Superpatron - Edward Vielmetti is Mobilizing the Friends of the Library for the Blind

Anarchism pamphlets from the Labadie Collection online

The U of Michigan's Labadie Collection is an amazing assemblage of books and pamphlets and letters on labor organizing, anarchism, and radical thought. A small piece of it has been digitized - it's worth a look. I liked Frank Chodorov's 1948 anti-postal manifesto The Myth Of The Post Office.

The Digital Library Production Service and the Special Collections Library are pleased to announce the availability of Anarchism Pamphlets in the Labadie Collection online. The search interface for the Anarchism Pamphlets is located at

http://www.hti.umich.edu/l/labadie

The pamphlets digitized comprise a small part of a much larger
collection of pamphlets owned by the Labadie Collection on the topic of
anarchism. Since this is an ongoing digitization project, the
pamphlets were chosen in call number order, rather than by level of
intellectual or historical significance. The pamphlets were first
cataloged in 1982 with funding from the NEH using a local database.
Later, the pamphlets were added to the University of Michigan Library's
online catalog MIRLYN, making them much more widely accessible.

Currently, there are 226 pamphlets online. Pamphlets determined to be in the public domain are available to the general public. Other works are restricted to campus users only.

More information about the Labadie Collection can be found at

http://www.lib.umich.edu/spec-coll/labadie/

--
Chris Powell
University of Michigan
Digital Library Production Service

Technorati Tags: anarchy

Slashdot | Solving the Home Library Problem?

Our dear friends at Slashdot have a discussion running on organizing books for a home library.  Lots of irrelevant chatter ensures, but a few good bits which I'll try to gather:

Slashdot | Solving the Home Library Problem?:

zgrossbart asks: "My wife and I have about 3,500 books. We can't find anything. All the books are in random order. We want to find a solution for organizing our books. We have a barcode scanner, but I'm not sure the best way to use it. I want a solution that is easy to maintain going forward and makes books easy to find. I also want the data in an open format. I'm think about using MySQL right now, but I'm open to other suggestions. What software do other people use to organize their home libraries?"

with the following recommendations:

I bootlegged a copy of AV Cataloger [avcataloger.com] and liked it so much that I bought it. I recommend it to all, but it is a Windows-based program.

I'm sure you can write your own, but AV Cataloger hits all the sites to gain information -- even Amazon for books. It also helps to keep track of what you loan to people (my mother is the worst thief my latest report shows!).

--

If you've got a Mac (a big IF, I know), Delicious Library [delicious-monster.com] is the way to go. I've not seen its equal for Mac or PC. Barcode scanning (I use a modified USB CueCat), auto-querying for book covers and other information, borrowers, and so forth. Works for books, CDs, video games, DVDs, whatever. Worth every penny!

--

Please consider joining Bibliophile [sourceforge.net] on sourceforge, which is a collection of a lot of the other open source literature management software. The effort is fairly informal, but we'd like to share tools for importing, exporting, and cross-site searching.

--

Here is the link: http://www.librarything.com/ [librarything.com]. This will help you with the cataloging of the books. As far as organizing, hrmmm, why not organize by color

and many, many more pages of this stuff.

Technorati Tags: slashdot

"Wall of Books" updated, and a new Pittsfield library full of new books and DVDs

I've put together a new "wall of books" for the Ann Arbor District Library recent acquisitions. You can see it at superpatron.com. I have three listings there - one each for "hot" books, fiction, and non-fiction. The non-fiction is a little wonky (it shows mysteries e.g.) for some reason, the catalog search is not turning up exactly what I'd expect.

The AADL put together a very clever display of new titles in all kinds of genres up on their big display at the new Pittsfield branch library - I understand it was done in Quartz Composer using that package's ability to pull in RSS feeds. More details as I find them out...I'll see if I can't at least get a video up somewhere for you to see it, if it can't be actually put online.

Pittsfield is very nice by the way - I was at the grand opening party. A lovely big kinetic sculpture for kids to play with in the middle, lots and lots of books and DVDs, glass and steel. It's a shame it's not on any bus lines. (where's that darned transit union when you need it)

Section 108 Study Group (Library of Congress)

Section 108 of the Copyright Act gives libraries certain special rights and privileges for access to copyrighted works for preservation and patron access. With the increasing digitization of materials and the fervently held economic desire of media industries to preserve and extend rights to their properties, rights of libraries are being closely watched.

The Section 108 Study Group (link below) is accepting written comments - this would be something worth some study of your own.

