Tag Archives: Birmingham

Birmingham, library, On the Web

Virtual Tours of Birmingham Libraries

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birmingham_library_tours

I just noticed this button at the bottom of the Birmingham Public Library site, which links to a webpage full of mini-video tours of the central downtown branch and five of the Birmingham branches.It’s powered by Alabama360.com, so you have the ability to zoom, pause, pan and tilt.

Some of the older tours are powered by MapWing which pinpoints still images rather than allowing you to pan through a panoramic shot.

The Linn Henley Research Library tours don’t do the murals justice. It’s just one of those things best seen in person.

library, Media, Technology

The Future of Libraries

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Open Library LogoI am a HUGE fan of our library system here in Birmingham. They are great and very rarely do I feel let down. I’m betting the folks in Boston feel the same way about their library system too. Especially with the launch of their Open Library Scan-on-Demand program.

Here are the directions from their site:

…if it’s at the Boston Public Library and hasn’t been scanned yet, there will be a “Scan This Book” button… …we’ll have a librarian go and get the book from the stacks, bring it to our scanning center, and have our team of scanners digitize it page-by-page. Within 3-5 days, you should receive an email follow-up with a link to the newly-digitized copy, complete with PDF, online flip book, full text (using OCR technology) and more, all thanks to your request!

 

Open Library Screenshot

How cool is that? You can tell these people have put a ton of thought into their library system. if you go the site, you can even see which titles are in the process of being scanned. Kudos Boston!