libraries
aardvarchaeology | August 28, 2014The library of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters is (one of?) Scandinavia's biggest research library (ies) for archaeology, the history of art and allied disciplines. Since it's co-located with the archives of the National Heritage Board in the East Stable next to the Swedish History Museum, it's an amazing place to do research. And it just got even better.
Librarian Annika Eriksson tells me they have been working on this for quite some time, and now they've got it up and running. The library's assortment of commercial digital resources – notably hundreds of paywalled research journals –…
mikethemadbiologist | June 3, 2011
If you're in Boston this weekend, you should visit the Boston Public Library's Civil War exhibits. While several exhibits will be open only during weekday business hours, the Torn in Two: The 150th Anniversary of the Civil War exhibit is fantastic. There's also a really good exhibit of Homer Winslow Civil War era prints, largely done for newspapers (9am - 5pm, Mon., Wed., and Fri.; 9am - 7pm Tues. and Thurs.).
Both are superb.
mikethemadbiologist | March 26, 2011It sounds like
the Boston Public Library will be closed year round on Sundays
:
Boston Public Library trustees have signed off on a $39.3 million budget that does not include branch closures or layoffs, but that does call for shuttering the Copley branch on Sundays....
The proposed library budget for fiscal 2012 budget will be included in Mayor Thomas Menino's overall city budget, due to be announced next month and needing the approval of the City Council. If the budget stays the same, funding levels fall to levels that were in place in fiscal year 2000.
Finances remain tight for the cash-…
mikethemadbiologist | March 23, 2011A recent change by Harper Collins Publishing regarding library-owned eBook has met with a lot of criticism:
The value of this magically convenient library book -- otherwise known as an e-book -- is the subject of a fresh and furious debate in the publishing world. For years, public libraries building their e-book collections have typically done so with the agreement from publishers that once a library buys an e-book, it can lend it out, one reader at a time, an unlimited number of times.
Last week, that agreement was upended by HarperCollins Publishers when it began enforcing new restrictions…
mikethemadbiologist | October 24, 2010The Boston Public Library has a really cool exhibit about postcards related to Boston. Here's one I thought was funny from 1908 (based on the postage, I think it's 1908):
I want my own unidirigible! Too bad Boston doesn't really look like this....
If you can't get to the library, the postcards are online here.
mikethemadbiologist | September 28, 2010By way of The New York Times, we learn that libraries are being privatized. Having lived in more than a few places, and being the kind of guy who uses libraries regularly, I've usually been very happy with my local library. I go to the library, I check out books (and videos), I read the books, and I return the books. And it's free.
Sure, sometimes you have to wait in line, in the worst case for, like, ten whole minutes--but you get free books (mind you, a couple of days ago, I waited that long at a chain book store for the privilege of giving them my money for books). There are some…
mikethemadbiologist | September 25, 2010One is in Boston, the other in D.C. In Boston, the Boston Public Library has an amazing collection of travel posters from the 1920s to the 1950s. Here's one:
If you can't visit it, there's an online gallery.
In D.C., the Smithsonian Natural History Museum has an exhibit about how the Natural History Museum has changed over the last 100 years. The exhibits have changed a little since these days:
If you can't visit, there's a pretty cool interactive before-and-after online feature too.
mikethemadbiologist | August 9, 2010As the slow-motion destruction of our nation's infrastructure continues due to deficits über alles hysteria, we find this very depressing article from Camden, NJ about the proposed eradication of its public library system:
Camden is preparing to permanently shut its library system by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents of the impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to borrow a library book free.
At an emotional but sparsely attended meeting of the library board Thursday, its president, Martin McKernan, said the city's three libraries cannot stay open past…
cpikas | July 29, 2010This APS rocks!
Here's the press release from PAMnet:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APS ONLINE JOURNALS AVAILABLE FREE IN U.S. PUBLIC LIBRARIES
Ridge, NY, 28 July 2010: The American Physical Society (APS) announces a new public access initiative that will give readers and researchers in public libraries in the United States full use of all online APS journals, from the most recent articles back to the first issue in 1893, a collection including over 400,000 scientific research papers. APS will provide this access at no cost to participating public libraries, as a contribution to public engagement…
jdupuis | July 27, 2010A few months ago I posted a fairly long essay on how I was approaching the challenge of thinking about the future. I modelled myself on a few articles by futurist Jamais Casico and focused on why thinking about the future matters, finding the right questions to ask about the future and recognizing that the future arises out of the present.
This time around, I'll use a few more of Casico's articles to explore further the challenges of thinking about the future, specifically mapping the possibilities (Parts I and II) and Writing Scenarios.
