At Manitowoc (Wis.) Public Library (MPL), which hosts a free carnival every August, local representatives such as the mayor and aldermen hop into a dunk tank or serve as targets for the water-balloon catapult. Julia Lee, youth services manager at MPL, says getting local celebrities in the dunk tank helps break down barriers between residents … Continue reading Nontraditional Approaches to Reaching Local Leaders
MERGE While specialized VR equipment can be expensive and difficult to loan, MERGE offers a suite of apps and accessories to make augmented and virtual reality more accessible and portable through common technology including smartphones, tablets, and laptops. The MERGE Cube is a small foam cube that, when used with its accompanying apps, allows users … Continue reading Alternate Realities, Simplified
OverDrive Digital Book Clubs Libraries that have digital collections from OverDrive are automatically part of the company’s global ebook club, the Big Library Read, which makes select titles available for unlimited checkouts for a limited period three times a year. In addition to this large-scale reading program, the company also provides support for community-wide and … Continue reading Bringing Book Clubs Online
Reed Strege, director of library services at the Braille Institute of America, led “The Best in New Tech for Readers with Blindness, Visual Impairments, and Physical Disabilities” on June 23 at the ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C., highlighting new and upcoming technology for blind and print disabled library users. “It’s a really … Continue reading On the Horizon for Accessibility
Katlin Seagraves is the digital literacy associate at the Tulsa City-County Library where she manages the library’s Digital Literacy Lab. At “Save As: Preserving Your Digital Life” on June 24 at the ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C., Seagraves educated attendees on methods for preserving born-digital personal data like photos and social media. … Continue reading Saving Your Digital Life
So many people came to the program, the drag queen held a second storytime immediately after her session. Now, even though the program is over, the library is still receiving around 50 emails per day asking them not to hold it. Sukrit Goswami, director of the Haverford Township Free Library, shared how he and his … Continue reading Discord in the Community
At “Casting light on the Dark Web: Dispelling myths and using it to preserve your anonymity” on June 23 at the ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C., Beckstrom and Brady Lund, PhD student at Emporia (Kans.) University School of Library and Information Management, explained the basics of the dark web and how libraries … Continue reading In the Deep Beneath the Iceberg
Service decisions’ effect on marginalized communities was the focus of Brown’s president’s program, “Inequity and the Disappearance of Reference and User Services,” on June 22 at the ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C. Teresa Morris, reference and instruction librarian at the College of San Mateo, moderated a discussion between Nicole Cooke, program director … Continue reading Toward Empowerment
Paige isn’t a librarian. She’s not even human. She’s a chatbot—a basic virtual assistant, programmed with a decision tree of potential questions, their answers, and code telling the bot how to respond. Cynthia Sandler, library media specialist at North Salem (N.Y.) Middle School and High School, created Paige in 2017 to help her students interact … Continue reading Your Library Needs to Speak to You
LendIT D-Tech’s self-service library vending machine, LendIT, can be placed anywhere with a power outlet and internet connection with a fixed IP address. That could be right outside the library building or in a mall or community center. Users can browse available books on screen, with images and descriptions provided by the library’s discovery layer … Continue reading All-Hours Access
Archiving the local web In order to maintain their local collections, public libraries are looking to web archiving. “Community Webs: Empowering Public Librarians to Create Community History Web Archives” explored how two public libraries are using the Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Jefferson Bailey, director of web archiving and data services at the Internet Archive, … Continue reading Community Collaboration at DPLAFest 2019
DPLA has undergone changes since the nonprofit was founded nine years ago as an access point to a network of libraries’ digital holdings. Bracken emphasized that its core values would remain: collaboration; a belief in the transformational power of technology; and a commitment to being a better partner to communities, “especially those who have been … Continue reading Facing the Past, Strengthening the Commons
