Bookmobile 2.0

Welcome to the all new Digital Bookmobile, the world's first bookmobile without books. This 18 wheeler is 69 feet long and packed with the latest digital technologies. It was created by Over Drive to be used as an outreach tool for public libraries to promote their digital offerings.

How it works:

"The Digital Bookmobile, developed inside a high-tech tractor-trailer, will present programs that promote the host library’s download digital media catalog and ‘virtual branch’ website. The vehicle is customized for each library event and equipped with broadband Internet-connected PCs, high definition monitors, premium sound systems, and a variety of portable media players. Hands-on learning stations demonstrate how to search the digital media catalog, use supported mobile devices, and download and enjoy eBooks, audiobooks, music, and video from the library."

It kicks off it's national tour August 10th at the main branch of the New York Public Library. Current tour schedule here.


Thanks to LIS for the lead

Emory University Unleashes The Danowski Poetry Collection

Emory University kicked off National Poetry Month with a bang. They had three Pulitzer Prize winning poets (Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass and Richard Wilbur) headlining a conference titled “A Fine Excess: A Three-Day Celebration of Poetry.”

It was during this event that Emory took the wraps off what some say is the most important collection of English-language poetry in the world.

It was the first public display of the fruits of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library which they acquired in 2004.

The 75,000 rare books, posters, periodicals and recordings that make up the collection is "a nearly complete record of all published English-language poetry in the 20th century."

I repeat "a nearly complete record of all published English-language poetry in the 20th century."

The library arrived in 1,500 boxes and tea crates, and is still being processed!

The exhibition is titled “Democratic Vistas: Exploring the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library,” and features 250 jewels from the collection including:

-A magnificent copy of the first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. (1855)

-Anne Sexton's annotated copy of Sylvia Plath's Ariel.

-one of 11 known copies of William Carlos Williams' first book, Poems (1909), which was never reprinted

-a first edition of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock and Other Observations" (1917), inscribed to his close friend Emily Hale;

Danowski has provided a 24-page handwritten introduction to the archive, titled “Anything you perhaps don’t recognize, please Google.”

Emory University Press Release

New York Times piece, Atlanta Sings of Poems Electric, Past and Present, by Brenda Goodman

New York Times slideshow of the exhibit

The Library of Congress Hits the Jackpot on Flickr

No one saw this coming.

The plan was simple enough. The Library of Congress teamed with Flickr for a pilot project called The Commons, which basically consisted of LOC opening a Flickr account and uploading a little over 3,000 images (the LOC houses 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials!)

The goal was to address two of the major challenges the library faces:
1. "how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and
2. "how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity."

The result was astonishing and could arguably be one of the greatest cultural achievements to date in the young world of social networking.

Here's what happened within two days:

• All 3,100+ photos have been viewed
• 420 of the photos have comments
• 1,200 of the photos have been favorited
• 392,000 views on the photostream
• 650,000 views of photos
• About 1.1 million total views on our account

In their wildest dreams no one at either the LOC or Flickr expected this kind of public response.

"Frankly, none of us could quite fathom how fantastic the response to the pilot has been." is how they put it at Flickr's blog.

And Matt Raymond of the Library of Congress responded by saying "I can tell you that the reaction to this two-day-old project has already vastly exceeded our expectations."

This is a watershed event. It is a solid web 2.0 victory and one that just might expand the boundaries of social networking, where people are interacting with places as much as with people.

For the Library of Congress, and all the libraries that are watching how this pilot turns out, it is a brave new world. Now the conversation must include the question - what are we doing to bring our collections to the public? Your collection strategy can longer be solely focused on having people come to you to see what you have or in loaning items to other institutions, museums etc.

The success of this pilot might also have an affect on the Google Book Search model that many libraries are endorsing. Maybe libraries need a more multi-dimensional Web 2.0 approach to their collections, one that encompasses more than just digitizing the contents of their books.


Image from the Bain Collection at the LOC

Pike Place Market Turns 100

Mark Tobey, The World of a Market

Pike Place Market in Seattle is 100 years old. Events are scheduled all summer long, culminating in the Centennial Celebration on August 17. Currently there are exhibitions on display at the Seattle Public Library and at the University of Washington Libraries:

"100 Years of The Pike Place Market: Fresh Produce, Flying Fish, Friendly Faces."

