Tag: reading

The automated library of the University of Chicago!

Posted on by Team Blookup

Let us continue our little tour of the libraries around the world with something a little bit different from what we have been showing you so far.

We are crossing the Atlantic ocean, off to University of Chicago, Illinois!

The Joa and Rika Mansueto Library, to call it by it’s official name, is unlike any other library you have seen before! Why ? Because it is totally automated! The students of the University of Chicago do not have to walk around some aisles to look for a particular book or to ask the librarian whether the said book is available or not.

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Mansueto Library’s glass dome containing the Grand Reading Room

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How the automated librery works ?

Instead, the students can browse through the online catalogue of the Mansueto library to see if the book they are looking for is available, order it right away, and by the time they walk to the library the book will be waiting for them.

How is this possible you might ask? Well it all comes down to the library’s ingenious design.

The Mansueto library is like an Iceberg, you can merely see a third of it.

On the surface there are no aisles nor shelves. The whole space is dedicated to reading. Everything is happening beneath the surface.

The inside of the Grand Reading Room

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The library has a storage vault buried 20 meters deep into the ground, consisting in 24 000 bins!  Each of them containing up to 100 books. While most (if not all) libraries sort their books by subject or author. The Mansueto library sorts its books by size to optimize the space of their bins.

Every book is marked on the spine with a barcode that is scanned each time the book leaves or comes back to the library.

Meanwhile,  five mechanical cranes move alongside the racks to find and lift the bin containing the book that has been ordered by a student to the surface. The student is notified by email when the book has been scanned. Finally when it is ready to be picked up.

While many will salute the technical prouesse of building an automated library, others will mourn the loss of their good old wooden shelves as well as the feeling of walking and browsing through the aisles. What do you think about the Mansueto automated library? Is it the result of a genius mind’s work ?  Or is it too much of a change?

Source – Photos by Tom Rossiter

Bookroo: children books in a box !

Posted on by Team Blookup

kids-readingDo you have children, nephews, nieces or godchildren?  Do you still have trouble finding what kind of books to offer them?

Our kind always used reading as a communication tool between generations. And as such, we want to transmit values, memories. But we can sometimes be afraid to impose them or to invest too early, to shock, to not be understood.In short, it’s not so easy to choose!

Well, take a deep breath because BlookUp found the perfect solution to offer books all year round without fearing the lack of idea!

Discover Bookroo!

The Bookroo logo Bookroo consists in a 1, 3, 6 or 12-month subscription. During which you will receive at home (within all US territory and also Canada, for an additional $11 per month). 

Each month, a box filled with books chosen for you in accordance with the way you filled out the subscription form!

Customization options are limited to the kids’ age (from 0 to 2 and 2 to 6). The idea is really to send you (or to the kids you are offering the gift to) books “that you don’t already know and are not easy to be found online or in stores”. 

Examples of books available in the Bookroo box
Those books, for example, were the ones sent during the last few months!

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So it’s a whole surprise that is coming in a beautiful cardboard box, and within it, books separately and elegantly wrapped like presents!

Do you like the idea? Well, go to Bookroo now, choose your subscription time and spread culture, values and imagination all around you!

Bookcrossing: Let your old books go and make them travel the world!

Posted on by Team Blookup

We all love our good old books, however, it comes a time when you don’t want to read them anymore, so you put them on your bookshelf and never touch them again, which is pretty sad. Luckily for you, we at BlookUp are going to tell you about a nice way of getting rid of your dusty pile of books!

The name is BookCrossing, it is website that allows you to let go of your old books and make them travel! The process is pretty simple: You first need to label the book you want to “set free” and register it on the website using the BookCrossingID written on the said label. Afterwards, all you have to do is leaving it somewhere you know it will be picked up, it could be at your local café, a table or a bench outside at a park….be creative! Once you get back home, saddened by the loss of your old book, you can keep an eye on it by entering the book’s BCID.

What a lovely BookCrossing house! Photo by Leisha Camden on Pinterest.

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If you don’t feel like releasing your book into the wild you can join on of the BookCrossing’s forums, tweet using #bookcrossing or directly  @BookCrossing to let the fellow bookcrossers know about your book!

The person who will pick up your book can type this code on the website and mark your book as officially “picked up”. Your book’s journey starts here! If one day you stumble upon a book that shouldn’t be here for any reason whatsoever, keep it mind that it is probably traveling the world just like your old book is so watch out for the BookCrossing labels!

 

Don’t forget to join the BookCrossing community:

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Source and credits

Dogs and Humans finding trust and confidence by reading

Posted on by Team Blookup

We already know that reading for ourselves has several beneficial effects. Escaping to other universes brings us solace, discovering other cultures opens our mind, we can learn, imagine, travel, ease our mind.

 But we don’t often read to others and communicate those feelings. Thus making reading a solitary hobby and, above all, a very “human” hobby.

But can reading be used to both build confidence in children and help abandonned dogs to trust humans again?

This strange-sounding question is what started the Shelter Buddies Reading Program, created by the Humane Society of Missouri.

Helping Dogs Relax !

The idea is to ask children and young people (between 6 and 15 years-old) to volunteer at the shelter in order to practice their reading and public speaking skills by reading one (or more!) book(s) to lonely dogs waiting in their kennel.

