Month: January 2005

why show movies @ your library?

Posted on by jessamyn

Why showing movies at libraries can be a good thing, as if you didn’t already know this.

The great thing about some public libraries, like this one, is the link the library sets up between the community, the library staff and the resources of the building and its contents. In this case, John Ciurrin from the Library introduced the film by referring to the Albany Public Library’s strong commitment to freedom of speech and how their large auditorium was dedicated to use by the community for a wide range of purposes. Dennis Mosley runs the Independent Film Forum at the Library, which has a loyal group of regulars. Venues like this are some of the most vital forums for public discussion in the country. [thanks dj]

hi – 26jan

Posted on by jessamyn

Hi. The reason I was curious about the things you can do without your gadgets is because my laptop broke while I was at ALA. I have a back-up laptop, but I learned in a hurry which things I do are laptop-specific. I had only an old copy of my postal-address book on my iPod, my “what I’ve read” RSS feed list was out of wack [I use Bloglines for back-up but NetNewsWire for regular reading], my IM client was ugly and my control key was in the wrong place. Otherwise, mostly not horrible which was good news. I try to have a set of tools that will work in a long power failure in addition to all the lovely blinky beepy widgetry that fills my office.

Posted in hi

librarianavengers: Designing for hyper-attentive cyborg children

Posted on by jessamyn

I have two confessions to make. 1. I never did like the International Children’s Digital Library much. I want to, I just don’t. 2. I haven’t been reading Erica’s LibrarianAvengers blog enough [now added to my RSS feeds]. Today’s post about the ICDL made me laugh out loud.

We need to run everything we do through a filter that asks: “If I click on this without an MLS, will it piss me off?” We need to acknowledge that design matters. We need to remove ourselves from our collections. We need to design websites that don’t mock the resources they contain. We need to do these things because otherwise all of our efforts are worthless. We need to design websites that don’t suck, because otherwise the kids that we care so much about are going to wander off and smoke crack. And it’s going to be our fault.