Library As Place: Being Human in a Digital World

Despite the increasingly digital nature of information retrieval, both users and computers continue to occupy physical space, and the library – as place – offers an essential location for inspiration. In an age when one might assume that the digital negates the physical, a finite place can root the individual within space regarding both composition and information retrieval. In this seeking for the essentially human element of the physical book within space, we may also discover a need for the library as place

Building the Financial Facade: Jacques-Denis Antoine\u27s Hotel De La Monnaie, The Parisian Mint, 1765-1775

Building the Financial Facade: Jacques-Denis Antoine\u27s Hotel de la Monnaie, The Parisian Mint, 1765-1775, a thesis prepared by Amanda Catherine Roth Clark in partial fulfillment of the requitements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of Art History

An Appeal for the Physical Book

Librarians are confronting a shift in media that is changing the structure and the collections of libraries as well as the meaning of librarianship itself. The heart of this essay suggests that the physical book maybe considered an enduring communication vessel. If the goal of the library is to offer access to the cultural record, then physical books as a social record embodying “bookness” hold a place within the library institution as a material expression of the intimate and enduring relationship between human and book

Literacy and Cultural Assimilation in Rural China: A Report from the Interior

The American Library Association has long been concerned with the promotion of literacy, particularly as it pertains to the equity and global universality of access to information. When libraries focus on the accessibility of information, literacy is understandably an initial step in the process. This essay focuses on challenges to literacy in rural China, and how technology may be improving access to information for many of the inland population

The Man Who Dies Rich, Dies Disgraced: The Carnegie Vision of Library as Place

Andrew Carnegie’s vision of the library as a place for intellectual elevation through the introspective act of reading offered the promise of increased prosperity and wisdom to persons in all walks of life. The architecture of Spokane’s Carnegie library spoke of this promise through its neoclassical façade and visual references to an age revered for civilized accomplishment. While some of these sentiments have fallen out of favor, the underlying principle of encouraging curious engagement by inspirational architecture remains true for libraries today. Poster presented at the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Seattle, WA

A Type of Communication What to Watch for in U.S. Presidential Campaign Promotional Ephemera & Typographic Choices

Facets of graphic design, logo design, typefaces, and other images absorbed through rapid cognition have a psychological effect on the viewer. Well known to advertisers, these stylistic typographic choices transmit a powerful message to viewers and influence their impressions of the product (Coleman and Wasike 2003: 1). Visual design decisions may persuade at unquestioned and unconscious levels, and they may be indelibly imbued with their historical identity. How then do these choices, when applied to the promotional materials of political campaigns, affect the stylistic impressions made by printed materials, such as posters, bumper stickers, lawn signs, and buttons? By examining this category of political ephemera, do we find that Republican campaigns tend to use bold, all caps, sans serif fonts more frequently, while Democratic campaigns prefer more slender, serif fonts? Moreover, what messages do these choices convey to the viewer? The following article explores these graphic decisions and their implications when employed in the aesthetic construction of U.S. presidential campaigns

Ice streams in the Laurentide Ice Sheet: identification, characteristics and comparison to modern ice sheets

This paper presents a comprehensive review and synthesis of ice streams in the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS) based on a new mapping inventory that includes previously hypothesised ice streams and includes a concerted effort to search for others from across the entire ice sheet bed. The inventory includes 117 ice streams, which have been identified based on a variety of evidence including their bedform imprint, large-scale geomorphology/topography, till properties, and ice rafted debris in ocean sediment records. Despite uncertainty in identifying ice streams in hard bedrock areas, it is unlikely that any major ice streams have been missed. During the Last Glacial Maximum, Laurentide ice streams formed a drainage pattern that bears close resemblance to the present day velocity patterns in modern ice sheets. Large ice streams had extensive onset zones and were fed by multiple tributaries and, where ice drained through regions of high relief, the spacing of ice streams shows a degree of spatial self-organisation which has hitherto not been recognised. Topography exerted a primary control on the location of ice streams, but there were large areas along the western and southern margin of the ice sheet where the bed was composed of weaker sedimentary bedrock, and where networks of ice streams switched direction repeatedly and probably over short time scales. As the ice sheet retreated onto its low relief interior, several ice streams show no correspondence with topography or underlying geology, perhaps facilitated by localised build-up of pressurised subglacial meltwater. They differed from most other ice stream tracks in having much lower length-to-width ratios and have no modern analogues. There have been very few attempts to date the initiation and cessation of ice streams, but it is clear that ice streams switched on and off during deglaciation, rather than maintaining the same trajectory as the ice margin retreated. We provide a first order estimate of changes in ice stream activity during deglaciation and show that around 30% of the margin was drained by ice streams at the LGM (similar to that for present day Antarctic ice sheets), but this decreases to 15% and 12% at 12 cal ka BP and 10 cal ka BP, respectively. The extent to which these changes in the ice stream drainage network represent a simple and predictable readjustment to a changing mass balance driven by climate, or internal ice dynamical feedbacks unrelated to climate (or both) is largely unknown and represents a key area for future work to address

Attention Journal

Review of Attention Journal, Reviewed August 2014 by Amanda C.R. Clark, Ph.D., Interim Director of the Library Harriet Cheney Cowles Memorial Library, Whitworth University [email protected]