Found at Coudal Partners
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Not all libraries are struggling.
Take an amazing tour of Korea's Yonsei University Library. Thanks for the link, Mike.
Primo Central plain and simple
OK, it is blatantly an Ex Libris marketing tool, but was such a clear and concise explanation of Primo Central, I felt it merited posting:
From Old Books
From Old Books offers up over 2,770 high-resolution free images scanned from more than 160 different old or rare books.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
1001 Books for Kindle
1001 Books was designed for Kindle owners and offers hundreds of free downloadable editions of some of the world's greatest literature. There are also some commercial offerings for a price, but there was enough offered at no charge that we thought it worth posting. 1001 Books offers:
- A list of the world's greatest books
- Links to download the free books on that list
- Links to buy the books that aren't free
- Links to request unavailable books be made available
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The Free Sound Project
The Freesound Project is a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to:
- browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a "sounds-like" type of browsing and more
- up and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license
- interact with fellow sound-artists!
Every Time Zone
Every Time Zone is a useful and great looking online tool for easily figuring out what time it is in other time zones. It also allows you to drag the time slider so you can sync up future meetings as well if you work with global partners.
Found at Coudal Partners
Found at Coudal Partners
Beloit College's Annual "Mindset List"
For most college freshmen starting school this fall, e-mail is passe and wearing a watch on your wrist is, well, unnecessary, according to the Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014, most of whom were born in 1992. The list of 75 characteristics of the class was first created by the Wisconsin school in 1998 to remind professors what cultural factors have gone into shaping the lives of their students.
While e-mail was revolutionary for their parents, today's college freshmen find it terribly slow, instead choosing to use their opposable thumbs to send dozens of text messages a day on their smartphones, which they use for telling time rather than strapping on a watch and surfing the web.
Here are the first 20:
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”
4. Al Gore has always been animated.
5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.
6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.
8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.
9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.
11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.
14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.
15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.
16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.
17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.
18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Lynd Ward Six Novels in Woodcuts (boxed set)
The Library of America will release a 2 volume boxed set featuring the six woodcut novels of Lynd Ward. These are among the first novels without words. Ward is considered by many as one of the founders of the American graphic novel.
Via Book Patrol.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Are you a muddled grumbletonian?
Here is a little something for linguists, lowlifes and librarians. Oxford University is publishing a reprint of the first English dictionary of slang with an introduction by John Simpson, chief editor of the OED. Check the announcement and some sample entries here.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Postertext
With Postertext you can literally hang your favorite book on the wall with the complete text, arranged to depict a memorable scene from the book. Below are Pride and Prejudice and Moby Dick. Very cool!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Correlation Found Between Investment in University Libraries and Grant Awards
A study released today by Elsevier has shown Universities are more likely to get funding for research when investments in university libraries is high. If the findings are correct, it means the universities that can't invest in libraries in the first place, and need grants the most, can't get them.
Devour YouTube videos
From the site:
"Around 25 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. It would take you approximately 1700 years to watch all those millions of videos. So good luck trying to find something worth watching on your lunch break.
Devour is here to help. Using a scientifically technologically artificially intelligently awesomely robotically humanly system (we hand-pick every video on the site), Devour sifts out the best videos and posts the well-curated collection every weekday. Fewer cute kittens, fewer skateboarding nutshots, fewer tween heart throbs, and lots more awesome.
Oh, and did we mention that every single video on Devour.com is in HD? And that every single video plays on the iPhone and iPad? Yep. We did, however, leave out one thing — comments. So enjoy the peace and quiet of not having to wade through all the brilliant critiques from this great nation's junior high masterminds."
Friday, August 06, 2010
Tag Galaxy
Just enter any word as a "tag" and generate your own Tag Galaxy (except it is really more of a "system" than a galaaxy. It is really fun if you give it a word it doesn't recognize.
The Helvetictoc
Cool idea: A prose-driven clock in Helvetica. Let run a bit and enjoy: The Helvetictoc
The Digital Bookcover
Just because a book is digitized doesn't mean it can't have an interesting cover:
Found at Book Patrol
Found at Book Patrol
Neo-vintage ads for social networks
Advertising Agency: Moma, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Creative Director: Rodolfo Sampaio
Art Director: Marco Martins
Copywriter: Adriano Matos
Illustrator: 6B Studio
Published: July 2010
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Two new LOC iPhone applications
The Library of Congress is the world's largest library and the largest body of knowledge under a single roof. Two new iPhone applications The Library of Congress Virtual tour (free), and The Library of Congress Reader(.99) give a fascinating look into the institution.The Virtual Tour walks you through the Main Reading Room, The Great Hall and much much more. The Reader grabs the top stories from the Library and feeds them to your iPhone or Touch. All great stuff if you are into not just books, but a major part of American life, culture and history.
1940s America in Color
These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.
From The Denver Post
Via TYWKIWDBI
From The Denver Post
Via TYWKIWDBI
A house made of books
"Scanner" by Matej Krén was specifically created for the Museo d'Arte Moderna ai Bologna. Throughout his career, Krén has focused mainly on the means of elaboration and transmission of knowledge, establishing suggestive links between their historical and ideological relativity and the experimentation with many forms of optical and perceptual illusion.
This "house" was made of books because they are symbols of intrinsically human free thought, books are here “used” as raw materials for an artistic process existing and communicating on many distinct levels.
More info and pics here.
This "house" was made of books because they are symbols of intrinsically human free thought, books are here “used” as raw materials for an artistic process existing and communicating on many distinct levels.
More info and pics here.
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