Superpatron

Because it's hard to download an analog synth with knobs

The Ann Arbor District Library has a super-cool new music tools collection, and so I checked out a Korg Monotron Delay from the library today and was making frog and cricket and space-age noises tonight. They check out for a week. Fun!

Rock and Roll Public Library - Mick Jones

From the blog London Calling, here is Mick Jones's announcement of the five-week instalation of the Rock n Roll Public Library in London:

The Rock n Roll Public Library is Mick Jones’s (The Clash, B.A.D, Carbon Silicon) direct artistic challenge to the likes of the corporate 02 British Music Experience. Rather than let his creative legacy atrophy Jones is ’transforming’ his own archive of near 10.000 artefacts into one unique ‘guerrilla-library.’ Set under the Westway motorway in 3000 sq.ft of former office space, Jones’s five-week civic endeavour will also encourage visitors to enrol, interact with the archive-exhibition (Jones began collecting well before he formed The Clash in 1976 to eventual international success, as such it forms an invaluable guide to the influences that informed Jones as a pop-artist). Also uniquely by request users will be able to scan (courtesy Genus, U.K distributor of the Book2net Kiosk) certain objects and via memory stick carry them away. Please note visitors to the world’s first, resolutely alternative, Rock n Roll Public Library shouldn’t expect peace and quiet.

Note the scanning process for taking things away; would that more organizations had that as part of their mission, and not as something to be tacked on as an afterthought.

 

 

The High Strung "Welcome to the library tour" documentary

"We're going to blow the roof off of libraries."

More about this Detroit band at thehighstrung.com, including mp3s and tour dates. Locally to michigan they are playing

Jul 22
Cromaine Library
Hartland, MI

Jul 23
Milford Public Library
Milford, MI

thanks dcb for the heads up.

Coverflow - browse through your album art

Coverflow is a shiny piece of eye candy for Mac OS X iTunes listeners. It gives you a nice simple and attractive way to flip through your album covers one at a time and then play what you see. See a review on Cool Hunting.

If anyone wants to do a mashup, here's a library idea - take a good easy to parse catalog interface like John Blyberg's AADL REST interface and hook it up to something like this so that you can flip through book covers just the same way. Or even do cover art for new books with a flip-interface through the RSS interface from Steal This Library, or your own personal collection from LibraryThing.

The High Strung summer library tour

Chela Weber writes:

Hi Edward-
I'm an MLIS student at Wayne State and have just started reading your blog. While you seem more focused on tech, I thought you still might be interested in this. The rock band The High Strung will play the main branch of Detroit Public Library this Wednesday as part of their summer library tour. I think it's very library 2.0, in a low-tech manifestation.
Following are a few links for more info:

http://www.lib.wayne.edu/geninfo/news/news.php?id_look=130

http://www.thehighstrung.com/library.html

Great reading your blog, thanks!

Chela