Collecting info on the newspaper displays in the lobby of the McHenry Library, which rotate frontpages from around the world.
Lee Jaffe's installation photos:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ldjaffe/albums/72157626824825533
- Modeled after installation at UC Berkeley International House
- "These photos document work on a 6-screen installation that will feature front pages from newspapers worldwide. The architects left us with pretty much nothing we could use and in fact added some extra surprises. I'm working with Doug Russo, a carpenter, to design and build this installation that we hope will compensate for the deficiencies of the space in an attractive and secure manner."
- "...the electrical raceway [was] added for a different project just before we started our installation. Nobody thinks this was done well -- there is conduit all throughout the wall and it could have been routed differently -- but there is no money to fix it at this point. We were able to reposition our installation a bit to cover some of the raceway but we cannot hide it completely." (photo)
- Installation occurred during summer 2011
Gifts funding the creation: "UC Santa Cruz receives $350,000 to create global café and reading garden at University Library"
http://news.ucsc.edu/2007/01/1028.html
- "Stephen Silberstein--cofounder and former president of Innovative Interfaces, a library software company in Emeryville, California-has donated $250,000 to create a global cyber café in the campus's newly expanded and renovated McHenry Library."
- "Plans for the UC Santa Cruz café include a rotating digital newspaper display that spotlights up-to-date front pages of approximately 140 newspapers from around the world. Representing the varied geographic areas of Asia, Europe, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and the United States, the newspaper exhibit is designed to contrast different global perspectives of current events."
UPDATE, 8/3/2015: A UCSC staff member writes:
"The person who was most directly involved with the implementation of this system has retired. I will try to answer your questions as best I can.
The current newspaper display was installed in 2011 based on an earlier pilot installation in 2009. It uses Mac Mini computers and 30" Dell monitors. The image swapping is managed by the MacOS screen saver application. The newspaper images are .jpegs managed by newseum.org and those images are updated on that site daily. The library contracted with a programmer to do some customized scripting to automate the daily download of new newspaper images. Unfortunately, I do not have any contact information for that developer."
So, it sounds like a script downloads the fixed image URLs, from Newseum, which updates the image URLs, daily. For example, the Centre, Alabama, USA newspaper, "
The Post". The script may copy the images to a folder on the computer driving each display (or perhaps a server folder). The computer then displays the images, in the configured folder, via native screensaver utility.
Seems pretty straightforward! I had wondered if Newseum represented the source; nice to see it confirmed. The script just iterates over a configured list of newspaper images, probably calling something like wget.
Note: Lee Jaffe may represent the retired staff member referred to, above. The 2009 installation seems to represents the install seen in several photos from Lee's Flickr account, prior to the McHenry Library remodel.
UPDATE: 04/08/2023 -
Newseum as an organization dissolved in 2019.
We stopped by the iHouse at UC Berkeley today and it looks like they removed their newspaper displays.
