Tag Archives: museums

News: Education & Technology, Librarianship

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Education & Technology

Librarianship

Are Digital Libraries A ‘Winner-Takes-All’ Market? OverDrive Hopes So | Forbes
“Schools and libraries in all forms are transitioning their spends from providing physical items that are being stored on shelves and branches to digital items — the fastest portion of their growth,” said Steve Potash  in a recent interview. Potash is President and CEO of OverDrive, the Cleveland-based provider of technology for managing and distributing digital content for lending libraries.

Gross: Fifty Shades of Grey goes viral – literally | theguardian
Library copies of the bestselling sadomasochistic romance were found to carry traces of herpes and cocaine.

50 year after JFK’s death, new website asks people to share their stories about his legacy | The Washington Post

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There’s no shortage of places for people to share memories of where they were 50 years ago when they found out John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. But a website debuting Monday aims to take the focus from past to future by asking people of all ages — even those who weren’t alive when Kennedy died — to share their thoughts about how he has inspired them.

The website is part of the JFK Library and Museum’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death, which is Friday. The museum also plans a new exhibit of never-before-displayed items from his three-day state funeral, including the flag that draped his casket and notes written by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Visitors to the “An Idea Lives On” site can explore an interactive video that includes NASA Commander Chris Cassidy, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, comedian Conan O’Brien, Freedom Rider Charles Person and others talking about Kennedy’s lasting impact.

Read more: 50 year after JFK’s death, new website asks people to share their stories about his legacy | The Washington Post.

Smithsonian now lets you view artifacts in 3D | CNET News

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Smithsonian X 3D

You can now take a 3D peek at several famous historical artifacts thanks to a project from the Smithsonian Institution.

Launched on Wednesday, the Smithsonian X 3D Web site serves up a collection of 3D images of artifacts digitally scanned by the museum through a partnership with Autodesk. You canexplore the artifacts in detail by manipulating their images via mouse on your computer or via finger on a supported touch-screen device.

Read: Smithsonian now lets you view artifacts in 3D | Internet & Media – CNET News.

Related: The Smithsonian Is Uploading Its Lost Treasures to the Internet | Gizmodo

8 Treasures That Are Too Precious To Display In Museums (PHOTOS) | Molly Oldfield | HuffPo

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I traveled the globe to the world’s most interesting museums, bypassing the main galleries in favor of the things you can’t usually see. The things I found were astounding; in the basement of the Royal Society in London, I put my eye to Newton’s telescope, just as he did centuries ago in his lab in the Tower of London; in Edinburgh I pored over the original draft of Auld Lang Syne, now sung all over the world at New Year; at the New York Public Library I held a letter opener which belonged to Dickens — the handle was made the paw of his beloved cat Bob; and in the Vatican observatory in the countryside outside Rome, I marveled at pieces of Mars.

Two years of adventures later I had written the stories of sixty objects, their hidden location and the curators who care for them. These tales of hidden treasures make up The Secret Museum. It’s impossible to pick a favorite because I love them all, but here’s a taster to get you started. Hopefully you’ll dip into your own copy and find personal favorite treasures to enjoy.

See them all: 8 Treasures That Are Too Precious To Display In Museums (PHOTOS) | Molly Oldfield.

Flag from the Battle of Trafalgar

News: Education & Technology, Librarianship

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Education & Technology

Startup Gives Free Stuff to Student Influencers | Mashable
Sumpto, a startup that identifies top social-media influencers at colleges across the country, sends students free gifts from brands in hopes that they will tweet, post and share photos of the free swag on their social-media accounts.

Twitter strives to explain itself to the public | CNET
A new “About Twitter” page attempts to describe the social network and explain how and why people tweet.

Bill Gates Believes Human Health Is More Important Than Tech | Mashable
In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times, which focused primarily on his work to bring health aid to the world’s impoverished regions, Gates offers a glimpse into how much his views have changed regarding the importance of technology in our lives.

E Ink Looks Beyond E-Readers | MIT Technology Review
Facing a declining market for e-readers, E Ink’s new R&D facility is trying out some different ideas.

