Category «Libraries»

How to display your books when space is tight

Washington Post – “Cruise Instagram or Pinterest, and you’ll find numerous examples of warm, cushy reading areas decked out with twinkling string lights and endless built-in shelves. How do you evoke the feeling of having your own library in a small space with a small budget? We surveyed some experts for advice…” [this article made …

Subjects: Libraries

The Crack Squad of Librarians Who Track Down Half-Forgotten Books

Atlas Obscura – Reuniting stumped readers with the books from the edges of their memories. “The carpet was khaki, the lights yellow, the walls a dishwater beige. The basement computer lab in Midtown Manhattan didn’t have much ambience. But 20 librarians from the New York Public Library were seated in the room—and they were there …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries

Why are Books That Shape? From Codices to Kindles, Why This Rectangle Stays Golden

BookRiot: “Anyone who has ever tried to organize their bookshelves can tell you that books are not a standard size. In fact, even books that fall under the same category (mass market paperbacks, trade paperbacks, hardcovers) can vary wildly. It makes a perfectly matched shelf very difficult. Despite all of those different sizes, though, almost …

Subjects: Knowledge Management, Libraries

How an AI archive platform is helping a Victorian library keep up with data

ZDNet – A proof of concept has been built to remove the need to manually archive catalogues — a process that has been used for over the last 20 years. “Victoria’s Stonnington Libraries together with Civica have developed an artificial intelligence-based proof-of-concept solution to remove the manual work involved with cataloguing and searching through library …

Subjects: AI, Knowledge Management, Libraries

Libraries and Archivists Are Scanning and Uploading Books That Are Secretly in the Public Domain

Vice – Millions of books are secretly in the public domain thanks to a copyright loophole, a new project seeks to put them on the Internet Archive – “A coalition of archivists, activists, and libraries are working overtime to make it easier to identify the many books that are secretly in the public domain, digitize …

Subjects: Copyright, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries

Automatic for the People

American Libraries – Are self-service libraries a threat to the profession or an opportunity to better serve patrons? – “Automated and self-service libraries—which have been popular in Europe for years—are gaining a foothold in the US. Will these services eliminate librarian jobs, or are they a cost-effective way to stretch budgets and provide basic services …

Subjects: Economy, Education, Knowledge Management, Libraries, Marketing

Tech Paging Big Brother: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

The New York Times – As fake and illegitimate texts proliferate online, books are becoming a form of misinformation.The author of “1984” would not be surprised. “I started browsing Orwell on Amazon after writing about the explosion in counterfeit books offered by the retailer. The fake books appeared to help Amazon by, for example, encouraging publishers …

Subjects: Copyright, E-Commerce, Intellectual Property, Libraries

A Comparative Study of Perceptions and Use of Google Scholar and Academic Library Discovery Systems

A Comparative Study of Perceptions and Use of Google Scholar and Academic Library Discovery Systems. Kyong Eun Oh and Mónica Colón-Aguirre Vol 80, No 6 (2019) DOI: 10.5860/crl.80.6.876 “Google Scholar and academic library discovery systems are both popular resources among academic users for finding scholarly information. By conducting an online survey with 975 users from …

Subjects: Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries, Search Engines

Exploring Data Worlds at the Public Library

“Data literacy is new to the world of libraries and its meaning is still open to negotiation. Although many have advocated for the education of a data-literate population, there is little consensus on what such educational programs should look like, particularly in the context of informal learning at the public library. The “Exploring Data Worlds …

Subjects: Education, Knowledge Management, Libraries

We’re in a Data Literacy Crisis. Could Librarians Be the Superheroes We Need?

Forbes – “In his work, Chapters from My Autobiography, Mark Twain famously complained (and attributed to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli), “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Imagine Twain’s frustration in today’s data-driven world. But he would have been in good company. Even as information, analytics, and statistics drive more decisions in our daily lives, we’re facing …

Subjects: Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries