Nina Katchadourian--Sorted Books

I came across a couple of artists in the past few weeks that are creating wonderful artwork using books as props.  The first is Nina Katchadourian, an artist I discovered through Brain Pickings.  In her Sorted Books series, Katchadourian goes to various libraries and uses books in the stacks to create intriguing and amusing phrases.  You can check out more of her work on her website, http://www.ninakatchadourian.com

Lissy Laricchia--Get Back in Your Book Alice

Through the Today and Tomorrow blog, I was introduced to the photographer, Lissy Laricchia.  Her series, Get Back in Your Book, depicts various characters of books being pulled quite literally back into their respective books.  So far, the set includes Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, Beauty and the Beast, Peter Pan, and Sleeping Beauty.  You can find all of the photographs in the series on her Flickr page.

Finally, while this leans towards commerce as opposed to traditional art, the bookmarks created by Jack Spade are both something to visually enjoy and use.  The perforated bookmark paper can be purchased here.

]]> http://www.dawnbilyeu.com/blog/2010/05/25/and-now-for-some-art/feed/ 0 http://www.dawnbilyeu.com/blog/2010/04/01/cataloging-the-worlds-books-wiki-style/ http://www.dawnbilyeu.com/blog/2010/04/01/cataloging-the-worlds-books-wiki-style/#comments Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:53:57 +0000 dbilyeu http://www.dawnbilyeu.com/blog/?p=957

A couple of weeks ago, the Internet Archive’s, Open Library, rolled out a soft launch of their new web design.  I checked out the Open Library website awhile back and found it to be an interesting project, but the design of the site did not really pull me in.  Although I liked the idea of a wiki devoted to cataloging all the world’s books, I did not see how this resource could be more useful than Worldcat, LibraryThing, or Google Books when it came to locating books in libraries, for sale, or in electronic form.

While I’m still slightly unclear why another resource of this type is needed, I can now see the benefits of an open-source database as opposed to a proprietary source such as Google Books or Worldcat.  Open Library also attempts to locate various electronic formats of a book–another advantage over a scanned copy obtained through Google Books.  Where the old site only allowed a subject, author, title search, etc., the new site has added the ability to browse by subject, places, people, and time.

But it might be the new design that really makes the site work for me.  Search results used to be displayed much like they are on Worldcat, with areas to refine the search in the left-hand column.  While this was not a bad layout, their new design more boldly displays options for search refinement.  Information on the new “soft launch” site is clearly displayed, with a variety of discovery tools and graphics.  Open Library is actively looking for developers to find new ways to use their book data and transform it into other useful tools.  I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

There is a new Web 2.0 book club (of sorts) that has received some press lately called BookGlutton.  The site has a number of public domain books downloaded for users to read, and also allows uploads by users of other public domain books not currently in their library.  Users are allowed to insert notes or chat with other readers of a book.  There are various groups already started that new readers can join–or they can start their own groups to discuss their readings or books in general.  While I’ve never been much of a book club gal, this site looks promising.