PLA Blog

Zeke Killbride, a librarian at the Finkelstein Memorial Library in Spring Valley, NY, wrote to us about a digital collection recently posted to the library’s site:

I’m writing to suggest a library link for your blog. I’m a librarian at the Finkelstein Memorial Library in Rockland County, New York, north of New York City. One of our patrons and her mother donated her late father’s drawings to our library and we have made them available online.

[Link to the collection]

It’s an interesting story. David Friedman was a Holocaust survivor. Friedman documented his agony and torment during the Holocaust through a powerful series, “Because…They Were Jews!” While he was working on this series he found comfort by visiting local libraries and sketching the people he saw. Timeframe: 1962-72.

Friedman’s words: “I needed to forget about the concentration camps and the horror that was there. So it was a pleasure to go to the library.” There’s a poignant human interest story here; showing libraries as a place of relaxation and sanctuary.

I would argue that this is more than a lovely human interest story. This is an example of librarians telling a story, something that Karen Hyman so often speaks about, a low-tech option for offering digital photos (fast-loading HTML, thumbnails for quick viewing, an HTML slideshow that simply refreshes the page and doesn’t require a special plug-in), and definitely taking content from the community and presenting it to the rest of the community in a new and interesting way. It’s providing context for content and communing with patrons. That’s Library 2.0 if I’ve ever seen it.

Tags: digital libraries, librarians, librarianship, Library2.0, public libraries, technology, web

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.