More than 5,000 of you nominated. More than 60,000 of you voted. And now the results are in. The winners of NPR’s Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy survey are an intriguing mix of classic and contemporary titles.
READ MORE NPR’s Top 100 Science-Fiction & Fantasy Books – How many have you read? | NPR
Graphic novel and comic book fans are book lovers, so it is no surprise that libraries and librarians are portrayed fairly frequently in all sorts of graphic works. Here are some comics that feature libraries and librarians and are perfect for some light reading or for a fun library display. READ MORE: Librarians Portrayed in Comics | CCGC in Libraries
PURISTS WILL SCOFF, but we could be nearing a future where new technologies make art museums come to life. Not hyperbolically, in the sense that virtual reality displays and touchscreen tablets let you interact with art in new ways (we’re already seeing that in spades, thanks to smart renovations at places like the Cleveland Museum of Art and the new Cooper Hewitt.)
This is more literal. In this near-future, works of art might actually register facial expressions. They might blink, or look right at you. READ MORE: Projection Mapping Brings an Ancient Greek Statue to Life | WIRED.
New York-based artist Brian Dettmer cuts into old books with X-ACTO knives and turns them into remixed works of art. Speaking at TED Youth last November, he told the audience, “I think of my work as sort of a remix …. because I’m working with somebody else’s material in the same way that a D.J. might be working with somebody else’s music.” “I carve into the surface of the book, and I’m not moving or adding anything. I’m just carving around whatever I find interesting. So everything you see within the finished piece is exactly where it was in the book before I began.”
READ MORE: Artist Takes Old Books and Gives Them New Life as Intricate Sculptures | Open Culture.
Though June, July and August might seem like ages away, many conferences use January as their deadline for submissions from students. So today is as good a time as any to talk about a type of submission that can seem foreign to a lot of library students- the poster session. Let’s dive in! READ MORE: Poster Sessions – A Beginner’s Guide | Hack Library School
A damaged sixth-century sword in a museum in Norway has been perfectly reproduced as new through 3D printing.
READ MORE: 3D printing produces a perfect replica of a sixth-century sword | CNET.
Recently, several non-techy friends have sidled up to me and asked, in hushed conspiratorial tones: “Keith, should I be playing video games?”
It’s an interesting question for two reasons. First, I write about video games for a living; that’s my job. So what did they think I was going to say? “No, they’re a massive waste of time”? Secondly, a few years ago, people my age were feeling guilty about playing video games, now there are people feeling guilty that they’re not. This is progress.
So for all the potential gamers out there who are thinking about taking up a joypad but don’t know where to start, or which games to try, or what a joypad looks like, here is a quick guide
READ MORE: How do I start playing video games? A beginner’s guide | Technology | The Guardian.
So you’ve bought a shiny new games console, or a ridiculously powerful PC, or the latest smartphone iteration, and now you want to play games on it. What happens next?
Well, if you’ve been doing the whole gaming thing for years, you’ll know which review sites to go to, what developers and publishers produce the best stuff and what everyone is looking forward to playing. But if you’re just starting out, it can all be a bit … overwhelming. Every year around 1,000 new titles are released on consoles and PC, and there are more than 300,000 games available on the Apple App Store. So how are you supposed to work out what to play?
Following our Beginner’s Guide to Gaming, here are 20 titles which will get you started. We’ve included smartphone, console and PC titles, and instead of focusing on titles aimed specifically at non-gamers, we’ve tried to select excellent recent titles that will introduce you to more complex gaming experiences and represent where the medium is right now.
READ MORE: Top 20 best video games for beginners | Technology | The Guardian.
This article presents the outcomes of a typological analysis of Web 2.0 learning technologies. A comprehensive review incorporating over two thousand links led to identification of 212 Web 2.0 technologies that were suitable for learning and teaching purposes. The typological analysis then resulted in 37 types of Web 2.0 technologies that were arranged into 14 clusters. The types of Web 2.0 learning technologies, their descriptions, pedagogical uses and example tools for each category are described, arranged according to the clusters. Results of this study imply that educators typically have a narrow conception of Web 2.0 technologies, and that there is a wide array of Web 2.0 tools as yet to be fully harnessed by learning designers and educational researchers.
READ MORE: A Typology of Web 2.0 Learning Technologies | EDUCAUSE.edu
Where music goes, technologically speaking, audio books soon follow. We’ve had audio books on vinyl LP, on cassette tape, on CD, and on MP3, just like we’ve had music. Now that so many of us pull up our daily jams on Spotify, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we can do a fair bit of our “reading” there as well. We’ve found a few lists that gather up the best audio book available on Spotify, including 21 classics and a collection of Shakespeare plays and sonnets at Gnarl’d, ten evergreen literary picks from Lifehacker, and a Spotify forum thread dedicated to subject.
Below, you’ll find Spotify links to more than 60 classic works of literature that, even if you struggled on getting them read in your English classes, you can now revisit in a perhaps much more lifestyle-compatible medium. To listen to any of these, you will of course need Spotify’s software and account. MORE: Listen to 60+ Free, High-Quality AudioBooks of Classic Literature on Spotify: Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy & More | Open Culture.
For more great audio, don’t forget to visit our collection, 630 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free | Open Culture.
Mia Wasikowska is beyond amazing! If I could only ever watch her and Keira Knightley’s movies, I would still die happy. The upcoming gothic horror film she is cast in, Crimson Peak by Guillermo del Toro, sounds creepy and intriguing…to be released October 2015 and also stars Chastain, Hiddleston and Hunnan.
infophile 