Helsinki’s New Library is Pretty Cool ( David Lee King)
“The new Helsinki Central Library, due to open in 2018, was designed for the urban dwellers of Helsinki by the residents themselves. That’s the reason why the new library will have, among other things, a movie theatre, music studio, restaurant, open workspaces and a “citizen balcony” – not to forget the traditional library space, of course.”
The Purpose-Based Library [American Libraries] (Library Link of the Day)
John Huber and Steven Potter authors of the The Purpose-Based Library: Finding Your Path to Survival, Success, and Growth pose the questions: What is your library’s purpose? Is it to check out books? Is it to be a jobs program? Is it to be publicly subsidized recreation for people who don’t want to play sports? Is it to provide a spectacle so people can come and see what crazy thing is happening at the library this week? Libraries are ideally positioned, both physically and virtually, to make a great impact on nearly every community in this country. The question is what does your community need, and how can your library behave in a purposeful way to help achieve that community vision”
Libraries of the future are going to change in some unexpected ways (Library Link of the Day)
“According to David Pescovitz, co-editor at Boing Boing and research director at the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto-based collective that makes forecasts about our world, it’s likely in the coming decades that society’s traditional understanding of a library will get completely upended. In 50 years’ time, Pescovitz tells Business Insider, libraries are poised to become all-in-one spaces for learning, consuming, sharing, creating, and experiencing — to the extent that enormous banks of data will allow people to “check out” brand-new realities, whether that’s scaling Mt. Everest or living out an afternoon as a dog.
Access-to-Own now available on ProQuest Ebook Central platform (Library Technology Guides)
“The Access-to-Own model adds to the wide choice of flexible ebook acquisition options available on the ProQuest Ebook Central platform. Libraries can choose from a variety of access models or mix and match models to build ebook collections that best fit their patrons’ needs and maximize library budgets.”
In Philadelphia, Public Libraries are Serving as Hubs of Health Information (Nurses in the Library) (INFOdocket)
“Now, with support from a President’s Engagement Prize, Penn School of Nursing graduate Melanie Mariano will help Philadelphia’s public libraries become hubs of health information and preventive health care for the city’s residents.As the project evolves, she would like to expand across the city to involve nurses from neighborhood clinics who would spend time in other Free Library branches, perhaps even providing first aid and immunizations.”
NISO Works on API for Improving Access to Econtent (Information Today)
I am very proud to announce that the new “Flexible API Framework for E-Content in Libraries” was submitted by Kelvin Watson, Chief Innovation and Technology Officer and Christopher Carvey, Director of Interactive Customer Experience from our own Queens Library IT Department. The proposed NISO (National Information Standards Organization) project “is aiming to create a flexible API framework for libraries to improve access to digital content such as ebooks.”
University of Oklahoma Expands Networked Virtual Reality Lab (Library Journal)
“Developed by the University of Oklahoma Libraries Innovation @ the Edge staff and launched early this year, the new Oklahoma Virtual Academic Laboratory (OVAL) is already hosting interactive coursework for students enrolled in architecture, interior design, chemistry and biochemistry, art history, English, journalism, and library and information science classes.The two virtual reality (VR) stations at Oklahoma’s Bizzell Memorial Library include railed chairs that were custom designed by the university’s physics fabrication lab to enable a range of motion and cable management, 3dconnexion Space Navigator 3D Mice, Leap Motion Controllers (to enable interactive hand movements), Oculus Rift head mounted displays, and PCs that the staff outfitted with high-end graphics cards, fast CPUs, and plenty of RAM. (For libraries interested in creating similar VR workstations, off-the-shelf Oculus-ready PCs currently retail as low as $600–$800, “gaming chairs” for $100, 3D Mice for $100, Leap motion controllers for $40, and Oculus headsets for $600, totaling about $1,500 per station at the low end.)”
Finland library installs karaoke booth (Library Stuff)
“A library in southern Finland wants people to sing their hearts out during their next visit – in a soundproofed karaoke booth.Locals can reserve up to two hours in the booth using their library cards, and once inside they’ll be able to choose from more than 3,000 songs, all listed on the library’s website. ”
American Chemistry Society (ACS) Launching Preprint Server, ChemRxiv (INFOdocket)
“ChemRxiv is expected to follow the established models of arXiv in physics and bioRxiv in the life sciences by enabling researchers working across diverse areas of inquiry to share early results and data with their scientist-colleagues ahead of formal peer review and publication,” says Kevin Davies, Ph.D., who, as Vice President within the ACS Publications Division, will be spearheading the effort as part of a joint undertaking with the Society’s Chemical Abstracts Service.”
Microsoft’s HoloLens sells out, goes commercial (ReadWriteWeb)
“Microsoft has declared HoloLens, its augmented reality headset, “open for business” with the launch of its commercial suite.” Aimed at enterprise, the suite has additional security and management features that won’t make it to the consumer model.”
Dokki1 library: Denmark’s futuristic “citizen space” has been named the world’s best public library (Library Stuff)
“There’s hope for this new era in libraries, encapsulated in Denmark’s vast Dokki1, a mixed-used “citizen space” with meeting rooms, art installations, classrooms, performance stages, makers’ workshops, and playgrounds, in addition to the usual rows of bookshelves. At 35,000 square meter (377,00 square feet), Dokki1 is the largest library in Scandinavia.”
