access should be on your MIND before the building project, not after

Seattle Public’s new building has some serious accessibility flaws, say disabled users. While some of these concerns are stylistic, some are quite serious and should have been thought about before the design was finalized. People with disabilities were invited to give their input about the design, but felt that it was ignored. SPL says it is willing to make changes. Similarly today ALA discussed making the ALA web site more friendly to the visually disabled stating [on the Council list] “[T]he Web Advisory Committee and ASCLA are currently working with ITTS on a priority list for implementing accessibility on an application by application basis.” Wouldn’t it have been nicer — and cheaper — if they had made accesibility a priority before they built the site?

hi – 21jun

Hi. Happy Solstice. Today I took a book-truckload of books over to the local senior residential center as part of a monthly Bookshelf program I’ve been trying to get started. 20-30 books, mostly large print, some books with normal type but lots of pictures [art books, gardening books], delivered monthly on a regular schedule. Books on tape coming soon and we take request. I generally get along pretty well with older people, but it was particularly gratifying to have some smiling older woman come right up to me and say “Hey this is a really neat idea, thanks for doing this.” and then walk off with a book of Krazy Kat comics or a Learn To Use Your Computer book.

Posted in hi

google as giant digital library? not quite.

A sane article on the whole Google vs. The Library thing. There’s some good thinking here, although I would argue that the NYTimes’ paraphrase of the issue as “A few research librarians say Google could eventually take on more of the role of a universal library.” could more accurately be stated — based on their own quotations, as “A few research librarians say Google could eventually take on more of the role of indexing a universal library.” [NYT, randomwalks]