Librarianship is not in trouble, nor is cataloging for that matter for those who worry or loath any more words on things about metadata, but the complete nature of the information landsacpe as it was known and was, is now changed and that fact seems clear and Is. The order of things in terms of purpose of today’s librarian certainly should be on the mind of every librarian on the planet lest they really don’t care about futures.

The future role and sustaniable role of librarian is as that of Bibliographer of Culture, or cultures.

That role is not an answer to Google by any mean and in fact this author b elieves answering Google is really not the Holy Grail that some have made it to be or maybe this author’s other ramblings have implied. Google is not a question, and neither is discovery library style an answer. Regarless of that false dichotomy which is presume by so many readers when they hear of criticism of familiar acts like cataloging or concepts like classifying or system lingo like ILS, when these are criticized many immediately defend to the fall back of Google vs. Libraries. It has never been so. Any effects and affects involved with Libraries due to Google are just that, perceived impacts and nothing more. Let us recall that a robust read of the literature from 1950s to 1990s of library science and practice clearly shows that identity crisis in our ranks was always in question.

After about 50+ years of recorded wrangling about the matter, this post-librarian in times where the author is now completely relevant in her/his intention stumbles back upon a theory so old and un-original that it is mere fool’s play to put it on the inspection table and consider it: bibliography is the last stand of Librarian, especially for academic librarianists

The older Order was composed of 3 to maybe 5 pillars:

1. Reference

2. Cataloging

3. Collection Development

and from here it is murky, and we have to discuss the order of  things above among the first three…. but Foundations of library practice are indeed inclusive at all time of these three… maybe not futures, but one thousand years and more up to recent 21st century times. Other pillars may, could be the following

*database and records

*citations and bibliography

*search and find

*acquisitions and preservation

*storage and retrieval

Among those closely related and entwined concepts both to on another and to the “big three”… that is the definitonal set formign the matrix of Librarianship as it has been done and talked about, or taught–theory, vs. practice.

We shall return to that list soon and commit to bullets, because neither is above the other, and secondly to no more than 5 pillars.

Somewhere in that praxis we have inherited, the simple citation, and the simple reference to someone in some “text” before was always inmanent and nocturnal, essential and at stake.

The Order of things must be re-ordered not in order to “combat” Google or to give up on all principles sancrosanct to the order of librarians, but in order to create a persistence in values that is endemic  (sp??) to the future work of all those who claim to be librarians. It seems to this genX librarian that librarians either define themselves in the 21st Century or they do not….. the 22nd century will not wait. This essay revolves around the idea that cultural bibliography or more apt for librarianists (my word for academic librarian) bibliography of culture is the profession’s aim and most just model for the next 100 years. Defining this concept will be easy and short, reodering the arrangements among us to bring it about is entirely impossible most likely.

Bibliographers of Culture, Copyright Law’s end as Known in 20th Century:

Nowadays,  lots of libraries link up to loan each other books.  For the library user, that means if your local library doesn’t have that book, you can request it anyway.  In a few days, that book will be shipped to your local library from the library that has that book in their collection.  Thus, the library user now has access to books from many libraries.  Big smile here!  Then reality sets in.  You have to wait days before you get your hands on that book to find if it actually contains the information or story that you want.  If not, then more days of waiting to try again.  It’s a great excuse for your local library not to have that book in the local collection since you can always request it.  When you do request it, the result is sometimes “Sorry, no copies available for requests.”.  That is because you are now competing for that book not with just the users of your local library, but also the users of all those other libraries.  Unlike database information, that book must spend part of its time in transit, during which nobody gets to read it.  The library is not likely to add more copies of that book if it is wanted mostly by users of other libraries.  Seldom is there any attempt to keep the book in the library closest to most of  those people that want it.  The tradeoff made by  libraries that do this is the resources spent to make these loans possible is cheaper than buying all those books to which access is gained.  Unfortunately, sometimes that access is just to the message  ”Sorry, no copies available for requests.”.

