“Managing Monsters”? Academics and Assessment
Recently in the London Review of Books Marina Warner explained why she quit her post at the University of Essex. I found it a shocking essay. Warner was pushed out …
Read MoreAuthor: Jennifer Schaffner
“The Strange Library”
The English translation of Haruki Murakami’s new book, The Strange Library, (村上春樹, ふしぎな図書館) is coming out soon. I learned about it from Steve Witt of UIUC, at a workshop of international and …
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“a love letter to libraries and archives”
If you haven’t found Bethany Nowviskie’s keynote at dh2014, I recommend it. Strongly. As she began her talk (vicariously), I overheard these whispers on twitter: Brian Croxall: “It makes perfect …
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Collective Collections / Digital Preservation / Evolving Scholarly Record / Research Information Management / Supporting Scholarship / Systemwide Organization
A modern day equivalent of Leonardo’s notebooks? Bringing an “archival mind” to the evolving scholarly record
As I listened in on the #esrworkshop last night, I heard phrases like “the archive,” “digital curation,” and “archival paradigm.” Archivists are experts at intellectually tying together many elements of …
Read MoreMeasurement and Behaviors / Modeling new services / Research Information Management / Supporting Scholarship
User studies and risks for research libraries?
This is the first in a series of posts that synthesize conclusions of published user studies about desires and needs for research support. I’ve collected quite a stack of them. …
Read MoreArchives and Special Collections / Collective Collections / Digitization / Research Library Partnership / Supporting Scholarship
Special Collections in the Collective Collection
Last month I facilitated a forum at the New-York Historical Society about Putting ‘Special’ in the ‘Collective Collection.’ We think it might be the first ever meeting about the centrality …
Read MoreScan and Deliver… on Wikipedia!
I just learned from Max – our Wikipedian in Residence – that NARA (the US National Archives) is postings scans of archives on request and putting them up on Wikipedia. …
Read MoreArchives and Special Collections / Digitization / Libraries Archives and Museums / Renovating Descriptive Practice / Visual Resources
Thick Description: Fingerprints, Sonnets, and Aboutness in Special Collections
Discoverability of special collections has long been a top concern of the OCLC Research Library Partnership. What works? Break out of the OPAC? Beyond MARC? End run around EAD? Constance …
Read MoreTurning out the lights on MissingMaterials.org
It’s always sad to say goodbye, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do. I want to alert you that the MissingMaterials.org experiment will close at the end of 2012. …
Read MoreThe Empires Fight Back – Globalization and Area Studies
Last week at our FutureCast meeting, Deborah Jakubs, University Librarian at Duke, gave us a thoughtful analysis of internationalizing education and research collections. She was commenting on Ben Wildavsky’s talk …
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