Treasury of Art

Librarians and teachers should know about Google's Art Project and introduce students to it. The images at the Art Project give viewers a chance to visit some of the major art museums of the world, including the Tate Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Once you click on the name of the museum, you can get a tour of the facility or view individual works of art. Unlike a real-life museum where paintings must often be viewed at a distance and sometimes over the heads of other visitors, this project gives viewers the chance for an intimate encounter with each painting. Areas can be enlarged for better viewing. Individual faces can be studied as well as details of architecture of decor. The Art Project is a treasure not to be missed by anyone who enjoys the beauty and excitement of fine art.

Something completely different

Sometimes even librarians get tired of worrying about the state of publishing or the future of books. When you want to hear a cheerful story about how kids can interact with books, click on this one from Publishers Weekly blog and see how children can react to an imaginative project suggested by a creative school librarian. Building birdhouses out of old picture books may not strike you as something you'd ever want to do, but it is refreshing to see how cheerful and inspiring an unusual work of art can be. It may even inspire you to create other inspiring projects for the children in your library.