The William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library at Ohio State University, to which I referred to in my recent SLA Future Ready 365 blog post, just received the 2011 Library Building Award from the American Institute of Architects/ American Library Association. Kudos!

Today, the SLA Future Ready 365 blog published the post I’ve prepared on the new academic library building. You can see it on the blog and I’m reproducing it below. Any SLA member can publish on the Future Ready 365 blog, simply send 250 words (or so) on how they are future ready to futureready365@sla.org. [...]

I’ve been pondering bookplates as a fundraiser for a long while now. The administrative hurdles and my lack of time are enough to not do anything much about it right now. But could virtual bookplates be the solution? Found via the Libology Blog, a program at the University of Florida Smathers Libraries are doing just [...]

I linked a few months ago to a flash mob at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. More recently, several hundreds of students tried to enter the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga library during finals week. Two nights ago, it the was the William T. Young Library at the University of Kentucky to be visited by, [...]

I have seen two examples recently of libraries reaching out to their users to gather their comments. Concordia University Libraries, in Montréal, Qué is using a web form (?) to gather comments and publishes responses via a blog. Questions/comments and answers are coming at a good clip. The Libraries administration actually uses the comments to [...]

The American Institute of Architects selected eight recipients for the 2009 AIA/ALA Library Building Awards. For each winning library, I tried to link to the website and to project details, via the architects’ sites and/or via the Architectural Record, if available. Arabian Library, Scottsdale Public Library, Scottsdale, Arizona richard+bauer architecture, LLC about the project C.V. [...]

Harvard University Provost Steven E. Hyman created a committee charged with improving the efficiency of the university’s library system. Since Harvard’s creation in 1638, no less than 75 different units have been instituted and have evolved “organically”. Some branches are autonomous, other services are centralized. The desired outcome would be “recommendations to improve the strength [...]

Very interesting post about the use of Twitter during presentations, by both attendees and presenter, over at Pistachio. Which brings a host of issues and interrogations: is it rude to look at a laptop instead of the presenter? why are the attendees twittering? Are they interested or bored? (enerving for the presenter) Should the presenter [...]

Found via – where else – Twitter, a list of libraries that tweet (thanks @CanuckLibrarian for the heads up and Lindy Brown for the actual list.)

I’ve just finished Dewey : a small-town library cat who touched the world, loaned to me by my student assistant. It’s a quick, easy read. It made me wondered though about cats in academic libraries. So I started looking and found this map listing library cats around the world. It’s produced by Gary Roma, who [...]

The Library Journal just published a story on 2008′s top 10 news in academic libraries, in two parts. In Part 2 are the Honorable Mentions: Honorable Mentions: The LJAN Top Ten Stories of 2008, 4-10 . And the top three are: #1 Georgia State University Sued by Publishers over E-Reserves #2 Harvard’s OA Mandate #3 The Google [...]

LISNews published a post today about a 2004 story on the membership libraries. The main library featured intrigued me as I didn’t know of it before. The Mechanics’ Institute Library and Chess Room was founded in 1854 in San Francisco and is the oldest library on the West Coast and one of the oldest chess clubs [...]