On the Eve of Destruction

Some photos of the Dana wing as the crew prepares it to come down.

Look what's coming out of the Dana wing!

Look what’s coming out of the Dana wing!

The pile of trash on the back patio of the Library.

The pile of trash on the back patio of the Library.

The periodicals room was emptied in the last week of September.

The periodicals room was emptied in the last week of September.

The bathroom in the periodicals room under destruction.

The bathroom in the periodicals room under destruction.

The tall windows on the back of the main reading room have been boarded to protect them while the Dana wing is demolished.

The tall windows on the back of the main reading room have been boarded to protect them while the Dana wing is demolished.

The door to Dana boarded up and bid good-bye with a Post-It note. Bye-bye!

The door to Dana boarded up and bid good-bye with a Post-It note. Bye-bye!

View of the new building from MMC

MMC has the best view of the new west wing of the library as it takes shape –

 

newwestwing

Recent grads – please, never do this!

“And This Is How You Don’t Follow Up To A Job Interview . . . I present to you an entry-level applicant’s guide to ensuring you never get a job.”

http://groupthink.jezebel.com/and-this-is-how-you-don-t-follow-up-to-a-second-intervi-1032671488

SMITHSONIAN DIGITAL VOLUNTEERS

“Join us as a Smithsonian Digital Volunteer to unlock stories by transcribing our collections. With your help, we can make the volumes of digitized Smithsonian Institution materials easier to use.”

https://transcription.si.edu/

Tenure awarded based in part on Wikipedia contributions

“Michel Aaij’s Wikipedia resume is impressive – more than 60,000 edits, a couple of Good Articles, a Featured List, almost 150 Did You Knows. But there’s one credit he’s most proud of: tenure.
For North American professors, tenure is one of the pinnacles of success in academia. Junior professors spend years building a portfolio that demonstrates teaching, research, and service to the discipline, then face a committee who evaluates the portfolio and determines whether to give the professor a lifetime position at that university or ask the professor to leave.”

Read more here: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/04/06/tenure-awarded-based-in-part-on-wikipedia-contributions/

Found Stereoscopic Photos Make World War I Come Alive

“Last year, the New York Public Library turned old stereoscopic photographs into internet-friendly GIFs with an addictive online tool called the Stereograminator. Now a Toronto-based photography studio and graphic design shop has done the same with a series of found images of World War I, resulting in vivid 3-D images that bring the brutality of the Great War to life.”

See images and get more detail:
http://hyperallergic.com/74765/found-stereoscopic-photos-make-world-war-i-come-alive/

http://anerdsworld.com/verascope-world-war-1/

Art Book: Dreams of the Sonora Aero Club

“Dreamer, optimist and visionary, Charles Dellschau (1830-1923) is one of the earliest documented self taught artists known in America. What began as an illustrated manuscript recounting his experiences in the California Gold Rush became an obsessive project resulting in twelve large, hand-bound books with more than 2500 drawings related to airships and the development of flight.”

Striking images from an art book created by Charles August Albert Dellschau at the turn of the century:

http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/dreams-of-the-sonora-aero-club/37754/

http://www.charlesdellschau.com/

Medieval book mended with silk thread

Unique mending job on a 14th century manuscript gets conserved:

http://www.ub.uu.se/en/Just-now/Projects/Completed-projects/A-medieval-book-mended-with-silk-thread/

A haunting, wordless retelling of the myth of Artemis and Actaeon

“Tell No One produced this film for the London National Gallery as part of a celebration of Titian’s works. It plays like a brief, fantastical horror film, with the transgressing Speleers helpless to avoid his fate after seeing Friel in the bath.”

http://io9.com/a-haunting-wordless-retelling-of-the-myth-of-artemis-a-551284261

ArchiveGrid

“ArchiveGrid is a collection of nearly two million archival material descriptions, including MARC records from WorldCat and finding aids harvested from the web. It’s supported by OCLC Research as the basis for our experimentation and testing in text mining, data analysis, and discovery system applications and interfaces. Archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives are represented in ArchiveGrid.

ArchiveGrid provides access to detailed archival collection descriptions, making information available about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and other archival materials. It also provides contact information for the institutions where the collections are kept.”

Visit the site:
http://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/