Tag Archives: collections

Creating the First Cultural #DigitalLibrary in Canada’s North | University of Alberta #libraries #culture

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(Edmonton) When you live 400 kilometres from the nearest library, getting information can be a real challenge. Professor Ali Shiri of the University of Alberta’s School of Library and Information Studies is leading a project to address this issue. Together with co-investigator Dinesh Rathi, Shiri and a team of collaborators have begun to bridge the information gap for some of Canada’s most isolated people with a project called Digital Library North.

Currently, people in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region—an area that spans 90,650 square kilometres—must travel to the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre to access hard-copy information. The challenges with distance and winter above the treeline limit the access. The SSHRC-funded project will create a digital library infrastructure to address the unique information needs in Canada’s northern regions over the next three years. READ MORE: Creating the first cultural digital library in Canada’s North | University of Alberta.

Biodiversity Heritage Library Launches #Crowdsourcing #Games | Library Journal #libraries #search #gamification #volunteer

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The Purposeful Gaming and BHL project recently launched its first two browser-based video games, Smorball and Beanstalk.  Both are designed to offer players a fun online diversion while helping the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) enable full-text searching of digitized materials. Funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which was awarded in December 2013, the project is exploring how games might be used to entice people to participate in crowdsourcing efforts at libraries and museums. READ MORE: Biodiversity Heritage Library Launches Crowdsourcing Games | Library Journal

60 Bookish Films #Streaming on #Netflix | BookRiot #books #film

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Here’s a new list to watch on Netflix streaming that originated as a book, short story, or comic. READ: 60 Bookish Films Streaming on Netflix | BookRiot.

African American Family Records from Era of Slavery to Be Available Free Online | The Guardian #genealogy #archives

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Millions of African Americans will soon be able to trace their families through the era of slavery, some to the countries from which their ancestors were snatched, thanks to a new and free online service that is digitizing a huge cache of federal records for the first time.

Handwritten records collecting information on newly freed slaves that were compiled just after the civil war will be available for easy searches through a new website, it was announced on Friday.

The records belong to the Freedmen’s Bureau, an administrative body created by Congress in 1865 to assist slaves in 15 states and the District of Columbia transition into free citizenship. READ MORE: African American family records from era of slavery to be available free online | Life and style | The Guardian.

Sioux Falls Man Donates Collection Of Nearly 18,000 #Books | KDLT.com

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – The University of Iowa has struck gold. Not the kind that lies in the federal reserve, but one of paper in a Sioux Falls man’s basement. After 20 years of collecting, he is donating his one-of-a-kind collection of 17,500 books worth an estimated three quarters of a million dollars. READ MORE: Sioux Falls Man Donates Collection Of Nearly 18,000 Books | KDLT.com South Dakota News

Copy of Original #StarWars Script Discovered in UNB Library | CBC News #libraries

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Deep in the archives of the University of New Brunswick’s library in Saint John, a famous movie script sat forgotten and collecting dust. It tells the tales of a galaxy far, far away — and no one knows how it got there.

READ MORE: Copy of original Star Wars script discovered in UNB library | New Brunswick | CBC News.

Browse More Than 1,000 Original Sketches Of Mid-Century Fashion | Co.Design

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Browse More Than 1,000 Original Sketches Of Mid-Century Fashion | Co.Design | business + design

Image Credit: The New York Public Library Digital Collections: Art and Picture Collection

In 1957, three New York designers Walter Teitelbaum, Leo Boren, and Howard Steel founded a company called Creators Studio that produced fashion design concepts. With the tagline “Not yesterday’s but tomorrow’s fashions today,” they’d draw up original garments based upon notable fashion trends, and design manufacturers would receive these sketches on a subscription basis.

Walter Teitelbaum gifted the New York Public Library with 1,067 of these drawings of women’s and children’s ready-to-wear fashions from 1957 to 1969, and the collection has been digitized for you to explore online.

READ MORE: Browse More Than 1,000 Original Sketches Of Mid-Century Fashion | Co.Design | business + design.

Take a Free Course on Film Noir; Then Watch Oodles of Free Noir Films Online | Open Culture #MOOCs #filmnoir

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Cinephiles, if you have some spare time in the coming months and feel like watching, say, over 100 film noir movies from the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) vaults, then you will be delighted with Summer of Darkness, which will devote every Friday, from June through July, to 24 hours of noir classics and rarities. And suppose you’d like a reward, like a certificate that proves you not only watched those movies, but properly studied them? Well TCM has that covered too, offering a free nine-week course in “The Case of Film Noir” to run concurrent with the series. It’s free to sign up, and the course runs June 1 – August 4.

READ MORE: Take a Free Course on Film Noir; Then Watch Oodles of Free Noir Films Online | Open Culture.

A Glimpse Inside the Hidden Vault Where Harvard Keeps Millions of Books | Gizmodo #libraries

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Harvard’s flagship library, Widener, is an imposing granite cube built quite literally as shrine to the book. A central alcove cuts through the stacks to show off a prized relic: an original Gutenberg bible. But this is not the heart of Harvard’s libraries. No, that would be its cold storage site, an anonymous concrete building few students or even faculty know about.

The Harvard Depository, some 30 miles from the Cambridge campus, better resembles an Amazon warehouse than a library. The 200,000 square foot facility houses the vast majority of Harvard Library’s collection—some 9 million books, films, LPs, magnetic tapes, and pamphlets sorted not by the Dewey decimal system but by size.

A fascinating new interactive documentary, Cold Storage, glimpses inside this little-known world.

READ MORE: A Glimpse Inside the Hidden Vault Where Harvard Keeps Millions of Books | Gizmodo

The Rise of DIY Libraries | VICE

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In March, a group of New York library officials released a statement declaring that a “staggering infrastructure crisis” has crept up on the city’s public library system. In Brownsville, Brooklyn, one branch is “routinely forced to close on hot days” due to problems with air conditioning. Others are plagued with water-damaged books and facilities that are too small to accommodate everyone in their community.

General interest public libraries are no less necessary than they were in 1901, when Andrew Carnegie donated the equivalent of $147 million to construct 65 of them across New York City, but their focus is increasingly shifting away from books and toward things like English classes, job training workshops, community meeting spaces, or just places to read the news online for those without internet access.

While the public must continue to fight for these more practical resources, a number of oddball independent libraries cropping up around the North American continent offer an experience that can’t be found in their traditional counterparts. These boutique libraries are working to stretch our very idea about the word “library,” creating a real living community around the often very lonely act of reading.

READ MORE: The Rise of DIY Libraries | VICE