Mapping the Possibilities
As we scan the environment,…
sb admin | July 21, 2010So there I was, try all kinds of librarian ninja tricks on the fanciest, most expensive research databases money can buy (SciFinder, Reaxys, Inspec...) and no joy. Couldn't find what I needed. I'm perfectly willing to admit that I don't know all that much chemistry, but usually I do ok since I work with one chemist quite a bit. Finally I gave up and googled it. After a few tries, I found way down in the results an article about something else (like I needed a chemical in an aqueous solution and it had the chemical in alcohol), but the snippet drew my eye. Sure enough - had a table with my…
sb admin | July 15, 2010And why we should care. Gary Price of the Resource Shelf pointed to a news story today, that Ebsco has acquired two more research databases: Criminal Justice Abstracts and Communications Abstracts. For those of you who haven't been following, Ebsco has recently acquired Ageline (it is now not available for free), NetLibrary, research databases from OCLC, The Music Index Online, World Textiles, ExPub (ChemExpert)... oh and exclusive rights to some magazines.
What we can expect from this is that those other databases will no longer be available on multiple platforms. Folks who aren't librarians…
jdupuis | July 6, 2010Nice article by Vit Wagner in Sunday's Toronto Star, Tough times, but some bookstores have a different story.
A couple of different independent bookstore owners/managers in the Toronto area talk about some of the challenges faced in surviving and even thriving in what should be a period of death and decline for bricks and mortar bookstores.
But while some of the competition is retrenching or worse, BakkaPhoenix, which recorded a double-digit increase in sales last year, is expanding. In stark contrast to the recently shuttered This Ain't the Rosedale Library, BakkaPhoenix is readying a fall…
jdupuis | May 25, 2010Another terrific issue. I'm going to list everything but the book & database reviews & reports so as not to clutter the post too much.
Five Voices, Two Perspectives: Integrating Student Librarians into a Science and Engineering Library by Eugene Barsky, Aleteia Greenwood, Samantha Sinanan, Lindsay Tripp, and Lindsay Willson, University of British Columbia
Collection Assessment in Response to Changing Curricula: An Analysis of the Biotechnology Resources at the University of Colorado at Boulder by Gabrielle Wiersma, University of Colorado at Boulder
Browsing of E-Journals by…
jdupuis | May 12, 2010Or is that the inherent insularity of academic culture in general?
Joshua Kim has some great observations (in context of a review of This Book is Overdue) (Amazon) about the great chasm of misunderstanding between the culture of the academic library and the broader academic culture.
As academia shifts and changes, as budgets squeeze, as millenials millenialize, it's a constant struggle to make the case for the library's role in academic life. It's hard to know both who our best champion's are and who our most determined opponents are. Sitting in the library talking to ourselves is probably…
cpikas | April 9, 2010V. brief post. Jonathan Rochkind points out that a lot of libraries are doing mobile sites and things, but he questions if they actually have a reason to think that these services are needed and will be used or if they are just creating these things because they're cool.
Please read his post, and let him know if you've talked to any users - either formally or informally - about what they want wrt mobile stuff. Thanks. BTW - I'd be happy to summarize here anything that is posted to his comments or that is shared with me directly.
cpikas | April 6, 2010The following is by Susan Fingerman. She and I were discussing all of the media commentary, so when I heard she actually read it, I asked - no, make that begged - for a review. She was kind enough to supply.
By now many of you have probably heard about This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (Harper,2010). The author Marilyn Johnson was inspired by the really interesting obituaries of librarians while writing a prior book on obituaries. Does the irony of this strike anyone else out there? Will we (librarians) and the places we work be more interesting, more…
cpikas | April 6, 2010I expect D to have a more thorough take (she always does!), but there's finally a more widespread outcry against Ebsco. A few of us commented about the exclusive rights to magazines and closing access to Ageline. There was also (rightfully) a kerfuffle about deep linking to HBS articles.
Now we hear from Meredith Farkas about exclusive access to military history journals and a more general piece by Sarah Houghton-Jan.
When I've posted something negative about Ebsco, I've gotten a phone call or e-mail from someone in management there. It's always been to solicit more information on the issue…
cpikas | March 16, 2010Libraries and librarians connect people to information. That's what we do. So there's the information part and there's the connecting part. Librarians gather, collect, license, and purchase information in the form of books, scrolls, artifacts, journals, web pages. And there's a lot to selecting what to gather and keep and balancing competing demands to get ready for the connecting. The connecting part has everything in it from organizing the information and listing it in a catalog, to negotiating the information need, to training users..
Libraries in the modern era have balanced spending on…