This exhibition is at the Seattle Public Library, Seattle Room, through October 6. The exhibit explores the history of the Market using materials from the Library's Special Collections, artifacts from the Museum of History and Industry and private donors, as well as photographs from several collections, notably the Seattle Municipal Archives, Hugh and Jane Ferguson Seattle Room, and the Museum of History and Industry. (Image: Seattle Public Library, Seattle Room)

"Our Market Century: 1907-2007."

This exhibition is at the University of Washington, Suzzallo Library, through August 24. Using resources from the Special Collections Division of the UW Libraries, the exhibit chronicles the history of the Market from its beginning to the present. Highlights include the early history, the role of the immigrant community in the development, and the succesful campaign to save the Market from urban renewal. (Photo: University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections)

The Pike Place Market is beloved for its historical and cultural value to Seattle. It opened with a few farmers' wagons in August, 1907, and is the oldest continually-operated public farmer's market in the country. Millions of tourists and locals frequent the market, popular for the fishmongers, fresh produce, and flower stalls. It is a city institution and national attraction.

But the Market history has not always been smooth. In 1942, more than two-thirds of the stalls were owned by Japanese-Americans. These stalls were confiscated and sold as a result of the World War II Japanese internment order. In the 1960s, the market was almost demolished by a proposal supported by Seattle government and business leaders. Fortunately, with strong community support, an initiative was passed in 1971 that created a historic preservation zone. (Another threat to the Market was a possible financial foreclosure in the 1980s.) Today, the Market is a 9-acre complex of buildings, vendors, merchants, restaurants, street performers, and residents.

Among the individuals who provided leadership during the Pike Place Market's critical junction in the 60s were Victor Steinbrueck and Mark Tobey. As part of the support for the Market, the University of Washington Press published Tobey's The World of a Market and later Steinbrueck's Market Sketchbook. Steinbrueck, a local architect and professor, was the leading activist in stopping the urban renewal plans to destroy the market. (His son, Peter, led the fight in the 1980s to save it from financial foreclosure.) He was also known for his loose ink sketches, used to describe urban scenes. Artist Mark Tobey, an internationally-recognized artist and founder of the Northwest School, traveled through the market neighborhood making art. (Image: Victor Steinbreuck, Seattle Cityscape.)

A good history of the Market , written by Pulitzer prize-winning author William Dietrich, can be found in the Seattle Times, Pacific Northwest magazine of June 7, 2007.

The Hunt Is On In the U.K.

The public libraries of the United Kingdom are on a treasure hunt.

The goal:

To find the coolest item in their collection that has yet to be digitized and enter it into a contest being run by the British Library.

The contest is sponsored by the British Library with financial support coming from Microsoft.

If a particular library doesn't feel they have anything worthy they can they include "local partners such as museums, archives, churches or stately homes" to come up with their submission.

Finalists will be "invited to a high-profile awards ceremony at the British Library."

There will be one winner for each part of the Kingdom; England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The winning items will be "digitized, converted into Turning the Pages 2.0 format and hosted online by the British Library for three years."

This is a pretty clever marketing strategy for both Microsoft and the British Library as it provides maximum exposure while providing an opportunity to feature their recently unveiled Turning the Pages 2.0 technology.

They are guaranteed A-list material to show off the technology with minimum expense.

Don't get me wrong. I can't wait to see the digitized versions of the winning books but the real contest should be in trying to find a way for these public institutions to digitize and make available to the public a much greater portion of their holdings.

British Library announcement
Article in the Belfast Telegraph on the contest

Previous Book Patrol post on the Turning the Pages 2.0 technology

The "Overly Attached Syndrome"

That's the diagnosis given to many book lovers by Alina Tugend in her piece New Ways to Do It Make Giving Away Books a Bit Less Painful that appears in the New York Times today.

"Getting rid of books creates tension for many, although it is often one of the first things people have to do when downsizing or simply trying to organize their lives." says Tugned.

For some, including the author, giving away or selling their books at the appropriate time is a liberating experience. There is little remorse. For others, the disposing of books from their library is one of the greatest of life challenges.

“People have a love affair with their books,” is how Standolyn Robertson, president of the National Association of Professional Organizers, sees it. For the "overly attached" she suggests that people "take photos of the covers of the books and make a memory album" and to try and only keep a small percentage of the books in your library.

For many of us, no matter how many options are available, it will never be "less painful" to release our books into the world.

The piece appears in the business section and feels out of place there. The quandary some people face when having to part with books is far from a business matter. The article seems to cover two phenomena- the process of letting go of your books and the response to the number of extraneous books in the world from the business sector. These are two different animals and each deserves its own cage.

