Personal Project

Thanks to Mick for organizing the Chicagoland Library Drupal Meeting in Oak Park. The presentation on "Top 5 Non-Obvious Drupal Modules" by Russ Bomhof and Geoffrey Hing from CRL was excellent (see slideshare). My presentation on implementing WYSIWYG is below. I'll have the audio up shortly.

So I was checking out the location of a library -- from Nelson, NZ, no less -- that someone had just posted on LibSite.org.

It turns out, Google has a StreetView for the place. I clicked in, all prepared for something exotic. Here's what I found:

View Larger Map

"Red Scare (1918-1921)" was a project I did for extra credit while finishing up my MLS at Queens College (CUNY). It must have been around 1997.

The online exhibit consisted of political cartoons with some photos from the period 1918-1921. There were over a hundred images illustrating the hysteria of the time -- most scanned from hard-bound copies of the Literary Digest, then conveniently housed in the stacks of NYU Bobst Library. The exhibit is hosted by Newman Library, Baruch College (CUNY) where I went after NYU.

Anyway, every once and a while, I get a request for permission to use one or two of the images. There was a lot of interest in them around the time of 9/11 but even afterwards, the requests still come in.

I usually explain that the copyright has long run out on the images and that they're free for the downloading. The latest request was from one of the College Prep Testing Services. They want to use one or two of the images for their section on U.S. History.

I guess, I'll have to upgrade the project at some point. Ten years is a long time for content like this on the Web.

I wish I could say my lack of posting for the last week or so is because of me 'gone fishing'.

Instead, I'm working on a site for the Public Library Association that, happily, is close to completion.

The thing's looking good but it's taken all my free time away.