Braigo launches web app to help blind people parse text on images (Tech Crunch)
“Braigo Platform is a free web application aimed at anyone who needs accessibility solutions for the visually impaired. The platform supports more than 50 languages, and can be used to extract text from images from a variety of sources, whether from the web or from a phone.
NASA Unveils New Public Web Portal for Research Results (Library Stuff)
“The creation of the NASA-Funded Research Results portal on NASA.gov reflects the agency’s ongoing commitment to providing broad public access to science data.”
Sno-Isle, OverDrive Test Demand-Driven Ebook Acquisition (Library Journal)
“At the request of Sno-Isle Libraries, WA, OverDrive has developed a demand-driven acquisition (DDA) model for popular ebooks, enabling patrons to discover thousands of titles for which the library has not yet purchased a license. When a user checks out one of these titles, Sno-Isle is invoiced, and the ebook is added to the library’s collection in a transaction that appears seamless to the patron. Unfortunately, audiobooks had to be cut from the project after two weeks, due to unexpected popularity and resulting expense. The day after the project was launched—without publicity—Sno-Isle was invoiced for $14,000 in ebook and audiobook DDA purchases. Over the next two weeks, DDA purchases sometimes exceeded $17,000 per day, surprising both Sno-Isle and OverDrive. Once audiobooks were pulled, daily invoices decreased to the $7,000 range, and have since leveled off to about $5,000 per day..”
NYPL Opens Permanent Library at Rikers Island (Library Journal)
“NYPL’s Correctional Services (CS) team has been providing library services at Rikers Island since 1984, currently operating five satellite libraries throughout the complex’s ten jails—mobile book carts that move from unit to unit, or rooms that share space with other programs, requiring the books to be boxed up and removed at the end of each session. The new 1,200-volume library at the Rose M. Singer Center (RMSC) is the first to occupy dedicated space. Decorated with posters and vibrant, comfortable furnishings, the library is open for six hours every Tuesday, serving half of the facility every other week. Inmates may check out two books at a time for two weeks.”
Library Charged $1.5 Million for Journal Archive ( Library Link of the Day)
“Although the Milwaukee papers were among the first to be digitized, they were not the first to be held hostage by NewsBank, which charged other public libraries the following prices, according to Kiely.
- The Seattle Public library paid $400,000 for the digital rights to the Seattle Times
- The East Baton Rouge Public Library paid $800,000 for the rights to the Baton Rouge Advocate
- The Sacramento Public Library will pay $1.2 million over 5 years for the Sacramento Bee records.”
When Libraries Don’t Provide Value (Designing Better Libraries)
“Research by two customer strategy consultants has identified 30 things that could be described as components of value. While the authors of “The 30 Things Customers Really Value” acknowledge that what constitutes value can vary from person to person, they believe their 30 building blocks of value cover most fundamental human needs.
We need to be more explicit about what that library value means, how exactly we deliver value and to intentionally design for value delivery.If librarians are unable to articulate what elements of value they provide to the community – and exactly how it is accomplished – then perhaps we don’t provide value. And when we do say we provide value we need research to confirm what we do and how it brings value to the community.”
Article: “New York Public Library Reads Up on the Cloud” (INFOdocket)
“Four years ago, the New York Public Library began to move its web properties to the cloud. Today, the library system has all of its approximately 80 web sites in the cloud. The library has shrunk the number of on-premise servers by 40% and is running those web properties 95% more cheaply than if it had bought the hardware and software to do it all by itself.”
What is the Decentralized Web? ( David Lee King)
“Tech leaders from around the world recently convened for the first Decentralized Web Summit. The group ranged from the Web’s creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, to today’s leading innovators, and their mission was to discuss a reorganization of the Internet, an abstract concept they call the “Decentralized Web”. According to Cory Doctorow a Decentralized Web is a “Web designed to resist attempts to centralize its architecture, services, or protocols [so] that no individual, state, or corporation can substantially control its use. ”
University of New Hampshire Librarian Leaves $4 Million to School (INFOdocket)
“Morin’s financial adviser, Edward Mullen, said the library worker was able to accumulate so much wealth because he never spent any money. Mullen started working with Morin in the early 1970s, and said by the 2000s he had saved quite a bit of cash in his checking and savings accounts. There was almost $1 million in his retirement account alone. Mullen said Morin had an older vehicle and, despite being a millionaire, he ate frozen dinners.”
Notable Lectures & Presentations: Alice White, Open Repositories 2016, Academic Art Museum and Library Summit
Open repositories 2016 ( Lone Wolf Librarian)
Presentations at the Open Repositories 2016 conference in Dublin, Ireland
Wikipedian in Residence at the Wellcome Library ( Lone Wolf Librarian)
Alice White at the Wellcome Library in the IK reviews her role as a Wikimedian in Residence.
New White Paper: “Prospects and Strategies for Deep Collaboration in the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums Sector” (INFOdocket)
“This paper reports on the findings of a working summit hosted by the University of Miami in January 2016 at which the administrative heads of art museums and libraries from fourteen academic institutions convened to explore the barriers to—and opportunities for—deeper intra-institutional museum-library collaborations.”
Library Blogs Buzz 