Welcome Blanket at Smart Museum (and some nifty cataloguing)

The Smart Museum in Chicago is having what is described as an artistic action.

On the museum website it says:
Welcome Blanket is a crowd-sourced artistic action that calls for over 3,000 blankets to be knit from 3,500,640 yards of yarn, a length equal to the proposed border wall dividing the United States and Mexico. Welcome Blanket invites participants to knit, crochet, or sew the blankets for new immigrants as well as for refugees seeking resettlement and send them with personal notes of welcome and stories of immigration to the Smart Museum of Art.


You can read more about it on the museum blog.

You can see the catalogue in this image from Instagram, and you can see the online catalogue by scrolling down at this link.

Now you can scroll through the Welcome Blanket catalogue!! You can check it out both on the Smart's and our websites. Thank you @smartmuseum for making this happen 💕🗽💕 ・・・ New #welcomeblanket tool: a digital catalogue of blankets! On the @welcomeblanket exhibition page on our website, you can now scroll through images and other details about the blankets we have opened and documented so far. We still have many, many more boxes to open and blankets to catalogue. You can help! Join in one of our unpacking parties, held every Saturday from 1–4pm.

A post shared by Welcome Blanket (@welcomeblanket) on Sep 13, 2017 at 4:52pm PDT

You can see how people are sharing their #welcomeblanket photographs. 


This is an impressive collaboration, and I really like how quickly the museum is cataloguing the material, as the catalogue keeps changing and being updated.  I figure this is part of the whole art experience, but this is an art experience with practical outcomes.  I had a look at the representation on Instagram of #wrapwithlove as I thought aspects of #welcomeblanket sounded similar to Wrap with love.

A key difference is the documentation and cataloguing. I have not found a library which photographs each wrap and includes the photograph in the local studies collection.  If anyone knows of this happening, I would be very interested to hear. I really like the #welcomeblanket for what is doing as an 'artistic action', and I really like the way the Smart Museum is cataloging all the wraps.

Instagram potential for local studies by @oclslibrary

The library staff at Orange County Library System do many amazing things.  Recently on Instagram they announced an #oclslovesorlando instagram challenge. Each day through April there is a different theme.  This is a great way to see how your community sees their environment.  As part of this there is the potential to collect these images for locals studies as a great way of recording what 2017 (for example) looks like.  This is a very exciting project.  Other libraries have done similar things.

I would be very interested to know if libraries are collecting this kind of material for local studies, as collecting recent/current content is really important.

Great work by OCLS, and great hashtag.

We're launching a new Instagram Photo Challenge and we want you to participate! Get out and explore your community in April. Show us your favorite local places and what makes Orlando unique using the hashtag #oclslovesorlando. We'll repost some of our photo favorite submissions during the month. Now get out there and start sharing! #orlando #ocfl #whyorlando #downtownorlando #obrag #localloveorlando #loveocls #orlandodoesntsuck #orlandolife #alocalthing #libraries #library #librariestransform #librariesofinstagram

A post shared by Orange County Library System (@ocls) on Apr 1, 2017 at 11:25am PDT

a few thoughts on The book of haps

The Book of Haps by Kate Davies
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had not heard about haps until I found out about this book. I am glad that I came across this as it is a lovely exploration of a very specific part of the history of knitting, and of knitting in a specific local area. This would be a great book for a Shetland public library local studies collection, and for other libraries to consider for their knitting collections.

It is exciting the way this book combines the history with new designs, based on the history. The focus on the purpose of haps, and their heritage has led to some very exciting designs from around the world, using different knitting techniques. The designs are so interesting that I foraged around at home and have already put together the makings of two haps. The challenge will be sorting out the time to make them. I look forward to learning some new techniques to be able to knit them.

A nice note to add, when this book is bought in paper, the ebook is also included. This is a very good publishing feature. I would be interested to know if they have thought of making both formats available to libraries.

This is an enjoyable read for people interested in social history.



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Review of Warning, the story of Cyclone Tracy

Warning, The Story of Cyclone Tracy by Sophie Cunningham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book acknowledges the Northern Territory Archives as being key to it being able to be written. This comes through the body of the book as well as the acknowledgements. It also highlights collecting by other organisations, including the recording of oral histories.

This book shows the value of different methods of research, archives, libraries and interviews. While it includes some personal elements from the author (of her memories and experiences), these do not overwhelm the accounts of what happened in Darwin, rather they help to position them. Similarly references to other disasters are used to make specific points about Cyclone Tracey and the aftermath. This book is a reminder of much discrimination, towards indigenous people and women (and while there have been changes, these have not passed).

Good discussion of the effects of climate change is also used as part of this book.

The personal stories of how people experienced the cyclone are very powerful. This was a powerful book to read, the cyclone accounts are vivid, as are the descriptions of the aftermath (including the politics).

This book highlights the importance of collecting current events. What collecting was done post Cyclone Yasi, the widespread rain and hail in April 2015 in NSW and the Christmas Day fires in Victoria 2015? This is important collecting for public libraries for their local studies collections for local research, but also to enable people to draw information from different events together (as was done in this book). The collections available for this writer show the importance of collecting soon after the event (obviously in a sensitive /appropriate/representative/inclusive way) as well as collecting after time has lapsed.

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Discovering collections discovering communities (DCDC) 2015 a Storify thanks to @C_Fryer

This has some great ideas for and examples from local studies collections (as well as many other collections as well)