Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Review of Oral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, and Engagement

Oral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, and EngagementOral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, and Engagement by Douglas A. Boyd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this book after hearing a talk by Douglas A. Boyd. It is an interesting and detailed exploration of oral history. The chapters are written to show good examples of what is possible and in some instances to show what could have been done better (like not reducing the background sounds). Ideas such as Creative Commons licensing, are included.

The importance of long format oral history is discussed, and that the length of the interview and the detail recorded add value and provide much research potential. Oral history is not about snappy sound bites. The importance of oral history being online, and searchable (through the use of methods such as OHMS) is also covered. That oral history is listened to, is also highlighted. It sounds obvious, but when much access has been via transcript, sometimes that it is a spoken method can be forgotten. There is good coverage of the importance of access to the recordings so it is important for non-digital formats to be digitised, catalogued, indexed and made available for people to research and listen to for other reasons.

"I believe in the primacy of the recording for our professional practice, while fully understanding and acknowledging the role of text to facilitate discovery and access" and looking for "sustainable models to connect archival users to the online primary sources".

It is a book I will have to reread, and keep thinking about the ideas raised in it.





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Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Museums and interactivity, part 1

Boott Cotton Mill Museum had some very interesting features. They were part of a national park hashtag promotion

Social media
They also had an area with comfortable seating where you could explore books about the area. These books were also available for sale in the museum shop, but it was nice to have this area to have a read.
reading at Boott Cotton Mills Museum
Denver Art Museum has a very interest mix of museum interactivity, with many of their exhibitions having spaces (just after the exhibition), to explore the ideas to try out creative responses and to make things. One of the art works was added to by the visitors. This was a high degree of interactivity. Some of it was targeting children, but some of the making and learning was targeting adults.
This area was for children and was connected to the Miro exhibtion
Denver Art Museum, CO
This art work could be added to
Denver Art Museum, CO
This was an area to make a post card,
Denver Art Museum, CO
Denver Art Museum, CO
This was a different kind of touch screen
Denver Art Museum, CO
This space followed and exhibition of American Indian Art
Denver Art Museum, CO
This one was connected to a textile exhibtion
Denver Art Museum, CO
and you could explore weaving
Denver Art Museum, CO
You could also play with Hieronymus Bosch puppets
Denver Art Museum, CO
This museum was providing lots of space to think about the area you were seeing, as well as to have a better understanding of how it was made, but also to see some of the inspirations for the art. Some of the interactions were digital , but many more were with marbles, paper, or wool. This is something to consider for libraries too. It was also great to see so many opportunities for adults to make and interact. There were also places to read about art
Denver Art Museum, CO

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Desks at services points, and roving services

This has been an interest of mine for many years because it is about taking the services to the clients.

Library 21C had small desks encouraging staff to rove

staff service point - Library 21C, CO

Arapahoe Libraries at Koelbel had small desks, also to enable roving
staff service desk - Koelbel Library
and
service desk - Smoky Hill Library
They were also making it easy for their clients to find things
find - Southglenn Library
At Anythink Brighton service desks are also compact
staff service desk - Anythink Brighton
As are the ones at Anythink Wright Farms
service desk - Anythink Wright Farms
Denver Public Library had signs about roving. They were working with an older, large building and this is one way to inform clients about what is possible, as they staff will not always be visible.
how to contact staff when the staff are roving - Main Library, Denver Public Library, CO

Nice features in spaces for children in libraries: part 2


This continues the earlier post about spaces for children in library.

Phoenix Library has step into reading in Spanish

children's space - ​Burton Barr Central Library
and English
children's space - ​Burton Barr Central Library


Cambridge Public Library had gerbils

Gerbils in the service desk, children's room, Main Library, Cambridge Public Library, MA
an amazing ceiling,
ceiling detail, children's room, Main Library, Cambridge Public Library, MA
meeting rooms
activity room with mural, children's room, Main Library, Cambridge Public Library, MA
and a fun stairway
children's room, Main Library, Cambridge Public Library, MA

Boston Public Library, had lots of spaces for parents and children to sit, off by them selves, or with others
Showing parts of two murals Children's space - Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square
and ways for children to navigate under the shelving. This does mean it is fixed shelving so there are some disadvantages to this.
Children's space -  Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square
Fox Library, MA had a children's reuse area for funds, use and to support the library,
Untitled
lovely signs for children,
Fox Library
Watertown Public Library had an interesting classification of picture books
categories - children's space - Watertown Free Public Library
This is not an exhaustive list.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

British Museum and #askacurator Storify

British Museum did a lovely Storify of their participation in #askacurator.  This highlights some lovely use of both the hashtag and Storify.  It was lovely to see how different curators were featured.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Other examples of #askacurator happening on other days... Musees d'Angers had their own day a few months ago
About Star Wars costume from the Smithsonian

Monday, November 23, 2015

International games day 2015 #igd15 on storify

I saw this lovely Storify by Matt Finch

It inspired me to do this not so lovely Storify bringing together the photographs and tweets from around the world. It was lovely to see the range of libraries involved, the range of games and the range of people.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

shareable web pages

This should not be hard to do, but it seems that sometimes it is.  I have just been looking at a webpage from a national organisation in Australia (and I won't out them), it is about exciting things coming up, and I thought I would tweet the page.  There was no share option.

Yes, I know I could have copied and pasted the information.  It isn't hard, and often I do this.  In this instance that the page was not easily sharable undercut what they seemed to be trying to achieve.

This is also a great page showing lots of social media options, but I can't find the share on this page either.  I really like the way the social media is brought together on this page - but it still needs to be shareable.

In case you are thinking I am being unreasonable in wanting to share webpages - have a look at how easy NASA makes it with share right next to search (on every page at the top right).  They also have an amazing range of share options.


Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Some nice features in spaces for children in public libraries: part 1

This post is a collection of interesting features from library spaces for children.

Koelbel Library, part of Arapahoe Libraries had the children's area refurbished and added some acoustic treatments (the blue and white noodle like attachments to the ceiling).  I think these look sculptural, and rather lovely. They apparently work very well too in deadening sound.

children's space - Koelbel Library
Koelbel Library, have the pull out drawers (also at other Arapahoe Libraries) to help children explore books for themselves. This is really showing thought for your library clients.

shelving - children's space - Koelbel Library
The collection is organised in a way which makes sense to children - note the animal sign
shelving - children's space - Koelbel Library
This photograph shows another  example of the same classification - at Southglenn children's space - Southglenn Library
Anythink Wright Farms had trees in the children's area
children's space - Anythink Wright Farms
and a lovely outdoor space for play and learning
outdoor seating - Anythink Wright Farms
The Anythink Libraries had prompts for play and thinking, like this one at Anythink Brighton
draw my summer - Anythink Brighton
and Anythink Perl Mack (although this was for anyone to connect to)
building with noodles - Anythink Perl Mack

This shows some of many lovely ideas.  There will be more posts on this theme.

Monday, November 16, 2015

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Join Ralph McDaniels to Celebrate Hip Hop History Month! | Queens Library

Join Ralph McDaniels to Celebrate Hip Hop History Month! | Queens Library



This is lovely.  This is a celebration of music and culture and it is also local studies.  Great to see this happening.  Make sure you read the article at the link above.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Where photographs end up...

I tripped across a Storify of photographs I tweeted from a tour of the Library at the Dock, in Melbourne.  The tour was after the Library stars seminar in 2014, and as I was there for work, I tweeted the photographs - so I could share what I was seeing.  I put photographs on my Flickr account when I take them in my own time.

If I am there for work they may go on one of the official work social media accounts, or if they aren't going to go there they are like these in the Storify, reporting on a seminar I went to (and not into my Flickr account).

Think about how you share the photographs you take. Are you happy for people to re-use them?  If so, make them easy to re-use.

This post came to my attention (thanks to an rss feed incase of scary things being said) as did this onethis onethis one, and this one.  These last photographs are from my Flickr stream (and so are taken in my own time).

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

My review of The Invisible Library

The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library #1)The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a good solid three stars, and highlights how wide the three star rating is for me.

I enjoyed reading this book.

Maybe it was not good to read it so soon after The Aeronaut's Windlass but that is how my reservations came in at the library.

This book is about a library (or rather The Library) and the collection policy for it which does not appear to be written down anywhere. Okay, that is one interpretation of what is it about, but it is what drives the story forward - how to obtain a very specific book for the collection. As we see how one book is obtained, we hear stories and rumours of other items being obtained in similar or different way.

There are librarians (or actually Librarians - the capitalisation is important) who travel to parallel worlds, collecting near identical editions (mainly of fiction). There are a range of procurement methods, including theft, and this becomes a slightly discredited method through the book. This theft is off putting (and I don't agree with libraries using theft or theft like practices to develop their collections, and yes I know this is a work of fiction).

There is a dragon, stylish dressing, zeppelins, vampires, werewolves, fae and some very interesting action sequences in the steampunk mix. All of the characters can deliver surprises (and I won't mention exactly what they are because of spoilers). There is character development which works well. This also turns out to be yet another political thriller in my accidental year of reading political thrillers.

It is the first in the series and I will be very interested to see what happens next and look forward to reading the next title.



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Thursday, October 22, 2015

Is your social media mentioned on vehicles?

Centennial Parklands social media on truck I liked this, it was simple, and clear. The social media was consistently present on promotional material - see here for some more examples.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Instameet at the USA National Archives

This is a lovely story in so many ways. It is a lovely use of Storify, it is great to hear that the USA National Archives ran an Instameet, and that is was so successful (judging from the great photographs). It is very much about the building architecture, but that is fine.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Finding out about online resources in library buildings

When I visit libraries and other places I like to see what I can find out about their online presence when I am onsite.  These are just a few examples.

Denver Library made it easy to find out about their local music

local music online - Main Library, Denver Public Library, CO
their ebooks and other online services as well.
ebooks - Main Library, Denver Public Library, CO

Arapahoe Libraries had promotions including for ebooks, and zineo posters and screen savers

find - Southglenn Library
Robbins Library tells about the Massachusetts wide ebooks collection
ebooks at Robbins Library, Arlington MA

Boston tells people about their renovations
signs about the renovation - Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square
Central Park encourages people to share their playground images
Untitled
The Blood bank encourages sharing on social media
Untitled
and the Australian Museum provided a hashtag (as well as other information not shown in this photograph) Australian Museum October 2015

Thursday, October 15, 2015

My review of A little book of craftivism

A Little Book of CraftivismA Little Book of Craftivism by Sarah Corbett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The title sums it up well. The reader is given the background to Sarah Corbett's involvement in craftivism, and that leads into the rest of the book. There are some strategies about how to be most effective in craftivism, and also information about how to cross stitch. There is wit in the strategies as the aim is to engage. There are some very good strategies, many involving action and patience.

This is very much a personal view (but that is kind of the point of this book). I would suggest reading it as a companion piece to Craftivism: The Art of Craft and Activism but it stands alone too. I read it because I had been following the author on social media.

It is an engaging and quick books to read. It is also a book to go away and think about, and to look back at.

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