No one saw this coming.The plan was simple enough. The Library of Congress teamed with Flickr for a pilot project called The Commons, which basically consisted of LOC opening a Flickr account and uploading a little over 3,000 images (the LOC houses 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials!)The goal was to address two of the major challenges the library faces:1. "how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and2. "how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity."The result was astonishing and could arguably be...
Book Scavengers
scav·enge: to take or gather (something usable) from discarded material.There are hundreds of them. They have gangster names like Tommy Books and Leprechaun and roam the streets of New York in the wee hours of the morning looking for books. Nothing is off limits - dumpsters, garbage cans, anyplace that might hold a discarded book is fair game. They gather as many as they can hold and then head to the corner of 12th of Broadway and wait.What are they waiting for?9:30am. For this is the time The Strand bookstore opens and they can turn their found objects into cash!This...
Thomas Jefferson’s Books Arrive at LibraryThing
The library of Thomas Jefferson, which is the library that made up the backbone of the early Library Congress, has arrived at LibraryThing.Using E. Milicent Sowerby's five-volume bibliography as their guide a group of sixteen catalogers took four months to enter nearly 4,900 titles and 187 of Jefferson's reviews.Now all the bells and whistles of LibraryThing are available for one of the greatest libraries ever assembled in this country; all those clouds and stats are now in play.Tim Spalding the founder and guiding light of LibraryThing frames the significance of this best when he says "On LibraryThing it's not just...
The Marriott Library Goes Robotic
The University of Utah's main library has installed the largest automated book retrieval center in North America. The new robotic book storage and retrieval system holds 2 million books and frees up 80,000 square feet of prime library space.Machine Details:-Rail-mounted robotic retrieval cranes move up and down four aisles. -Each aisle is 130 feet long, 35 feet tall, and holds 19,181 bins.-Has its own heating and air-conditioning system-Built by HK SystemsBook Details:-"Older and less used materials" are stored in the Automated Retrieval Center (ARC)-The books are stored by size not call number and it takes between 5 to 10 minutes...
Goodreads Rising as the Year Ends in the Book Social Networking World
2007 will go down as the year book social networking got shot out of the canon and as the year comes to a close we see Goodreads rising, Shelfari stumbling and LibraryThing coasting along.Goodreads ended the year with an estimated $750,000 infusion via a group of angels consisting of "six influential Internet pioneers." Murmurings could be heard back in October when Marc Hedlund at O'Reilly Radar commented on how he and a bunch of his friends were corralled into joining Goodreads. Hedlund confessed his love for LibrayThing's blog but admits he isn't very fond of its product. Hedlund ended the...