Vintage Ads

I’ve been reading more about the history of graphic design lately. During the first part of the 20th century, the large portion of the client-base for graphic designers were cigarette companies. Looking back at ads from the 30s, 40s and 50s, I can appreciate the craft (they’re all illustrated by hand), but it raises a lot of questions in my mind about ethics in a profession like graphic design. Like most, these designers did not know just how bad cigarettes were when these advertisements were composed. And this makes me wonder how many of the ads we see now will prove to be as ironic as these do now:
  • And read the reasons why you should change to Philip Morris. They’re recommended by nose and throat specialists!
  • Nevermind what they recommend. What do doctors smoke?
  • This isn’t intended to be marketed towards children. I know many adults who still play with their paper dolls.
  • This is just terrible.

Desk Set

If you like movies and libraries, I’ve got a recommendation for you. Desk Set (1957) is a comedy, starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, set in the reference library at a television network. Hepburn is the head librarian and Tracy is a man hired by the company to install the “electronic brain” aka very large computer in the reference department. The librarians fear that with the installation of this new bit of technology, they will all soon be out of a job. Faced with this possibility, Hepburn sets out to prove that no computer can ever match the abilities of the human mind. You can find this film and many others here in Snell Library.

Swap Tree

In honor of Earth Day, I wanted to post something I learned about recently that’s meant to be environmentally conscious.  Yesterday, a friend told me about SwapTree.com, a site where you can exchange products you have (like books, cds, and dvds) for others that you want.  It’s a massive trading website where you just have to pay shipping and handling costs.  While I’m a hoarder who likes holding on to things, I certainly appreciate SwapTree’s message of re-usability and bartering!  My friend also told me that for every trade made today, SwapTree will donate $1 to the Sierra Club.  (Though I couldn’t find anything corroborating that on their website.) I also think that taste is such a funny and personal issue, that it would be interesting to see what people are looking for (or looking to unload.)  It seems like their could be some airing of dirty laundry-from my cursory survey it seems like people are looking to pick up much ‘hipper’ items (and trade away Chicken Soup for the Soul and Kenny G!) Has anyone tried this before?  What do you think?

Authority Records and Databases

Today (4/4/08) Christine Oka was describing a citation/author search issue in the Gale/Thompson databases. The Gale/Thompson databases do not have authority records listing known variations( such as misspellings and regional variants) in author names. This lack of meta data makes searching for a given citation somewhat of a challenge as you have to systematically search the database on each variant search term. This is analogous to have to driving down every street in a subdivision to locate every house with the last name smith on the mailbox.

Teaching with Technology

On April 29th I will be making a poster presentation on Teaching with Video: Preproduction planning and Post Production resources for YouTube presentations. My coworkers Thomas and Andrew will be leading the afternoon breakout sessions. Here is the website to learn more about the conference. http://www.edtech.neu.edu/news_events/index.php?id=50 This will be held on campus at the Curry Center and Attendance is free for Northeastern attendees. If you are interested just register to attend.