Tag Archives: library

February 18, 2013, 11:00 am

Organizing Our (Analog) Library

The acquisition of books is by no means a matter of money or expert knowledge alone. Not even both factors together suffice for the establishment of a real library, which is always somewhat impenetrable and at the same time uniquely itself. 
–Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library”

[This is a guest post by Jonathan Sterne, an associate professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. His latest books are MP3: The Meaning of a Format(Duke University Press) and The Sound Studies Reader (Routledge). Find him online at http://sterneworks.org and follow him on Twitter @jonathansterne.--@JBJ]

Over the winter break, my partner Carrie Rentschler and I spent a few days organizing our library. For humanist academics who spend so much of their time engaged with books, we don’t really …

December 13, 2011, 11:00 am

Games in the Library

By Anastasia Salter

Getting games into the classroom is easy when the games are free and short: however, class time is limited, and getting copies of certain games for an entire classroom can be prohibitively expensive. Assigning a game as a class text is also difficult in many programs, as doing so often requires making assumptions about the computer or console that students have access to—not to mention the cost of the game or equipment, and the tech savvy required to get classic games running. Even the availability of games or other digital resources can be challenging. Networks such as Steam have started preserving a wider range of games via digital distribution, but those aren’t necessarily the game that will be most valuable for your class.

I wrestled with this problem when teaching the history of video games, a course where there were far more games than class time could cover, and no easy…

October 14, 2011, 11:00 am

Digital Public Library of America Plenary Meeting

By Konrad Lawson

Digital Public Library of America ProfHacker isn’t usually a place for event announcements, but there is an exciting meeting that is taking place next week at the National Archives in Washington, DC, which I think is worth a posting here. Many of our readers may have seen mention here and there about the idea of creating a genuine digital public library for the United States, something many countries around the world have done. One of the most active advocates of this idea, and the one who has left the greatest trail of articles related to the proposal online is the historian and director of the Harvard University Library, Robert Darnton (see for example, this piece). I have watched Darnton speak about the DPLA on several occasions and I think he strikes the perfect balance between the pragmatist and an advocate for creating a library that isn’t afraid to reach for its true potential. The topic has also found mention…

September 7, 2011, 3:00 pm

Your Research Variable Solved: LibX

By Prof. Hacker

[This is a guest post by Cindy Fisher, the First-year Experience Librarian at the University of Texas at Austin. You can follow her on twitter @cynth.--@jbj.]

There have been a few recent articles, such as this one, that try to dispel stereotypes of what the typical librarian does or does not do as part of their daily routine. I like to think that a large part of what I do is teaching people the skills or tools to make their research (in or out of the classroom) more efficient. (Recent guest author Caro Pinto described a similar goal in her library classes.)

To this end, each semester a colleague and I teach a one-hour workshop called Work Smarter which, as you might guess, highlights and demonstrates tools that facilitate easier research and collaboration. Each time we show the LibX browser extension, the audience erupts in an audible cheer. Why? Think back to what browsing the…