2010 Library Design Showcase Call for Submissions

November 19, 2009

American Libraries is now accepting submissions for our annual Library Design Showcase, to be published in the April 2010 issue. This is a showcase of new and newly renovated or expanded libraries of all types. Roughly 30 of the best construction projects of the year will be highlighed in this major AL feature. To be considered, send the completed submission form ([PDF] or [Word] format), along with color photos, 35mm slides, or high-resolution digital images, to: American Libraries, Attn: Architecture Showcase, American Library Association, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611. The deadline is February 1, 2010, and to be eligible, projects must have been completed after October 1, 2008. Online Submissions You can also submit online via YouSendIt. First, I recommend you use WinZip or a similar compression application to compress your files into a single file. YouSendIt only allows one file of up to 100 MB to be sent at a time on a free account, so you may need to make a couple different files if they are very large. Second, you will need to sign up for a free YouSendIt account to use the system. To do so, go to www.yousendit.com, click the “Sign Up” button, and sign up for the free “Lite” account. The system will ask you fairly standard account-creation questions (username, password, real name, and the like) and send you a conformation e-mail with the activation link. Once you’ve activated your account, log in and click the “Send” button. In the “To:” field, enter my address, glandgraf@ala.org. Input a subject and message if you wish, and click the “Browse” button to find and attach your file. Then click “Send It” and your files will be on their way. (You’ll be given premium, and paid, delivery options; they are not required to send the files and I suggest you ignore them.) What We're Looking For Shortly after the February 1 deadline, a group of editors and designers will meet to go through all of the submissions—we've received about 70 each of the past three years—to select the approximately 30 projects that will be featured in the pages of American Libraries. We’re looking for visual appeal, interesting stories, and variety in the libraries we include. In other words, the quality of photos and the project description are the most important parts of the submission form. For digital photos, this means a resolution of 300 dpi is critical, and they need to be large. The smallest photos that we ran last year, with the exception of shots of architectural details, were about 4 inches by 3 inches. The best way I can describe what the project descriptions should entail is: They should be what you’d tell a friend or a colleague when you’re bragging about your new library. Interesting construction details, favorite features, or intriguing snippets about how the space gets used are all good things to include. I’ll be distilling those facts into the descriptive text that accompanies each photo. If you have a new or renovated facility, I hope you’ll consider submitting it. If you have any questions, or if you have a facility that’s still in progress and you want to receive an e-mail notification when we’ve opened submissions for 2010, please leave a comment or drop me an e-mail. I

A Critical Situation in California

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Little Village (Dubuque, Iowa), Dec. 4
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Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

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Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

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2010 Library Design Showcase Call for Submissions

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2010 Library Design Showcase Call for Submissions

A Critical Situation in California