Linnie Rawlinson has a piece on CNN titled Seattle Central Library: Creating the Perfect Public Space in which she urges people looking for ways to make "public spaces outstanding" to look to Seattle and how it pulled off and executed the Libraries For All campaign in which it raised over $200 million to create and remodel 27 library branches. The crown jewel of the campaign being the Rem Koolhaas-designed Central Library."Seattle is a city of readers, but our library buildings were getting tired...they were not working, not big enough, not functional for the change in the way information is being...
Collector 2.0
Is everybody a collector? There is a new social networking site that's banking on it.Collectors' Quest believes everybody collects; "Our world is full of stuff and human beings are wild and creative enough to find ways to collect most anything," is how they put it."Collectors are passionate, enthusiastic, engaged but often disconnected" and their goal is to connect them.Their tagline: "Where Hunters Gather"Beside the usual social network components they are plugging CQTV "a broadband TV network that will open new avenues in interactivity, community, and commerce while redefining the business model for new digital programming."They have a seasoned top-tier management...
E-Mail From Your Typewriter
What happens when a mom "just couldn’t deal with a computer’s scroll bars, control keys, mouse, and other “cryptic” hardware," and her kid is technically inclined?The kid makes a "typewriter that sends email. It is a regular portable typewriter, which has concealed electronics that automatically sends the typed letter as an email...when the letter is finished and pulled out of the machine's carriage"The project is called 22 Pop (after the Olivetti typewriter, Letterea 22 and a reference to internet protocol terminology) and not only does it help his mom but it expands the boundaries of the e-mail universe. "The project...
For Your Halloween Bookshelf
"Antique looking books seem perfectly harmless until someone walks by, then the middle book slides out toward the victim as if it will fall from the shelf. Books also emit spooky sounds for a totally haunted effect."They are calling them Possessed Books and they sell for $25.There is also a little video clip of them in action at the above link.For an added fee they should let you pick the titles for the spine labels.Any ideas?via Boing Boing
The Library Sale as a Contact Sport
The public library sale, especially in major cities, has always been a competitive event. They are important inventory streams for most used booksellers who have an open book shop and for most book scouts. They get there early and when the doors open they turn off all appearances of civility and enter accumulation mode.Now these sales are also the feeding grounds for the new breed of booksellers who sell primarily online and deal almost exclusively in books with ISBN numbers, that is books printed after 1966 or in many cases after 1974 when it became the worldwide standard.Most of the...