Last month, the Harvard MetaLAB released Cold Storage, a mini-documentary about the Harvard Depository (HD), a 127,000-square-foot “guarded compound” 25 miles from campus where approximately 9 million of Harvard Library’s lesser-used books, pamphlets, records, etc. are stored in a space reminiscent of Home Depot.
March 2015
11 Of The Coolest Librarians From Pop Culture
If that clichéd version of a librarian doesn’t sound familiar, you must be one of the lucky ones who knows the cardigan-wearing, tea-drinking, bright-eyed mistresses of the Dewey Decimal system. Your kind of librarian helps you find just the right book every time, and she always winks as she waves your late fee. Whether you know the crotchety, nightmare-inducing vision from your high school or the soft voice and vanilla-scented angel from the days of early reading, most people think of one these conventions when they think of librarians.
In the first Hebrew city, a final farewell to Yiddish
What he learned in that advertisement was that the Tel Aviv municipal library would be giving away its entire Yiddish book collection – an opportunity, from his standpoint at least, that could not be missed. “I came with an empty suitcase, and I plan to fill it entirely with these books,” says Kleiner, who hails from Dusseldorf, where he began learning Yiddish about five years ago. What he’s mainly in the market for, he reports, are Yiddish-language biographies and diaries.
Why we can’t live without books in pictures and words
Children’s authors and illustrators including Chris Riddell, Michael Morpurgo and Rachel Renee Russell tell us why they can’t live without books, as part of our World Book Day celebrations
From Why we can’t live without books in pictures and words | Children’s books | The Guardian
How the Disabled Benefit from Libraries
All across America, public libraries are either closing or having their funding reduced to such a level that their futures remain uncertain. The effect these closings will have on the wider public remains unclear, though it’s guaranteed not to be good.
And for the disabled people who depend on libraries to provide a slice of normality in a life that already faces enough uphill battles, where will they turn?
From How the Disabled Benefit from Libraries | Reading, Writing, Research
Woman who performed sex acts at library fired
The rules include no men or minors on camera for any reason and no “actions that may be deemed obscene in your community,” according to the website.
From Woman who performed sex acts at library fired | Ontario | News | Toronto Sun
Reviving the Library in Greece: The Future Is Now for the Future Library Network and the INELI-Balkans Project
The importance of this is astronomical for the people as a whole and for the revival of the country’s library community, in particular. Since its inception four years ago, the Future Library Network of public and municipal libraries in Greece has prospered and advanced all manner of learning, creativity, technological understanding and innovation. It currently consists of 140 Public and Municipal Libraries, with 7,354 individual members and has renovated 8 children’s libraries in Central Macedonia and established 9 Media Labs across the country. It’s hosted over 9,800 events in more than 100 Greek cities which have drawn in over 300,000 participants. It’s also organized training programs for “future librarians” and has distributed approximately 50,000 books and all matter of technological equipment to over 120 libraries nationwide. Its yearly Summer Campaign has so far hosted 8,402 activities and events for 200,000 children aimed at promoting Reading & Creativity.
The Anti-Information Age
Two beliefs safely inhabit the canon of contemporary thinking about journalism. The first is that the Internet is the most powerful force disrupting the news media. The second is that the Internet and the communication and information tools it has spawned—like YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook—are shifting power from governments to civil society and to individual bloggers, netizens, or citizen journalists.
It is hard to disagree with these two beliefs. Yet they obscure evidence that governments are having as much success as the Internet in disrupting independent media and determining what information reaches society.
Three Emerging Digital Platforms for 2015 | Fail!lab
‘Twas a world of limited options for digital libraries just a few short years back. Nowadays, however, the options are many more and the features and functionalities are truly groundbreaking.
Actually Stoll’s 1995 anti-Internet column was amazingly on-target
Stoll predicted that the Web would be a fount of misleading information and outright lies, that it would be oversold as a tool for education and governing, and that it would isolate people more than bring them together. “A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee,” he wrote. “No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who’d prefer cybersex to the real thing?”
From Actually, that ‘off target’ 1995 anti-Internet column was amazingly on-target – LA Times
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