Rachel Singer Gordon is trying to get an idea of what library speakers are charging, and receiving, for speaking work, and what sort of work they are doing. Take a minute and go fill out her Speaking Survey.
Month: September 2006
SPL’s signage woes
I’ve talked before about Seattle Public’s newish Big Beautiful Library, and others have mentioned the weird juxtaposition of amazing architecture with crummy laser-printed signage or post-it signage. It’s no surprise that you can have cleaner lines and more striking architecture without little notes everyplace saying “this way to the restroom” but those are the choices we have to make as librarians. Now it looks like Seattle is finally paying someone to fix their sign problem. [thanks carolyn]
cARTalog – card catalog art
Cartalog is an online gallery of card catalog art, a great companion to John Blyberg’s Catalog Card Generator, check this post for more information about how the generator came about. Sadly, by the time I heard about the cartalog, they were no longer sending out cards.
portrait of the librarian at a young age
Today is my birthday. I am 38. It’s been a pretty good day so far. One of the places I am going today is the library.
no glove no love? the necessity of white gloves for conservation
In a paper published last year (pdf) but only getting noticed in the mainstream media recently, conservation consultant Cathleen A. Baker and librarian
Randy Silverman argue that for the handling of most types of materials, white gloves don’t help, may hurt, and create a false impression of protection where none exists.
Current reading room rules do little to instruct patrons about preferable handling practices, relying on the impression that wearing gloves adequately achieves collections care. Even if cotton gloves were capable of providing effective prophylactic barrier between patrons and the collection, their use promotes the false illusion that the hands, once encased, are somehow transformed into “safe†instruments. Wearing gloves actually increases the potential for physically damaging fragile material through mishandling, and this is especially true for ultra thin or brittle papers that become far more difficult to handle with the sense of touch dulled. Measures must be taken to reduce collection risks through instruction and example, we submit, but not through the use of gloves.