The Toronto reference library was recently renovated, and they sent a drone flying around it to get a bird's eye view. They now have a salon for "writers, thinkers, artists and innovators come together for conversation and debate."  They forgot to mention ASTRONAUTS.  Have any of you had experiences with drones in your libraries? Or astronauts, for that matter?

It was Banned Books Week last week.  Did you know it is still an issue? The Mercury out of Portland also has a list of books challenged in Oregon.

Did you know Overdrive is integrated with Bing search engine?  Overdrive is the company behind Library2Go, Oregon's digital library consortium.  Search for a title in Bing, and you'll notice now on the right side of the screen there's an option to borrow the book from Overdrive.  I searched for "donna tartt the goldfinch" and despite the weird results (El Jilguero?), I found it under "Read this Book".

The Library of Congress has many many things in its collection.  And people do many many creative things with them. And creepy things. Artist Kevin Weir has more examples over at his site.

Kevin Weir

More OLA 2014 Conference Wrap-ups

From "The Second Floor Librarians" blog of the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, here are some brief  thoughts about the conference as well as a link to a page containing some substantial book art.  Wet books, structures, Buddhas - there's a bit of everything.

Here's a conference wrap-up from OLA itself. There are links to the survey as well as the resources at NW Central.  There's also a list of award winners, both books and bingo. Sounds like fun!

You can read back through the twitter feed of the conference.

And finally, our State Librarian has a few quick thoughts on the conference over at her blog.

Did we leave anything out?

Secret messages found in library!

Secret message found in Weldon Library

Someone has been leaving coded messages in books at D.B. Weldon Library! Mike Moffat is keeping track of them in his blog over at Reflections on Southwestern Ontario.  What do they mean?  Who is leaving them?  They come with trinkets and drawings and are so far inscrutable. I love this kind of thing, which is why I rated Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore so highly in goodreads.

If your library has themed displays for the coming planting season, a seed library might be a good addition.  It seems seed libraries would be a good fit in Oregon.

Multnomah County Library is celebrating it's 150th anniversary this year, and Kelly House, a reporter at the Oregonian, was lucky enough to get a peek in some of the early historical records. The founders certainly had some beautiful penmanship.

There was a recent story about Google having the interiors of libraries available through Street View over on ebookfriendly.com, but they don't compare to the interior tour you can take of the Strahov Library, which is the worlds largest indoor picture as of March 2011.  It is beautiful.  You can take the tour (which might take a little too much time if you're at work) or you can click and pan and zoom on your own, and get closer than you ever could in real life.  The resolution is stunning.

Strahov Ceiling Detail

Best library things this week

Barbara Wildenboer altered books

Barbara Wildenboer has made some pretty amazing book art.  I look at these and think: "So pretty, but they look valuable and they've been cut up!"  What do you think? Beautiful art or "save the books!"?

Using 3D printers in libraries is becoming more common, but this is the first I've heard of someone doing such a generous thing. What cool things has your library printed?

Amazing approval ratings for public libraries

We don't all work in public libraries, but this article from The Atlantic is an uplifting quick blurb about people's attitudes towards libraries and I'm sure that feeling is shared towards all good libraries!

Here's a library that got it wrong:  A library in Italy was "ransacked" by the director... of the library.  

But don't fret, here's a library that got it right: The British Library uploaded one million public domain pictures to Flickr.com. Enjoy!

75 years ago today...

Proquest is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the use of microfilm in preserving and storing documents, particularly in libraries.  And how are they celebrating?  They've released a comic all about Eugene Powers, who in starting University Microfilms, Inc. became the *ahem* powerhouse behind this innovation.  You can read the comic here.

World's tiniest books

Joshua Bright for The New York Times

I couldn't resist posting about this. Have you ever seen such adorable books? The books described in this article about a serious collector are: "By definition, miniature books are properly printed and bound, and for the most part no larger than three inches."  I think shelving them would present the average shelver with a whole new set of ergonomic challenges.

The National Medal for Museum and Library service has been announced. Libraries in our northern and southern neighboring states are included in the list of honorees. Congrats!

The 2013 Conference page has been updated!  Check it out. We have a lot of financial incentives again this year.

Library news and ergonomics and slides

This article about crowdfunding is a pretty good answer to the question in one of our previous posts about funding libraries. There are a few other options besides kickstarter.com and it's interesting to see what results people got or didn't get.

Here's a great online course from the University System of Georgia all about library ergonomics that gives more information about what happens when you use your body incorrectly, and makes you pay attention with sporadic quizzes throughout.

You've all seen the library slide by now, right?

Libaries in the news this week: What's unique about your collection?

We start off with a beautiful visualization of catalog searches from the entire state of Wyoming.
Filament Mind from yongjulee on Vimeo.

