Below are some interesting news stories from the world of libraries and archives. But first, in honor of Pride Month, there is a link below to a recommended reading list. Enjoy!
“A breakdancing workshop and presentation was part of a recent “Digging in the Crates” event. Another event’s theme was learning about plagiarism through music, and how musical artists credit and respect their predecessors through homage.” Roanoke Times
February 13, 2018: “Children will be able to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what a librarian’s work is really like during an upcoming program at the Petoskey District Library.
The Mini Masters of Library Science program will allow children to work with a librarian to process books, plan events and advise readers on new books that fit their interests.
“They’ll get to put a barcode on a book and catalog it into the computer and do check-in and check-out of books,” said Megan Goedge, children’s and youth services librarian at the Petoskey District Library. “There’s going to be a lot of stuff, so we’ll meet twice. At the end of the (second session) kids will get a Mini Masters degree of library science.”
February 26, 2018: “Students have an excuse to be loud at Virginia Tech’s Newman Library thanks to the work of a DJ librarian. The third Thursday of every month, a group of Tech students, faculty and staff gather together to explore hip hop, education and expression through an event known as “Digging in the Crates,” which started last year.”
February 5, 2018: Barbara Fister reflects on the “Libraries in the Context of Capitalism” symposium and the themes of hidden and undervalued nature of library/archives labor that emerged as a result of the meeting.
February 26, 2018: “Just over 8,000 registrants came to the Mile High City for five days of presentations, conversations, and innovations, many of which centered on the importance of making sure that people from all socioeconomic backgrounds and walks of life have a voice in our national dialogue.
Artist, activist, and author Patrisse Cullors began the Opening Session by telling the story of her 4th-grade teacher—Mrs. Goldberg at Erwin Street Elementary School in Van Nuys, California—who gave the young Cullors books about the civil rights movement. “This part of education—the part where I get to be curious, get to be engaged—is the part I loved the most,” Cullors told attendees. “This is the foundation for my activism.”
February 13, 2018: “Digital preservationists at Yale University Library are building a shareable “emulation as a service” infrastructure to resurrect thousands of obsolete software programs and ensure that the information produced on them will be kept intact and made easily available for future access, study, and use.”
February 22, 2018: “Simply put, our mission is to build and preserve comprehensive collections of the world’s most important television programming and make them as accessible as possible to researchers and the general public. We will need your help.”
“Preserving TV news is critical, and at the Internet Archive we’ve decided to rededicate ourselves to growing our collection,” explained Roger MacDonald, Director of Television at the Internet Archive. “We plan to go wide, expanding our archives of global TV news from every continent. We also plan to go deep, gathering content from local markets around the country. And we plan to do so in a sustainable way that ensures that this TV will be available to generations to come.”
Interior designer Margaret Sullivan’s vision for the future of libraries.
As always, there is lot going on in the library and information sciences world, so here is a small sampling from this past week! Happy reading!
New Archives Projects
Newcomb adds digital archives to document LGBTQ+ history via Tulane Hullabaloo
Newcomb Institute at Tulane University is diversifying its historical archives by adding its first-ever completely digital-born collection to preserve the history of LGBTQ+ activism in New Orleans. The featured image above is from the Newcomb.
10 Questions…with Margaret Sullivan, an Interior Designer via InteriorDesign.net
“With her six-person studio in NYC, Margaret Sullivan is on a mission to design the public library of the 21st century. Libraries, often fated with lackluster interiors, function as gathering spots and learning hubs for local residents of all ages. Sullivan knows a well-designed library will benefit the entire community…We ask the designer to share what she’s doing to keep these public spaces relevant.”
Why Austin’s New Central Library is a Vision for the Future via Austin American-Statesman “The Austin Public Library recently opened its spectacular facility with much fanfare to respond to a diversity of needs in the Austin community. Transformed from a traditional library filled with books and other sources of information including media, the new open design sets itself apart as a new standard to address user needs in the 21st century. The timing of the opening of the new Austin Public Library is a perfect opportunity to highlight the resurgence of the central role of libraries in their respective communities, whether public, academic or school libraries, as they rethink their relevance amidst fast-paced changes.”
