Top 10 Coolest Public Libraries

Here's a fun article about the 10 coolest public library buildings in the U.S. Two are from Massachusetts. Woo-hoo!






Photo by nengard.

Digital Commonwealth

Here's a resource developed by the Boston Public Library, the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, and regional library systems in the state. The Digital Commonwealth portal provides access to digitized collections of photos and other cultural artifacts from libraries and historical societies across the state.

Image from the Clifton Johnson Collection, 1880-1940. Jones Library Special Collections, Amherst, Massachusetts. http://dlib.cwmars.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/amherst&CISOPTR=8

I heart RSS

I love my RSS feeds and reader! Really, to be able to just come to one webpage whenever I have time and read all of my news in one place, well, that just makes my life a little bit easier. What I really love about RSS readers is that they will keep stories for you past the day they were on the New York Times, Boston.com, or BBC homepage. So, if I don't have time to scan the BBC page today, my feedreader will still link to the story tomorrow (most of the time, I know there are some exceptions).

This really gives me a chance to not feel pressured to make it to all the blogs and news pages in any given day. I can sit down once a week for about half an hour and catch up on all of my news. Even setting aside 5 or 10 minutes a day to browse my RSS feeds will keep me caught up on what is going on in the library world and the broader world.

Oh, by the way, you can subscribe to my blog by using the links on the right.

Flickr

I did a search for "libraries" on Flickr and was surprised at how many beautiful pictures of library buildings are available (even one of the Hogwarts Library). This picture is of the inside of the New York Public Library. (Photo by T.SC)


In doing my search, I knew I would get a lot of results for libraries because lots of public and academic libraries are using Flickr as a promotional tool and as a way to connect to their communities. The Library of Congress has digitized public domain photos from their collection and added them to Flickr as a way to make them available to the world for research or interest. They currently have more than 4,500 photos available. Right now the Library of Congress photostream includes lots of photographs of baseball players from the early 20th Century as part of their News in the 1910s collection. They also have a collection of color photos from the 1930s and 1940s showing daily life during the Great Depression and World War II eras.

The Newton Free Library has been very successful at using Flickr to promote and highlight their services, staff, and programs. I've been impressed to watch their photostream grow over the past year or so.

Talking with Auntie Jenn

Since we're talking about photos this week, here's a new one of Emmett.



And, I just have to include this cute video I took last weekend when I visited my brother and sister-in-law and nephew. Emmett is really vocal now and babbling a lot. Plus he's just so cute!

Acrobat.com

Yesterday I was researching Adobe software to purchase for some staff members and I came across a cool new tool Adobe has called Acrobat.com. It's free. All you need is a username and password. You can read about it here on Adobe's website. It reminds me of Google Apps a little, especially Google Docs. But there's one really interesting feature of Acrobat.com I want to try out soon. It's called Adobe ConnectNow. You can share your computer screen with other people and do a live chat. It's also similar to iChat, but has many more features. This could have some great possibilities for collaboration.

Many libraries have live virtual reference chat options for answering reference questions. One feature of virtual reference software is the ability to share the librarian's computer screen with the patron so that the patron can see which database the librarian is searching and how the librarian puts together keywords in a search. I can envision Adobe ConnectNow being similar to this chat software, but free. And with many more potential uses.

Anyone up for trying it out with me?

Baseball and Blogs

Monday night R and I went to the Red Sox ALDS playoff game against the Angels. Let's just say that in all the baseball games I've been to this one had to be the most exciting (and the coldest). When the Sox won the game, clinching a playoff spot in the ALCS, Fenway Park was wild! No one left, everyone was cheering, high-fiving. I think I got picked up and twirled around. So why am I talking about baseball?

It's interesting to me to see how different industries have moved into the web 2.0 world. The Red Sox website (while a little crowded) includes video highlights, links to players blogs, and applications for mobile devices. So, you can check out Jacoby Ellsbury's blog as well as Jason Varitek's squeeze play at 3rd base Monday night.

Web 2.0

I'm really excited that we are all taking part in this learning journey about Web 2.0 tools! I'll pepper my blog with some interesting articles and maybe some sports stuff along the way too.

While I am familiar with a lot of the Web 2.0 things we'll be learning about, I'm really excited to learn more about iTunesU. I looked at it a few months ago and found some cool PBS clips and lesson plans and thought that there might be a possibility that PS could use it to reach more teachers. So, I'm excited to play with it more and hear what others think about it.

Web 2.0 has been in my vocabulary for a while. It was becoming a big deal while I was in grad school at IU in 2003. And as an academic librarian I was expected to evaluate and use tools where possible in my teaching and in course management pages for faculty members. I'm really glad to have this opportunity to learn more about some of the tools I've been using and some of the new ones.