You can read more about this unique installation in the Wired article Massive Fiber-Optic Installation Lights Up Library Queries.

Public libraries around the country are adding some creative check-out options to their collections: Libraries offer weird things to draw new borrowers. I wouldn't necessarily call these "weird", just... new. Multnomah County is one of the libraries in Oregon offering the "Kill-O-Watt" meter to measure energy usage.  What does your library offer that might be considered "weird" by the uninitiated-to-libraries people? Please tell me there is a library in Oregon that checks out seeds.

And finally, a couple congratulations:
First to the folks at the Broad Channel Library, which just reopened after being wrecked by Sandy,
And second to Paralibrarian of the Year 2013: Laura Poe.

More Retro Library Posters and One Amazing Garden

Visit your school library!  This is part of a flickr set posted by user Enokson, who is a Library Technician in a school. I especially like the one with the cat reading about lions.  She also has some fascinating photos of textbook damage, although why I find them more fascinating when photographed instead of in real life, I don't know.  Have any of you dug up any treasures in your libraries?



And I highly encourage you to check out the Huntington Library's fully renovated Japanese Gardens. The photos of the grounds are breath-taking. I, for one, would not mind having that kind of an area for breaks during work.  Where is your favorite place to take breaks at your library?

Library takes over Walmart!

Well, not really, but the people in McAllen, Texas certainly have enough space now that an abandoned Walmart has been converted into a library.  What a great idea!

Within the first month following the opening, new user registration increased by 23%.

Have you all seen this outdoor library/art installation by Massimo Bartolini?

Who would like to be responsible for getting the books inside when it rains?  Let's see a show of hands...

Leaving and returning books

Ummm...

More book art, this time from artist Alicia Martin.  You can see several more views and a video in this My Modern Met post.

Do you work in a library where you get returns? Late returns?  How do your late returns compare to the one received by Archbishop Marsh's Library in Dublin?

More library designs and donations

Check out these library designs - public and private.


Southern Oregon University library may get a great donation of early Oregon history.

More book sculptures (that aren't donations) that are simply amazing.

And I'm not sure how I missed this, there's an animated greeting from the anonymous sculptor who donated her book sculptures to libraries in Scotland:

A Book For Xmas from a book for xmas on Vimeo.

You can find the entire continuing story at thiscentralstation.com.

There's more!

Photo by chrisdonia

More anonymous paper sculptures have appeared in Scotland libraries and museums, this time with a tantalizing farewell letter.

Beautiful Retro-Styled Library Posters

I stumbled on these posters from Nate Koehler today. They remind me of the illustrations in books I read as a child. They really are gorgeous. You can find the whole set at Nate's website or at design work life .

Mysterious Paper Sculptures

Have you all seen the amazing book sculptures left in libraries around Edinburgh?  They are really quite stunning.  And such a thoughtful and generous way to show appreciation for these essential institutions.

We get some lovely gifts from our patrons who sometimes bring us flowers or baked goods, and always hand them directly to us and get a big "thanks!".

The things we tend to receive anonymously are more on the weird side.  I swear I heard a story about someone finding teeth in the bookdrop one morning, but when trying to track down the source of that story, no one had heard it but me.  I'm sure I didn't make it up, though! Was it a misguided attempt to contact the tooth fairy?  A late night brawl in parking lot?

I know we've definitely had a kitten put in our bookdrop overnight. Quite the surprise for the morning crew! Fortunately, the kitten was not injured by books coming in on top of it and eventually found a good home.

What fabulous anonymous gifts has your library received? Or, barring that, what's the weirdest thing your library has received?

"There is not such a cradle of democracy on earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration." Andrew Carnegie 1835-1919

This past Monday I traveled from Eugene to Hood River for the SSD Board Meeting at the library there.  What a thrill and privilege it was to visit the Hood River library, recently reopened after a year's closure due to loss of funding.

The library is in the original Carnegie building with an addition built on at a later date.  Taking a brief walk around the building I spotted a delightful sculpture near the trees.  Taller than I it had a small brass plaque identifying it as "Stoniferous Pine" and was made entirely of rocks and flat stones in the shape of a tree.

They were fitted into place with no mortar, held together by their careful, complicated placement.

From the Hood River County Library District's website: "Hood River County's first publicly-funded library opened on September 13, 1912."   "Hood River County Library District recently became a member of the Libraries of Eastern Oregon, LEO, an organization dedicated to helping the many small, rural libraries across Oregon deliver great services to their users." 

The library reopened this July thanks to enthusiastic community support, generous monetary donations, and grants; and thanks to their library Foundation which used imaginative fund raising dinners held in local homes with themes based on books, in addition to their further dedicated efforts to solicit stable funding.  The Hood River library stands as a testament to those grass roots movements that often achieve what bureaucracy can't or won't.