Daily Thoughts 10/11/2011

Studiosul ("The Scholar") or Studiu cu barbat la masa de lucru ("Study Portrait of a Man at His Writing Desk"), ink drawing, 11,6 x 10,3 cm.

Daily Thoughts 10/11/2011

On the train this morning, I started reading A Thinking Man's Bully Unstuck In Time, Unburdened by Convention And Liberated from Fact by Michael Adelberg.  This is an advanced reading copy given to me by Library Journal.  The story is about a man in psychotherapy who has a history of being a bully.  This drives one of his friends to committ suicide and his son to try and committ suicide.  There is a callousness to the book which is quite surprising.

Things have been rather steady today.  I updated the Facebook page and the Twitter account.  The number of social media followers for the library has been increasing steadily.  I also checked the displays.

Also, our Sony representative came by and showed the new Sony Tablet which was rather interesting.  We took some pictures with the tablet, took a lot at the book Alice In Wonderland, and tried out some applications.  There was also some discussion about the Sony E-readers and what was coming next.  The Sony representative was nice enough to donate some books to the library.

We also had a public demonstration of the Sony Ereaders for the patrons where we showed people how the Ereaders worked in the computer lab.

I am going to New York Comic Con on Thursday.  It should be interesting.  If you work at a library, there is a special "Kidsa Day" promotion for librarians. For your customers and patrons, New York Comic Con hosts a “Kids Day” on Sunday, October 16, the final day of the show. Children and tweens under 12 are welcomed to attend the Show and literary programs at no cost on Sunday. NYCC will support this in your library with posters, bookmarks and pins. If you'd like to make Kids Day available through your library please email Jul Sifers (jsifers@reedexpo.com) with New York Comic Con; they would be happy to send you all the information and material to share this free event with your community

The book Designing With Web Standards 2nd Edition by Jeffrey Zeldman came in for me to read.

I spent some time making sure the computer lab was set up for the Beginning Computer Class tonight this evening which was from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m..

I read some more of A Thinking Man's Bully on the train home.  It is a very psychological novel.  I think it is a deeply revelatory book.  It shows how behavior passes from father to son.  The main characters son becomes a bully like his father. The story is quite macho in points.  Some of the characters play hockey which is a very physical sport with lots of contact and fighting.

Daily Thoughts 8/31/2011

Arna Bontemp, Painting by Betsy Graves Reyneau, provided by the National Archives and
Records Administration as a cooperative project with Wikimedia
 
Daily Thoughts 8/31/2011

This morning, I read some more of Hard Magic.  There is a lot of action in the story, plus there are a lot of different types of people with different powers.  The story is very clearly one of good versus evil.

I spent some more time on the Twitter and Facebook account.  I also checked the displays and put some books on 9/11 in the current events display.  I spent some more time checking on databases and the website as well.

I also had some time to read through Publishers Weekly today.  I put A First Rate Madness Uncovering the Links Between Leadershiop and Mental Illness by S. Nassir Ghaemi on hold.  I am looking forward to reading The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity by Jeffrey D. Sachs when it comes out in October.

The book, No Shelf Required E-Books in Libraries by Sue Polanka came in for me to read.  It is also a blog http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/

On the way home, I finished reading Hard Magic. It had lots of action and fighting.  It was worth reading.

Web Bits

Sony Tablets Coming in September
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/devices/article/48536-sony-tablets-coming-in-september.html

Sony Announces First Dedicated Ereader With Wireless Access
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891828-264/sony_announces_first_dedicated_ereader.html.csp

Daily Thoughts 7/18/2011

A Writer Trimming his Pen, Jan Ekels

Daily Thoughts 7/18/2011

I finished reading On Leadership today which is part of Harvard Business Review's 10 Must Reads series.  A lot of it was about self management and self-awareness.  It basically says unless you have yourself organized you won't be able to organize other people.  I also started reading Curation Nation by Steven Rosenbaum.  I like the idea that we are all curators of everything we put online.

Today, we finished a five foot banner in Microsoft Publishers for the CD Music collection.  I checked the Twitter account and the displays as well.

Our Sony representative came by and opened the display for the Sony Readers.  We now have three circulating sony PRS-350 ereaders.  These are the first circulating cataloged ereaders in Westchester county.  One of them has already gone out five times on the new record for the PRS-350.  The checkout is for two hours at a time.  People are coming and using them to find out how an ereader works or want to see how the Sony E-reader is different from the Kindle or Nook.  We have a user agreement for the ereaders.  We got the Sony grant for the three free ereaders.  They also sent us a lot of promotional material. http://ebookstore.sony.com/library-program/

We are not using Overdrive to fill the ereaders.  Right now, we have started by downloading 108 free books from the Baen Free Library, Project Gutenberg, and other sites.  We will be adding more free ebooks slowly and may eventually start purchasing books for the ereaders.

I read some more of Curation Nation.  The author is specifically talking about curating content on the web.  This means organizaing and selecting specialty information for websites.  This can range from cooking sites to books.  The author describes how The Huffington Post rose to prominence by aggregating content from a variety of sources as well including their own content editors.