Superpatron

Movie night at the library - Wichita edition - Academy Award short films

My neighbor Ann Hanson pointed me at the Wichita Public Library's annual Academy Awards short film showings as a good example of a program that libraries can host that does a good service for the community. Here's the newspaper clipping from the Wichita Eagle:

A tall order of short films

All short films nominated for an Oscar will be shown in Wichita, for free.

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BY ROD POCOWATCHIT

The Wichita Eagle

For the 23rd year, the Wichita Public Library will feature its popular showcase of Oscar-nominated short films throughout the upcoming week.

Wichita is one of the few cities that offers a chance to see all of the nominated short films in one program. And all screenings are free.

Things I want to write more about here - categories A-G

Every so often I run into corners of the world that I want to explore. Here's some list of the things I'd like to write more about, even if I don't have a full blog-length posting for any of them written right now. I'm keying off the categories I've set up.

This is part 1: Amazon through Google Book Search.

Sorry no links yet....will hyperlink as I have time to edit, but I thought I'd get this out into the world.

Amazon - about the book cover and album cover art database they have; how to set up an affiliate bookstore that actually works; on using Amazon to do wish lists that are then fulfilled through your library (via Jon Udell); on using Amazon as a book finding system and then using Book Burro or similar to connect back to your library; much more I'm sure.

Ann Arbor - plans for a new library downtown; reviews of all of the branches; reviews of other Washtenaw County libraries; special libraries in town like the Ford Presidential Library

Archives - an interview with the folks who run the Labadie Collection; an interview with the Prelingers; an interview with Brewster Kahle; some discussion of the peculiar nature of archives in the digital age

Archival Television - Jeff Ubois blog of the same name; the loss of the video record; clearing and securing rights; bootlegs on Youtube; museums of the broadcast industry

Beyond big vendors - this was the title of a talk I gave; an exploration of consolidation in the integrated library systems space, and some understanding of new alternatives

Book Burro - at least an annual post on what it is (repetition is the soul of the net); a screencast showing how I use it; documentation for online book finding system developers to get them to have Book Burro pop up on their book screens; a discussion of how tools like this can be funded by affiliate revenues

Book covers - as finding aids; variations between editions; in online book finding and book inventory systems; search by contents of the cover, not contents of the book

Book trading - more reviews of any book trading systems I find; some stories about book swap clubs that meet in person; children's birthday parties where everyone brings a book and everyone gets a book

Bookins - how they advertise new inventory on Twitter; comparison with other book swap sites; integration with LibraryThing

Books - more book reviews, lots of book reviews would be welcomed; the book publishing industry as a whole; old books; smelly books; pretty much anything is fair game.

Books sorted by color - more discussion of cover art, illustrations, other metadata about the book captured in the cover art but not indexed by typical book finding systems; the book illustration business; how covers are designed; history of binding systems; algorithms to determine which color a book is; art and photographic illustrations of installations where books have been sorted by color

Bookshelves - compact shelving, buying shelves for personal libraries, reviews of bookcases, shelving for libraries, innovations in book shelving, reviews of books about bookshelves, how to build your own, built in shelving, what to do when yours fill up

Code - more code! software that does interesting things with book and library data; mashups, data extraction, search algorithms, recommender systems, page layout, interactive design, home grown alternative views of the library

Collection development - impact of patrons on collections; controversial materials and how they are added to the collection and perhaps subtracted from the collection; metrics used for weeding and deaccessions; building your personal library from another library's discards; libraries as endangering printed materials

Electronic collections - library originated book and non-book collections; hardware, software, and systems for managing and cataloging same; preservation of digital relics; copyright, fair use and international implications of same; the proper provenance of enthusiast collectors

Events and exhibits - individual events and exhibits, and also ways by which libraries can improve their ability to bring people through the door by hosting book-themed events. Compare libraries to bookstores and see how they stack up; facilities building and planning with events in mind.

