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Discussions about ‘informal learning’ seem to be growing. I am interested because libraries and museums have always been really important spaces for informal and unstructured learning.

I think it is important to study and understand how it works, and why informal learning is good. But can you actually plan for information leaning? At some point if you are planning for it, doesn’t it in fact cease to be informal?

The New York Public Library recently redesigned their logo.
In their words, this was in an attempt to make a “new logo that is user-friendly, accessible, dynamic and relevant.”

The Library of Congress recently did the same. In both of these cases, the new logos are radically simple. There are practical reasons to go with a simple design. In the LoC case, you can tell they have thought a lot about how and where the logo would appear.

Image courtesy of the Brand New website: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/an_iconic_lion_for_an_iconic_institution.php

courtesy of Brand New: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/the_librabry_of_congress_gets_its_wings.php

Yet there is something unsettling to me about both of these. Somehow these both seem dumbed-down. Does the new (eerily Disney-like) NYPL lion really seem more user-friendly and accessible? It seems to me that its cartoon-ish nature just makes it seem out of place, that it looses its connection with the lions outside its doors that originally inspired the logo. It just doesn’t represent the very complex, awe-inspiring place that does everything from provide services to recent immigrants, to host a reunion of the Velvet Underground and sends out strange Tweets with quotes from Roger Moore’s biography. In that way it isn’t user friendly, it is misleading.

Both of these cases seem also to  move away from a geographically-based icon to an object-oriented one. And I think that is a dangerous move for libraries these days. If information is getting more and more ubiquitous, don’t we need to remind people that libraries are in fact important as spaces as well (even if the spaces the libraries are creating might be virtual)?

It’s possible that I am reacting to a general dislike that I felt immediately for these new identities, but I just can’t shake the feeling that they both point to a trend. I am a huge fan of usability and accessibility, but I think these are both examples of something else entirely…something I can’t quite put my finger on. Am I over-reacting?

Last week the Google Book Search settlement was officially withdrawn from the US court where it was being decided, “in light of the parties’ plans to modify the Settlement Agreement”. With over 400 filings in response to the settlement the final document might end up looking significantly different. Brandon Butler, Legal and Policy Fellow for the Association of Research Libraries, has created a handy guide to the filings, summarizing the key reasons for support and objection and naming some of the more interesting “key supporters” (Cornell, Stanford University Libraries, American Association of People with Disabilities) “filers with reservations” (American Association of University Professors, American Library Association) and “key opponents” (Amazon, ProQuest, the Republics of German and France) of the settlement. There are a few interesting cases (faculty of the University of California, Committee on Institutional Cooperation, Charles Nesson et al. from Harvard) where objections or reservations are coming from institutions that have contracts with Google to scan their collections. Does make one wonder whether the people that made the agreements are having second thoughts, or whether there is just some internal disagreements.

Across the pond, JISC is soliciting feedback on the settlement.

You can find the entire text of the original settlement agreement on Google’s official Settlement administration site.