Illustration corner and Vintage Ads

Animalrium, (as I've said before), is one of my favourite blogs. She really curates a lovely collection of animal-related illustrations and short videos. The post that I got today's Illustration Corner from is all about the kind of vintage advertising that populated her Italian childhood, including lots of visual delights such as the wild horses featured in Illustration Corner, and the elephant/tire in the Pirelli ad by Armando Testa below.

Boards.ie are giving away a free iPad 2...

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore iPad App Trailer from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

A fantastic new i-pad e-book for children (*cue physical-book loving mothers across the country shielding their children's eyes in horror) - which seems to preserve (and in fact add to) the mystery and imagination of reading. Read about how and why it is so well done here. Never mind the kids; I want it for my bedtimes:)

Illustration corner - memo!

Illustration corner got a little bit dusty and cobwebby there, so I put up a new illustration - ship in a bottle by memo. Memo is run by British illustrator Helen Entwisle and she creates charming hand drawn and screen printed illustration, self-published zines, hand printed stationery, limited edition prints, tote bags and accessories. Check out her blog or her Etsy shop for more nice things (many of which I'd fork out for if I were in a forking out mood). And see to the upper left her lovely tote bags - perhaps we should do something like this for our library totes! (Although some rephrasing and covering of our tracks would be necessary). (I joke!)

Library videos

I found this on a blog  purporting (is that a word?!) to have the best library videos. This kind of thing seems to be way out of our technical reach, but its still worth a look...
Who Will Help Me - University of Alberta Libraries

Podcasting 2

So I've had a good nose through other libraries' podcasts, and I've listened to Ann Lib's well-executed podcast (kudos!). Haven't been brave enough to record one yet and not entirely sure what I would talk about (and there's the small matter of a deeply engrained horror of my own voice), but here are some ideas for podcasts the library could do:

• A simple tour of the library in English/Irish (possibly other languages such as French with the help of the French department! which might help Erasmus students)
• A short interview with any of the authors or speakers that we have come to our events (i.e. Eneclann etc.)
• A guide to databases - i.e. one podcast per popular database.
• A talk about the Impac/Booker/(insert other major book award here) nominees for upcoming year

What I do know is that the talk would have to be structured and that a plan would have to be in place to keep the momentum up in the recording of a series rather than a random selection of recordings. I also don't think it should be a one-person job - the pressure should be dispersed over many library staff:) Now I've fulfilled the obligatory parts of this Thing, I'll wait and see if I think of anything good to podcast myself. iPodder  will tell you all about the best podcasting sites and what they have to offer. Image above is from here.

Podcasting 1

Alrighty moving on; we have new things to blog about! I'm only at the beginning of the podcasting journey but while having a snoop around other libraries' audio and video content, (which proved both fascinating and intimidating) I found this video (also available on audio) about "Digital Humanities and the Future of Libraries" from NYPL...seems timely (a word of warning watching this is like attending a conference - skip ahead through intro):

Smartphone needed asap so I can listen to as well as look at (and occasionally sniff) books, and all the other wonderful stuff there is out there waiting to be streamed, no wait, fed to me... sigh.
In other reflections, South Dublin libraries are long-renowned for their progressive tackling of new technologies - good for them! and the public!