If you’re like me, you’re working over the holidays. Beyond my few in-office days this week, I’ve got a handful of volunteer projects to complete or plan before the new year, some conference presentations to start on (hello pie charts!), and multiple folders of PDFs to read on my desktop. I might even spend a few hours tweaking the ArLiSNAP redesign! (More about this later.)
If you’re not like me, you’re probably visiting with family and friends, flipping the channels on the TV, sleeping in, and otherwise loafing. Lucky you. But you might still want to catch up on your reading, do something professional-development-related, or polish off a personal project. With most regularly-publishing websites on a hiatus until the end of the year, allow me to recommend some media archives to check out if you want to keep your head in librarian-land:
Long-Forms
The Digitization Age: Mass Culture is Quality Culture. An overview of EU digitization initiatives and their impact on cultural access. (PDF)
A Season of Life in the LAC. A speech by the relatively new head of cultural heritage in Canada, Guy Berthiaume, discussing the pitiful state of our priorities challenges and opportunities we face.
An interview with Sarah Thornton, author of a new book of collected interviews with artists. Full disclosure: I got both of her books from the library and couldn’t get into either of them. But you might succeed where I have failed!
A history of the war between Amazon and the book industry.
Do we really need a Whole Foods of contemporary art? And does commercialization ever equate to democratization?
Listen/Watch
Circulating Ideas: A podcast series interviewing librarians, including a DAM expert and the director of the DPLA.
You can use your ARLIS/NA membership to access the webinar recording on library advocacy from a few weeks back.
Twitter!
VRA / ARLIS members on Twitter
I’ve only recently become a convert to Twitter, and have found it surprisingly great for networking. I didn’t take my LIS in Toronto, although I work here now, so it’s been pretty good for meeting colleagues and filling the support gap where my classmates might’ve been. I’ve been following public chats like #critlib, #SLAtalk, and #snapRT, and looking for good art-related conversations as well. (Feel free to suggest some if you know of any.) Most of these chats will be suspended over the holidays, but it’s a good time to go back and read older discussions on topics of interest (especially if someone was nice enough to storify them!).
Eye Candy
The Tate put a ton of artists’ archival content online.
The Public Domain Class of 2015. Several artists entering the public domain, including Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Munch.
And, when you’re in the midst of holiday-related stress, don’t forget you can punch a Monet.
Filed under: Fun, News Tagged: art
