Publishers’ Bindings Online

A beautiful site with literary, historical and artistic galleries, teaching plans, tools and resources.

“Decorative bindings cover many of the books that people have in their homes today, but their owners are often unaware of their cultural and historical significance. These bindings reflect not only social and cultural history, but bibliographic history as well.

In September 2003, The University of Alabama, University Libraries, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, received an IMLS National Leadership grant to create the digital resource, Publishers’ Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books (PBO). 

The project will also afford students, teachers, binders, and scholars in many different areas the opportunity to study up to 5,000 decorative bindings from two different physical collections in a single, virtual location.”

Via: The Centered Librarian

Another University Library Appears Bookless

The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library opening next week at the University of Chicago is a clean space of light which appears to be devoid of books. The collection is beneath the dome, efficiently sorted by size. Watch the video to see how this amazingly automated system works.

From Big Think via TYWKIWDBI.

World’s Largest Indoor Photo: Strahov Monastery Library

Image by Jeffrey Martin, http://www.360cities.net. Click on the image to open the gigapixel image.

“Panoramic photographer Jeffrey Martin spent five days shooting this 40-gigapixel image of the library at Strahov Monastery in Prague. Martin calls it “the largest interior photo in the world,’ and ‘the highest-resolution view of any interior space that has ever been captured. ‘You can look in any direction, and zoom in closely enough to read the ancient lettering on the spines of these very old books. Martin stitched 2,947 individual photos together to make the image.” (via Patricia Sarles / LM Net Archives)

Image by Jeffrey Martin, http://www.360cities.net. Click on the image to open the gigapixel image.

The website claims that if you printed this photo it would be 23 metres (or 78 feet) long. Click on either image, view full screen and take a tour – you can almost smell the ancient texts.

The Strahov Library By 360 Cities, a fascinating world-wide 360-panorama community.
360 Cities Blog Post

``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Full Circle to the Dark Ages?

To explain the term ‘call number’, I tell my students about traditional library service in the ‘old days’: where the librarian stood behind a counter and ‘called out the number’ of a requested tome to a page in a back room where the books were all kept. “Still,” states History Magazine, “libraries remained the domain of the learned: teachers, scientists, scholars”.

When they hear this, my students are appalled: to not have the freedom to browse the shelves for the perfect book seems completely barbaric!

And yet, now, with the potentially universal freedom to browse the unlimited quantity of a full range of quality internet material, one library has chosen to again remove the books from public access and replace them with a “so-called red room: a space filled with more than 100 plastic red crates, where students can pick up books they requested online”. Tradition seems to have gone full circle with a distinct digital twist.

Granted, this is a college library where students are still presumably able to get the traditional library experience at their local public library but I am nonetheless saddened to view the cold, sterile and to me uninviting space where students are expected to be inspired.

MARC Records for Web Resources

It’s true that you learn something new every day and when you’re in a position that was traditionally filled by professionals with master’s degrees, you always feel like you’re on the middle rung of a never-ending ladder that’s sinking in the mud: constantly climbing, but never getting to the top. I knew I could include links in print resource records, but today I learned that you could potentially include web resources in your online catalogue. Why did I not know that before?

Web resources that I discover are usually delivered to my K-12 staff by email and the onus is on them to bookmark them, or otherwise note them however possible. I’ve tried various methods over the years to organize them and make them more permanently available, from themed card-stock bookmarks to custom websites and bookmark sharing sites. With the often ephemeral nature of individual websites, changing staff and curriculum, and the always present challenge of time, these methods proved to be little more than make-work projects. The time involved did not compare favourably to the usefulness.

Through Diane Galloway-Soloman, the ORC Coordinator for Alberta Learning, I have just learned about a very interesting program by Marcia Mardis documented in the School Library Journal. Marcia has built a program that automatically generates a MARC record for online resources.

“The Web2MARC tool allows school librarians to automatically generate MARC (Machine-Readable-Cataloging) records for anything they see on the web…and tailor the records to their local needs—no cataloging required,” says Mardis

What a great idea! I’m off to learn more about it. We’ll see if it works with my software.

How about $1,092 for European Lounge Chairs in the Library?

That’s what the Detroit Public Library apparently spent on their new chairs in their new South Wing renovations while considering closing neighbourhood branches. I can’t imagine how they can justify that. Do they really look that comfortable?

Read more at the ever enlightening TYWKIWDBI.