The Corkboard

Because editing a 25 page essay on reference sources isn’t nearly as exciting as “big” thoughts that blow my mind, I bring you (or myself at a later time) two lightbulb moments of the day:

1. Use iTunes to give access to your library’s digital reserves

Here’s how it works. All of your reserve material, audio and video, is turned into digital format and hosted on a very large server (depending on the size of the collection). That server is hooked up to iTunes. That iTunes account is password protected. Those now digital items are broken down in folders (Psychology reserves, Music Theory reserves, yada yada). The reserve items are only accessible within the library’s network, in much the same way that they were when they were in physical format.

For an hour I talked with our media services librarian about this concept. For an hour she told me how she abhorred it for its blatant disregard of copyright law. I claimed fair use. We both just shrugged our shoulders. Who the heck can decipher how fair use actually works? I claimed that it would be used for educational uses and only accessible via the library’s connection (and with a password). She still said it broke copyright.

I think it has potential…somewhere.

2. Use CoverFlow technology (like you see in iTunes) with an RSS feed of newly acquired book covers for an interactive browsing experience.

Yea, my technical abilities are bit challenged, but freely shared code always makes up for that. So check these out:

1. Flame Actionscript 3
2. CoverFlow Flex Component
3. a Flickr photo feed in CoverFlow
4. Something not nearly as impressive as the first three

I really doubt anyone would say that this doesn’t have a bit of a wow factor to it, which would be promptly followed up with “uh, yea that isn’t necessary.” Well, no it isn’t. But either is gaming in libraries…