Education
Coding Creativity Reigns During Computer Science Education Weekvia EdTechMagazine “Computer science is often top of mind for 21st-century educators, but this week, you’ll likely hear more about it than ever before. From Dec. 4-10, teachers and students across the globe will celebrate Computer Science Education Week. Many classrooms are expected to participate in an Hour of Code, during which students spend at least one hour working on a coding activity.”
What We Know and What They Know: Scholarly Communication, Usability, and Un-Usabilityvia ACRLog
“Over the past handful of years, a lot of digital ink has been spilled on library responses to #icanhazpdf, SciHub, and, most recently, the #Twitterlibraryloan movement. This hit home in my life because in recent discussion with students at my University, we found that students told us outright that they used SciHub because of its ability to “get most things.” How we talk about piracy with our patrons is an important topic for discussion, and places a tremendous amount of emphasis on the ethics of a for-profit publishing model. But it places librarians in a precarious situation defending publishing practices that build barriers to research.”
Design Thinking. Backward Design. Accessibility. SAMR. Universal Design for Learning (UDL). These days, in discussions of the future of librarianship, pedagogy or education in general, there are so many terms and acronyms thrown around but what do they all mean? Many of these terms are borrowed from engineering, urban planning, and design, to name a few. Are people in the library and information sciences field using them properly? You also may read those terms and think, “These don’t belong together!” I’m here to make the claim that they do and that they should be studied together in order to be the most successful. “What MAKES a Library” is a series of articles for UNBOUND in which I will define these terms and explore how these concepts are being put into action in libraries while showing where the intersections of these ideas can be ways to utilize them in library spaces. This article’s focus is on design thinking.
Before I go any further, allow me to introduce myself as the 2016-2017 Dean’s Fellow for SLIS Initiatives and your resident UNBOUND blogger. Just this fall, I began my quest to earn my Dual Degree Masters in Archives/History aka goodbye social life, hello manuscripts. I fulfill many librarian stereotypes; for example, I have a cat (named Gabriel, Gabe for short), I went to an all women’s college (Anassa Kata Bryn Mawr), I’m listening to classical music as I write this and I absolutely love to read. When you hear the word, “librarian”, I’m willing to bet (unless you are a past or current MLIS student) that an image of an old, crotchety grey-haired lady with a tight bun and cat-eyed glasses whisper-yelling “Shhhh!” comes to mind. Continue reading What MAKES A Library?, Issue No. 1 – Design Thinking
Chicago Public Library makerspace visualization (Katie Day on Flickr)
Why libraries are helping their users create
As the world goes digital, some are questioning the future of libraries. If you think of a library as only a storehouse of books, you might wonder: who will need libraries when most of our reading is available digitally, on a computer, or on mobile devices?
When you think about the reason libraries have become storehouses of books, and think about the underlying reasons why libraries exist, you end up with a mission statement like the one proposed by R. David Lankes: “The Mission of Librarians Is to Improve Society through Facilitating Knowledge Creation in Their Communities.” That’s the reason people needed books, and still need information (in any format) — to facilitate their own knowledge creation activities.
Libraries maintain relevancy by offering programs and services that help users create content — services, such as helping local authors write books, offering co-working spaces, and helping people make interesting objects using 3D printing. This is an expansion of the roles libraries have already been involved in for some time, such as offering public computing, assistance with job searching, and serving as community gathering places. Library users have long valued these services, as described in the Pew Internet report, “How Americans Value Public Libraries in Their Communities.”
Best mobile apps for creative projects
Since libraries are getting involved in different ways with helping their users create, it’s good for librarians to know some of the best mobile apps to recommend to users as tools for their creative projects. Below is a sample of the many apps available that can be used for content creation and curation. Apps for working with photos, video, art, and music, may be the topic of a future post.
For those who want an easy way to start creating interactive books
● Book Creator for iPad – Android, iOS. An easy-to-use app for creating multi-media ebooks, which include text, images, video, music, and narration. Great for working with kids.
● iBooks Author – Mac OS. Although it is not a mobile app (it runs on Macs), iBooks Author enables you to create interactive ebooks for Apple’s iBookstore with multimedia features for viewing on iPads. It’s easy-to-learn, easy-to-use, and free. Some libraries are using it to create interactive ebooks from special collections. For example, see the New York Public Library’s NYPL Point: John Cage’s Prepared Piano.