Film - libraries for film; collecting video and film; archival television (via Jeff Ubois); rights, copyrights, and the like; stock footage libraries; impact of digital distribution on the circulation patterns in public libraries that have big DVD collections

Friends Bookshop - relationships between Friends groups and libraries; examples of particularly fun bookshops; self service bookshops; using friends book inventory to do outreach; purposes of friends bookshops - to entertain people who want to run a bookstore, or to raise money, or both

Friends of the library - about national and local organizations; demographics of friends groups; "Friends of the Library, for the net"; library advocacy; when friends groups turn into haters groups

Games - games in the library; word games; something more about Eli@AADL; Wii at the library. Games in the kids room - ice cream truck. Learning from games.

Google Book Search - contracts, restrictions on use of data, inaccuracies within, quality of scanning, quality of metadata, shout out to Ben Bunnell, aftermarket greasemonkey hacks to fix issues with, comparison with Microsoft et al, comparison with Open Library, Distributed Proofreaders

Google Scholar - library use and access to, Andrew Odlyzko on open publishing, relative frequency of citation of non-internet publications, Math 40 yr history of increased collaboration via Patrick Ion, quality of data, quality of metadata, use by scholars as replacement for vita

Brooklyn Public Library exec director Dionne Mack-Harvin eyes Netflix

The august academic journal of record for New York City, the New York Post, reports that Brooklyn Public is looking at using Netflix to deliver materials. This excerpt from the Brooklyn Record blog:

Dionne Mack-Harvin was recently named executive director of Brooklyn's library system, and one of her first new initiative is to develop a home-delivery system so patrons could obtain books and other materials without having to visit one of the library's 60 branches. The library is reaching out to Netflix to serve as a provider of DVDs and videos. "What we want to do is work with Netflix and really get that inventory together, really use Netflix as the delivery mechanism," said John Vitali, the library's chief fiscal officer. "We're getting some good vibrations back. Nothing formal has been settled."

Mack-Harvin's initiatives go beyond home delivery - this from Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn and New York 1:

For the first time in the city's history, an African-American woman was appointed as the head of a major public library system Thursday. Dionne Mack-Harvin will serve as executive director of the Brooklyn Public Library, the fifth largest system in the country. She was voted in unanimously by the board of trustees earlier this week. "I have to tell you Dionne earned her position the old fashioned way: she earned it, very, very simple," said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. “My vision for Brooklyn Public Library is that every Brooklyn library will be the center of the community,” said Mack-Harvin. “We will increase access so that the library doors are open at all 60 of our locations when they should be." Mack-Harvin started her career as a librarian at the Crown Heights branch more than a decade ago.

More on the official Mack-Harvin appointment announcement from the NYC Mayor's office.

Dionne received her Master of Arts in Africana Studies from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany in 1995 and her Masters of Library Science in Information Science from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at SUNY Albany in 1996. She graduated magna cum laude from SUNY at Brockport in 1994 with a Bachelors of Science in History and African and Afro-American Studies.

Bringing kids to the library with anime (Monticello, MN)

The Monticello Public Library (Minnesota) is using anime film in their teens programs. From the Monticello Times

One of the Monticello Library's newer kids' clubs is luring local adolescents through its doors in droves.

The Anime Club, a Great River Regional Library pilot program, meets once a month to watch an animated film, munch on Japanese candy and bond over a shared interest in a popular cultural sensation that blurs the lines between technology, artistry and cartoonery.

"Anime is geared for children to adults," said GRRL youth services coordinator Heidi Hoks. "It's getting to be a very popular art form. It won a foreign film award at the Academy Awards a few years ago. It isn't just cartoons." [...]

"It's a way for kids to get together and talk about movies and books," Hoks said. "It's been an extraordinarily positive experience for all the locations, especially Monticello. We were looking for something that would get kids into the library, get them excited about reading, and it seems to be doing that. Kids check out anime materials, and then they check out other materials, too. It's a great way for them to see what's available to them."

"The whole region is very excited about this," she said. "It gets kids into the library and it gets them reading. And that's the crux of our whole mission."

