Daily Thoughts 01/17/2012

Herbert Putnam in his office. Librarian of Congress Date Created/Published: [between 1890 and 1910]

Daily Thoughts 01/17/2012

This morning, I read some of Tony Wheeler's Bad Lands A Tourist on the Axis of Evil.  Tony Wheeler is the founder of  Lonely Planet travel guides.  He travels to a variety of places as a tourist that are somewhat closed to westerners.  The book is entertaining.  So far, I have read about visiting Afghanistan, Albania, Burma, Cuba, Iran, and Iraq.  There are constant little reminders that these places are potentially dangerous and one has to watch what one is doing carefully.  However, the people are also friendly and interesting.

I updated the Twitter and Facebook accounts for the library.  We are also working on the website and the e-blast.  I gave a colleague my collection of monthly calendars so she could check what we had done during the year.

We had the Biography Book Club today.  I talked about the book The Life and Legend of Jay Gould.   We also talked about the book The Warmth of Other Suns:  The Epic Story of America's Great Migration.  One of our patrons suggested we might want to change the focus of the book club to books on current events.

I spent some time making calls to people about the Mount Vernon Writers Network http://www.mvwn.org  to confirm their attendance.  I also showed another colleague Tumblebooks which are E-books for children.

I spent some time at the beginning of the Intermediate Computer Class this evening talking about the E-readers.  I showed the Kindle and the Sony E-readers to the people at the class.  I am going to be going over the Nook with the career counselor who comes to visit on Tuesdays next week.  It should be interesting.

On the way home, I read some more of Tony Wheeler's Badlands.  In both North Korea and Libya, Tony Wheeler had to travel as part of a group of people with a guide who directed what they could see.  Everything was well planned beforehand.  There is quite a bit of historical commentary thrown in with his experiences visiting these countries.

Web Bits

20 Heroic Librarians Who Save the World
http://io9.com/5671047/20-heroic-librarians-who-save-the-world

Book Clubbing: On Living and Learning In Bookstores
http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/11965/book-clubbing-sonya-chung-on-living-learning-in-bookstores.html