Today I have observed a scientific law.  Logically, there is very little reason for booksales in libraries to work.  We withdraw books that no-one is borrowing because they are old, tatty or unpopular. We put them in a jumbled heap with very little thought about display or sequence on a table, and then we make lots of money when people buy them.  And yet these are the same books that no-one wanted when they were only a few metres away on a shelf.

Surely, this proves once and for all that customers look at books differently depending on their context.  Faced with several bays and hundreds of books, not much looks appealing.  Yet select twenty, put them somewhere else and automatically, something happens inside the customer’s head and they start ranking them.  Well, I wouldn’t take that one, but the one next to it looks a lot better, and so does the one on the end.  Which should I pick up?  I can’t decide – I’ll take both. But the human brain cannot rank 100 books in a manageable way, so this kind of thing doesn’t really happen amongst the shelves.  So we just need to use this process more in our stock management, and bingo.  It is of course the same principle that we use in displays and promotions already, and the reason the returns shelf is so popular.  I just hadn’t seen the Law of Booksales as a proof before.  I’m not convinced that customers really want a blinding amount of choice.   It may make them feel secure in the knowledge that they can find anything in the library, but it doesn’t translate into good issues.   At best, it’s a perception rather than a truth.  And I can’t help wondering if “rationalising” the stock is a great way of getting customers to tell us what they actually want, rather than us guessing.   But it’s been ages since I’ve seen a “Can’t find what you’re looking for? Just ask!” sign.  Where’s that kind of promotion gone off to?

Just need to put the law in scientific terms: I guess it would be,

Immediate Context a Desirability*

(*No alpha symbol on this page – my hazy memory tells me that means “is proportional to…”?)

So there’s something to think about – what in my library does my brain automatically try and rank?

It’s that time of year: Thanksgiving. Like most, my family has the tradition of saying what we are  thankful for, and this year I decided to make a list, because lists are fun, and I’ve seen a few people do it already, I’m being a copycat Soo, with that, I’m thankful for…

• My family, which is about to get a little bigger. I’m a little excited to be an auntie.
• My friends who keep my social calendar busy, and are always there when I need them.
• A job that I enjoy, it’s something I do not take for granted. Libraries feed the soul!
• A new apartment with Louie, because now I have his xbox 360 to further feed my obsessions, i.e. NetFlix and Zune.
• I’m borrowing this one from DC Comics Cover Editor Kenny Lopez ” Everything Blackest Night except the Blackest Night version of the New York Mets that played this year. ..” Let’s go Mets in 2010!
• of course, my Blackberry- it’s the world at my fingertips and keeps me connected to all my Twitter peeps

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! I’m ready for some sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce!

The New Media Consortium recently released the Short List of Horizon Topics for 2010 and the Horizon Report 2010 Preview.  These documents, which you can view by visiting the Horizon Report Wiki, are the result of the rounds of discussions and voting by the Advisory Board members.  The final report will be officially released on January 20, 2010.

The report preview organizes topics by “time to adoption” and  includes a description of the topic; the relevance for teaching, learning, and creative expression; examples of how the topic is being applied, and suggestions for further reading.  In addition, the preview version of the report includes a section called “Critical Challenges” as well as a section for “Key Trends.”

Consider the six final topics:

• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
  • Mobile Computing
  • Open Content
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
  • Electronic Books
  • Simple Augmented Reality
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
  • Gesture-Based Computing
  • Visual Data Analysis

Where are we as K12 libraries in preparing to utilize these technologies, particularly that of mobile computing and open source applications?  How can we as school librarians help lead the way for the integration of these tools not only into our libraries but also in our school classrooms?   What are K12 vendors doing to help school libraries prepare to adopt and integrate these technologies effectively?

I also find the “Critical Challenges” particularly interesting and encourage you to read the details of each challenge.

• The role of the academy—and the way we prepare students for their future lives—is changing.

• New scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching continue to emerge but appropriate metrics for evaluating them increasingly lag behind or fail to appear.

• Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key 21st century skill, but there is a widening training gap for faculty and teachers.

• Institutions increasingly focus more narrowly on key goals, as a result of shrinking budgets in the present economic climate.

