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"A series of unconference-style events focused on connecting practitioners and technologists interested in digital curation"
"Today, I’d like to suggest that the traditional research library faces a similar challenge. The library collection is simply a bigger version of the encyclopedia: a seemingly exhaustive but actually (in the great majority of cases) very limited information portal that invites increasingly-skeptical customers to “start your research here.”"
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But in its fight to retain a strong position in the marketplace of researchers’ time and attention, I think the library’s most powerful weapon is the type of material we usually refer to as “special collections.” Patrons can get commercially-published books and articles from any number of sources, but if your library owns a truly unique document (like a daguerrotype portrait of a 19th-century actor, or the handwritten diary of a Mormon pioneer, or a typescript transcription of an oral history) then access to that document constitutes a genuinely unique value proposition. Historically, we in research libraries have tended to consign special collections to something of a ghetto—a benign and beloved one to be sure, but one that is somewhat outside the mainstream of everyday library services.
That has to change. Greg Silvis, of the University of Delaware library, put it very well when he argued recently that “the future of libraries will not be found in commodity (catalog) records for commodity books.” Serving as a broker for resources that exist in many different copies in multiple formats and that can be found easily through Amazon or iTunes and purchased at reasonable prices is not an area of growing opportunity for libraries. Where we offer real and unique value, value that separates us from the competition, is in those areas in which we have no competition.
"TJM.org is the website of Tim McCormick. I work for HighWire Press, Stanford University, in Palo Alto, CA, as Sr. Product Manager for Emerging Content. Also reader, writer, library student."
"Hargus Molnar, Master Librarian, had a face that would have been at home in a gallery of military statues, among dead conquerors casting their permanent scowls down across the centuries. Lean and sinewy, with close-cropped gray hair and a dozen visible scars, he wore a use-seasoned suit of black leather and silvery mail. Etched on his cuirass was a stylized scroll, symbol of the Living Library, surmounted by the phrase Auvidestes, Gerani, Molokare. The words were Alaurin, the formal language of scholars, and they formed the motto of the Librarians:
RETRIEVE. RETURN. SURVIVE."
The Library as Incubator Project was created by Erinn Batykefer, Laura Damon-Moore, and Christina Endres, three graduate students at the UW-Madison School of Library and Information Studies.
The Project highlights the ways that libraries and artists can work together and features:
Visual artists, performing artists, and writers who use libraries in their communities for inspiration, information, and as gallery space
Collections, libraries and library staff that incubate the arts, and the ways that artists can use them effectively
Free-to-share resources for librarians looking to incubate the arts at their libraries
Ideas for artists looking to connect with their communities through library programming
"Inside Higher Ed's "Library Limbo" story, noting the backlash against layoffs at the USD library, has sparked some great conversations about professional development and management in the past few days. "
Those of you who don't keep up with Edinburgh's literary world through Twitter may have missed the recent spate of mysterious paper sculptures appearing around the city.
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A gift in support of libraries, books, works, ideas..... Once upon a time there was a book and in the book was a nest and in the nest was an egg and in the egg was a dragon and in the dragon was a story.....
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