Section 108 Study Group (Library of Congress):
Section 108 Study Group Mission Statement

The purpose of the Section 108 Study Group is to conduct a reexamination of the exceptions and limitations applicable to libraries and archives under the Copyright Act, specifically in light of the changes wrought by digital media. The group will study how Section 108 of the Copyright Act may need to be amended to address the relevant issues and concerns of libraries and archives, as well as creators and other copyright holders. The group will provide findings and recommendations on how to revise the copyright law in order to ensure an appropriate balance among the interests of creators and other copyright holders, libraries and archives in a manner that best serves the national interest. The findings and recommendations will be submitted by mid-2006 to the Librarian of Congress.

Technorati Tags: section108, libraries

Building a “Wall of Books” From a Library Online Catalog - your help needed!

As part of Higher Ed Blogcon, an online conference in April 2006, I'm going to be publishing an extended article on 'Building a Wall of Books from a Library Online Catalog'. This is an extension of the work I did earlier (see the original blog post and the Flickr photoset).

You, dear fellow superpatrons, can help with the writing of this article. I really believe that being able to visualize a lot of information quickly will help people pick out what they want to find from a library catalog, especially for recently published books where publishers have gone to some lengths to do distinctive cover art. To do a proper discussion of this, I'd like to answer these questions:

Do you have any great photos of great book collections (libraries, bookstores, private collections) where the covers are mostly facing outwards? Please do share them here or point to Flickr photos.

What interesting feeds of books do you have available to you? Some might be recently checked out, or recently checked in, or recently purchased, or popular, or a shelf list near something you like, or a patrons-who-borrowed-also-borrowed, etc. Pretty much anything that lets you start in one place and go outwards from there will help.

What sources do you have for book cover image art, and especially CD and DVD cover image art? AADL uses Syndetics, it's easy to use Amazon, and I'm sure there are others free and for pay. For instance, I'd love to be able to use IMDB cover art for a movie listing, but haven't figured out a way to backtrack from movie title to image through any reliable shared key.

Two of the original motivators for this exercise were Delicious Library (which does a nice wall of books from your personal collection) and a suggestion from Eli Neiburger to do a flash-based flipbook catalog. Dave Pattern has done some neat stuff as well. Brainstorm with me a bit - what could you do with book covers as playing cards, trading cards, objects in some virtual world like Second Life, ...?

Has anyone done or thought of innovative library catalog interfaces where instead of "checking out" a book through some click or typing driving process, you simply drag a book cover into a checkout bin? Seems obvious enough if you can get the underpinnings to work right.

thanks all!

Book Burro: combining book price comparisons and library lookup

Book Burro (requires Firefox) notices that you're looking at a web page for a book, and helps you find out not only whether it's available at a (small set) of libraries but also what the best price is to buy it from a range of bookstores.

Unlike the various library lookup schemes that I've written about here it's not easily extensible by the patron-as-programmer, so you get what you get. But what you get is very useful.

The author, Jesse Andrews, is now at Flock, a company working on a new Firefox-derived browser. Let's hope when it releases it has a lot of bookish smarts built in.

Teeter Talk: interview with Alicia Wise, Publishers Licensing Society, London UK

Teeter Talk is an interview blog by "Homeless Dave" in Ann Arbor, MI. He invites people to his house, has them sit on the teeter-totter in his back yard, and then they teeter-totters away while talking to each other. Outdoors. In the winter. In Michigan. It's great.

He's a great interviewer, and for this issue he has Alicia Wise who is in town for the digitization symposium. (I'll be blogging as much of that as I can.) You'll want to read the whole thing for the publisher's side of the Google Book Search equation, but I did want to call out this bit for accessibility of books to the visually impaired that's happening in the UK.

Teeter Talk:

HD: Did you go to the talk by the guy from Google, John Needham?

AW: No. Been there. Done it. Seen it.

HD: So you weren't expecting him to say anything new?

AW: No. But I spoke in that room just before he did, ... I think it was the same room. We were coming out, and we'd been doing this really worthy presentation about how to make more books accessible to blind people: there were ten people in the audience. And we come out and the entire hallway is wall-to-wall with a sea of seething publishers wanting to get a piece of Google action. Never mind!

HD: Yeah, the New York Times reported it was standing room only. I guess people were hovering around the doorway hoping people would leave a little early so they could sneak in for the last bit. So tell me about this project for the blind.