These challenges leave me with many questions:

• Will it be school librarians who lead the resistance and coup d’etat, against the test driven school culture that is diametric to 21st century learning that values inquiry, creative expression, and collaboration?
• Are we teaching our students and teachers about new forms of scholarship?  How do we redefine authority and find new ways to evaluate and assess authority?
• How do we help posit new literacies (media, digital, transliteracy) as mainstream literacies for students and for teachers?
• How do we as school librarians turn budget crises into innovation?
• How do we tap into emerging technologies to create even more effective programs in the face of financially challenged circumstances?

What might happen if we as school librarians formed inquiry circles with public librarians, academic librarians, teachers, technology personnel, administrators, students, parents, and vendors to explore these questions, challenges, and trends?  How could we work together to find inventive and meaningful ways to harness the powers of these technologies?  What might learning look in both K12 and higher education if we engaged in inquiry and problem solving together?

Although these documents represent the “preview” and not the final draft of the report, please read the draft forms and put these ideas on your radar if they aren’t there already.  What is your response to the report preview?  How do you see K12 libraries meeting the challenges outlined in the draft?  How do you see the key trends impacting the 21st century school library and our practices?  I have cross-posted this entry on the AASL blog; please share your responses there as well as here.

Buffy Hamilton, Ed.S.
School Library Media Specialist
Creekview High School, Canton, Georgia

Do you want to be a librarian? This video was shot in 1947 and I think it’s lovely! Although things have moved on just a bit since then (ahem), some things haven’t changed, i.e. you need to be able to find stuff and be nice to people. That’s what being a librarian’s all about innit?

Although I don’t really believe that boy is interested in learning about television.

Presentation Zen: Hans Rosling & the art of storytelling with statistics via kwout

Earlier this week, I urged librarians to think about ways to tell your library’s story.  Here is a cool post from Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen blog, “Hans Rosling and The Art of Storytelling with Statistics.”   Check out what Reynolds has to say about using data and statistics as story, and then check out the latest Rosling video that demonstrates how Rosling uses data to tell a story.

The next two days will provide lots of time to reflect on those in our life and what they mean to us. There will be many personal and heart-felt “thank yous” shared over meals and sweets. I myself will be video conferencing with my parents and two sisters tomorrow, as they celebrate in Chicago and I dine with my grandparents in L.A.

What makes this post unusual is my thanks is not directed at an individual, but instead community entities. Though essential parts of our lives, they rarely get special days of thanks and Thanksgiving is not typically directed towards businesses and organizations.

So here it goes. If you are thankful for a local organization or business, post a comment stating why and I will be happy to pass it on and/or post to our Facebook page.

Public library system — Thank you for providing endless hours of entertainment both wandering your halls looking for titles and sitting in your chairs reading them. Thank you for searching for my hold requests and meticulously alphabetizing them on a shelf so I can run in and check them out. Thank you for the free wifi that came in so handy during grad school, and the free classes you provide in financial management.

Fresh ‘n’ Easy — Thank you for being inexpensive and delicious. Thank you for being within walking distance of the Raising Arizona Kids’ office so I can save gas and walk to lunch. Thank you for always greeting me and offering your help when I’ve forgotten to grab some humus, because I always do.

Margaret T. Hance Park — Thank you for all the open green space to play nerf football and let me dog run free. Thank you for providing those little doggie bags for when I run out, because I always do.

Raising Arizona Kids — Thanks for giving me a job =) Thanks for having a staff of fantastic women and men that make everyday productive AND entertaining. Thank you for having a snack box that is always filled with goodies and letting Mala bring little puppy Bonnie to work so I have a dog to nuzzle until I go home to my own.

So we are doing really well in our libraries / idea stores this year and we have arranged a small festival to celebrate this, the challenge now is to get an audience.  Here’s the programme…

Friday 4^th Dec 7pm – 8.30pm. Bethnal Green Library.

Martin Knight and Low Life Literature. Join Martin Knight, author and co-owner of London Books in discussing some forgotten gems of low-life London literature.