Illustration by Tim Lane, first appeared in Boston Globe

The Librarian: Hollywood Style

The documentary film from Overdue Productions "The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians Through Film" will premier in a couple of weeks at the ALA Conference in Washington, D.C.

Here's the trailer:


It is the first full-length documentary film to focus on the work and lives of librarians, offering "a unique and charming blend of film clips, humor and critical analysis of the popular image of librarians." The film weaves interviews with real librarians with "movie clips of cinematic librarians."

This trailer focuses more on the interviews with librarians (after all the film is premiering at the ALA Conference) but I can't help but wonder if they have another preview featuring those movie clips?

I think this one might have legs.

The Hollywood Librarian website
Their blog and their video -Behind the Scenes of The Hollywood Librarian
ALA Press Release

University of Washington Digital Collections Uses Wikipedia

Library, University of Washington 1922

The librarians at the University of Washington Libraries, Digital Initiatives unit, are reaching out to where many users first begin an information search - Wikipedia. They are inserting links into this popular online encyclopedia. The links are increasing the impact of the digitized materials in the UW collections, providing direct access beyond the traditional boundaries of the library.

The University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections are comprised of over 120,000 images, text, and audio files covering a wide range of topics and resources. Special strengths are in Seattle history and people and places of the Pacific Northwest. These collections average 3,600 visits a day. The ongoing project to insert links into Wikipedia involves assessing the subject areas of the collections and matching them to existing Wikipedia articles. In some cases, new articles have been created to inform the user about a unique collection. An example is the J. Willis Sayre Photographs, a selection of nearly 10,000 images of theatrical and vaudeville entertainers who performed in Seattle from 1900-1955.

Beauty line from 'The Midnight Sons', 1911, Moore Theatre, Seattle

Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia collaboratively written by its users. With over 1.5 million English-language articles, it is fast becoming one of the top reference resources. Part of the appeal is that the articles are well organized and categorized. The liberal use of links - to other Wikipedia articles and to outside resources - makes it a good starting point for information searches. While anyone may contribute to Wikipedia, there are policies, guidelines, and forums which govern the creation and editing of content, including tools to minimize spamming. Furthermore, Wikipedia content may be copied and distributed freely. Copies of articles with the University of Washington links can be found in a number of other online dictionaries and encyclopedias.

Including links in Wikipedia is an excellent way to increase access to the University of Washington Digital Collections as well as to participate in the creation of information resources around the world.


Material for this post is from the May/Jun 2007 issue of D-Lib Magazine, "Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections" by Ann M. Lally and Carolyn E. Dunford of the University of Washington Libraries. Images are from the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection.

Shelfitis: A Strain of Bibliomania

David McKie's piece in the Guardian today "My obsession with spines" deals with a strain of bibliomania that affects many of us book types. The need to know what is on the shelf behind that person in the picture. He talks about recent images in the Guardian and his desire to identify all the titles lurking on the shelves in the background.

He calls it a "form of voyeurism, a lust to discover guilty secrets."

Like McKie whenever I visit someone's home it is the books on the shelf that grab my attention not the furniture, not the kitchen appliances but the books.

It is also very distracting to watch television interviews with books as a backdrop. My attention is alway divided between listening and scanning the shelves. I am hoping that when television gets a bit more interactive my curiosity will be quelled by a simple click.

Shelfari should offer this option for its users:
Instead of only seeing all the titles from your library face out why not an option of a spine shot of the collection for us incurables?


Image of inside of Ophelias Books in Seattle taken by brewbooks

Side By Side. Finally

For the first time, after who knows how many thousands of years, the sacred texts of the world's three monastic faiths, Judiasm, Christianilty and Islam have been gathered together for an exhibition at the British Library.

The exhibit Sacred: Discover What We Share: The World's Greatest Collection of Jewish, Christian and Muslim Holy Books brings together the rarest sacred texts in existence.

Highlights include:
A tattered copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
A"Qur'an commissioned for a 14th-century Mongol ruler of modern Iran who was born a shaman, baptised a Christian, and converted first to Buddhism, then Sunni and finally Shia Islam."

There is a significant online component to the exhibit that features videos, podcasts and interactive maps. There are also 8 texts in the exhibit that are available to view using the newly released "Turning The Pages" technology

Graham Shaw, the lead curator, says of the exhibit "We were determined not to create faith zones, but to show these wonderful manuscripts side by side, and demonstrate how much we share"

Maybe one day we can all live that way.



Guardian article on the exhibit



Images:
Above: St.Matthew from the Lindisfarne Gospels
Below: Sultan Baybar's Qur'an from the British Library