The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) presented its 2012 National Medal for Museum and Library Service to ten museums and libraries from across the country. According to the IMLS, “the National Medal is the nation’s highest honor conferred on museums and libraries for service to the community and celebrates institutions that make a difference for individuals, families, and communities.” IMLS Director Susan Hildreth and Domestic Policy Council Director Cecillia Muñoz presented the Medals in a ceremony held today (November 14, 2012). Among the honorees are the Long Island Children’s Museum in Garden City, New York, and the Shaler North Hills Library in Glenshaw, Pennsylvania. Read more.
From Historical Society of Washington D.C:
Washington, D.C.— October 4, 2012 (PDF): The Historical Society of Washington, D.C. announced today it will reopen the Kiplinger Research Library to the general public on a twice-weekly basis starting November 5, 2012. The library will be open by appointment on Mondays and open to the public with regular hours on Wednesdays.
Read more.
Today,the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the first 12 winners of a national competition to build 21st Century learning labs in museums and libraries around the country. The winners—four museums and eight libraries—will receive a total of $1.2 million in grants to plan and design the labs. Inspired by YOUMedia, a new teen space at the Chicago Public Library, and innovations in science and technology centers, these labs will help young people move beyond consuming content to making and creating it.
The twelve recipients were selected from a pool of ninety-eight applicants from thirty-two states. The process for awarding a second round of grants begins in Spring 2012.
The Mid-Atlantic regional winners for the 21st Century Learning Lab grants are:
Howard County Public Library, Columbia, Maryland who, along with partners The Institute of Learning Innovation and MindGrub Technologies, LLC, will develop a Learning Lab for youth ages 11-18 at the Savage Branch library. Staff at the branch and system levels have identified the need for a dedicated space and activities to meet the increased usage of the library by teen customers, and to deliver effective, informal, learning involving digital media.
New York Hall of Science, New York, New York which will will plan and prototype a youth-centered, community-engaged Digital Making program within the museum’s new Cognizant Maker Space. Digital Making is a program that will empower diverse groups of middle- and high-school youth to investigate and communicate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) topics through digital media including sound, video, and games.
DaVinci Discovery Center of Science and Technology, Allentown, Pennsylvania which will partner with the Allentown Public Library to create a virtual studio environment for youth engaged in digital media and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) activities. Participation in the virtual environment will be supported by face-to-face outreach programs. Tools for the creation of digital content will be available on loan from the library.
Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania which will work with a variety of local organizations to develop a comprehensive plan for a digital media Learning Lab in the new Parkway Central Library. The lab design will be based on current research, teen focus groups, input from local partners, expert consultants, and staff experience.
Please visit the Institute of Museum and Library Services for more information on all the winning proposals.
(From imls.gov)
“The revolution will not be tweeted.” Or, so read the tagline on a recent Malcolm Gladwell article in The New Yorker. In his persuasive manner, Gladwell suggested that relationships developed through Facebook, for example, tend to be shallow and rarely strong enough to create the bonds necessary for the hard work of achieving social change. Yet, we have watched as the youth of the Arab world foment revolution, successful in part due to the use of Twitter and Facebook as tools for organizing and publicizing their cause. Can social media build and sustain meaningful communities? Maybe the jury is still out on the relationship between new technologies and civic engagement.
Many of us who work in the public history field are asking these same questions. Web 2.0 tools have opened up a world of new and exciting possibilities for exploring and presenting history and we feel the pressure to use these tools, even as we don’t know its exact impact on our audience. But, I think we also feel suspicious of technology’s ability to act as a stand-in for face-to-face dialogue. How do we keep up with technology without ignoring the need for authentic, real-time interactions?
The Buffalo & Erie County Public Library is wrestling with just these issues. At the recent NCPH conference in Pensacola, Anne Conable, Project Director, and Michael Frisch, Professor of History at SUNY-Buffalo, spoke about their new collaborative project called “Re-Collecting the Great Depression and New Deal as a Civic Resource in Hard Times.”
The library is developing a unique digital inventory of primary source materials (photographs, oral histories, artifacts, buildings) relating to the Great Depression and the New Deal in western New York. This multi-media “collection of collections” will be a resource to support civic dialogue and reflection, drawing the community into the library for panel discussions and an exploration of their shared history. The project explores how the experiences of Buffalo residents in the 1930s might help provide context and perspective on the present. And, the library is experimenting with technology to help drive this process.
The central mission of the project has hinged on a series of three PastForward discussions. The topics have been incredibly timely; the first discussion in October 2010 focused on public funding for the arts and the legacy of the WPA. The second, “Our Daily Bread: Organized Labor Then and Now,” ran in February on the heels of Governor Scott Walker’s controversial plan to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employee union members in Wisconsin. Both events were well attended – at each panel discussion, over 70 members of the community came to share their views and engage with the history.
Technology has played an important, but supporting, role in the project. Both Conable and Frisch speak eloquently about the project as a “model of how digital humanities can help a public library mobilize collections to address the civic purposes central to its mission.” Event participants can, for example, create their own personalized tour – downloadable from Google Maps – of Depression-era Buffalo. (Zotero, the collections software, allows them to pull from the burgeoning collections database to accomplish this.) They can download posters with photographs from the collection. These options allow the visitor to customize their experience, while also encouraging further engagement with the programming.
If you are in the western New York region, the third discussion in the PastForward series, “Housing For All: Policy and Reality,” will be held on May 24th at 7 p.m. in the Central Library. The discussion is sure to be dynamic, and while none of us has all the answers about the relationship between technology and civic life, this project is an innovative model for the ways in which new technologies can support the work of history and encourage community building.
“Housing For All: Policy and Reality”
May 24, 2011│ 7 p.m.
Central Library
1 Lafayette Square
Buffalo, NY 14203-1887
For more information: http://www.buffalolib.org/events/newsroom/index.asp
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