Personal blog: All opinions are only my own, unless you want to borrow them. (he/him)
I have to take a moment to brag – Rebecca Joines Schinsky, associate editor and community manager at one of my all-time favorite bibliophile blogs Book Riot, has named the Kansas City Public Library’s Central Library the most beautiful public library in America! w00t!
America’s Most Beautiful Public Library (posted February 25, 2013)
How much do I love that I get to come to work here everyday?
I imagine that by now everyone in Library Land – and in Book-Lover Land more generally – has seen this news story:
Horrible Histories Author Terry Deary On Libraries: ‘No Longer Relevant’ (posted on the Huffington Post on February 14, 2013)
Such attitudes toward libraries make me sad and angry. Of course, I’m highly biased on this subject, but it’s more than that. It’s the way his whole argument perpetuates misinformation, encourages overwhelmingly selfish principles, and his understanding of how communities and social systems actually work is frighteningly simplistic.
Not only does he completely ignore the massive pile of evidence that libraries are an incredibly effective venue for reader discovery and a leading driver of book sales, I’m personally disgusted by his unmitigated self-interest.
And he’s absolutely, 100% wrong about the “concept behind libraries”.
Never forget – the intent of public libraries is to provide all citizens with access to information in service of maintaining an informed democracy. The purpose of libraries is to enable self-improvement and drive social progress. This is true throughout modern Western culture.
He considers his paycheck more important than civic duty and the communal good, and I think that’s pathetic.
Actually, now that I think of it – people holding their paychecks as more important than civic duty and the communal good is the source of most of our current social ills…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about library marketing. Here at the Kansas City Public Library, we have 10 branches that serve highly diverse communities in neighborhoods throughout the city. One of the challenges for our Digital Branch is to figure out the most effective ways to market our online services.
So it’s timely that Library Journal posted this: The Results Are In and They Aren’t Good | Library Marketing by Nancy Dowd (posted on February 5, 2013)
Last week, I ran across this website: Librarian Design Share
What I particularly appreciate about the Librarian Design Share site is the opportunity to see how different libraries establish and express their own unique personalities. To my way of thinking, library marketing and the library’s personality are inextricably intertwined.
Continue reading “Library Marketing”
Last week, David Vinjamuri posted Part II of his two-part series on public libraries. I had some serious criticisms of Part I, so I’m happy to see that he goes some way to redeeming himself this time around.
Why Public Libraries Matter: And How They Can Do More by David Vinjamuri
His essay hits several nails squarely on the head, most especially his vision of libraries as community spaces and central forces in the ecosystem of reading. And he’s correct that libraries must establish larger cooperative communities between disparate systems.
This is not to say, though, that he gets everything right in Part II.
Continue reading “Public Libraries Matter: And We’re Already Trying to Do More”
At my library, we’re currently working on a project in conjunction with several other regional knowledge institutions to put online our full collection of historical documents regarding the Civil War in Missouri and Kansas. One piece of functionality we’re creating is a way to visually represent the relationships between people, places, and things within this pool of data. These visualizations are based on a relationship database that we constructed, using a basic semantic structure: “Object A [relationship] Object B” and we can verify this relationship with “Document X”. Thus, for example:
Iskabibble Jones is married to Bridgette Jones and we know this because of information contained in Bridgette’s letter dated …
Only, instead of statements, we represent this all graphically with links to images and documents. It’s a pretty nifty function!
The way we’re building the database for this relationship visualization tool is representative of how online data gets handled in general. It illustrates the fundamental paradigm that has governed computer development from the beginning – and, indeed, the development of mechanized data handling even before the advent of computers.
Continue reading “Data Handling in Electronic Systems – Inspiration for a Paradigm Reassessment”
I just saw this article online today:
Let’s Hope Snøhetta’s New Robotic Library At NC State Isn’t Run By An Evil Super Computer
I think this library is absolutely gorgeous! I really like how peaceful and bright and comfortable it looks inside.
I find this type of robotic technology fascinating. We know that it works – the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago is testament enough to that. Space and storage have been perpetual challenges for libraries for a long, long time. This represents an elegant and cost-effective solution. As one who has long been interested in archival work, I’m excited by the potential this technology has for that field, as well.
Continue reading “On Robotic Libraries and Serendipity”
One of my current obsessions is the changing nature of our relationship to information. I keep coming back to this topic. We’re currently witnessing the greatest change in how we use and value information since the advent of printing – and maybe even since the invention of writing.
(Yes, I’m being overly dramatic about it but I actually do believe this.)
I’m curious to see how collection development for libraries evolves in the Digital Information Age. Not just in terms of format and access changes, but more essentially – how will the Digital Information Age affect the techniques we use to determine what our patrons need in the first place?
Continue reading “Collection Development in a Digital Age”
Last week, I switched into a new job here at the Kansas City Public Library – Digital User Specialist. As we expand our library services through new technological portals, it’s my responsibility to ensure that these new services and interfaces answer to the needs of our patrons, and that they’re actually usable. I’ll be doing usability testing, creating personas, collecting user feedback, lots of wire-framing. But mostly, I’ll be the one constantly asking the questions:
Moreover, I’ll be the one encouraging all my library co-workers to ask these questions, as well.
Continue reading “The Joy of Saying Yes”
I think this is wonderful! I can’t wait until this extension is available for all browsers…
Browser Extension Encourages Amazon Searchers to Head to Their Library by Matt Ennis (published online by Library Journal on Jan. 2, 2013)
It reminds me of an idea I had when I was in grad school for a location-based mobile app that would integrate nearby library holdings and databases with online search results – so that whatever you’re searching for, you’d see what’s online side-by-side with the resources are close by in the nearest library.
According to many sources, this Christmas was a big one for mobile technology! Ebook and app downloads hit record highs! Ebook readership continues to grow while print readership declines!
It’s an exciting time to be a digital librarian!
Wandering through the library these past couple of weeks, with new technology the talk of the season, I overheard several comments that went something like this:
Continue reading “‘Tis the Season for Mobile Technology!”
John the Librarian 