LISNews: Librarian News

Someone passed along This Librarians in Smocks photo set over at Flickr. It really amused me for some reason.

" A Weary Librarian" sent along a link to Librarians for Fairness: "A librarians' association that advocates for academic balance in our libraries

Librarians for Fairness is an organization dedicated to bringing positive programs about Israel to libraries across the nation and to promoting democratic values. We work to ensure that Israel's viewpoint is represented fairly in our libraries through books, periodicals, audiovisuals, online resources, and scheduled events."

Photographic Preservation Society was founded on a belief in the value of history, a reverence for the past, and a recognition of the importance of future access to photographic images reflecting that past. PPS exists to preserve historically significant photographic collections. To conserve, document and celebrate the images of history through the highest quality digital reproduction and documentation of important data about the images. To forestall the deterioration of our photographic treasures through archival care in environments that are temperature, humidity and light controlled. To allow future generations access to these images through an online Virtual Museum.

Photographic Preservation Society was created as a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit to aid libraries and museums which lack the funds and expertise necessary to preserve their historical photographic collections. Utilizing the most advanced methodologies, hardware and software, PPS will record each image and its metadata to the highest archival standards, enabling the owner to properly store the originals. The photographic duplicates may then be used as many times and in as many ways as necessary.

Through an easily searchable database viewers can access the images without human touch, allowing PPS to achieve its goal of protecting fragile originals. PPS will incorporate these images and metadata into its online Virtual Museum, offering them to a global audience.

The Flamenco search interface framework has the primary design goal of allowing users to move through large information spaces in a flexible manner without feeling lost. A key property of the interface is the explicit exposure of category metadata, to guide the user toward possible choices, and to organize the results of keyword searches. The interface uses hierarchical faceted metadata in a manner that allows users to both refine and expand the current query, while maintaining a consistent representation of the collection's structure. This use of metadata is integrated with free-text search, allowing the user to follow links, then add search terms, then follow more links, without interrupting the interaction flow.