The Book City located in the Eastlands Mall at Rosny is a good example of how bookstores have been steadily changing from places to buy books to plces to enjoy books. It utilises an open plan layout that sacrifices some shelf space in order to give customers room to move around or sit down and browse through a novel. With its warm atmosphere and low couches it's halfway between a bookstore and a library. The open plan and flat floor also make for easy wheelchair access.
I found the staff to be friendly and helpful - they were willing to let me take these pictures after I explained why I was there - and the selection of material was fair. The stock is divided into categories by subject that are clearly marked and easy to browse through. There's no real plan as to how the different subjects are laid out, beyond having all non-fiction on free standing shelves and most of the fiction on the shelves that run around the outside walls. This can create a little confusion, but the store is simply too small for it to be much of a problem and the staff will help you find where books on a particular subject are kept if you ask for help. There is a moderate emphasis towards fiction and recreational reading even in the non fiction material (books on subjects such as wine, fashion and gardening) and a significant portion of the fiction works are for children and young adults. If you look closely at the pictures on my flickr photostream you can see that the entire rear part of the store is given over to books aimed at children. Curiously, there was also a section just for military history as well as a good selection of books that would be classified under science and technology (mostly cars and planes). There were also section dedicated to cooking, history and biographies. I also noted that this branch of Book City carres no DVD's or other audiovisual material.
This would be a good bookstore to serve the general fiction and nonfiction needs of a primary* or high school library - or a Polytechnic - but otherwise Book City, despite the quality of their outlets, is probably not a large enough organisation to serve the needs of a major institution. Their website reveals that they have only been in operation for 8 years and that this is only their second branch. The website did not, however, provide trading hours or make any mention of the new branch located at Rosny. I was surprised by this given that it did have an online catalogue that enables customers to browse Book City's stock by subject, in a limited way.
Overall this is a great bookstore to have fun browsing in or pick up something to read, but if you're looking for something obscure or require academic texts or similar in large quantities you should probably look elsewhere.
*Corpus Christi Primary School actually operates a program where money is rised for students to go to a bookstore and choose books to buy for their library. I believe that this is the bookstore the students visit.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Critical Evalutations of Library Related Online Resources
Just some quick assessments and critiques of a few handy Library resources of various types to round out my assessment:
Brown, Lindy. (2010), Circulation, America, viewed 31st of August 2010, http://lindybrown.com/blog/
This is a great blog written and regularly updated by a woman named Lindy Brown, who according to her online resume has a B.S. in Sociology, an M.Ed. in Student Affairs in Higher Education and is now studying for a Masters in Library/Information Systems while interning several hours a week at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library and volunteering with the Internet Public Library. Between these qualifications (which can be verified by other means) and the quality of the blog I consider this to be a fairly authoritative resource. The individual posts are one person's subjective opinion, but they contain a lot of interesting information the way different libraries are using web 2.0 applications - and a lot of useful links as well.
Monash Public Library Service, (2010), Monash Public Library Service Podcasts, Australia, viewed 1st September 2010, http://www.monlib.vic.gov.au/pods.html
As the name indicates, these are the podcasts of Monash Public Library Service in Victoria. That guarantees their authority, but judging by the limited number of podcasts available and their dates the MPLS hasn't been offering this service for very long. The podcasts that are available aren't about libraries, but rather act as a way for the library to provide material (talks by various authors) that clients could normally only experience in person.
Library of Congress, (2010), The Library of Congress' Photostream - Map, America, viewed 1st September 2010, http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/map/
The Library of Congress (surely an authoritative source if there ever was one, although their flickr account doesn't specify which members of staff maintain it) uses flickr's mashup with google maps to let users geographically search for archival images it has posted online. Clever or what? In addition, clicking on a picture will take you to its flickr entry, which for the LoC's pictures will contain exhaustive bibliographical information on the picture.
I found a few other mashups that were library-specific. Interestingly, all of them used maps in some way.
As a bonus, here are links to a couple of blog posts that contain links to flickr collections for a lot of different libraries:
http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2007/07/08/libraries-using-flickr/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/librariesandlibrarians/discuss/169806/
Greenhill, Kathryn. (2007), youtubeandlibraries, Australia, viewed 27th August 2010, http://youtubeandlibraries.pbworks.com/
This is a pretty basic wiki that's never been updated. It's mostly interesting because it has several library themed youtube videos embedded in it - which makes it an example of another kind of mashup as well. It was produced by Kathryn Greenhill, an Associate Lecturer in Information Studies at Curtin University in Perth, who frequently speaks, writes and facilitates workshops about the impact of emerging technologies on libraries and our users. I would say she is a fairly authoritative source. Her blog, http://librariansmatter.com/blog/, is a great resource for any Librarian who wants to know more about how libraries can use web 2.0 technologies.
