In a comment on my post about the Lost Book Club, Beth Tribe from the Howard County Library tells us about the “Lost” related book display she made this Summer.
The books as well as the DVDs flew off this display at an alarming rate. I had to restock it constantly which was a good thing.
At a blog post titled Deserted Island Reads she gives more details of her firt ever book display:
…I then divided the cube into 3 seasons. Using the top layer for the DVDs of Lost, I then arranged the books below them that corresponded with the appropriate season.
I’m honored that they allowed me to set this up directly in front of our circulation desk. I’ve been told this is the equivalent of the candy/gum rack at the grocery store. Except I’m hoping that kids of all ages will check out items from my display.
An oldie but a goodie. Here’s my little Mao in one of his many costumes. Happy Halloween all.
Remember the really amazing and simple online mixtape site
muxtape? The one about which everyone wondered when it would get shut down? Yeah, that’s the one. It did close its doors some time ago, and last month the site’s creator tells the story. Here’s an excerpt:
Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn’t necessarily carry over. I also learned that none of the labels were especially interested in helping me out, and from their perspective it had no bearing on the negotiations. I disagreed.
The whole things makes an interesting read, but the summary is that instead of relinquishing creative control of the site though licensing deals with companies like UMG and EMI he decided to change the purpose of the site. It is “relaunching as a service exclusively for bands, offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet.” It will be nice for bands to have access to nifty, simple embeddable players, but I really liked listening to people’s muxtapes. Regardless, I admire muxtape’s Justin Ouellette for a) not compromising and b) being just as interested or perhaps more interested in the site’s interface and the process of sharing.
Despite not being particularly readable or plain,
potatochampion.com really works for me:
Plus, they have great chips.
Not only does Derik Badman have a ridiculously cool name, he also publishes a twice weekly webcomic called Things Change, writes about comics (mostly), contributes to a very promising new library blog, I just noticed that he creates warm & fuzzy feelings with University students on Facebook too.
Besides writing a random post about Derik, I really did want to highlight this great interaction. Let’s be clear, the interaction happened because a librarian and student developed a good relationship face to face. The student, though, moved it online, giving the relationship significance and exposure.
Note: I erased the name of the student and also confirmed with Derik that he was okay with me posting his otherwise protected Facebook status update.
I haven’t yet seen the show “Lost” even though everyone and their grandmother have recommended it to me. I’ll probably get some hate mail from raving “Lost” fans if I don’t say I’ll get around to it eventually. Just like “The Godfather” movies. *ducks*
Did you know that there is a Lost Book Club where people are discussing books mentioned on the show?
I’m always interested when I find people discussing content in places I didn’t expect. I’m sure Steven Johnson would argue that “Lost” is just like a huge novel on screen, so it is natural for fans of it to also enjoy books.
What also interests me is how much richer the discussions could be if a librarian added some value to it, either guiding the discussions online or planning physical world discussions. At the very least we can use the list of books from the show to make a nice book display to go along with the DVDs.
The NYT enters further into the world of user generated content and social networking with its Visualization Lab. With your free NYT registration you can now play with datasets that they provide.
I like this for a number of reasons.
- These tools are easy to use. The NYT is allowing its readers to succeed, and succeeding feels good. Making people feel smart and good seems like a smart way to get people to come back to the site.
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It is an experiment with crowdsourcing. With enough data and people, something groundbreaking might result from people playing with this. It’ll be even more interesting when people can extract their own data from the newspaper’s archives.
- Pretty pictures!
Seattle Public Library has their “Making Visible the Invisible” installation of circ data on display. I know some library out there can take it a step further and export data from the ILS and give patrons some online tools with which to manipulate it. 3-2-1-go!
A patron responds to the new carpeting:
“I can tell that a degree in librarianship does not involve interior design.”
UPDATED 8:11am PDT: There’s a full interview with the Head of the HUB at ALA Techsource. Great interview by Michael Stephens. I think I had seen it originally at his post Almost done with the semester! ages ago. /UPDATED
This may have been posted by someone before but I couldn’t find it. Anyways, check out these nifty service points:
uploaded by thehubatwts
You can see more about the University of Kentucky’s HUB info commons.
