Daily Thoughts 3/16/2009

English: The National Diet Library that exists in the present-day State Guest-House (former Akasaka Detached Palace) Occupied Japan (post World War II). United States government picture (public domain).

Daily Thoughts 3/16/2009

Today we have a collection development meeting in the afternoon to discuss various issues with ordering and assignments for people ordering books. It should be very interesting. This month I ordered computer books and law books. I focused mainly on the Nutshell series from Westlaw which is popular with lawyers and lay people as well.

I am going to the Open Access and Libraries Conference Tomorrow at Columbia University.http://unabashedlibrarian.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=69 . The information on electronic books looks very interesting. It is the second year that the conference has been held. The first year was enjoyable.

I was at the collection development meeting this afternoon. Mostly it was going over policies and ideas about how the book ordering is being managed. The meeting focused on nonfiction books. I am doing an order of law books and an order of Job Information Center books this month. We are going to do a fiction order later this month.

I finished reading Words In Your Face A Guided Tour of Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam By Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz has participated in numerous poetry slams. She has a website at http://www.aptowicz.com This was a long hard read. Every chapter had interviews in it. It was reading lots of complex dialogue followed by commentary on the dialogue. Mixed in with the dialogue were brief historical statements about the poetry slam. This was a surprisingly intellectual and deeply thoughtful book.

I learned quite a bit about poetry, not because there was a lot of poetry in this book. There was very little poetry in this book. There was a lot of terminology and a lot of talk about the backgrounds of the slam poets. Many had theatrical backgrounds in addition to being poets. I learned two things at the end of the book, Spoken Word is a commercial term for any recording that has to do with voice, poetry, readings, and interviews.

The other term which caught my eyes when reading was the term beatboxing or making percussive sounds and musical instrument sounds to rhythm with your voice. The other idea is poetry boxing where two poets face off against each other to see who can get audience favor. Somehow, I find it interesting that there is a strong competitive element to some types of poetry, kind of like a sport of words.

Because the book had so much depth, it might take me a little bit of time to write a proper review of the book.

I started reading more Social Software In Libraries Building Collaboration, Communication, and Community Online by Meredith G. Farkas.