Lenovo pursued BlackBerry bid, but Ottawa rejected idea | Globe & Mail
[T]he Canadian government told the smartphone company it would not accept a Chinese takeover because of national security concerns.

Apple: “Our Business Does Not Depend on Collecting Personal Data” | AllThingsD
Apple published a formal report on federal government data requests and in so doing became the first tech company to disclose such inquiries by both account and device.

Librarianship

Museum of Science Fiction might be coming to DC | CNET
Trekkies and wanna-be Mars colonists might soon have a permanent brick-and-mortar site for sharing their love of all things science fiction

Illinois Library Comes Under Fire | American Libraries Magazine
“Sometimes libraries that are doing ‘all the right things’ pay a price for their excellence through uncivil attacks and attempts to dismantle their work,” Barbara Jones, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), told American Libraries. She is referring to Orland Park (Ill.) Public Library (OPPL) in south suburban Chicago, which has endured several intellectual-freedom challenges over the past few months.

MELSA, 3M Develop New Ebook Sharing Feature for Consortia | The Digital Shift

The Library Vending Machine | BookRiot
Changing demographics and difficulty securing new funds for new libraries, The Pioneer Library System in Norman, Oklahoma decided to to use technology to meet its patrons needs. So last week, it opened the first 24-hour library vending machine in the United States. Built by EnvisionWare, this fully automated machine will be able to to dispense more than 400 pieces of media (books/DVDs/audiobooks) and store more than 1000 returned items.

Deep Inside This Museum Lies the Holy Grail of Adventure Games | Wired.com

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The library inside the National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York isn’t your average hall full of dog-eared books. It houses some original documents used in the making of some of the most legendary, important videogames ever created. And we got to see them.

via Deep Inside This Museum Lies the Holy Grail of Adventure Games | Game|Life | Wired.com.

21 Muppets Find a Much-Deserved Home at the Smithsonian | Gizmodo

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Thanks to a donation from the Henson Foundation, on Tuesday, Miss Piggy, Kermit the Frog, and 19 other Muppets and well-loved characters gained their rightful place in history, entering into the collection of the Smithsonian Museum.

The Muppets

Read: 21 Muppets Find a Much-Deserved Home at the Smithsonian | Gizmodo.

Philly’s Free Library worth the trip for rare-book collection | readingeagle.com

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The literary wealth of more than 5,000 years is preserved at this museum-row library that is anything but ordinary.

via Philly’s Free Library worth the trip for rare-book collection | readingeagle.com.

World’s largest Aboriginal exhibition goes online | Australian Geographic

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THE WORLD’S LARGEST AND most representative collection of Aboriginal artefacts will soon be accessible at the click of a mouse.

The South Australian Museum has undertaken a significant project to digitally photograph and database every object in its Aboriginal Material Culture collection, which is recognised as the world’s largest and most comprehensive.

Aboriginal Artifact

via World’s largest Aboriginal exhibition goes online | Australian Geographic.

Related: Australia’s Oldest Culture Enters the Digital Age – One Image at a Time | South Australian Museum

The Smithsonian Just Added a Chunk of Code to Its Permanent Collection | Gizmodo

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Great to see an organization swoop in, so to speak, to preserve a defunct application, then go a step further and open the source code to developers. Hope to see this happen more often.

The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt design museum in New York just acquired the source code to an iPad app called Planetary from its now-defunct developer. Code is officially art now.

Planetary, as you can see in the video above, is basically a fancy music visualizer. The app’s source code was donated to the Cooper-Hewitt, which promptly open-sourced the code in hopes that people will use its visualization methods for other applications. Beyond the original lines of code, the museum has made a commitment to preserving the offshoots of the open-source project, and to nurturing their development. Planetary’s source has also been printed out in machine-readable OCR-A font on archival stock. Apparently, posterity demands a physical paper record that’s a little less fleeting than a digital archive.

See the full story: The Smithsonian Just Added a Chunk of Code to Its Permanent Collection | Gizmodo.