For people who want to make non-boring presentations
● Keynote – iOS. An easy-to-use presentation app similar to PowerPoint that enables users to design beautiful presentations. It comes with a set of well-designed themes. Pro themes are available from several publishers as well.
● Slideshark – iOS. Present PowerPoint slides on your iPad.
● Haiku Deck – iOS (iPad only). Create presentations with an elegant, minimalist look. One unique and useful feature of Haiku Deck is its ability to search Creative Commons-licensed images to use in your slides.
● Prezi– iOS. Create presentations on a zooming, virtual canvas. People either love or hate Prezi.
For those who want to use shared whiteboards for demonstrations and teaching
● Explain Everything – Android, iOS (iPad only). Create screencasts or live demos of annotated documents, drawings, photos, or videos on your iPad.
● Doceri – iOS (iPad only). Another popular and useful interactive whiteboard app.
For those who want to create designs for 3D printing
● 123D Design – iOS (iPad only). Autodesk makes several apps in this area. 123D Design is a good place to start. Designs can be initiated on an iPad, saved in the cloud, and finished on the desktop with 123D Design for Mac or Windows.
● Makies Doll Factory – iOS (iPad only). Build fully-customizable digital dolls. See “Libby, the librarian.”
● Blokify 3D Printing & Modeling – iOS. 3D modeling software that enables kids to create toys they can play with virtually or physically via 3D printing.
● Thingiverse – Android, iOS. Share and browse user-created digital design files for 3D printing.
For those who want to curate and share content on the web
● Flipboard – Android, iOS. A visual news reading app that provides an appealing way to browse, read, and share stories from a variety of sources. Use it to create “magazines” on topics of your choice. Here’s an example: “Book as App – Interactive, Multi-Touch.”
● Scoop.it – Android, iOS. Collect stories on a topic to share via a “magazine” on the web.
● Paper.li – iOS. A curation app for the creation of virtual newspapers on specific topics.
Additional information about what libraries are doing to facilitate content creation in their communities
Batykefer, Erinn, Laura Damon-Moore, and Christina Jones. “Library as Incubator Project.” A site that advocates for libraries as incubators of the arts.
Chant, Ian. “Opening Up: Next Steps for MOOCs and Libraries.” Library Journal. Discusses an academic library offering its own MOOCs and a public library using a MOOC as the foundation of a summer reading program. Makes the case that libraries are well-placed to be part of experiments with MOOCs.
Farkas, Meredith. “Libraries as Publishers: Our Push to Change the Publishing Landscape.” American Libraries. Exploring the role of libraries in enabling publishing, through publishing the work of the library’s constituencies (public libraries), and through publishing open-access work (academic libraries).
“Four Local Libraries Honored for Offering Cutting-edge Services.” Digital Book World.ALA honored four libraries offering cutting-edge technology services, including services for easy video creation by faculty and students, and using Instagram’s API to capture photos tagged with the library’s hashtag and display them online and in the library.
Godin, Seth. “The future of the Library.” Seth Godin’s blog. Describes librarians as people who can bring domain knowledge and access to information, helping users create and invent.
Nawotka, Edward. “A Visit to BiblioTech: The 21st Century All-Digital Library.” Publishing Perspectives. The story of an all-digital public library in San Antonio, Texas. They loan out e-readers for home use. Discusses how economical it was to build, compared to other public libraries with print collections.
Peterson, Andrea. “Need to use a 3-D printer? Try your local library.” The Washington Post. A story on library 3D printing services, focusing on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C.
Peterson, Andrea. “Digital age is forcing libraries to change.” Washington Post. . All about the “digital commons” at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C. Try out e-book readers, use a 3D printer, use the Skype station, a co-working space, and more.
Resnick, Brian. “The Library of the Future is Here.” Business Insider. Describes libraries not as warehouses of books, but as services and tools for the commons.
“Symposium: Creative making for libraries & museums.” Dysart & Jones. http://www.creativemaking.org/. A symposium held in July 2013 that focused on creative making in libraries and museums, with examples of makerspaces, fab labs, and more.
Tennant, Roy. “The Mission of Librarians is to Empower.” The Digital Shift. Many of the ways we empower our users and communities — increasing knowledge, providing access to tools, and more.
