(crossposted from librarytestkitchen.org)
I love the whole relevance by adjacency logic that libraries rely on. Similar things are next to each other. But libraries only do this with books. Can’t we do it with more media types?
Read more of "media wall"I received an overdue notice a little while back. I’ve received them many times. But I looked at it and I realized it was pretty complicated.
Read more of "Overdue Redesign"Last week we launched what we think is a useful and appealing way to browse books at scale, timed to coincide with the launch of the Digital Public Library of America. (Congrats, DPLA!!!)
Read more of "StackLife DPLA"And the award for Best Film in the Awesome Box category goes to… Cleveland Institute of Music. Hoorah!
Read more of "Awesome Box at Cleveland Institute of Music"
The Harvard Library Innovation Lab is looking for a highly creative and motivated developer to dream up and develop innovative projects that chart the future of libraries.
We are a tightly knit team of six and are passionate about solving problems, having fun, and improving lives through libraries. Join us!
This is definitely a dream job for somebody out there.
Read more of "Hiring! A developer to chart the future of libraries"We’ve created an embeddable widget for the Awesome Box. This widget allows Awesome Box members to share items that have been awesomed without forcing their patrons to visit the Awesome Box site.
Read more of "Awesome Widget"Our Awesome Boxes were itching to get their hands on even more books, music and movies so they jumped the fence and escaped Harvard Yard to their first public library home. A box can now be found at each of the three branches of the Somerville Public Library.
Read more of "Awesome Boxes at Somerville Public Library"[mp3 here]
Last week, Andrew Odlyzko [wikipedia] a mathematician and historian, and former head of the University of Minnesota’s Digital Technology Center, posted a research paper that concludes that the data suggest that libraries are losing their competition with the publishers of academic journals. Andrew is a long-time open access advocate, so he’s not saying this is a good thing. But he is a data-driven historian.
So I gave him a call, and we talked for about 25 minutes about the paper, and more generally about the role of curators in an age of free or cheap abundance. You can listen here.
Read more of "Are publishers out-competing libraries? Podcast with Andrew Odlyzko"We recently rolled out more Awesome Boxes here at Harvard. We now have boxes in Widener, Langdell, Lamont, and Cabot.
Read more of "Boxes deployed, more data"Marc Parry of the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote a nice piece yesterday featuring some of our projects and discussing the privacy issues libraries face in the digital age.
Read more of "Library Innovation Lab Featured in Chronicle Of Higher Education"