Other libraries with anime clubs include the Lakewood Public Library, the Jacksonville Public Library, and the Phoenix Public Library - and I'm sure that there are dozens or hundreds more.

Thanks to superpatron George Hotelling for pointing me to this, and there's some discussion also on digg.

Technorati Tags: library, anime, superpatron

Archives failure: NASA loses moon landing original video

From Eric Ederer via Red Tape

The government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong’s famous “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” a NASA spokesman said yesterday.

Armstrong’s moon walk, seen by millions of television viewers on July 20, 1969, is among the transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaloma said.

NASA has retained copies of the TV broadcasts and offers several clips on its Web site. But those images are of lower quality than the originals stored on the missing magnetic tapes.

Archives and museums are not just for teaching history; NASA is also going back to museums to see original Apollo rocket parts (Washington Post/AP, Aug 15 2006) to get ideas and examples for engineers who are building the next generation of spacecraft.

UPDATE: also seen on Boing Boing.

(this should go in a government documents / archives category too)

Technorati Tags: apollo, archives, govdoc, moon, nasa

7 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do at the Library (via Pop Goes the Library)

7 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do at the Library - MSN Encarta, from superpatron Martha Brockenbrough. Here's thing two:

Even if my local branch doesn't have the book or movie, it's no problem. I just have it sent where I want it--free of charge. This is the second amazing library secret: They're happy to move things from one library in the system to another if it makes it easier for you to get what you want.

Thanks to Pop Goes the Library for the link.

That blog has some great ideas about DVD discussion groups (using a special collection to make sure everyone in the group can see the movie without fear of late fees), tips for libraries who want to circulate comics (hint: clear tape reinforcement), and a pointer to Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge.

Library mashup idea: LibraryThing + IMDB

For the Talis library mashups contest, and idea came from Fran Dowd on the LibraryThing mailing list:

I looked at the forum and I'm not bothered about the prize, and haven't time / space / skills to do the work, so I'll just put my idea up here and anyone else is welcome to it ...

I would like a site that linked Library stuff with Film/TV stuff (like being able to merge LibraryThing and imdb.com).

It's about taking the "work" encompassing "edition" capability to the next level, really.

I'd like to be able to see what movie versions or TV adaptations there had been of any book / play, write / read reviews that specifically referenced the original text and the adaptations and discussed various approaches, looped me back from film to original works, novelisations, graphic novels etc. (And if it could add DVDs to my Amazon rental list at the click of a button, that would be even better.) I'd want to be able to catalogue videos / DVDs in LT and link them to the relevant written work - BladeRunner, Throne of Blood, Importance of Being Earnest, V for Vendetta.

Sounds great!

Looking up your library's movie holdings from a review site

Movie Dude v1.5 w/AADL additions
Originally uploaded by Edward Vielmetti.

I was at the Ann Arbor blogger meetup last night, talking with mitten about movies. She said that when it comes time to look up movies to check out from the library she keeps two windows open: one on IMDB and one on the AADL site.

I thought about this a bit and went looking for a way to make it a little easier. Here's the first try. It's based on The Movie Dude, a Greasemonkey script that adds links to Netflix, Yahoo, Amazon, and IMDB movie reviews when you are on any of those sites.

A little bit of surgery and I was able to add in support for the AADL, at least for going from IMDB etc to the AADL. In the opposite direction I couldn't see any easy way to parse out the title of the movie from the HTML that the catalog provides.

If you want to give it a try, no guarantees, see

http://www.superpatron.com/moviedude15-aadl.user.js

You'll need Greasemonkey and Firefox to try this out.

My dream going in was to give a live accounting of not just whether the library had a title but also how many holds there were on it and what branch it was at if it was in - I think that's within the realm of reason if I can find someone who has already done an RSS in Javascript module that I can borrow.

Still experimenting.

UPDATE 6/06: Movie Dude has been updated to cover a few more sites; this script might be improved by syncing up with the current release.

New category "library mashups" added.

Technorati Tags: firefox, greasemonkey, library, mashup, mashups, moviedude