 Sunday 6^th Dec 1pm – 2.30pm. Idea Store Whitechapel

Meet Manzu Islam author of The Mapmakers of Spitalfields. The stories, set in London’s Banglatown and Bangladesh, bring startlingly fresh insights to the experiences of exile and settlement.

Monday 7^th Dec 7pm – 8.30pm. Idea Store Whitechapel.  

“An illustrated talk on Whitechapel, Spitalfields and beyond.” with John Bennett.  From Mile End to Whitechapel and on to Spitalfields, John Bennett presents the hidden gems and the well known sites of the core of London’s East End.

Tuesday 8^th Dec 7pm – 8.30pm. Idea Store Whitechapel

Delane’s War by Tim Coates. A fascinating history, vividly recounted, Delane’s War has striking parallels with contemporary events, from the embedding of journalists within army units in Afghanistan to the decision to hold a public inquiry into the Britain’s role in the war in Iraq. It is a testament to a man who dared to print the truth in the face of a government’s lies.

Wednesday 9^th Dec 7pm – 8.30pm. Idea Store Whitechapel.

John Harvey is an award winning crime writer whose most famous creations are Charlie Resnick and Frank Elder. He now has over 100 published books to his credit, the most recent being the novel Far Cry, and a collection of stories and jazz-related poems, Minor Key.

Thursday 10th December, 6.30pm – 7.30pm. Idea Store Whitechapel.

Book Group discussion of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Wilde’s take on the Faustian pact was one of the most celebrated and controversial novels of the time, representing the fin de siecle. Its influence still resonates today, amongst authors, artists and critics alike. Books available on request at the ground floor helpdesk.

Thursday 10^th Dec 7.30pm – 9pm. Idea Store Whitechapel. 

Dan Cruickshank talks about his new book The secret history of Georgian London: how the wages of sin shaped the capital. Georgian London evokes images of elegant buildings and fine art, but it was also a city where prostitution was rife, houses of ill repute widespread, and many tens of thousands of people dependent in some way or other on the wages of sin.

Saturday 12^th December 2pm – 3.30pm. Idea Store Whitechapel

Kia Abdullah author of Child’s Play. A tale of twisted sexuality and tortured morality, Child’s Play places a telescope into the darkest recesses of the human mind and invites it’s readers to take a look.

The lovely Eastside books from Brick lane will be the booksellers so a great chance to get some signed books for Christmas presents.

All a challenge for me as I am used to dealing with children’s writers and publishers but fingers crossed it all goes well.

Extra very exciting news is that Anthony Browne will be spending World Book day in Tower Hamlets with our school children. Hooray for us!

I was going to write a big long piece today about it being the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. I was going to write about what an important day this is, and about how we marched again on Saturday night to Reclaim the Night and called for an end to violence against women and girls. I was going to write about how the blogger Noble Savage had been sexually assaulted during the march, and about the candlelit vigil tonight in Trafalgar Square that’s been called in remembrance of all women who have been murdered and affected by male violence. And I was going to write about the government’s new strategy, announced today, on ending violence against women:  Together We Can End Violence against Women and Girls

And then my daughter rang me, and told me about how she’d been physically assaulted last night. My daughter rang me and told me about the man who suddenly came from nowhere while she was busy working away in a public library: about the man who grabbed her by the throat, headbutted her, flung her on the floor, and chased after her once she’d managed to struggle free. She told me about how he’d chased her and tried to get behind the library counter where she’d run to for safety, and about how other library staff had had to restrain him. This man. This man she’s never met before. This man she doesn’t even know.

And while she was telling me all this I know I made all the right noises and said all the right things. I know that my voice didn’t catch in my throat the way it has been doing ever since. I know that I checked with her, again and again, that she was really as all right as she said she was. And I told her I was so so glad she hadn’t been seriously hurt. And I told her of course I understood now why she hadn’t phoned last night to wish her dad a happy birthday. And I told her that I loved her.

And then I put the phone down.

And then I cried.

Because do you know what? It wasn’t meant to be like this.

We were supposed to build a better world for our daughters. A safer world. A nicer world. For fuck’s sake we were supposed to change the world, so that when our daughters stepped out into it they wouldn’t have to be afraid. They wouldn’t have to know the fear that so many of us have known.

