Access 2013 notes: highlights.

Thoughts
  • North Carolina State University recently built a new Hunt Library on campus. In order to promote it, the library staff asked its users (students, faculty, and staff of NCSU) to share their interaction with the space through Instagram. The #MyHuntLibrary project demonstrates one way to market library spaces and to interact with users through a social media platform.
  • Finding material in a large library space, especially one that relies on Library of Congress classification system, can be intimidating. Ryerson University Libraries created a simple but robust user-oriented app called BookFinder.  Labelling every book stack and shelf with a number, taking into account where each stack starts and ends, as well as syncing item availability information tells the student the exact physical location of their material.
  • A couple of fellas from Montana State University wanted to “push the boundaries of the codex as a container for information”, and in a sense, break apart the book as we think of it. Essentially envisioning  the book as a networked API of content, they wanted to experiment with the book “as a medium to be hyperlinked, marked up, styled, and analyzed as a full participant in the web of data”. Here is an example of a cook book as reinvented by the students on MSU.
  • Riding (literally!) the recent trend of both mobile services and maker/hacker spaces, my friend Kim Martin from Western University discussed the challenges and lessons of buying, equipping and driving a DH Maker Bus around London, ON. Community creation spaces, serving rural communities, establishing partnerships, outreach services, peer training and fostering transliteracies were all goals of this project, which continues to draw supporters locally and across North America.
  • Finally, Jon Voss presented the intersection of digital tools, collective memory and social engagement through his project, Historypin, which allows users to overlay historical photographs over current streetviews, annotate and discuss the content shared through this platform. Community outreach, programming and citizen participation is a huge part of Historypin, which very much aligns this work with the values of public libraries.