Yearly Archives: 2008

Death of the carrel?

Today’s Toronto Star had an interesting article on David Chang, a winner of the Ontario College of Art and Design Medal, Industrial Design for his creation, the Mobi, a mobile personal desk/shopping cart.

Mobi allows library users to collect the materials needed and set up a portable workspace in a preferred space, or nest Mobi up to other units to create a larger work surface for group activities. Mobi brings a new energy to the sometimes static space of libraries, with the hope of setting a precedent for the types of experiences to be had in libraries of the future.

More images of the Mobi in action are available on the designer’s website.

The only design flaw I can find with the Mobi is the limited space for graffiti.

Tim Berners-Lee announces World Wide Web Foundation

Tim Berners-Lee has announced he creation of the World Wide Web Foundation, which seeks,

  • to advance One Web that is free and open,
  • to expand the Web’s capability and robustness,
  • and to extend the Web’s benefits to all people on the planet.

The Web Foundation is bringing together business leaders, technology innovators, academia, government, NGOs, and experts in many fields to tackle challenges that, like the Web, are global in scale. By funding research, technology development, and outreach, the Web Foundation strives to enable all people to share knowledge, access services, conduct commerce, participate in good governance, and communicate in creative ways.

There is also an interesting short article at the BBC on the role of the Foundation in certifying websites that it has found a reliable source of information.

Are you too talented to be a librarian?

Dancer During my travels I came across the following postcard from the Creative Trust. I’m not quite sure what the message is, but it seems to be that talented people are trapped in stifling library careers and need to be set free (the back of the card says “With your help, our artists can devote themselves to what they do best”). Anyone else have any thoughts?

And don’t try this move in the stacks. Far too dangerous (and creative) for a librarian.

Bacon=Bookmark

Has the phone ever rung when you’ve been reading a book over breakfast and, looking around for a convenient bookmark, you picked up a piece of bacon from your plate and slipped it between the pages? No? Well someone did…

Abebooks has an interesting article about all the valuable, interesting and weird things that people have found in second-hand books.

(Thanks to Kimbootu)

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