We were supposed to stop the rape and the murders and the sexual assaults and the physical assaults and the forced marriages and the sexual exploitation and the domestic violence and the FGM and the so-called honour crimes. We were supposed to make it right for all the women and girls who came after us.

On days like these, it really does come home to me, literally, just how badly we’ve failed.

On days like these, all I can say is, I’m sorry.

http://uconnmagic.blogspot.com/2009/11/magic-on-road-ohio-libraries-part-5.html

Whenever I am trying to explain why it is totally feasible and in fact quite wonderful to raise a child in New York City, I invariably reference an article that I read in the New York Times in June 2008, shortly before I gave birth to MJ.  The author, Helene Stapinski, writes about visiting various New York City public playgrounds with her young children: “Since I’ve spent most of my adult life here, I know many neighborhoods intimately and use the playgrounds as an excuse to give my children an extended tour of the town they call home.”  The article goes on to describe their favorite parks, including descriptions of the neighborhoods they visited and the modes of transportation they took to get there.  

I’ve always said that the unlimited Metrocard is the “key to the city,” and I admire Helene’s desire to introduce her children to the different corners of the city we call home.  This is why it’s great to raise children in New York – the world is just outside your front door and the opportunities for adventure and exploration are limitless.

In the spirit of Helene Stapinski, this week MJ and I began our own quest: to find our favorite New York Public Library Children’s Room.  The New York Public Library system includes Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island; however initially we will limit our search to Manhattan.  As we get further into our hunt for the best children’s room, we may check out some of the branch libraries in the Queens and Brooklyn Public Library systems as well.   

Stay tuned for reviews of our favorite libraries, and please feel free to post recommendations!

On 18 Nov, I joined more than 600 other publishing peers for an Aptara webinar on “eBook Readers and Standards…Where to Now?” The presentation looked at the rapidly unfolding eBook market, and how publishers are struggling to adapt as competitive and consumer pressures demand that their titles be compatible with the multitude of new eBook applications and eReaders coming to market. For those working on the development of a successful eBook production strategy, this presentation gave a clear position on where the market is today and will be tomorrow.

The presenters were Sarah Rotman Epps, Forrester Research’s eBook Market Analyst, and Michael Smith, Director of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), which manages the EPUB standard. Here are some highlights:

From Sarah Rotman Epps on a Forrester Research survey completed in the third quarter 2009:

• Q2 2008, 37% had never heard of an electronic book device; in Q3 2009, that number dropped to 17%
• US eReader outlook:
  • Sell-through of 3 million units in 2009
    • Amazon 60%
    • Sony 35%
    • Others less than 5%
  • 40% of 2009 sales (1.2M) in Q4, with 900,000 in November/December holiday season
  • A conservative estimate for 2010 would be for sales to increase from 6M (2009) to 10M units
• What’s coming in 2010:
  • First eReaders not using E Ink screens
  • New screen sizes, color, and non-E Ink video
  • New category-bending devices: dual screens, web tablets, smartphones better optimized for reading
  • More competition: B&N, others
  • Global growth
  • 2007 is to eReaders what 2001 was to MP3 players
• US consumers:
  • 3% now use their desktop computer to reader eBooks
  • 2% use their laptop computer
  • 1% use an eReader device, such as a Kindle or Sony Reader
  • 1% use a netbook
  • 1% use a mobile phone or PDA
• Of consumers who say they are interested in eBooks, the value they saw included:
  • Take up less space: 54%
  • Can access multiple books on the go: 47%
  • Can adjust text size: 37%
  • Better for the environment than print books: 37%
  • Can read in dark/low light: 37%
  • Cheaper than print books: 35%
  • Easy to search: 26%
  • Easy to look up a word in a dictionary: 22%
• When asked how interested they would be in reading different forms of media on an eBook reader, consumers who were very interested replied:
  • Books: 29%
  • Magazines: 15%
  • Newspapers: 14%
  • Textbooks: 11%
  • Wikipedia: 9%
  • Comics: 7%
  • Blogs: 4%
• What should book publishers take away from the survey:
  • Stay “device agnostic”
  • The features that matter when it comes to content:
    • Ability to reflow content and look good on any device
    • Ability to sync up content across multiple devices
    • Ability to share content with a friend
• What will eBooks mean for a publisher’s bottom line?
  • Expect small revenues from any one channel, but expect growth over time across devices
  • Could be incremental, but much will be replacement
    • Plan for a smaller business
    • But potentially still a profitable one as you cut back print operations over time
  • New opportunities
    • Subscriptions
    • Incremental content sales
    • Advertising

