Future & Present Librarians,

I went down to Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park last week to find a well run free library, which had been set up by a librarian on day one of the demonstrations there, over a month ago. Users can take books, and return them when and if they can. Donations are encouraged, though they have too much fiction and would prefer more works on politics, economics, and history. Their collection contains hundreds of books, of all kinds, for all readers, and they have some periodicals, ‘zines, CD’s and such. LibraryThing has given them a lifetime account, and they process and catalog items with it by ISBN, using an iPhone scanner, when possible.

Anyone can volunteer at the OWS Library. It’s a very satisfying experience, and a cool, bustling place to be. The Library is at the northeast corner of Zuccotti Park, at the intersection of Broadway and Liberty Street.

More info on the Occupy Wall Street Library can be found at their website – http://peopleslibrary.wordpress.com/

The Queens Memory Project (QMP) is a site of digital collective memory which began here at Queens College, and in collaboration with Queens Library, as an independent study for GSLIS alumni and project director, Natalie Milbrodt.  It is a digital archive, but its public face is a website featuring interviews and photos documenting the lives of contemporary Queens residents. These stories and images are presented alongside digitized historical photographs, maps, news clippings and other rare archival records.

If you are interested in archives, oral history, digital memory projects, or anything and everything Queens please check out our website and join us on Facebook (Queens Memory Project) and Twitter (@Queensmemory) to receive the latest news on exciting events coming this fall!

Great story from GSLIANN, posted by Professor Chelton:

“Hello, I’m Henry!”

We have a new staff member named Henry! Henry works with Mike B., a librarian at the Central Branch, and he’s a handsome fellow, yes?

Service Dogs are trained to work with individuals with physical or mental disabilities including panic attacks, PTSD and depression. But it’s not easy to become a Service Dog. First, the dogs must be screened for temperament. A good Service Dog is not protective, is people-oriented, is not overactive, and is confident but not dominant or submissive. Some are trained from puppyhood, but like many Service Dogs today, Henry is a rescue dog. With the downturn in the economy, shelters are finding that increasing numbers of dog owners are giving up their dogs because they are either relocating or having to downsize to places that don’t allow dogs. Many of these rescues are well suited to the rigorous training that a certified facility can provide.

These doggies undergo months of training with instructors and then they have to train with their people. Henry trained with Heeling Allies for 6 months and with Mike alone for several weeks. More training is ahead; Henry is going to be as educated as any librarian you’ll ever meet!

If you run into Henry, remember some of the etiquette for interacting with people and their Service Dogs:

1. Speak to the person first. Do not aim distracting or rude noises at the dog .
2. Do not touch the service dog without asking for, and receiving, permission.
3. Do not offer food to the service dog.
4. Do not ask personal questions about the handler’s disability, or otherwise intrude on his or her privacy.
5. Don’t be offended if the handler does not wish to chat about the service dog.

Mike and Henry during training

Mike describes Henry as very serious at work but playful at home (he knows, in life, you need to mix it up a bit). He is great with kids, lets cats share his food dish while he is eating, and has a wise, yet puppyish soul. To learn more about the wonderful work done by service animals, check out Elise Lufkin’s inspiring and informative To the Rescue: Found dogs with a mission, Rachel McPherson’sEvery Dog Has a Gift: True stories of dogs who bring hope & healing into our lives, and Patricia Dibsie’s beautifully illustrated Love Heels: Tales from Canine companions for independence.

~ Marty, Broadview Branch

The ARChive of Contemporary Music is the largest collection of popular music in America, with more than two million recordings.  Our music book collection is also one of the best in America, numbering 20,000+ volumes.  To scan this resource the Internet Archive has installed one of their Scribe machines in our Lower Manhattan facility.  When completed, all of our materials will be preserved electronically, OCR Readable, and available in-house for reading and research.

Currently, we are looking for interns for Fall of 2011 and Spring 2012. Interns will share responsibilities with volunteers and employees and will be involved with every part of the project.

Internship description and duties:

• Scanning involves handling a wide assortment of delicate and valuable books while utilizing the Internet Archive’s Scribe Machine.
• Republishing and touch up is done through open source software at www.archive.org.
• Metadata creation/manipulation requires melding of our filemaker catalog with existing MARC records at the Internet Archive.

