Archive for April, 2009

YMCA Library Cover Story

April 30th, 2009


The cover story on the Library History Buff website for May lies in the label affixed to the top of the featured cover. The YMCA of San Francisco found a novel method of raising revenue for its free library. They rescued letters from the Dead Letter Office of the Post Office Department in hopes that the recipient of the rescued item would make a contribution for this service. In this case, the envelope contained an invitation to a church ceremony that occurred on October 27, 1870. Since the envelope was postmarked Nov. 20, the recipient may have not been willing to make a contribution to the San Francisco YMCA. The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in the United States was founded in Boston, MA in 1851. By 1876 there were 478 of these associations in cities across the nation. Of these, 180 had libraries with a total of 164,188 volumes. Two hundred and one of the YMCAs had reading rooms with an average of 9,145 readers daily. The purpose of YMCA libraries was “to provide a suitable place for young men and others to spend their evenings in, without resorting to the haunts of vice and dissipation.” Some YMCA libraries were free and some charged a nominal fee, generally $1 a year. The Library of the Young Men’s Christian Association of San Francisco was founded in 1853. By 1876 it had a collection of 5,000 volumes.

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Happy 150th Alice Tyler

April 27th, 2009
Today we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the library profession's outstanding former leaders. Alice Sarah Tyler (1859-1944) was one of the library pioneers who helped define state level public library development in the twentieth century. Tyler served as President of the American Library Association in 1920-21, the third woman to do so. Tyler was a graduate of the first class of the Library School of the Armour Institute of Chicago which was the predecessor of the University of Illinois Library School. She was the first Secretary of the Iowa State Library Commission in 1900, a position she held for thirteen years. She served as president of the League of Library Commissions in 1906-1907. Tyler became director of the Library School at Western Reserve University in 1913 where she served until her retirement in 1929. She held numerous leadership positions in a variety of library organizations. Tyler was one of the forty library leaders selected by the Library Journal to be included in "A Library Hall of Fame" in 1951. Tyler's philosophy of librarianship is reflected in a quote from a 1927 talk: "The ultimate goal in library work is after all elusive... Certainly our real goal is not toward an external end; it must be in the realm of mind and spirit. If one can phrase a practical end for the elusive quest, it might be: Helping people to use their minds; Stimulating people to think!" Tyler is listed in the Dictionary of American Library Biography, and I'm indebted to Helen M. Focke who wrote the entry for Tyler for much of the information in this post.

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chinatown project

April 27th, 2009
chinatown project assignment for eating san francisco

yesterday, we field tripped to chinatown. the chinatown crüe arranged for a tour of the tin how temple, dim sum brunch at new asia, and a brief visit at the golden gate fortune cookie factory.


1. working solo or collaboratively with others, create and share a story.

2. your story must involve food.

3. your story must involve chinatown.

4. your story must teach us at least one thing about food. teach us something interesting, something fascinating.

5. be creative.

6. as always, your project must rest upon a platform that a) supports multimedia, b) is open to the public, and c) allows visitors the opportunity to comment on your work.

7. when finished, and no later than class on wednesday, thick tweet your project.

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homework for tuesday’s class

April 27th, 2009
homework for tuesday's class in digital media production

tuesday's class will be a wikipedia workshop day. if you have a laptop, bring it to class. if you don't have one, try to borrow one from your roommate or friend.

also, prior to class, please:

1. create an account on wikipedia. you may use your name, your full name, or a pseudonym.

2. start an account on google docs. this requires having a google account.

3. watch common craft's google docs in plain english.

4. learn how to use google docs.

5. cut and paste the section or subsection of USF's wikipedia page you are working on to google docs. save it and be ready to edit and add to it in class on tuesday.

6. in class on tuesday, using zotero, wikipedia, and google docs, we will individually and collectively work on USF's wikipedia page.

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Bookstack Retrieval

April 25th, 2009
One of the more interesting library related images (WHi 39575) in the Wisconsin Historical Images collection of the Wisconsin Historical Society shows two giant revolving bookstacks with an elevator placed between them. The vision of this futuristic book retrieval system was created by W. D. Lewis around 1900. Massive storage of books by libraries in tiered bookstacks was not that far into the future though. When the New York Public Library on 42nd Street opened in 1911 it had eight tiers of steel bookstacks capable of holding three million volumes. When the Free Library of Philadelphia opened in 1927 it utilized a number of new technologies to speed retrieval of books from its six tier free standing bookstack. Click here to see a step by step view of the retrieval process. The Mathewson Automated Retrieval System (MARS) at the University of Nevada, Reno is a modern day version of an old idea.

To find out about a library bookstack from hell click here.



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