I got an iPhone this past month, and I’ve been slowly digging into the vast library or apps that the phone offers. A lot of things have grabbed my attention, but nothing perhaps so much as Historypin. From Wikipedia: Historypin is an online, user-generated archive of historical photos and personal recollections. Users are able to use the location and date of an image to ‘pin’ it to Google Maps Where Google Street View is available, users can overlay the historical photograph and compare it with the contemporary location. When I use Historypin, all that I can think about is how […]
Contributors TTW Editor
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http://youtu.be/N9I90xg5R2Y Double Jump is Michigan’s only local game show. Each episode host Dan Hartley explores gaming as a legitimate and mainstream form of art and entertainment. We’ll explore the various facets of the medium itself with experts and designers, as well as games’ impact on Michigan industries. Independent and local developers also have a voice here as well as any industries and educational facilities tied to them. Libraries are one of our nation’s oldest institutions, and gaming one of our newest. What happens with these two disparate worlds meet? In the first segment of “Libraries and Gaming”, Double Jump looks […]
THE BACKSTORY I wanted the teens using my library to do something creative this summer. I’ve recently grown weary of having programs for the sake of programs, so with this mindset I reached out to the amazing Sonya Tomlinson aka Sontiago to help unlock the amazing creativity of the teens here in Portland. Sonya’s an amazing hip hop artist based here in Portland who has already done some amazing work with teens in our community (click that link, please), so it was a no-brainer to have her be the person running this event. We met over lunch at Kamasouptra and we came up with […]
8BitLibrary: The Collected Writings of Justin Hoenke: December 2009-July 2011 It has been a fun almost 2 years. We’ve danced, we’ve went out and got tattoos, and most of all we’ve talked about video games a lot. But sometimes things just need to come to an end, and my part in 8BitLibrary has come to an end. Since I’m a librarian and all that, I’ve decided to organize my 8BitLibrary writings in a nice little PDF and post it here for anyone to read or download. I hope you enjoy my writings. I’ll continue to write about gaming in libraries […]
“The time is now,” I keep telling myself. Let me tell you why. It’s been almost five years since I fell into being a teen librarian. I was working toward my MLS at Clarion University when I was approached to do some summer teen programming at the Clarion Free Library in Clarion, PA. Their proposal was simple: do stuff for teens, buy some cool books, and get them into the library. I was a one-person team tasked with pretty much creating a library for these oft-forgotten patrons. I did it, and the teens were happy, but I realized at the […]
This is the second and final installment of my interview with Vanessa Morris. Part 1 was posted on Wednesday, July 13th and is available HERE. – TTW Contributor Ben Lainhart —- BL: I know that you have both a professional and personal interest in virtual worlds and and social media. You mentioned their usefulness in relation to education. What are some other purposes they could serve? Do you think they are changing how we interact with others or how we view ourselves? VM: Social media is definitely changing how we interact with others and how we view ourselves. For those […]
When Michael asked me to be a Contributor here on Tame the Web I knew that one of the things I wanted to do was start an interview series with different people in the profession that I find interesting, instructive or challenging. My goal with this series is provide interviews that are more conversational in nature and touch on a wide variety of topics. While my approach is that of a recent MLIS graduate trying to make sense of the LIS profession and its future, I hope that these interviews help foster dialogue about the many difficulties and triumphs LIS […]
Here’s Andromeda Yelton‘s TEDx talk from this past June at Princeton Public Library in New Jersey. In 6 minutes and 31 seconds, Andromeda talks about how her and a gang of librarians (see below) earned enough money to build a library in India and then raise enough for 100 extra books, a newspaper subscription, and then, to top it all off, 4 bo0kmobiles in Africa. All of this, might I add, was done through Twitter/Blogging/Social Media. I was lucky enough to be part of the gang of librarians I mentioned above. Much love to the work of Andromeda, Ned Potter, and […]
Recently, ALA retweeted a tweet that originally came from @FSG_Books. It was a library haiku that read: A library card / is a 100% off / coupon for great books. This is a misconception throughout libraries everywhere. A library card isn’t a 100% off coupon. A library card is a tool that allows users to take advantage of the services and materials that have already been purchased for them. People who use the library and borrow those books have already paid for them. They’re not free books when the people borrowing them have already paid for them. Many users believe […]
Over the weekend, while all my American colleagues were heading to The Big Easy for #ala11, I jumped north of the border to attend TEDxLibrarians at the University of Toronto. It was an inspiring day in a beautiful city and the speakers gave me a lot to think about on my long drive home. TEDx events are inspired by, and take their name from, the wildly popular TED conference. Local and independently run, TEDx organizers build the event around short and inspiring talks to create a TED-like atmosphere that is meaningful and thought provoking. Since TED first began sanctioning these […]