They freely decide which book(s) to read and the dog they want to read it to, they sit in front of him or her and initiate the first contact.

Girl sitting on the floor reading to a dog

Jo Ellyn Klepacki, assistant director of the Missouri Humane Society explains that the goal of the program is to get the dogs to move from the back of the kennel to the front, as dogs staying near the front of their kennel get adopted more quickly than the others. Knowing this, it’s easy to understand how slowly adjusting them to the presence of kind humans can help them trust people again and find a new loving home faster.

Boy sitting on the floor reading to a dog

“We started this for two reasons”, Klepacki adds, “Dogs in a shelter environment exhibit a lot of signs of anxiety and show stress signals, so we wanted to do something to comfort them. We have a lot of children in our area who are really engaged and they ask, ‘How can I help?’” 

Children sitting in front of dog kennels reading to them

The program benefits both dogs and the young volunteers, who are able to practice their aloud-reading skills in a safe and nonjudgmental environment. Thus also helping to tame their fear of audiences. The shelter encourages them to generally interact with the dogs as well, by talking to them and by passing them treats if they make their way to the front of the glass.

The program is a success, and you can still become a Reading Buddy now if you want to help!

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Source – Photos credits: Humane Society of Missouri, abcnews and twistedsifter

Books and Progress: Discover the National Library of France!

Posted on by Team Blookup

Okay, we saw great books, that’s good. But when large books are not buildings themselves, we must put them in large libraries, right?

The National Library of France (“Bibliothèque Pierre Mendes France” or “BNF”), in Paris, seems to be the right place to house collections gathering nearly 14 million books and prints, and increasing  approximately of 670,000 documents per year!

This staggering number is divided over two locations: The historic Richelieu library, on Vivienne Street, and the François Mitterrand library, near the Seine docks.

National Library of Paris

 4 buildings like this, designed by architect Dominique Perrault, store millions of valuable documents on the east side of Paris.

photo credit: Inathèque

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These collections include several million periodicals, about 250,000 manuscripts, 2,500 vellum and 10,000 medieval manuscripts (making it the largest library in the world for this kind of documents), maps, prints, photographs, scores, coins, medals, audio, video, multimedia or digital (16.5 billion URLs), objects and artefacts, costumes, scenery …
The BNF is also increasingly known for its digital library, Gallica, which provides access to the reproduction of more than 3.4 million documents in texts, images or sounds in order to save documents that were too damaged to be consulted or which have to be saved in emergency because their data were about to be lost forever.

At the Tolbiac library, the reading rooms are located on the ground floor. When a reader wants a book, he must introduce his library card into an electronic reader, choose the book he wants and order it. The book is delivered about half an hour later, after the library staff working on the upper floors put the ordered books in automated guided vehicles and sent them to their future readers.

National Library of Paris Oval Room Richelieu National Library of Paris Tolbiac lecture room

The reading rooms of the BNF: Left, the Oval Room of the Richelieu site; On the right, the Ground Garden Site Tolbiac.

photos credits: Vincent Desjardins

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We are sur all this makes you want to read! But to avoid dizziness, it’s best to start with your holiday memories turned into a blook!

Booxup : share your books with others !

Posted on by wsb

Trades of services between private individuals are more and more practiced : carpooling, couch surfing,… well, now it is also true for books ! Indeed, a very new app has been created a few months ago. Its name is Booxup.

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Booxup is an app which was made for people who want to share their books with others. You just have to submit on the website to be apart of the community. Then, you can add books you want to share on your virtual library so that the other members can see it and choose it if they want to. You can also seek a book you would love among the couple of libraries around you. Booxup works with the geolocalisation, so you will only see libraries close to you. You can also follow members to know when they add a new book on the app.

Booxup was made to let people discover new books and share their owns. This is also a good way to meet people who love the same thing than you : reading. Maybe you should turn your blog into a book and share it on the app ? 🙂

 

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This tiny book is full of happiness !

Posted on by wsb

This is the end of the week. The week-end is almost here, so we decided to share a lovely project with you.

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The artist Evan made the tiniest book we have ever seen, untitled « The small pleasures of life ». The idea was to list all the little pleasures everybody can have in his everyday life : drinking a good coffee, reading a book, writing blog articles, watching the stars,… Every little pleasure, memory or feeling is summarized in a few words on one page, and illustred by a very simple drawing on the other page.

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This is such a beautiful idea, full of happiness and poetry ! Every one should own this kind of book 🙂

plaisir-enlever-petit-truc-coince-dent plaisir-debarrasser-enveloppe-corporelle

 

Source

A box full of books in the street (France)

Posted on by wsb

Would you love sharing your books with others and discovering new books for free ? Well, this is possible ! In Moulleau, South of France, a box has been installed in the street. The concept is very simple : you put a book you loved (or not) in the box, and you can choose an other one and take it for free. The goal is to discover new authors or stories and to share with others.

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On the box is written : « Take the time to read… In this box, you can leave one or a few book(s) you loved. It is free access. Every one can borrow a book and read it on a bench before redepositing it in the box.” 

The idea has been developed in other cities of France, and hundreds of people have joined the concept. If you are curious and like reading books, this was definitely made for you !