Digital Library Digest: November 28, 2012

Libraries in Idaho and Minnesota aim to fill digital literacy gap within new immigrant communities

“While major urban centers like New York, Miami, and Los Angeles have always drawn new immigrants, there are many pockets of new Americans now living in mid-size US cities due to job opportunities and proximity to families and former neighbors from their homes abroad. Some come to the US without significant digital literacy skills, and local libraries take up the challenge to help them meet their online needs. Here are two library systems, one in Idaho and one in Minnesota, that have found innovative ways to provide resources to these unique groups.

“Idaho’s “Train the Trainer” program: Boise and Twin Falls may not seem like major cities for immigrants but both have speakers of Hindi, Karen, Russian, and other foreign languages who need digital literacy skills. The Idaho Commission for Libraries, in partnership with the Idaho Office for Refugees, developed a program that trains foreign language speakers to, in turn, teach digital literacy to others in their language groups.

“Minnesota library reaches out: Two Somali refugees, an uncle in his 60s and a nephew in his early 20s, started learning English together at Franklin Learning Center (FLC) in Minneapolis, a part of the Hennepin County Library system. The uncle had never used a computer before. After English class one day, he watched his nephew using a social networking site at the Franklin branch and decided that he’d like to learn how to use a computer too. Staff members helped him practice basic mouse and keyboarding skills, and soon the uncle was exploring online on his own.”

From American Libraries Magazine, New Americans and the Digital Literacy Gap

Australian refurbished library embraces digital access through new, digital content display

“A Big Data exhibition is being staged in the refurbished National Library in Wellington.

National Librarian Bill Macnaught says he’s keenly looking forward to the public’s reaction to the $65 million upgrade of the building. The most attention-grabbing enhancements are large flat-panel displays in the public areas and the introductory exhibition, entitled “Big Data – Changing Place”.

The Library has been closed since December 2009 for a major refurbishment. An advance audience of media, National Library staff and dignitaries including Prime Minister John Key were the first to see the new layout at a reopening yesterday.

The Big Data exhibition draws on data progressively being opened up by government agencies, including Land Information New Zealand and GNS Science (formerly Geological and Nuclear Sciences) as well as overseas contributors such as NASA.

“This is a new chapter in the National Library’s life” says Macnaught. While the conventional research spaces and stores of physical exhibits and documents will still be there, “we are in the middle of a watershed, where from now on digital is the way we’ll be serving our customers” and linking with other knowledge institutions nationally and internationally, he says.

“One aim of the redesigned public interface is to overcome the forbidding appearance of the building, by drawing people in with digital displays, particularly Lifelines, a large horizontal touch-sensitive display surface in the foyer, where visitors can explore photographic material related to their home region or their family. This done by selecting or typing geographical and personal keywords and through what Macnaught calls a “serendipitous approach, casually flicking through the material”.

“Visitors can build a repository of images relevant to them, attach it to their email address and receive a link that enables them to explore the material from their own devices.”

From Stephen Bell’s article for Computer World, National Library at a “digital watershed”

Multimedia video contests prompts users to interact and create using digital archives

“What happens when the Prelinger Archives, a collection of over 3,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films, meets the Free Music Archive, an ever-growing interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads? In a contest titled “The Past Re-imagined as the Future,” participants were asked to answer that very question. According to the FMA, the 122 resulting videos mashups “are deeply disturbing, abstract, violent, beautiful, and often half-naked.” In pairing the two archives, contestants edited images from the past with technology from the present, merging video with sound in repeated demonstrations of the rich resources available within these open digital libraries.

“The range of submissions to “The Past Re-Imagined as the Future” is as diverse as the material represented within the archives themselves. Guidelines for the contest were fairly broad: at least half the sound and video used had to come from the archives and the final product needed to clock in at under fifteen minutes. All the videos are currently online, where the judges — a group of audio, video, and artistic professionals scattered across the globe — will pick their favorites, and where you can weigh in on the popular choice winner.

“In just a small sampling of the contest video mashups, I watched short documentary narratives, abstract reflections on image and sound, comedic juxtapositions, frenetic collages, and what could only be described as hardcore punk music videos. Pacing varies from glacial to neck-break speeds. Music choices capture the eclecticism of FMA’s offerings.

“The contest is a fantastic creative prompt, but it also provides participants with a practical lesson on the responsible use of digital resources. Each participant was required to list their many sources and select their own Creative Commons designation, protecting and promoting their work in an informed way. This is something current remix culture of both music and amateur video making is sorely lacking. The Free Music and Prelinger Archives prove there is a middle ground between small- and large-scale distribution that is fertile, inspiring, and just waiting to be remixed.”

From Sarah Hotchkiss’s article for KQED, A Remix Contest Takes Advantage of Dynamic Digital Libraries

American Library Association’s statement about fair ebook pricing and terms stresses rights to equal access, free market principles

“Last week, more than 40 of the American Library Association’s 57 state and regional chapters signed a joint statement opposing the pricing and licensing terms that publishers and distributors have established for the sale of ebooks to libraries.

“Libraries, like other consumers, should be free to buy any published e-content at competitive prices, to keep these items in their collection, and to loan them to their patrons,” reads a portion of the statement. “Anything less violates basic democratic principles of a free market, freedom of speech, and equitable access. If financial barriers are removed in libraries, all citizens would have equal access to this material.”

“It continues: “The Indiana Library Federation is in agreement with the Montana Library Association, which asks publishers of e-content to place libraries on a level playing field with other consumers of e-content. The cooperative relationship among publishers, authors, distributors, and agents must be restored.”

“ALA President Maureen Sullivan commented, “This joint statement underscores how critical this issue is for the public. Librarians across the country daily face questions from their readers about why access to ebooks is restricted. ALA fully supports this grassroots effort.”

From Matt Enis’s post for The Digital Shift, ALA Chapters Issue Joint Statement Protesting Ebook Pricing and Terms

Pro of online database: only have to worry about computer bugs, not real crawling insects

“Absence can speak volumes. The lack of sediment in a flat piece of ground—a track—can testify to the footstep of a dinosaur that once walked on it. The lack of minerals in a solid shell—a hole—can reveal the presence of parasite that was once trapped in it. The world’s museums are full of such “trace fossils”, but so are many of the world’s art galleries.

“The image above is taken from a woodcut currently residing in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. It was made by etching a pattern into a block of wood, so that the remaining raised edges could be dipped in ink and used to print an image. These woodcuts were the main way of illustrating European books between the 15^th and 19^th centuries, and were used for at least 7 million different titles.

“But as you can see, the print is littered with tiny white holes. These are called wormholes, and inaccurately so—they’re actually the work of beetles. The adults laid their eggs in crevices within the trunks of trees. The grubs slowly bored their way through the wood, eventually transformed into adults, and burrowed their way out of their shelters. The artists who transformed the tree trunks into printing blocks also inherited the exit-holes of the adult beetles, which left small circles of empty whiteness when pressed onto pages.

“The beetles only emerged a year or so after the blocks were carved. The holes they left must have been frustrating, but remaking them would have been expensive. So the blocks were kept and reused despite their defects, unless the beetles had really gone to town. The holes they left behind preserve a record of wood-boring beetles, across four centuries of European literature. These holes are trace fossils. They’re evidence of beetle behaviour that’s been printed into old pages, just as dinosaur tracks were printed into the earth.”

From Ed Young’s article for Discover Magazine, Wormholes in old books preserve a history of insects