E-books Making It Harder to Meet (and Judge) People?

I just read an interesting piece in the online magazine Slate in which the author is lamenting the rise of e-books for a very specific reason: he thinks it will make it harder to meet people and form impressions of them or get to know them because we can’t see what they’re reading. Check out the article. The author, Mark Oppenheimer, notes that he enjoys looking around on the subway to see what books people are reading, and that he has learned more about people he was dating by observing the books on their shelves. If everyone on the train is carrying a Kindle or a Nook, and books on apartment shelves vanish in favor of an iPad on the coffee table, he fears, we’ll lose out on one of the best conversation-starters around. What do you think? Is this an unforeseen drawback to the e-book revolution? Or is Oppenheimer worrying too much?

Going Global

On Sunday, a few friends and I decided that the Christian Science Center was worth investigating after 2+ years of walking curiously in its shadow. Inside, we found this (above). This enormous glowing globe – house is called the Mapparium. Its a three story painted glass globe that you walk inside. It’s inside the Mary Baker Eddy Library on Mass. Avenue, and it’s preeeetttty awesome. There is a fee to enter the Mapparium, which is bogus, but hey, its a measly four dollars for a unique, thought-provoking experience — more than you’d get out of a Big Mac (also four dollars) from the McDonald’s next door. You enter on a bridge suspended in the earth’s core (super cool). Then a brief light show begins (super cool) during which you examine the foreign cartography of this three-dimensional map made in 1935 (super cool). Like, what is French Indo-China? Oh, and this happens to be super cool: the acoustics of the perfect sphere are quite unique. From the center, your voice is very loud. I happened to be standing in the center. I’ve never felt so powerful, or so entertained. Not to mention somewhat rude. From the edge of the bridge, your voice can be heard very clearly by the person on the other side of the bridge, but not by others in the center, so two can have a secret conversation in plain globe-light. Everything about this place is… well, I think you know how I feel about it. I vote we get one of these at Snell instead of an Alumni Reading Room. No offense, Mom (class of ’82).

Seeking New Writers for Snell Snippets

With the school year coming around and new students pouring in, not to mention some new Library employees who have started working or will soon begin working at Snell, I want to send out a call for all potential bloggers. At Snell Snippets, we are trying to branch out, both in our service to the library and in the way we encompass all sections of the library. This means we are promoting news, resources, and general updates at a good rate, but we are also looking to include more people as contributing writers. A contributing writer would be required to complete at least one post per week and they would be required to be trained as a blogger. All blog posts are intrinsically related to the library; either they are about a recent library development, or a book, film, CD, etc., that we have at Snell. Posts may also be about the broad topic of libraries, literature and literacy as it relates to our own goals. As one of the primary blog goals is to get more students reading it, we are therefore trying to get more students to write for it. As of now, the blog administrators are mainly divided between the 2nd and third floor; Karen, Rebecca and myself. The same can be said of all contributors. Having several students working at Circulation to blog about the library from their perspective would be just one of many welcome additions. Of course, this is only an example. I look forward to hearing from interested writers. Anybody with a skill for writing, reading and intellectual curiosity may apply. I know that includes a good many people here.

Smithsonian Global Sound’s Mobile App is Here!

Smithsonian Global Sound, Alexander Street Press‘s “virtual encyclopedia of the world’s musical and aural traditions,” has three convenient ways to access recordings from your mobile phone. Select a track you wish to listen to, click on the mobile phone icon, and choose one of three methods for accessing the track (and entire album!) from your mobile device. Click on the screen shot below of the Cajun Home Music Album to see the pop-up help menu you will receive. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at d.mandel@neu.edu. Debra Mandel

Promotional Strategies?

As the title may indicate, this is a post that will raise only questions and provide no answers. I hope readers are okay with that, because it’s one of my favorite things to do. These are important questions about the Library website.  First, let me draw your attention to the intriguing organization of the Hunter College Library web page. Not only is their web page beautifully organized, I think, but they have also taken advantage of mentioning the other libraries in the same area. Hunter College is located in Manhattan and is part of the CUNY (City University of New York) system. So one of the links at the bottom-center of their page has to be the CUNY Libraries. Hunter also uses Blackboard, like so many colleges, so it has a link for that. Same with Facebook and Google. But the other three links are to the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Library. Why, I asked myself, would Hunter College want to link to institutions that are essentially competitors? There are a few reasons I can think of: 1. Hunter College believes its Library web page is more appealing than the other web pages, so it wants to place a point of comparison in the mind of the visitor. They are hoping that the visitor will be put off by the Queens Library’s web page in comparison to theirs, therefore causing the web page visitor to be more inclined to visit the Hunter College Libraries. (And it knows that the vast majority of visitors are students and faculty, who are in close proximity to their Library; other nearby territory simply must be blocked off.) 2. The Hunter College Library doesn’t care about the amount of attention its website gets, because that alone won’t guarantee more donations or visits to the actual Library. What the staff of the library cares about is the world of reading and researching, period. Any institution that promotes those habits is a friend of theirs in the grand scheme. 3. There is some New York Library web that I’m unaware of; i.e. all these libraries aren’t really competitors at all, but have arrangements where they share books and resources and common donors; Hunter feels obliged to provide links. I am not an advertising expert. But I did major in Communications; so I stand by these educated guesses.  The question simply becomes; do we want to be competitors, or do we want to find common ground? Do we want to acknowledge our connections to the Boston Library system (I think there is one, correct me if I’m wrong?)? Or do we want to take a more isolated approach to Library promotion? That last question sounds silly, because we are not taking an isolated approach. But as of now, we provide no links to libraries in the greater Boston area on our homepage. Considering the vast number of Universities here, not to mention the many branches of the Boston Public Library, we are at no shortage of these “connections.” In fact, by linking to other sites in this blog post, I am publicizing them. Perhaps we should consider these three reasons for linking to other libraries, think of some more reasons and provide links. (For the record, we do provide links to YouTube and Flickr, sites that involve us but are inherently unrelated. Do we think these links are beneficial or are they distracting?)