David Gwynn

Toronto Star article on threats to broadcast ephemera (one of my big interests) and other visual materials. The article also features a link to this cool YouTube channel.

So the project we’ve been working on for a year and a half made the local news last night. That’s always fun…

As excited as I was to see that LibraryThing now has an iPhone app, I was very disappointed to find that it doesn’t access your actual library, but instead just looks for bookstores and events based on your current location. Which, granted, is pretty cool–except for the fact that I was inside the pretty major university library where I work when I downloaded it. Guess what was nowhere to be found in the results?

I love LT enough to let this pass, really, but it was kind of a letdown.

This is the kind of archival project that few people think about, but that will also become incredibly important over the coming years. I’ll admit that preserving the real URLs behind all those shortening services wasn’t something I’d ever really considered. It also makes me wonder about strategies for preserving database-driven websites (like this one, for example). How does an external entity manage to save both the database and the PHP files that make it function? It’s not like saving static HTML pages, although I guess saving sites as generated in that format might be the only option at this point.

Just turned in my last paper for my last class in my last semester of library school.

So, ummm, what do I do now?

I work with the coolest insects in the world. I’d love to say I played a part in this video, but I can’t. I got to attend the world premiere, though…

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) for best adaptive reuse ever of a former McDonald’s location.

This is a nice commentary on preserving  libraries as physical spaces in an age of digitization.

On a similar note, here’s an article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the 120th anniversary of the first Carengie Library to be built in Braddock, Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh’s first Carnegie, in my adopted neighborhood of Lawrenceville, was on a recently proposed list of closures, but seems to have been spared for now. I love this vintage neighborhood library, with its (apparently) original shelving and fixtures. With some money (that’s always the catch), it could be an incredible landmark and probably an even more valuable community resource.

Library computer users viewing porn anger parents:

Kimberly Romie, whose Piedmont Homeschoolers Association members have increasingly complained about the problem, said some parents have stopped taking their children to the library.

“We’re talking about some really hardcore, gross stuff,” said Romie, who had three such experiences at the library and has heard similar accounts from other parents.

“My total issue is that it should not be allowed. Someone cannot stand over them the whole time. A child or a mom is going to end up walking in on this. And once you see it, you’ve seen it.”

Unfortunately, Ms, Romie sort of contradicts herself in the first and second sentences of the last paragraph where she follows “It should not be allowed” with “someone cannot stand over them the whole time”. Unfortunately, standing over them is about the only completely effective means of preventing the problem. Filters don’t work, they never have worked, and they cause far more problems than they solve. I understand her frustration, but other than constant monitoring or getting rid of internet access altogether, how would she propose solving this problem? “Not allowing it” is much easier said than done.