AW: It's really cool actually. It's in partnership with the Royal National Institute for the Blind, who have got a campaign called the Right to Read. And they're helping raise awareness in Britain right now that only about five percent of books that are published are ever made accessible in ways that blind, vision-impaired or dyslexic readers can access. So they're trying to work with the industry and with authors. The way it would work is this. When a book is created, even if it is only published in print, it's of course created in digital form: Word files, or Quark files or PDF's or whatever. So the idea is the publisher will give the electronic files to the Royal National Institute for the Blind before publication. The RNIB will be a trusted partner. They'll reformat those files and then make the versions that are needed in the blind community accessible on the same day that the print is published. They'll reformat them into audio books, into large print formats, into Braille, and there's also a format called DAISY, which is an electronic version, where you hear it and while you're reading along on the screen, the text that's being read is highlighted. It's a really cool and important project. I'm really excited about it.

Technorati Tags: library2.0

April 14, 2006: Library Camp, a Library 2.0 Unconference, Ann Arbor, MI

I'm happy to announce a date for Library Camp, a Library 2.0 unconference to be held in Ann Arbor, MI on April 14, 2006. Superpatron and the Ann Arbor District Library have space at the downtown library for people to gather and talk about Library 2.0 issues and opportunities. We're hoping for a good turnout.

An unconference or "camp" is a way of organizing a conference so that you focus on bringing the right people to the room and don't stress about who is going to be a speaker or what's going to be on the agenda. There is a low podium, lots of places to gather and talk, and no fixed pre-set agenda. This technique is based on Harrison Owen's "Open Space" conference format, and it's turned out a whole series of good events in the technology field (FooCamp, BarCamp, MashupCamp) in the last six months. As long as you remember a few key principles - whoever shows up are the right people, and the "law of two feet", you'll have a good time and learn a lot. And because it's in a library you can always repair to the stacks if you need something to back up your argument!

The event is free and open to the public, librarians and patrons alike. We have space for maybe 100 people to gather downtown at the library, and if interest overfills that we'll make room somehow. If you're planning to come, let us know. There's a Library Camp Signup Page on our wiki, or send mail to camp@superpatron.com and we'll help you out best we can.

Put your name on the Library Camp map thanks to Attendr.

Technorati Tags: annarbor, librarycamp, unconference

Library Elf: Keep tabs on your library books - Lifehacker

Lifehacker, a blog focused on productivity improvements as part of some kind of digital lifestyle, has this to say about Library Elf:

Keep tabs on your library books - Lifehacker:

Keep tabs on your library books
READ MORE: Email Notification, Library, Monitors, Web Utilities, organizers, time savers

Email reminder service Elf helps library users keep track of their library borrowings.

Once you have signed up, Elf will email you before your library items are due. It also lets you know when your holds are ready and when they are about to expire. Loan information is displayed in a calendar format which gives you a quick way to see the overall status of your library accounts.

Thanks for the pointer to superpatron Jody who writes

Continuing on my love affair with all things library, Library Elf is a wicked service.
Toronto Public Library phones with hold and overdue notifications. As much as I like answering the phone to a robot, email notifications make more sense to me.

Technorati Tags: elf, libraryelf

"Hello. My name is Rachel and I'm a libraryoholic."

Superpatron Rachel misses her library card catalog.

Newness of Life: Hello. My name is Rachel and I'm a libraryoholic.:

Part and parcel of the library experience when I was younger was the card catalog. It's definitely convenient to have library catalogs computerized now, but I confess that I miss the soft thump-thump sound of a search through the rows of cards, the precision of the alphabetization, and the smooth heavy slide of the drawers opening and shutting. I tell my children about card catalogs and it's like telling them about cash registers that went ching-ching instead of beep-beep, or about, say, Atari game systems, or the Revolutionary War. All are equally unreal for them.

It's been years since my library had a card catalog and I'm sure they disposed of the cards long ago. Which is a shame -- or, rather, it's a shame I didn't think of this before -- because if I could get them I'd love to have the cards from the books I loved to read twenty years ago, or from the classics I so enjoy in adulthood (not to mention the really old cards displayed on this site; our library was only constructed in the sixties and early seventies so I doubt there's much chance of its catalog having had anything handwritten in it). Bookmarks, wall decorations, greeting cards even. What a missed opportunity.

She links back to the author Rosina Lippi (Sara Donati) who links to a catalog card of her own book, which in turn ties back to John Blyberg's code that creates these cards for the Ann Arbor District Library.