From Michael Smith’s presentation:

• Industry predictions:
  • Continued growth of eBooks and eReaders as they become more mainstream
  • Younger generations (digital natives) begin to read electronically for pleasure
  • Hockey stick sales growth: 2010-2011
• eBook wholesale numbers:
  • 2009: $109,900,000 (Q1-Q3)
  • 2008: $53,500,000
  • 2007: $31,800,000
  • 2006: $20,000,000
• eBook formats: What’s right for your content?
  • Final form content vs. digital reflowable text
    • PDF vs. EPUB
  • How will content be consumed?
    • Web
    • Mobile
    • E Ink Display
• Current standards landscape
  • EPUB is an open and non-proprietary standard
    • Key to healthy eBook ecosystem
    • PDF is an ISO Standard
    • DAISY, ONIX, ISBN, XML, XHTML, CSS all important
  • Others promoting non-EPUB formats
• What’s pivotal to pervasive EPUB adoption?
  • Publisher adoption — Critical mass of content
  • Consumer adoption — EPUB prefect for small screen apps
  • Continuous evolution and improvements — EPUB Maintenance Working Group + EPUB 3.0
• Future of EPUB — Not a matter of “if,” but how fast it will become the dominant format/preferred standard
  • Continued worldwide adoption of EPUB with strong push throughout Europe, China and Japan
  • Move from primarily trade titles into Science/Technology/Math and then Higher-Ed
  • Continued growth in Library markets
  • Adoption of EPUB format to be a factor in rise of accessible titles available for Print Disabled community

I couldn’t believe one of the headlines in today’s NY Times: “News Corp. Weighs an Exclusive Alliance With Bing.” I originally thought that this was not what the title of the article meant, and there must be some mistake. However, Microsoft really has pitched an offer to the News Corporation controlled by Rupert Murdoch that would give Microsoft exclusive rights to index the news corporations daily reports.

This would be an attractive offer to most news agencies, most of which have been loosing money from customers and advertisers ever since the Internet took off. What if they only made their content available to a single search engine, or if they moved to a pay-per-index system (Microsoft, Google, and so forth would have to pay to index their content)? What ramifications would this have?

This sounds an awful lot like a monopoly if Microsoft’s Bing would be the only business able to index the News Corporation’s content. The definition of a monopoly given by Answer.com says it is,

“A situation in which a single company or group owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. By definition, monopoly is characterized by an absence of competition – which often results in high prices and inferior products.”

This agreement sounds like a monopoly to me. I’m not sure where other vendors like Lexis-Nexis, which also indexes news content, would fall under this agreement. Would they also be excluded?

I’m surprised that the News Corporation is even considering this tactic since it seems contrary to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. Specifically, the preamble which states that, “Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy.” Would placing an electronic barrier (only being available to search through BING) be in the best interests of its readers and under the Professional Journalists Code of Ethics?

Here are some other problems with this arrangement:
- There would essentially be no competition between vendors, and could potentially lead to a decline in quality of information.
- How would this affect consumers? It would probably alienate some readers and advertisers, specifically those who may not use BING, but to what extent? Would this arrangement ultimately loose business to competitors and essentially become financially dependent in time on Microsoft?
- Would this really be financially beneficial to the Murdock News Corporation? Could this backfire and bring the downfall of Murdock News Corporation? Could this backfire on Microsoft and look like a way to stifle competition from Google (which it is doing)? How might this be perceived from users who basically want free information (plus free music and movies…)?
- Would other news corporations follow suit and go exclusively to rival search engines? If this would be the case, we would essentially loose a huge chunk of informational exchange and essentially miss one of the basic
- Would Twitter and other new social technologies fill in the void that the Murdock News Corporation would leave?
- How might this affect future technology; should one search engine be preferable to another? Will new technology be geared towards one search engine or another?

