Since September of 2015, we’ve been in the midst of a search to find a new President of the Boston Public Library. The BPL is an amazing institution on many levels. Part of the greatness of the BPL derives from its history: it is the first free municipal library in the world, the first to … Read more
The Web turns 25 years old this year. What has changed since Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN in Switzerland, released this gift to the world in 1989? The easier question to answer might be to ask what hasn’t changed. The widespread use of the Web in communities all around the world has touched … Read more
My favorite tweet in a long time, courtesy of @electriclit: It’s going to be a good day. The Digital Public Library of America opens at noon: j.mp/15hTf0w // @dpla Today is launch day for the DPLA. Hooray! So many people have worked so very hard in the past two years to get the plan down, … Read more
Super late to the party: Dan Cohen & the DPLA. An enthusiastic take by Sarah Barbrow on Dan Cohen’s appointment as the founding executive director of the Digital Public Library of America, which I share.
The New York Times is running one of its Room for Debate series on the future of libraries. The four debaters (so far) are Luis Herrera, director of the San Francisco Public Library (and a board member of the Digital Public Library of America); Susan Crawford, visiting professor at Harvard Law School; Buffy J. Hamilton, … Read more
We had a final session of our Bibliotheca class today at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, which I am co-teaching with Jeffrey Schnapp. We used the time to explore the final projects of each of the students, some alone and some in groups. As a group, they are terrific, ranging from proposals to redesign and … Read more
We are just thrilled to have William Rawn and his colleague Cliff Gayley of William Rawn Associates in our Bibliotheca class (which I’m co-teaching with Jeffrey Schnapp) at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design this morning. They’ve designed the Cambridge Public Library’s main building, as well as the Rochester Public Library. They are also discussing two … Read more
I’m having a huge amount of fun teaching a class at the Harvard Graduate School of Design with my friend Jeffrey Schnapp on the history, present, and future of libraries, called Bibliotheca. The students are fantastic: twenty or so, mostly studying design and architecture, though there are graduate students in other fields. We’re holding the … Read more
A group of us is gathered today at Harvard Law School for a conversation about the future of legal information, libraries, and the law itself. It’s a fun and diverse group — about 150 strong — in Austin Hall’s north classroom. The wiki for the conference has the schedule, the participants, and a lot of … Read more
I’m preparing for a lecture tonight at Harvard Law School. Here’s the abstract: The Path of Legal Information November 9, 2010 I propose a path toward a new legal information environment that is predominantly digital in nature. This new era grows out of a long history of growth and change in the publishing of legal … Read more