Daily Thoughts 3/20/2009

Evert A. Duyckinick, Portrait Gallery of Eminent Men and Women in Europe and America. New York: Johnson, Wilson & Company, 1873.

Daily Thoughts 3/20/2009

This is a nice little article on the first color ebook reader. http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/03/worlds-first-co.html

Today had a few unexpected things. I went over shelving with the library aides and the person managing shelving. I reminded them that all the books should be edged; one half inch from edge of the bookshelves and even. There should be no books lying on top of the other books. At the end of each shelf there should be a hands breadth; four to six inches of empty space left at the end of each shelf. When the books are not edged, it is often hard to see the spine labels. When the books are too tightly packed together, it breaks the spine of the book and causes books to split in half.

I also walked around and looked at the shelving to check for repairs and sections of books that were out of order. This is called "walking the shelves". It looks like I am walking back and forth systematically between the aisles and looking over the bookshelves from top to bottom. It is more than doing individual shelf reading where you check to see if individual books are out of order.

I am going to be selecting extra pieces with a colleague for the slat wall displays that are going up for new books. This should be interesting. We also got new book detection systems for the library.

I went to a meeting at city hall for Earth Day which is April 22, 2009. The main focus of the discussion seemed to be neighborhood cleanup and recycling. They wanted civic organizations to adopt blocks for neighborhood cleanup. The largest church had agreed to do some pickup of trash and light painting around our neighborhood. We do need it. They are also asking us to do something for Arbor Day. I am planning a display of environmental books for Earth Day. Also, it is about the time for planting flowers.

I read some more of Social Software In Libraries. The author was going into areas which we have not done yet, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), VOIP (Internet Telephony), screen capture software, instant messaging reference, vodcasting, podcasting, and a wide assortment of technology. There is a tremendous amount to think about in this book.