Rhode Island Historical Society’s Research Library Reading Room Closure

On December 17, 2013, the Rhode Island Historical Society’s Research Library Reading Room sustained water damage from a mechanical failure. The Library will be closed until further notice. During the pending Reading Room reconstruction, reference staff will not have access to Rhode Island Vital Records, the newspaper microfilm collection, or the genealogical reference resources that are housed in the Reading Room. These collections are undamaged, but inaccessible. Unfortunately, without these collections, we are temporarily unable to answer reference questions about genealogy, family history, or newspaper articles. We will continue to provide copy and ILL copy requests from accessible collections for researchers, but please note that response time may be slower than usual. We have added a webpage of resources that you and your patrons may find helpful in your research endeavors during the time when we are closed.

The Government Shutdown and Libraries

From ALA Direct: http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/article/government-shutdown-and-libraries

Rauschenberg Research Project

The Rauschenberg Research Project provides free worldwide access to a wealth of scholarly research and documentation relating to artworks by Robert Rauschenberg in San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection.

Blue Mountain Project

The Princeton University Library has announced the launch of the Blue Mountain Project, an open-access digital thematic research collection of avant-garde art, music and literary periodicals (1848-1923). Drawing together rare material from Princeton’s Art, Music and Rare Books libraries, the Blue Mountain Project will provide high-quality digital images as well as full-text searching, deep indexing of content, detailed metadata and descriptive essays to a broad audience. With generous support from the NEH, the Blue Mountain Project will make 34 titles available over the next two years. A full list of these periodicals – which are in English, German, French, Danish, Dutch, Hungarian, Czech and Russian – can be found on the Blue Mountain project page.

EBSCOhost downtime for My EBSCOhost on Oct 26 from 7-8am

News from EBSCOhost: Please note that for about one hour beginning at 7:00 a.m. EDT (UTC-5) on Friday, October 26, 2012 certain EBSCOhost functionality will be unavailable due to planned maintenance. Please note that EBSCOhost will continue to be available during this brief interval, however EBSCOhost with Navigator may experience intermittent interrupted access. Affected functionality will include: Personal User Authentication Checkout and Download of eBooks Alerts Access to My EBSCOhost folder items or the ability to save items to personalized folders from session We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this short maintenance interval.

Brown University’s Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab

In October, Brown University is opening up the Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab in the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library. The lab features a large-scale visualization video wall consisting of 12 high-resolution, 55-inch LED screens that form a 7-by-16-foot display with a combined resolution of over 24 megapixels, creating a high-quality viewing and analytical space. It also features a surround-sound audio system, videoconferencing capabilities, specialized lighting, and several individual touch-screen monitors.... Brown University Library News, Oct. 3

Art.sy

Discover the world’s great art on Art.sy Richard Byrne writes: “Art.sy is a new site that has indexed thousands of works of art that you can view online. It allows you to browse for artworks according to medium, style, subject matter, movement, or region in which the art is produced. Once you’ve found an artwork that you like, Art.sy helps you find more by suggesting related works. It will serve as a nice supplement to art history and art appreciation courses.” Art.sy went live on October 8.... Free Technology for Teachers, Oct. 9; New York Times, Oct. 8

The Art of Library Date Stamps

An artist uses due date stamps to create art.

Fold This! Pop-up Books & Paper Engineering

"Movable books have been around for more than 700 years." Read More. See RISD's pop-up books.

Europeana

Europeana is a single access point to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe. It is an authoritative source of information coming from European cultural and scientific institutions. On September 12, 2012 Europeana opened "up data about all 20 million of the items it holds under the CC0 rights waiver. This means that anyone can reuse the data for any purpose - whether using it to build applications to bring cultural content to new audiences in new ways, or analysing it to improve our understanding of Europe's cultural and intellectual history." For more info see: The Guardian article.

Color Blind

An interesting post on color blindness and Van Gogh on Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.

Library Survey!

Hi from the Fleet Library at RISD!

This is National Library Week, and we would love to get your thoughts and ideas on the RISD Library. Please take 5 - 10 minutes to fill out the following survey. (It will be available until April 20.)

Link to survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RISDLibrarySurvey

Thanks from all the staff at the library.

Google Art Project

Learn more about the Google Art Project here.

Bibliophilia - books we love & why

To celebrate National Library Week, April 8-14, 2012, we invite RISD Students, Faculty and Staff to select 1-3 of their favorite RISD Library items to be displayed on the stadium seating in the first floor Library Reading Room. Favorite items may include any combination of Media, Reference, Oversize and Main books as well as circulating Picture Collection and Material Resource Center items. Include 1-2 sentences about what sets this particular book, film or visual material apart from others. Comments are optional and will be included in the display.

Just fill out the online form for the Bibliophilia exhibition or the printed cards which are available at service desks throughout the Library.
We'll pull the items and put them on display.

Spead the word - tell your friends, colleagues, and student workers about the exhibition.
Invite them to select a favorite book, film or material from our collection.

The display will run Sunday April 8 - Sunday April 22, 2012

Current Topics in Textiles + Library Research by RISD Apparel Students

http://textileincubator.wordpress.com/

Textile Incubator is a place for Rhode Island School of Design Apparel students and faculty to post information about their favorite textile and apparel happenings. From new innovations in electronic textiles to the history of denim, no topic is off-limits. If you can wear it, knit it, sew it, dye it or print it… we’ll blog it.

Providence Athenaeum in the news

NPR: Athena's Library, The Quirky Pillar Of Providence

ARTstor updates - Folders changes and Chome browser

There was an update to the ARTstor Digital Library this week. New changes include:

* Full support for Chrome browsers.
* In your image search results, you may now see icons on the lower right-hand corner of the image thumbnail: "P" denotes Personal Collection (for images uploaded by a campus instructor), and "H" Hosted images (for images visible only at your institution).
* Folders are now nested in two upper level folders: "Private Folders" and "Institutional Folders." "Private Folders" contains folders viewable only by you. "Institutional Folders" contains folders that are viewable by other users at your institution either as "Public" folders or as "Password-protected" folders.


After this update, some users may find that they cannot see their folders or image groups; clearing the browser cache should resolve the issue. Read detailed instructions on how to do this on our help wiki.

And of course, you can contact User Services for more help at userservices@artstor.org.

Library Online Catalog Down for Updates on Wednesday

Update: upgrades down last night when the library was closed. Online catalog is working.

The Library online catalog will be down for updates tomorrow, Wednesday, Feb 15 from 8:30 am to 10:30 am.

Wintersession Break Hours

Sat Feb 11 10am-6pm

Sun Feb 12 Closed

Mon Feb 13 - Th Feb 16 8:30am-8pm

Fri Feb 17 8:30am-4:30pm

Sat Feb 18 Closed

Sun Feb 19 Regular Hours Resume

Librarian Love

Congratulations to the 10 winners
of the 2011 I Love My Librarian Award

Read Caroline Kennedy's remarks as she describes libraries as "tabernacles of personal freedom" and
watch the I Love My Librarian recipient interviews