We’re living smack dab in the middle of a golden age of data viz—or peak data viz, depending on your point of view. Beautiful Science, a new exhibition at the British Library, offers a glimpse at how complex info was presented before technology made infographics so inescapably ubiquitous.
Digging through the archives of old libraries is a blast. Depending on the library, you’ll find everything from dated architectural drawings to snippets of old children’s books. You can just imagine the treasures to be found in the British Library’s ancient archive. And, now, you don’t even have to get your fingers dusty!
If you were ever paranoid that your employer was reading your social media missives, imagine being the subject of some future student’s grad school thesis. From tomorrow, Britain’s six biggest libraries will be entitled to crawl and archive the web in an attempt to create the UK’s official digital repository — in the same way the sextet must receive a copy of every book, newspaper and magazine published in the motherland. The first crawls will begin in the next few weeks, and your drunken holiday photos could be accessible from terminals in the British Library, national libraries of Wales and Scotland as well as the Bodleian, Cambridge University and Trinity College libraries from as early as the end of this year. As far as we’re concerned, we’re hoping those long forgotten Livejournal entries will be packed off to Leeds, where the British Library’s unloved texts go to sit on a shelf die.
Filed under: Internet
Via: The Telegraph
Source: British Library, (2)