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



Arapahoe Libraries at Koelbel had small desks, also to enable roving

and

They were also making it easy for their clients to find things

At Anythink Brighton service desks are also compact

As are the ones at 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.

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


and English



Cambridge Public Library had gerbils


an amazing ceiling,

meeting rooms

and a fun stairway


Boston Public Library, had lots of spaces for parents and children to sit, off by them selves, or with others

and ways for children to navigate under the shelving. This does mean it is fixed shelving so there are some disadvantages to this.

Fox Library, MA had a children's reuse area for funds, use and to support the library,

lovely signs for children,

Watertown Public Library had an interesting classification of picture books

This is not an exhaustive list.

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

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.

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.

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.


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.


The collection is organised in a way which makes sense to children - note the animal sign

This photograph shows another  example of the same classification - at Southglenn
Anythink Wright Farms had trees in the children's area

and a lovely outdoor space for play and learning

The Anythink Libraries had prompts for play and thinking, like this one at Anythink Brighton

and Anythink Perl Mack (although this was for anyone to connect to)


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

Mesa County Library in Colorado seeking crowdfunding for local studies app

I read this article Wild Colorado Wildlife Discovery App : Mesa County Libraries develops app with state Parks and Wildlife agency and then found this This is local studies. It is also an interesting partnership. It is also information services.

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.

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 one, this one, this one, and this one.  These last photographs are from my Flickr stream (and so are taken in my own time).