Library Blogs

The wall for our Computer & Video Game Archive room was installed yesterday afternoon. Here are a few pictures.

Here are a few more pictures of items we've had donated to the game archive over the past few weeks.

A couple of days ago we received the first batch of new games that have made their way through acquisitions -> cataloging -> labelling. We received another large tote full of games today, so there's plenty more to come. I've started an RSS feed for the video games that arrive.

Sorry it's been so long between updates. But things have been happening with new archive. The space is coming along nicely. Last week the wiring was completed and the furniture assembled.

There are three ways to find MBooks in Mirlyn, the U-M online catalog.

The Library's Electronic Access Unit expressed an interest in making Mirlyn's list of electronic newspapers easier to browse. I'm happy to say that working with my colleagues in the EA Unit, we have developed a tool to do just this from the Library's website.

Very busy this past week: Ordered lots of stuff: games, consoles, displays, controllers, etc. Should start arriving in the next week or two. Fielded questions from folks in cataloging and acquisitions. We're doing lots of things that fall outside the normal work flow so many decisions have to be made.

Many people have asked us about the languages available in MBooks. In particular, they want to know if Google is providing searchable text for non-Western languages or difficult scripts. Most Western European languages have been available from the beginning of the project, but here are some examples of books in languages that Google has added in the past few years.

Yesterday we received our first item purchased (as opposed to donated) for the gaming archive: A Nintendo Wii. Spent about 30 minutes this afternoon hooking it up to make sure that it all works—it's a rough job, but somebody has to do it!

As previously mentioned, the Usability Working Group (UWG), along with our 2 fantastic and hardworking interns, have been conducting usability research on MTagger.