Qualification requirements:

• Some library experience and/or graduate-level library classes.
• Good interpersonal skills, responsible, reliable, detail-oriented.
• Familiarity with and enthusiasm for music, books, and the visual arts!

Those that wish to take on a larger role will be invited to apply to formally manage the project for a term of no less than one Semester. Project Management will require overseeing all of the required processes as well as scheduling and managing team members. Management may be ideal for a student interested in receiving credit for independent study, or for those focused on a career in  digitizing materials. Potential Interns should email will@arcmusic.org and should provide a resume with a few words about their interest in this project.

We would greatly appreciate it if you passed this message on to Queens College students or faculty with applicable research interests (Music Archives, Special Libraries, Digitization, Copyright/ Public Domain Issues). We would also love to discuss establishing a long-term relationship with your program that could be promoted to our mutual benefit. We are regularly undertaking cutting edge projects in the field and always need the help and spark that interns provide.

Yours,

Will Susich, Archivist / Project Director

The ARChive of Contemporary Music

54 White Street

New York NY 10013 USA

(212) 226-6967

Click here to view the embedded video.

According to Pariser, there are at least 57 ways Google filters (or “tailors”) your search results.  There’s a lot of speculation about what “signals” are employed.  The following blog posts provide more information:

• What are the 57 signals google uses to filter search results?

• The Filter Bubble

Here’s the info on Pariser’s book.  He is board president and former executive director of MoveOn.org.

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You

Eli Pariser; Penguin Press 2011

WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder

 

NYPL Labs presents: Digital Humanities and the Future of Libraries

A conversation in honor of Dr. Paul LeClerc with:

Kari Kraus, Jon Orwant, Dot Porter and Doug Reside

Thursday June 16, 4-6pm at The New York Public Library

Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (42nd St. and 5th Ave.), South Court Auditorium

FREE and open to the public

Since the early days of the field, Digital Humanities practitioners have frequently found allies and collaborators in librarians and archivists. Many early digital humanities projects centered around organizing and making accessible information–two activities at the core of the mission of almost every library. Perhaps for this reason,many of the largest digital humanities centers are physically situated in and often at least partially funded by University libraries.

Nonetheless, the field has traditionally been led (with a few notable exceptions) by faculty from humanities departments rather than by library staff, and libraries have tended to isolate digital humanities centers as somewhat quarantined departments separate from the daily work of the institution. However, as both digital humanities and librarianship develop in the 21st century, there are indications that these walls of separation are beginning to erode. In this panel discussion, NYPL Digital Curator for the Performing Arts,Doug Reside, and three digital humanists from very different backgrounds will discuss the future of libraries and the digital humanities and how these two related, but as yet mostly separate fields, may (or may not) finally converge.

This event is held in honor of outgoing NYPL President Dr. Paul LeClerc, whose vision and passionate advocacy have advanced the frontiers of digital humanities innovation at the Library. The event is sponsored byNYPL Labs, a collaborative team of librarians, curators and technologists developing new ideas and tools for digital research.

Participants

KARI KRAUS is an assistant professor in the College of Information Studies and the Department of English at the University of Maryland. Her research and teaching interests focus on new media and the digital humanities, textual scholarship and print culture, digital preservation, transmedia storytelling, and game studies. Kraus is a local Co-PI on an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant for preserving virtual worlds; a Co-PI on an IMLS Digital Humanities Internship grant; and, with Derek Hansen (iSchool), the Co-Principal Investigator of an NSF grant to study Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and transmedia storytelling in the service of education and design. In addition to the University of Maryland, she has taught at the University of Rochester and the Eastman School of Music, and in the Art and Visual Technology program at George Mason University.

JON ORWANTis Engineering Manager at Google, where he works on Book Search, Patent Search, visualizations, and the digital humanities, where he recently launched the Google Books Ngram Viewer. He’s the author or co-author of several books on programming, including the bestselling Programming Perl, and published an independent computer magazine. Before joining Google he was the CTO of O’Reilly & Associates and Director of Research for France Telecom. He received his doctorate from MIT’s Electronic Publishing Group in 1999.

