Gaynor Backhouse writes a great post about libraries, holding out for “a guided tour of the library’s digital underbelly”. My favorite part is her metaphor about horizon-scanning:

Horizon scanning is a bit like doing a jigsaw you’ve bought from a car boot sale: first of all, it comes in a plastic bag, so there’s no picture to guide you. Secondly, you can see from the myriad sizes of the different pieces that there’s more than one puzzle in there and, thirdly, you know, even as you are handing over your money, that you won’t have all the pieces to complete any one, particular puzzle. [JISC Libraries of the Future | Holding out for a hero: technology, the future and the renaissance of the university librarian.]

Gaynor manages JISC’s TechWatch, keeping up with tech trends for libraries.

I’m not quite sure what the library’s “digital underbelly” is. But this sampling of news art strikes me as one possible example.

Graphics section of the Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1938

The Art the Message: The Story Behind the Chicago Tribune Collection has the same feel of the behind-the-scenes tour Gaynor Backhouse described: “secret stuff” that only the curators know about. This collection was saved by Janet A. Ginsburg, who edits news aggregator trackernews.net and curates a collection of news retrospectives, hosted at her personal site.

For access to the physical collection (now known as the Janet A. Ginsburg Chicago Tribune Collection of the Michigan State University News Archive) contact MSU Communication professor Lucinda Davenport. Images from Janet’s news art exhibit can also be seen at Brainpickings and (with Portuguese commentary) at Segunda Língua. Found via Janet’s comment on Steven Berlin Johnson’s SXSW talk, Old Growth Media And The Future Of News.