in the Times included two phone numbers (one is main number at the NYPL), three cities (New York, Boston, and London), two people (Oprah Winfrey and Jean de Brunhoff, subject of an exhibit at the Morgan Library), and the Museum of Modern Art. The other two terms in the top 10 are “electronic books” and “e-books.”

Hard to say what any of this means, but it’s interesting that e-books seems to be a hot topic in articles about libraries, at least in the Times.

Ken LissCategory: E-books

03 Apr 2009 09:54 am

YouTube EDU

The Chronicle of Higher Ed reports that YouTube has introduced a new YouTube EDU section that brings together channels set up by more than 100 colleges and includes complete lectures for some 200 full college courses.

The main page shows the most viewed channels and videos. A Directory link lists all of the participating colleges and the numbers of videos they make available.

The handful of comments on the article include this one, which I’ll post here without further comment from me:

“I’ve believed for a while now that YouTube is the library of the future, holding information on just about every subject possible in this age of technology and visual learners. This is one more step in that direction.”

Ken LissCategory: YouTube

01 Apr 2009 09:53 am

WorldCat xISSN History Visualization Tool

WorldCat has introduced a Web-based tool that lets you visualize the history of a particular journal. Just enter an ISSN, and you’ll see a genealogical chart, if you will, of that journal’s evolution including past titles, mergers with other journals, and color-coding for print, CD-ROM, online, and microform ISSNs.

The example below is just a portion of the tortured history of what started as the Journal of the Chemical Society (the part that led to Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry). Click on the image to see the full visualization. (Be ready to do a lot of scrolling, horizontally and vertically.)

They’re not all this complicated; some are not complicated at all. But enter the ISSN of your favorite journal into the tool and see what it does.

Ken LissCategory: Tools

30 Mar 2009 11:02 am

Interpretive Design: Museums & Libraries

The Washington Post last week profiled Ralph Applebaum, the designer of the United States Holocaust Museum and other projects and – according to the article – “the biggest player in what’s often called ‘interpretive design,’ a concept that takes in not just design but the whole experience of museum visitors.

Applebaum’s approach, says the Post, has gone “from thinking about exhibitions to branding whole institutions,” and so much of what he says and does is equally applicable to libraries and to our new University Librarian’s goal of reimagining the Libraries at Boston College.

Just read some of these quotes from the article, substituting “library” for “museum” as you do:

“Museum directors worry about having a reputation for being old-fashioned, yet they don’t want to surrender their status as authoritative, even elite places.”

“There’s a trend toward museums wanting to be all things to all people, technologically seductive but educational; a place for scholarship and conservation, but also a family [student?] entertainment destination.”

“[His] ideas all stress the opening up of museums as social and learning spaces, community centers, places of collective engagement.”

Applebaum even calls himself a “content aggregator” and, according to the Post, borrows the ideas of John Cotton Dana and John (not Melvil) Dewey.

More than anything, says the article, Applebaum “has become an expert at finding ‘the big idea’ that helps museum directors and boards feel good about what they do.”

It sounds like a way of thinking from which we can learn a lot.

Ken LissCategory: Library Buildings and Students and Marketing

— Next Page »

About the Site:

Links

Categories:

Search:

Monthly:

RSS Feeds:

Meta