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Repurposing Retail | Library by Design

By Louise Schaper on June 17, 2013 Leave a Comment

The trend toward putting public libraries in retail spaces such as big-box stores, malls, strip centers, and main street buildings shows no sign of slowing. The McAllen Public Library, TX, main library, which opened in late 2011 in a former Wal-Mart, garnered many awards, including the coveted American Institute of Architects (AIA) Honor Award for Interior Architecture. McAllen residents got a lot of library compared with what they would have gotten building new, reduced their impact on the environment, and turned a blight into a flourishing center of community life.

Filed Under: Featured, Library by Design, Library Services, LJ in Print Tagged With: lbd, retail

2013 Gale/LJ Library of the Year: Howard County Library System, MD

By John N. Berry III on June 5, 2013 6 Comments

“We deliver high-quality education for all ages,” says the simple, direct mission statement of the library system. Its position as an integral member of the county education system was coupled with the effort by CEO and president Valerie Gross to use “words that work” to describe the jobs of HCLS staffers, the services they provide, and the vision and mandate of the library. They all combine to provide a brand that has made HCLS a crucial county asset and a new model for libraries everywhere. This championing of community alignment, as well as many other impressive endeavors, makes HCLS the 2013 Gale/LJ Library of the Year—a well-supported, sustainable 21st-century library system from which others can and do take inspiration.

Filed Under: Awards, Featured, LJ in Print Tagged With: HCLS, Howard County Library System

Back Home to Chicago: LJ’s Guide to the 2013 ALA Annual Conference Program

By John N. Berry III with LJ Staff on May 30, 2013 1 Comment

To aid in your use of the handy ALA Scheduler this year LJ ’s editors have selected a few of their favorite ALA program sessions from the sprawling array of options on offer. We hope these selections will give you the best shot at the newest and best ideas and innovations, the most useful information and best practices, and, of course, the most entertainment for the time and money you have invested. If all else fails there is always “that toddlin’ town” outside.

Filed Under: ALA, ALA Conferences and Meetings, Events, Featured, LJ in Print Tagged With: ALA, ala2013

Looking Through the Labrary Lens: Lessons from the Library Test Kitchen | Library by Design

By Jennifer Koerber on May 28, 2013 Leave a Comment

SPACES POPPING UP (From l.–r.): Labrary’s Bookface installation; Makers seek to design at the Bubbler program at Madison Public Library; Brooklyn Public Library’s Info Commons recording and video space. Brooklyn Public Library Photo By ©2013 Philip Greenberg; Bubbler Photo Courtesy Of Madison Public Library

In fall 2012, the Harvard Labrary—a temporary “pop-up” space in an empty storefront in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA—was opened as a public gallery for design student projects from the semester-long Library Test Kitchen (LTK) seminar at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Filed Under: Academic Libraries, Featured, Future of Libraries, Library by Design, Library Services, LJ in Print Tagged With: Harvard, Labrary

Making Room for Innovation

By Jeff Goldenson & Nate Hill on May 16, 2013 Leave a Comment

ATTRACTION ABOUNDS At top, the 4th Floor Maker space with its 3-D printing lab was a highlight of the night at the 2013
Tennessee Library Association annual conference held in the library space; the Labrary storefront (bottom) likewise attracted passers-by into its experimental area to see how future library design might look.
4th floor photo by Mary Barnett; Labrary photo courtesy of Jennifer Koerberber

Two library service prototyping spaces, in two very different places, have a remarkable amount in common. Nate Hill runs and operates the 4th Floor in Chattanooga, a large public library loft space operating as a flexible community makerspace and event space. Jeff Goldenson co-ran and operated Labrary, a 37-day design experiment occupying a vacant storefront in Cambridge.

Filed Under: Featured, Future of Libraries, Library Services, LJ in Print, Public Services Tagged With: 4th Floor, Chattanooga, collaboration, design, experiment, Harvard, innovation, Labrary, makerspace

BEA For All: A Librarian’s Guide to BookExpo America 2013

By Margaret Heilbrun & Henrietta Thornton-Verma on May 15, 2013 1 Comment

To make the most of BEA, here are the offerings that are best for librarians—not all of them are particularly aimed at our profession, but eavesdropping on “the other side” can be illuminating. Though ebook questions feature heavily, we’re moving on from library availability concerns to debates surrounding secondhand ebooks, the effects on authors, and e-publishing of out-of-print titles.

Filed Under: BookExpo America (BEA), Featured, LJ in Print, Publishing, Reviews, Shows & Events Tagged With: BEA, BookExpo America, publishing

Massive Open Opportunity: Supporting MOOCs in Public and Academic Libraries

By Meredith Schwartz on May 10, 2013 5 Comments

If you’re an academic librarian, you’re probably already awash, at least peripherally, in news about MOOCs—massive open online courses have been touted as the next big thing in higher ed since they burst on the scene about a year ago. If you’re a public librarian, on the other hand, you may not even have heard of them. Yet MOOCs are bringing unprecedented challenges and opportunities to both kinds of libraries already, and they’re only going to grow.

Filed Under: Academic Libraries, Copyright and Fair Use, Featured, Future of Libraries, Industry News, Library Services, LJ in Print, Public Services Tagged With: MOOCs

OverDrive and Sourcebooks to Launch Ambitious Ebook Data Experiment

By Michael Kelley on May 3, 2013 5 Comments

OverDrive and Sourcebooks are preparing to launch an innovative and ambitious pilot program whose goal is to clearly demonstrate the impact libraries have on book sales and author recognition.

OverDrive sent a letter today to about 35,000 librarians worldwide and invited them to opt in to a program that will run from May 15 through June 1 and allow all participating libraries to feature simultaneously on their OverDrive home page, at no cost, a single title from Sourcebooks.

Filed Under: Ebooks, Featured Tagged With: overdrive, Sourcebooks, TDS-LJ

Separated At Birth: Library and Publisher Metadata

By The Digital Shift on April 29, 2013

The Douglas County Libraries’ (DCL) pioneering project to own, rather than license, much of its e-content has not only forged a new business model but also exposed a new frontier in metadata. As of March, about 22,000 of the library’s nearly 58,000 e-content titles had been purchased directly from publishers and stored on an Adobe Content Server (ACS), and it became quickly apparent to library staff that we were going to have to get creative with the metadata associated with this material.

Filed Under: Featured, LJ in Print, Publishing, Technology Tagged With: discovery, ebooks, LJ, metadata, publishing, TDS

The Winds of Change | Periodicals Price Survey 2013

By Stephen Bosch & Kittie Henderson on April 25, 2013 5 Comments

The stock market has hit record highs, and unemployment has reached the lowest level since the recession began. Despite this good news, the library economic environment has not seen commensurate improvement. There continues to be a struggle to find the resources needed to support library collections and services, and conditions remain highly unsettled.