Ryan

Via Metafilter:

Within the Laurentian Library, the enigmatic masterwork of Michelangelo, there exists a complex geometric pavement that is hidden from view, little known about and shrouded with mystery. The Library is situated within the Medici family church complex of San Lorenzo in Florence, and like many Renaissance libraries, it is located on the upper level of a cloistered courtyard. Once the upper level is reached, there is little fanfare announcing the Library entrance and it would be easy to walk by it unless you knew where it was located. But on passing through the door, quite a different world opens up; the visitor stands in the corner of a gigantic room that ominously stares downwards, leaning on the senses with its architectonic weight …

The pavement appears to have been intentionally concealed for centures – this site tries to determine why. More information about the library’s history is here. Just for good measure, there are some cool 3D models of the library available here.

Via robot wisdom:

Last Monday, an essay critical of Wikipedia prompted [founder] Jimmy Wales to raise the issue of how to improve the quality of writing in Wikipedia articles, conceding that there were significant problems in some areas.

The essay in question was posted by business journalist and author Nicholas Carr on his blog October 3. Its focus was actually on the Web 2.0 concept, and Carr gave it the title, “The amorality of Web 2.0”. His reflections were prompted by media coverage leading up to this past week’s Web 2.0 Conference, and the idealistic notions of people like conference organizer Tim O’Reilly. Carr argued that although the technology behind the Web is fundamentally amoral, the glowing rhetoric around it is creating a quasi-religious fervor and contributing to the “cult of the amateur”.

As an example of this phenomenon, Carr turned to Wikipedia, saying, “If you read anything about Web 2.0, you’ll inevitably find praise heaped upon Wikipedia as a glorious manifestation of ‘the age of participation.'” His own assessment: “In reality, though, Wikipedia isn’t very good at all.” To support this, he quoted passages from the articles on Bill Gates and Jane Fonda that he described as “an incoherent hodgepodge of dubious factoids”, adding that these were representative of much of Wikipedia’s content …

More at Wikipedia.

Libraries in NY’s Erie County are struggling to survive:

If you need a lesson on the importance of solidarity, spend a day walking in the shoes of Tom Morrissey, president of the Library Association of Buffalo & Erie County Librarians. For two years, Morrissey and his local have been locked in a divisive struggle to keep nearly half of Erie County ‘s libraries from closing, which would mean job cuts for union members and a tremendous loss of public services …

County leaders are considering a plan that would close as many as 24 of the county’s 52 libraries. For years, library funding has been a political football; last year, the county provided no funds to buy books.

More from New York Teacher.

The 7/28 episode (Real Audio required) of BBC Radio 4’s “You & Yours” focused on the state of the UK’s public libraries:

Should libraries be more like community centres with internet café’s, juice bars and job centres, or should they focus on book borrowing rates which have fallen in recent times?

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Today’s KidsPost has a nice article about a puppet lending library run by Brooklyn’s Puppeteers Cooperative.

Draped over dull gray boxes of electrical equipment is a Mother Earth puppet with a face the size of a manhole cover. A dragon made of blue garbage bags snakes down a circular staircase.

They peer from alcoves and hang from the ceiling; floor after floor of enormous puppets, including kid-size, grinning white carousel horses. The best part of it: The puppets are part of the New York Puppet Library and they can be checked out — for two weeks. The puppets really belong to a group called the Puppeteers Cooperative. People use them for parties, parades and political rallies.

ABC News profiled the library earlier in the summer. The library’s photo of the week, showing patrons using their puppets, is always good for a smile.

The 7/30/05 issue of Ariadne focuses on information accessibility:

From AlterNet:

In 1997, 175 feminist bookstores dotted the country, but today only about 35 are still in business …

As bookstores disappear, so do the intellectual community centers they once provided for browsing and attending talks and readings.

“There is a struggle for public space, period,” says [Women & Children First owner Linda] Bubon. “It is desperately needed in a democracy.”

Complete article via robot wisdom.

The bi-monthly update of the always useful Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is up, with links to 17 recent articles on all aspects of academic publishing.

A plan by Southport, CT’s Pequot Library to sell a portion of its rare books collection to raise funds has met with stiff resistance from donors and residents:

This collection is replete with riches – a 1493 book by Christopher Columbus describing his journey to the New World, a writ from a Salem witch trial judge, and letters by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and every signer of the Declaration of Independence. But for more than 50 years, most of it has been housed at Yale, where it was moved to be stored and professionally catalogued when the library was having financial difficulties.

Now Pequot officials say that in an effort to improve their overall holdings, they want to sell part of the collection and bring the rest back to Southport. And their plan has met unexpected opposition from a descendant of [donor Mary] Wakeman and some local residents and library supporters.

Complete article (New York Times – registration required).

cantfindongoogle.com is a relatively new site devoted to helping Google addicts access the rest of the information world:

Most of the time, you punch what you want to know into Google, and you instantly get what you’re looking for. But have you ever had that experience, where you try query after query and no matter how hard you try, you just can’t find what you’re looking for? That’s what this site is for — because the things Google can’t find is more interesting than the stuff Google can find.

Via Metafilter. Some fairly confused queries here, but it looks promising – and they’re probably not much worse than those the average public librarian has to field on any given day :).