This essay is partly a response + riposte to Johanna Drucker’s Jan. 2014 essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Pixel Dust: Illusions of Innovation in Scholarly Publishing,” and partly a plea for the University, and the Humanities, along with their publishing “arms,” to be refashioned, not as sites of cultural Authority from which Knowledge…[Read more]

Relative to many of the ongoing discussions and debates around the changing (and often precarious) landscapes of scholarly publishing, and especially around Open Access publishing, we at punctum books have put together a sort of “primer” (which also serves as our own, expanded vision statement) on what we see as the perils of the commodification…[Read more]

This article provides an overview of design thinking as a component of, and contributor to, great library user experiences. When design thinking is used to shape the environment in which users connect with library spaces and personnel, the result is a better library experience—by design.

Good Night, Sleep Tight is an interactive virtual reality performance created by theatre and digital arts company ZU-UK. It was previewed at Gerry’s Kitchen in July 2017. Combining VR and binaural technologies, participants are put to bed and transported to a dreamscape composed of childhood imagery and aerial cityscapes. This artistic position r…[Read more]

The Music Library at the University of Washington is fortunate to count among its holdings a substantial collection of rare musical scores. A highlight of our special collections is the William Crawford III Music Collection. Given to the UW in 2014, the Crawford Collection includes over 700 rare, early-edition vocal scores, spanning six centuries…[Read more]

As librarians, we recognize that the ways in which our students access information are changing, rapidly and dramatically. The students we work with today face an information landscape that is often very different from what we remember from our student years. So much of what our music students need is seemingly readily available online through…[Read more]

Critlib, or critical librarianship, is the discussion and application of social justice issues in the library field. Generally, the application of critlib has been focused on information literacy and pedagogy, as well as cataloging, but one important aspect of the discussion that is often overlooked is that of library management. Just like…[Read more]

Proposal for Book ‘Em: Libraries, Librarians, and Information in Mystery Fiction, 1970-2018

Many academic libraries conduct extensive user studies when redesigning their websites, considering characteristics such as design features, information architecture, and link and information placement. One of the less studied aspects impacting library website usability is choice of language. This article presents the results of a usability study…[Read more]

DocPerform is a multi- and interdisciplinary research project based at City, University of London. Led by members of the Department of Library & Information Science, it comprises scholars and practitioners from the fields of performing arts and library & information science. The project concerns conceptual, methodological and technological…[Read more]

Argues that the list of Core Library Values compiled by the American Library Association should be applied to our broader information landscape, not just to libraries.

This essay suggests that there has been a relative lack of digitally enabled historical research on the recent past, when compared to earlier periods of history. It explores why this might be the case, focussing in particular on both the obstacles and some missing drivers to mass digitisation of primary sources for the 20th century. It suggests…[Read more]

Think back to your first year of college. How did you feel? Eager? Excited? Maybe also fearful, anxious about fitting in, making friends, or being successful? First-year students have a lot on their minds. It can be challenging to help them forge a meaningful connection with the library. Amidst the internal cacophony generated by the transition to…[Read more]

This presentation defines BEAM and discusses how the author introduced it in a graduate-level music bibliography course.

Open access has changed. At the beginning of the millennium, it was portrayed in a romanticizing way and was embedded in a conceptual ensemble of participation, democratization, digital commons and equality. Nowadays, open access seems to be exclusive: to the extent that commercial players have discovered it as a business model and article fees…[Read more]

As cultural heritage collections become available online they carry the promise of ‘access’ – new audiences, new uses, new understandings. But access is never simply open. Limits are imposed, structures are defined, categories are created. Decisions are made about what gets digitised and why. This chapter will describe a series of exper…[Read more]

The process of managing information in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) design projects remained relatively unchanged between publication of works of Bavarian theorist Albrecht Dürer and French mathematician Gaspard Monge in the 1500s and 1700s respectively, and the widespread adoption of computer aided design (CAD) in the early…[Read more]

Der Markt für wissenschaftliche Informationen hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten einen enormen Konzentrationsprozess durchlaufen, und zwar nicht nur was Publikationen, sondern Produkte des gesamten akademischen Workflows betrifft. Dies könnte am Ende zu einem „end-to-end lock-in” führen. Sowohl um dieser Entwicklung etwas entgegenzusetzen als auch…[Read more]