Library students Turner Masland, Rebecca Chernay, Amy Frazier and Serenity Ibsen have made a delightful video The Visiting Librarian’s Guide to Portland. Donut and coffee suggestions and a lively soundtrack. And remember: Couch Street is pronounced “cooch.” Aaron Schmidt has also written a Walking Guide to Portland that is useful and the PLA Blog has a list of Portland libraries in case you’re like me and like to visit local libraries while you’re out and about.
while I was away – sxsw
So, I may have mentioned earlier that this is the month I’m away giving talks and talking to librarians instead of typing on my blogonet. I’m partway done. I’ve been to Florida and Alaska and Austin Texas and I’ll be stopping by Portland Oregon next week and then I’m pretty much done. I’ve done a few talks you’ve maybe heard before but the biggest news is the panel that NYPL’s Jenny Engstrom and I did at SXSW on Tuesday. It was called How The Other Half Lives: Touring The Digital Divide [link goes to our slides] and it was a look at how libraries are dealing with people on the other side of the digital divide.
Some of this is stuff you’ve heard before but some is newish. We were lucky enough to give our presentation after the FCC released the results of their broadband study but before they actually released their Broadband Plan, so there was a lot to talk about but not too much to fight about. The talk was well-attended, well-tweeted and folks asked a lot of questions and stuck around to talk more. I’ve just gotten back from Texas so I’ll save more links and discussions for a little later. Thanks to everyone who showed up and who supported us in our desire to get this talk on the roaster at SXSW. I think we gave people a lot of food for thought.
redefining what it means to read – the seven stages of librarianship
Enjoying listening to Jenny Levine talking about gaming in libraries. I’m still not much of a gamer, but I’ve definitely been seeing the value of gaming programs bringing teens into libraries. She pointed me to a document that I hadn’t read and am really enjoying [kill me, I’m multiasking!] called Fiat Lux, Fiat LateÂbra: A CelÂeÂbraÂtion of HisÂtorÂiÂcal Library FuncÂtions [pdf] by D. W. KrumÂmel. Not a new article (Jenny posted about it in 2008) but a great read including, especially “The Seven Ages of LibrarÂiÂanÂship†which is a great exposition of how the library has evolved and is evolving.
We have always been at war with the USA PATRIOT Act
possibly the best library hoax
“Jean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, was a man with a singular passion. He collected books of which only one copy was known to exist…. [W]hen he died on September 1, 1839 he possessed only fifty-two books, but each of them was absolutely unique. His heir, not sharing the old man’s passion for book collecting, arranged for an auction to sell off the library”
Compelling no? The auction really happened, the rest of it is made up, the creation of a local antiquarian, having a bit of a practical joke. Read more at blacksundae, or see the auction catalog, itself a rarity, on Google Books.