As a librarian, I know that our community faces a real problem storing the records that document our history.  As a community, we have a real problem recognizing the significance of our history.

So, here is a solution really suggested by uber-preservationist Craig Bobby.  The Breuer becomes a central film and print, drawings archive for our university and our public library holdings, our music history, our art history, our local Cuyahoga records--everything.  The gorgeous Rotunda becomes the entry, and the Euclid Corridor really does become a Digital Infromation Corridor connecting University Circle museums with Downtown, Case, CSU, Tri-C, CPL and the Rock Hall.

La Cienega--The Beverly Hills Waterworks faced a similar fate as the Breuer.  Residents filed an injunction to prevent the demolition of this landmark structure.  It now houses the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Center for Motion Picture Study.

Think of the synergy?!

Currently CWRU houses their archives in an expensive storage facility in Pennsylvania.  It takes weeks for researchers to fill information requests.  Cleveland Public Library houses material at a Lakeshore facility that will soon be outgrown.  I am not sure about CSU's archive status, but we all need to consolidate our print collections.  Cleveland Public Library has a nationally recognized Preservation Department with ties to the Intermuseum Conservation Association.  

We all have the chance to be winners here...or we face cultural suicide:

Library storage booked to capacity

State's five depositories cull collections as space runs out

By gpotthoff [at] dispatch [dot] com

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

  Tonight, Cleveland's subprime mortgage debacle was featured on the NBC nightly news.  Can we, for once, be  featured for making progress and for innovation?? 

In the holiday spirit of Web 2.0, I am reproducing the questions posed by Gerry McKiernan--also passing along this valuable site:  The 24 languages project

From: "Gerry Mckiernan" <gerrymck [at] iastate [dot] edu>

Colleagues/

I've discovered that a Fall issue of _NextSpace_, the OCLC Newsletter,
has an excellent article on "Libraries and Social Networking".

The piece consists of a Q&A with Nine Notables:

Lori Bell (Alliance Library Systems, Second Life Librarian and Director
of Innovation), Edward Castronova (Indiana University, Associate
Professor of Telecommunications), Paul Jones (ibiblio.org, Director),
Hemanshu Nigam (MySpace, Chief Security Offfice), Kitty Pope (Alliance
Library System, Second Life Librarian and Executive Director), Fred
Stutzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ph. D. Student),
Stuart L. Weibel, Ph. D. (OCLC, Consulting Research Scientist)

The Questions:

How do you define online social networking? Examples of how it*s
working well and not so well?

What are the impacts, overall, do you think on industry, education and
cultural institutions?

Specifically, how do you see it affecting libraries/museums? Right now,
and in the future?

How can libraries best work to shape the next wave? Should they?

Do you see social networking as a serious, long-term cultural and
business phenomenon?

I have excerpted portions of the Q&A in my _Friends_ blog
BTW: During this Holiday Season  - Give The Gift That Keeps on Giving:

Subscribe to the _Friends_ blog with a Feedburner Webfeed [:-)

Season's Greetings!

AND

Happy Monday !

/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

There is Nothing More Powerful Than An Idea Whose Time Has Come /V.
Hugo [ http://www.blogger.com/profile/09093368136660604490 ]

Iowa: Where the Tall Corn Flows and the (North)West Wind Blows ...
[ http://alternativeenergyblogs.blogspot.com/ ]

I worked for a summer as clerical archivist, then also in the CSU library just helping out.

The archive I worked on were that of the universities architects, it was amazing what they had just laying around; piles of drawing and documents. They paid me to come in and physically sort it and then create a database…you know to locate it latter. It never got finished I graduated, it was a student assistant position.

I was told it is as I left it, that they could not find another person able to finish it. The archive….

I think that there must be similar scenarios everywhere…

It would be awesome to have that a repository, then also have it all searchable.

Build it then pass legislation that mandate records be archived into a professionally managed searchable archive.

Most records are lost, I believe…the ones at CSU are figuratively lost…not literally because they are there and they need to be gone through, a good entry level job, identifying and sorting is really easy, and they all could be coded and then stored.

They say government cannot create jobs there is one way, right here in this…the fees to store them charged to match the cost of operation.

The Rotunda could be the place you go to look things up…how cool would that be!

  We need better recordkeeping and more good clerks in the world...to put US in order :)

Scroll UP--You will find information on the person most qualified to be our first Cuyahoga County Executive: