other uses for apps

This is an interesting local government initiative.

Reporting potholes in Minneapolis? There's an app for that (via GCN)

By GCN Staff Jul 19, 2012 As state and local governments seek new ways to deliver better services at lower costs, they are turning to mobile applications as an easy way to engage with their citizens. Minneapolis, for one, recently upgraded its municipal services through a new mobile application that…

references from my #alia2012 presentation

This blog posts brings together the references from my presentation at the ALIA Biennial conference.  

You can read my paper, and access the links below. 

These are in order of being mentioned in my presentation/paper. 

• Barbecoa website
• Barbarcoa on twitter and facebook
• Fayetteville Free Public Library - report on maker space
• Jamie - magazine
• Eli Niebuger Access, schmaccess: libraries in the Age of Information Ubiquity VALA 7 - 9 February 2012
• British Library and BBC The listening project
•  ABC Open
• Mosman memories
• NSW Readers Advisory Working Group National Year of Reading twitter reading group 
• Jack Elliott Making sense of Mills and Boon 
•  Invisible Australians
•  Justin Hoenke Content creation for teens

Content Creation for Teens

View more presentations from Justin Hoenke

• The name of the rose by Umberto Eco
• Such tweet sorrow, Royal Shakespeare Company
• The play's the thing, Magpie Games
•  Find the future
• Ann Arbor District Library Summer Game
• Scanning for shopping
• Klagenfurt, Austria - a scannable library
• ALIA Biennial social media
• Monstrum
•  Jannik Mulvad This week in libraries #69
• Scottsdale Public Library 
• Phoenix Public Library 

Banksy

I started #blogjune with a post about ROA, so it seems fitting to end this month of blogging with a post about Banksy as the move is from very large and complex ideas to often (but not always) small and complex ideas whose apparent simplicity is misleading.
Banksy seems to be challenging us to not take things for granted, to enjoy the temporary (which can be a challenge in libraries keeping collections and access for perpetuity), and to look around us.   You can see a lot more of his art in this set on Flickr.

Dimitri Tsykalov

I have recently come across the work of this artist. You can see a lot more examples of his work over at Bored Panda, and at the artists website.

 After looking at these carved fruit and vegetables I won't be taking red cabbages for granted. It has made me think about how as Dimitri Tsykalov carves back the fruit, he is showing something hidden, which only he could see or imagine before he did the carving. His carving and art work makes the idea, and the art work, visible to the rest of us.

Source: boredpanda.com via ellen on Pinterest

This is not a new idea, but this is also how we need to show our ideas to others, and make sure we are describing an idea so that to others it does not appear as an uncarved piece of fruit but as the idea we are actually trying to present. Looking at this cabbage, maybe sometimes my descriptions of ideas are more like the cabbage before the carving rather than afterwards when the skull is visible. This is making me think that I have to make sure my ideas are carved apples or cabbages, rather than with the ideas hidden.