Read original NY Times article…

As we continue adding websites to our del.ici.ous collection of bookmarks, we want to keep you informed of our favorite recent additions, organized by subject:

Fine Arts

Bruce Nauman Leave the Land Alone: Documentation of Bruce Nauman’s performance of Untitled (Leave the Land Alone), 1969/2009.

The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated: A Library of Congress exhibition documenting the work of photographer to the Tsar Sergei Mikhailovich Prokrudin-Gorskii.

French National Library’s Image Bank: A searchable collection of digital materials from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture: Website for the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Vézelay: Benedictine Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine: A searchable collection of digital images of the Abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine at Vézelay, photographed by Alison Stones, and cataloged by the Digital Research Library at the University of Pittsburgh.

Architecture/ Design

Arch Daily: An the online source of continuous information for a growing community of thousands of architects searching for the latest architectural news: projects, products, events, interviews and competitions among others.

E. A. Seguy’s Butterflies: A digital collection of Seguy’s collotypes from the New York Public Library.

Environmental Design Archives: Gertrude Jekyll: Archival material from the University of California at Berkeley. The Jekyll collection includes presentation drawings, planting plans, plant lists, surveys, photographs, and correspondence relating to residential gardens throughout the United Kingdom.

Plastics Network: Website of an international collaborative project to promote an understanding of the study of plastics and design.

Tom Eckersley Poster Archive: A collection of digital images of Eckersley’s posters hosted by the Visual Arts Data Service, VADS, created from the artist’s archive at the University of the Arts in London.

Liberal Arts

American Treasures of the Library of Congress: Online exhibition displaying some 250 items from the Library of Congress collections, including some not currently on permanent display. The organizing principles of this exhibition are Memory, Reason and Imagination.

Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database: “The Literature, Arts, & Medicine Database is an annotated multimedia listing of prose, poetry, film, video and art that was developed to be a resource for teaching and research in MEDICAL HUMANITIES, and for use in health/pre-health, graduate and undergraduate liberal arts and social science settings.”

Transatlantic Slave Trade Database Images: A collection of images of places and vessels involved in the Transatlantic Slave trade, as well as slave portraits. This collection is part of the Voyages database project, which has collected archival data from all over the world to create an invaluable resource for scholars of the slave trade.

Van Gogh: The Letters: A project of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, offering all 902 letters to and from Van Gogh in digital format, with scans of the originals, transcripts and annotations.

Voice of the Shuttle – Cultural Studies: Voice of the Shuttle (VoS) is a subject gateway for humanities and humanities-related resources on the Internet.

Museums

Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity: MoMA exhibition displaying “over 400 works by some 100 Bauhaus teachers and students that reflect the extraordinarily broad range of the school’s output.”

New Ceramics Galleries, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: “Purpose built in 1909 for the display of the Ceramics collection the newly refurbished galleries tell the story of world ceramics, with 3000 objects on display from the earliest Chinese pottery to contemporary ceramic art.”

RISD Museum: The Brilliant Line: An exhibition of engravings from the Early Modern period.

Reunion des Musees Nationaux: A digital collection of art images from French museums.

The Virtual Museum of Iraq: Online exhibition of objects from Iraqi museums created by the Italian National Research Council.

I am in the humanities library at the University of Oslo. I am terribly excited. I just had a chat with the people who established the postcolonial literature subject I’m going to teach. They are so lovely! As soon as I stepped onto the campus it felt like coming home. A university campus!!! With courtyards and large square glass-fronted buildings and students in coats and scarves! The library smells like old books. There are high windows above the shelves and sunlight slants in through the blinds. I am sitting opposite The Riverside Chaucer, two shelves away from Peter Carey’s Collected Short Stories. (This is a small library; they have a larger one a few buildings down.) The musty book smell and the yellow sunlight make my heart skip. This is where I want to be.