Ninja Librarian

Bad Customer Service?

Wayman Adams artwork found in library!

Nine (and counting) oil painted portraits by well known artist Wayman Adams have mysteriously turned up in Gee Library! How they got here is a puzzle--they were relegated to a storage room where things are sorted out before being gotten rid of. I'm in charge of arranging displays in the library, and I was looking at the frames to salvage for student created art.

Then it occurred to me to research the artist--perhaps these were something worth keeping rather than turning over to the theatre department to be used as props. The signature is very unusual, but with help I was able to decipher the last name, and a few letters of the first name.

A little time with Google trying various versions of the name along with portrait and the name of the auction house that was on the back of a few works brought me to the name Wayman Adams. He is a well known artist from Indiana who was born in 1883. He was already an established artist when in his mid thirties he married a woman from Austin and moved to Texas, where he lived for the rest of his life.
He was known as "Painter of Presidents" because he did portraits of several US presidents as well as several governors of Indiana. Most of his artwork is held in Indiana museums, but Texas has a fair number. To my knowledge with nine pieces we have the largest collection in the state.

Now we need to find out how they came to be in the library. I was able to trace all nine pieces to an auction in Waco held in 1993. I wonder if they will tell me who bought them, and perhaps that person is the one who donated them to us.It is an exciting mystery, among several. The piece below was listed in the auction catalogue as reserved for the Carnegie Institute. How did it end up in Commerce, Texas? The piece below won the Walter Lippincott Award in 1933, given by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
The Smithsonian online archive lists the piece below, Portrait of Everett Victor Meeks, as being owned by Yale University Art Galley.

So now we have a mystery on our hands--how did we come to get these works of art?

Banned Books Week

Gee Library is hosting two activities for ALA's Banned Books Week:

1) Tuesday at 3:30--a Read Out! Participants are invited to read three to five minute selections from a banned or challenged book of their choice.

2) Thursday at 3:30--view and discuss the classic Bette Davis film "Storm Center". This 1956 film involves a public librarian who is confronted by her town council who demand she removed a book from her shelves.

And for a humorous take on censorship, Tom Lehrer's immortal song:

Fall semester 2009!

Our new computer lab, dubbed the "Nexus", has eaten up the area formerly known as "Reference".

ALA 2009--Chicago

Web 2.0 Meet the Standard of 21st Century Learner

Friendfeed : FriendFeed is a real-time feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed.

Slideshare : Embeds powerpoints. Example: 10 Things We Bet You Didn't Know About the Library http://www.slideshare.net/westervillelibrary/10-things-we-bet-you-didnt-know-about-the-library

Pageflakes : A personal portal or start page. Organized into tabs, each tab containing Flakes, which are modules with various content. Similar to iGoogle.

Alice Down the YouTube: Ethical Training in the Online Wonderland

Videos hosted on Youtube, created by staff dealing with ethical issues

King County Library System Training
KCLS Training – Michael Denton

Bunnies

123

Patrons Gone Wild


Eric Faden
Fair(y) Use Tale


Art Institute of Washington
Goofus and Gallant in the Library

Part 2


Dan Conley
Managarian
Part 1 – Intro

Part 3 – Customer Service

Part 5 – Where do patrons come from?



Making Virtual Reality-Based Library Services Real for K-12 Teachers & Librarians

Chicago Public Schools Department of Libraries Second Life Project



My Avatar Will Contact Your Avatar: Virtual Worlds, Real Opportunities

What are the trends and developments in virtual worlds, such as Second Life, Lively, Qwaq, Teen Second Life, and Whyville? How are they being used by libraries and library-related organizations? What factors should libraries consider in deciding whether or not to develop a virtual world presence? What is the future of librarianship in virtual worlds? What resources and skills are needed to start and sustain a virtual world library presence?


Has Library 2.0 Fulfilled its Promise?

http://litablog.org/2009/07/15/has-library-2-0-fulfilled-its-promise

Copyright Law Explained