Collection Development for My Random Life.

100 Amazing Flickr Collections for Architecture Buffs | Graduate Degree.

Some people stare at the ocean, I tend to stare at buildings and walls. There is a great list of architecture pics linked on the above site. I love it, love it, love it. I don’t have to search for this now (or create it myself).

Perhaps libraries should start to cull websites like this…. Consider a top 100 websites about … (you fill it in).  Have we abandoned that for the simple keyword search? I wonder what we lose in discovery by zooming in so far with a keyword search.  It would be cool if we could zoom in/out of our searches like on all the digital maps websites.  Zoom straight to the word on the page, then paragraph, then chapter, then book, then books next to it on the shelf, then books related to it, etc.

See what you think about when you stare at buildings…

Thanks to Core77 for the heads up.

So sleeping on all the good discussion from ILS Conference I spoke about a few posts ago, made me think what are the “bestsellers” in an academic library. Public libraries have seemed to embrace making multiple copies, access, holds, promoting, author meet-ups, book groups, expedited processing & purchasing, etc.  — an emphasis for bestsellers which really pleases their patrons.

What in the academic world would be the same thing?

Is it online access to journals? Could be…

…but I guess I am going throw this out there… would it be textbooks?

I love the Information Aesthetics blog, here they note visual design of search interfaces:
visual search engines – data visualization & visual design – information aesthetics

Libraries really need to think about how their websites, databases, and online catalog appear. Maybe we can take a page from one of the designs shown at Information Aesthetics