DOT PORTER is currently the Associate Director for Content & Services in the Digital Library Program at Indiana University. Ms. Porter holds an MA in Medieval Studies and an MS in Library Science, although after receiving her MSLS rather than going to work in a library, she took a position in a digital humanities center. Over the next seven years she dedicated herself to working with humanities scholars to undertake faculty-driven digital projects. These projects often involved working closely with librarians, and with other scholars, such as computer scientists, as well, but the driving force behind the projects was always the humanities scholar. In June 2010, Ms. Porter came to work in the Digital Library Program at IU and was immediately stuck with a bit of culture shock. Although the technologies used in DL are very similar to those in DH, the aims and goals can be quite different, and working between the two can be an interesting, educational, and engaging experience.

DOUG RESIDE (moderator) became Digital Curator for the Performing Arts at New York Public Library in January of 2011 after serving for four and a half years on the directorial staff of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland in College Park. He holds a BS in Computer Science and a BA, MA, and Ph.D. in English Literature. He has been a PI on three earlier startup grants (The Ajax XML Encoder, Music Theatre Online, and the Collaborative Ajax Modeling Platform) and the co-PI with Tanya Clement on the Off the Tracks workshop. Additionally, he is the original project director of the NEH Preservation and Access funded Text Image Linking Environment (TILE) which is scheduled for release in the summer of 2011.

Jason Kucsma
Acting Interim Director & Emerging Technologies Manager
Metropolitan New York Library Council
212.228.2320 x23
www.metro.org

New York Public Library, New York City, in 1914 (Wikimedia Commons)

Monday is the New York Public Library’s 100th birthday. Check out the festivities at the Belmont Library in the Bronx. And all you librarians, don’t miss this Sunday’s New York Times’ crossword puzzle!

Dear GSLIS Students.

I am happy to offer the below workshops focusing on EAD and its evolving relationship with web 2.0 technologies, and, most notably Archivist Toolkit.  I am further delighted to welcome GSLIS Alum, Special Collections and Archives Fellow, and former Archives Assistant for the Queens College Civil Rights project Kevin Schlottman to campus to facilitate.  Kevin provided a similar workshop last semester to great success.  I feel it important to maintain a strong connection between students and alum in order to fully utilize the School’s estimable list of graduates.  Kevin, serves as a wonderful ambassador for this process.

Date: Tuesday, May 24
Times: 5-6 and 7-8.
Place: Will be confirmed and announced by weeks’ end.
This is a Free workshop sponsored by the Queens College Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists.

Abstract:

This workshop will provide an introduction to Encoded Archival
Description (EAD), the XML standard for encoding archival finding
aids.  It will focus on the syntax and structure of EAD and cover the
most common tags.  Related topics XSLT, namespaces, and the
implementation of EAD will be briefly addressed.  The workshop
includes a small hands-on component, and extensive additional
resources will be provided.  The goal of the workshop is to provide
students with the basic skill of encoding EAD finding aids.

Students are encouraged to explore the EAD website maintained by SAA:
http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/aboutEAD.html> and to read
Combs et al., “Over, Under, Around, and Through: Getting Around
Barriers to EAD Implementation”

http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2010/2010-04.pdf
before attending the workshop.

Ben Alexander
Assistant Professor, The Graduate School of Library and Information Studies
Director, Archival Studies Program, The Graduate School of Library and Information Studies
Head of Special Collections and Archives, Queens College Libraries
Queens College, The City University of New York
Benjamin.Alexander@qc.cuny.edu
(718) 997-3757

The two speakers for the workshop will be:

• Molly Kleinman, Copyright Specialist and Special Projects Librarian, University of Michigan Library
• Joy  Kirchner, Librarian, Collections, Licensing & Digital Scholarship, University of British Columbia Library

Following the ACRL workshop, afternoon break-out sessions will expand on issues raised by the presenters as well as related topics.

Please register at the following link:

http://cunyacrlroadshow2011.eventbrite.com/

If you have any questions about the event, please contact one of the planning committee co-chairs:

Bronwen Densmore

Instructional Design Librarian
Ursula C. Schwerin Library
New York City College of Technology

bdensmore@citytech.cuny.edu

John Carey

Head Librarian
Health Professions Library
Hunter College – Brookdale Campus
John.Carey@hunter.cuny.edu

Date: Wednesday, May 11, 2011Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Place: Godwin-Ternbach Museum, 405 Klapper Hall

Suggested Donation: $30 (payable at event)

Please RSVP to QC_GSLIS@qc.cuny.edu or 718.997.3790