Brown, Lindy. (2010), Circulation, America, viewed 31st of August 2010, http://lindybrown.com/blog/
This is a great blog written and regularly updated by a woman named Lindy Brown, who according to her online resume has a B.S. in Sociology, an M.Ed. in Student Affairs in Higher Education and is now studying for a Masters in Library/Information Systems while interning several hours a week at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library and volunteering with the Internet Public Library. Between these qualifications (which can be verified by other means) and the quality of the blog I consider this to be a fairly authoritative resource. The individual posts are one person's subjective opinion, but they contain a lot of interesting information the way different libraries are using web 2.0 applications - and a lot of useful links as well.
Monash Public Library Service, (2010), Monash Public Library Service Podcasts, Australia, viewed 1st September 2010, http://www.monlib.vic.gov.au/pods.html
As the name indicates, these are the podcasts of Monash Public Library Service in Victoria. That guarantees their authority, but judging by the limited number of podcasts available and their dates the MPLS hasn't been offering this service for very long. The podcasts that are available aren't about libraries, but rather act as a way for the library to provide material (talks by various authors) that clients could normally only experience in person.
Library of Congress, (2010), The Library of Congress' Photostream - Map, America, viewed 1st September 2010, http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/map/
The Library of Congress (surely an authoritative source if there ever was one, although their flickr account doesn't specify which members of staff maintain it) uses flickr's mashup with google maps to let users geographically search for archival images it has posted online. Clever or what? In addition, clicking on a picture will take you to its flickr entry, which for the LoC's pictures will contain exhaustive bibliographical information on the picture.
I found a few other mashups that were library-specific. Interestingly, all of them used maps in some way.
As a bonus, here are links to a couple of blog posts that contain links to flickr collections for a lot of different libraries:
http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2007/07/08/libraries-using-flickr/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/librariesandlibrarians/discuss/169806/
Greenhill, Kathryn. (2007), youtubeandlibraries, Australia, viewed 27th August 2010, http://youtubeandlibraries.pbworks.com/
This is a pretty basic wiki that's never been updated. It's mostly interesting because it has several library themed youtube videos embedded in it - which makes it an example of another kind of mashup as well. It was produced by Kathryn Greenhill, an Associate Lecturer in Information Studies at Curtin University in Perth, who frequently speaks, writes and facilitates workshops about the impact of emerging technologies on libraries and our users. I would say she is a fairly authoritative source. Her blog, http://librariansmatter.com/blog/, is a great resource for any Librarian who wants to know more about how libraries can use web 2.0 technologies.
Youtube Video - Shelving Demonstration and Video Evaluation
This is the video of the shelving demonstration that I made with Michael several months ago in the Polytechnic Library. In order to get it to upload to youtube, I had to run it through a conversion program called zwei-stein that allows you to alter the resolution, frames per second and audio quality of a video. It's fairly easy to use once you've learnt your way around it.
I was a little surprised to see that such a short video (2:46) took up more than 180 MB in its original form. The cameras we used were nice, but I feel that they recorded in a format that wasn't really efficient enough for video you want to upload, unless you have a lot of bandwidth.
Finally, much thanks to Michael for agreeing to act as my presenter.
And here's a youtube video by the Allen County Public Librarians that I like for its 'behind the scenes' take on Library Operations:
Askacpl (2009) What Happens When I Place a Book on Hold? viewed on 31st of August 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eZzC-va1Bk
The title is self explanataory and as it is produced by qualified Librarians with extensive experience in putting informative training videos on youtube I would call this video highly authoritative and well presented.
Incidentally, the staff of the Allen County Piblic Library have really embraced the effective use of youtube for Libraries. They use their regularly updated youtube channel to make service anouncements for their clients, publish training videos and interviews that Library staff and patrons will find useful and make announcements about changes in the services.
I was a little surprised to see that such a short video (2:46) took up more than 180 MB in its original form. The cameras we used were nice, but I feel that they recorded in a format that wasn't really efficient enough for video you want to upload, unless you have a lot of bandwidth.
Finally, much thanks to Michael for agreeing to act as my presenter.
And here's a youtube video by the Allen County Public Librarians that I like for its 'behind the scenes' take on Library Operations:
Askacpl (2009) What Happens When I Place a Book on Hold? viewed on 31st of August 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eZzC-va1Bk
The title is self explanataory and as it is produced by qualified Librarians with extensive experience in putting informative training videos on youtube I would call this video highly authoritative and well presented.
Incidentally, the staff of the Allen County Piblic Library have really embraced the effective use of youtube for Libraries. They use their regularly updated youtube channel to make service anouncements for their clients, publish training videos and interviews that Library staff and patrons will find useful and make announcements about changes in the services.
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