Cultural heritage resources at UKOLN

From Lorcan
UKOLN has published a range of short briefing documents aimed at supporting use of networked technologies and services in the cultural heritage sector.

www.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/documents

The initial series of documents covers Web 2.0 (with a focus on blogs and social networks), usability, collection description, metadata and preservation.

Start with IntroBytes documents for quick introductions to a variety of topics, and then move on to Best Of to find other useful sources of information and Ariadne to keep up to date

Research resources for the visual arts

Some of the art librarians on the Arlisanz list have been discussing online resource guides to assist students with image research.

Librarians at the Sydney College of the Arts have created an image collections page www.library.usyd.edu.au/subjects/finearts/artimages.html

Other libraries are considering something more along the lines of a multimedia resource, like the iResearch learning objects at http://elearning.library.usyd.edu.au/

While librarians at RMIT have a guide that will be updated eventually into the Libguide format. http://www.lib.rmit.edu.au/guides/images.html

Sustainability

Sustainability is one of the Library's strategic priorities which makes The Green Library blog something to keep an eye on.

The Green Library blog is devoted to documenting significant activities, events, literature, and projects that focus on " ... increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources — energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment during the building's lifecycle, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal" of and by libraries.

http://thegreenlibraryblog.blogspot.com/

del.icio.us

Abbey Lee filing cards in the Mitchell catalogue at at 2 am

Your blog as a place to lodge ideas - an idea repository

From Awareness to Funding is the title of a report published recently by OCLC . The report is based on a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which looked at attitudes and perceptions about library funding and the potential of a large-scale marketing and advocacy campaign to increase public library funding in the U.S.

Some of the findings from the report:

• Library funding support is only marginally related to library visitation
• Perceptions of librarians are an important predictor of library funding support

and

• Voters who see the library as a 'transformational' force as opposed to an 'informational' source are more likely to increase taxes in its support
  

Libraries of the future

Found in Dlib: "What is the future of academic and research libraries? A recently launched web site from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) entitled Libraries of the Future http://www.jisc.ac.uk/librariesofthefuture addresses that question and others concerning how the libraries of today may evolve to address the needs of future information users. With the site, JISC hopes to engender discussion through various means, including interactive Web 2.0 services, a blog, podcasts, an events calendar, various types of documents (such as slides from event presentations), and links to other, related sites"

Moving forward

Libraries should be “more and more a place to do stuff, not just to find stuff. We need to stop being a grocery store and [start] being a kitchen.”

- Joan Frye Williams at recent 2008 American Library Association Conference

Finding Time at Penn State

This presentation by Ellysa Cahoy shows how hard it can be to find some things in a library catalogue.
Fortunately on our web site access to Time magazine is only 4 clicks away ... although you do have to be onsite!!

Of cabbages--and kings

Late last year theauthor drew my attention to a new online journal code4lib. In its second issue there is an interesting article on the use of Web 2.0 tools for subject guides - http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/47

The wisdom of crowds

Can you name any of these characters?
If you think you know who they are -
add a tag as a comment ...
perhaps the collective wisdom of the Learning 2.0 group will prove Surowiecki's thesis

Puzzled .........

I have been trying to post a video on the Rum Rebellion featuring our own Paul Brunton. The short can be found on the Sydney Morning Herald's multimedia pages at http://www.smh.com.au/multimedia/2008/rumrebellion/main.html
Perhaps theauthor can help me!!

Picture Australia's OurTown

I have added some images to Picture Australia's Ourtown group. The National Library checks the group regularly, acquiring some images for its Pictures collection. According to PA's Flickr Report by April 2008 there were 2,031 images in Ourtown. I have assigned Creative Commons licenses and tagged the five images taken around Chifley Square in Sydney with slnsw2008.
The State Library of Victoria has a group photo pool on Flickr which aims to collate photos of the Library, its exhibitions and events.

Where the wild things are

In its Scootle database, the Le@rning Federation makes digital resources available for online curriculum content. The resources are sourced from Australia and New Zealand's premier cultural institutions including the National Library (such as invitation here). We need to be there too! see
www.scootle.edu.au

Use of wikis & blogs for subject guides

Meredith Farkas, in her May 2007 American Libraries article, points out that wikis can make "a subject guide easier to update, searchable, and collaborative” (Farkas 2007, p. 33). Here is an Early Childhood Education Subject Guide Built Using a Wiki: http://www.lib.fsu.edu/wiki/index.php/Early_Childhood_Education

Other libraries have used blogs to create and maintain subject guides. Plymouth State University in New Hampshire is using Scriblio, which is a customized version of the WordPress blogging software for their subject guides as well as their library OPAC. Here is an example of their Graphic Design Subject Guide Built using Scriblio: http://library.plymouth.edu/by-subject/graphic-design

Wikis

I have had a little play with wikis through my involvement with NSLA's Information Access Plan. I posted a paper on rights management by Jennie Berryman here https://wiki.nla.gov.au/display/NSLAIAP/Rights+Management+Discussion+Paper
and some information about authentication on the wiki hosted by the NLA. It is probably a good way to work collaboratively but I must admit I did find it intimidating contributing & commenting in such a public space. I think others must feel the same way because there has been very little activity since the workshop.

Flickr

I see on Lorcan's weblog the Powerhouse Museum is contributing 50 images a week to Flickr. It has joined the Library of Congress in the Commons on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/commons As Lorcan points out this is all about aggregating supply and demand and also combining audience & professional metadata. Seb Chan at the Museum comments "tonnes of tags have been added and they have been of a quality we have nor experienced in our other tagging projects" .There were some interesting interactions with users including a discussion about an image of a long demolished pub in the Rocks in Yahoo Answers.

Searching State Library of NSW on Flickr I found 241 hits including some false drops - photos of ceramic pots by clayglazepots. I couldn't see the phrase in the tags so the words must have been scattered thru the artist's extensive biog. Repeating the search as a phrase using inverted commas improved the results producing 119 hits.

Looking north

Looking north is the Library's new Discover atmitchell Collections site
There must be heaps of material [photos and docs] out there that people would love to contribute in a wiki type interactive collection. e.g. this photo of the corner shop in Greenwich Rd circa 1920’s.

When all the baby boomers retire and go online and start their family histories and dig through those old boxes of photos and ephemera – there will be a huge untapped reservoir of free and enthusiastic labour to help Mitchell Library build such sites.

Some news from George Bush about his memoirs, Library & microfish

Lake Wendouree

We travelled to Ballarat recently for a wonderful wedding. The drought has been severe in Victoria turning Lake Wendouree into a football oval. Prospectors with metal detectors have found coins, guns, knives and all manner of things on the Lake bed.
The State Library of Victoria opened a new storage facility at Ballarat in 2006. More than 100,000 newspapers; 25,000 boxes of manuscripts; 750,000 serial volumes were moved into the store on the campus of the University of Ballarat.

I should have a look at my friend Michael's blog for inspiration - Mike learned to love blogging in 2007 by doing a blog for his friend, Olive Riley. At 108, Olive is the oldest blogger in the world. www.allaboutolive.com.au The Library has archived Olive's blog in PANDORA
Mike's blog about family art stories is at http://familyartstoriesrubbo.wordpress.com/

Have just started reading The secret agent by Joseph Conrad first published in 1907. It is available electronically at Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/974 but I am reading the Library's copy at N823.912/47
It is now midnight and probably too late to read on .........