Daily Thoughts 4/7/2010

Suggested credit line: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USZ62-54231], James Branch Cabell, Public Domain

Daily Thoughts 4/7/2010

Today has been another quiet day. I changed the display for the storage books from fairytales to books on the west including westerns. People read a lot less western and pioneer literature. Zane Grey, Max Brand, Owen Wister, and Louis L'amour are not as popular as they used to be.

I also had some time to read Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal. The idea of the agency is kind of interesting. The publisher determines the price for the ebook, then the retailer gets a fixed percentage of profit, 30%. It puts more power into the producer of the work; the author and the publisher. It is a rather interesting idea.

We also had a collection development meeting. I have to check out the price for a docking station for ipods, iphones, kindles, and other devices for Overdrive. I'll probably do that on Friday.

Things are moving along steadily with the shifting projects. We have to look at labeling the shelves for the paperback fiction.

Things have been a little tight lately. We are starting to look at different vendors. http://www.librariansyellowpages.com/

We are going to have a poetry open microphone on Saturday from 2-4 p.m. I have learned a few things. The first thing is to have a sign up sheet beforehand. The second thing to do is to call the people on the signup sheet a couple of days before the event to confirm people are coming and ask them to bring a friend. I have to think of which poetry I am going to read. I think we may open with people introducing themselves and asking people to make a short statement of why they are here. I think we will have a few poets from the community this time which should make it a a little bit better. Also we may have people from the senior center.

Daily Thoughts 4/29/09

Reading Lady. Kamisaka, Sekka -- Artist Woodcuts From:Momoyogusa = Flowers of a Hundred Generations. c1909

Daily Thoughts 4/29/09

Today is rather interesting. We had a morning meeting discussing the many things which are currently happening. We are doing a lot with getting the library collection more organized. I spent a considerable amount of time making sure the law collection was being covered properly today.

We have a reggae poet doing a workshop right now. I stopped in for a minute to check on things. He was talking about how to do free writing. He has a cd of his poetry which he is giving to participants. There is also a class visiting from the local baptist church who are working on a project on different countries around the world. The final thing which is happening is a city Green Committee which is meeting for the first time in the community room. We are making a concerted effort to increase community involvement in the library. The reggae poet did very well. He wants to come back again to do another workshop. He gave two of his spoken word cds to the library.

I started working on a bookmark for graphic novels. It has a nice short selection of what I think people might like to read. I might also do one for writing as well.

On the train home, I started reading Good To Great Why Some Companies Make The Leap... And Others Don't by Jim Collins. There is also an accompanying monograph called Good To Great And The Social Sectors Why Business Thinking Is Not The Answer by Jim Collins. The monograph is quite short, only 35 pages of text.

Daily Thoughts 4/16/2009

Carlo Naya, Lo Scrivano, 1865

Daily Thoughts 4/16/2009

I was very busy yesterday, much more so than usual. I did not get a chance to write. Yesterday, I went to another Earth Day committee meeting. I picked up some trash bags for the cleanup around the building. The post office has agreed to clean up around the building across the street. I also dropped off some flyers at the YMCA across the street.

I am thinking about what needs to be done next week. I have made sure that there are flyers for the program next week on setting up a home office. Also, we have flyers put up for the poetry workshop on April 29. I am looking forward to the workshop. It will be the final poetry event for National Poetry Month.

I finished reading Wikipedia Revolution on the train this morning.

We have another new librarian who started on April 14, 2009. The reference desk is filling up now.

Two new books came in for me to read, Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky and The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines.

This week is National Library Week, April 13-19, 2009. Take some time to visit your library and check out a book, or if you are not so book inclined check out a dvd or sit down and use a computer for a bit. We are here for people to visit and use.

Turn it off

Turn it all off

Sit quietly for a few moments

No electricity no machines

Daily Thoughts 4/14/2009

Depiction of Aesop from the Nuremberg Chronicle. Published in 1493

Daily Thoughts 4/14/2009

Today was another day at work. We are going to add The Multicultural Review which is a quarterly journal to our routing list. It is one of the journals which we subscribe to. We had a collection development meeting today. I described what I had ordered, some 800s and a set of graphic novels on the New York Times bestseller list. I also have to put several Job Information Center titles on order which are being requested regularly.

I updated the displays for current events and Earth Day which is April 22, 2009. I also put together a list of supplies to ask for the Earth Celebration Week. I basically broke it down into two categories, planting supplies for flowers, and cleanup supplies. I have to call the people who I called before to confirm what we need tomorrow. I have another meeting tomorrow.

I also ran an open microphone poetry program today as well. It went much better than I expected. Fourteen people came in and out this time. I have a decent supply of poetry of my own, plus we had about seven people who had brought their own poetry to read as well as several books of poetry which I brought in case somebody did not have anything to read of their own. There were a few people who came in just to listen. We had the usual refreshments, mini-muffins, apple juice, coffee, and water. The microphone was set up a little better this time. The crowd was a mix of late teenagers and adults. It is an inexpensive program if you can do it right. April is national poetry month.

I read some more of The Wikipedia Revolution. This book is very interesting. It is as much a history of the internet as a story about the creation of the Wikipedia Encyclopedia. The technology for creating Wikipedia was already in place by 1995, Wikipedia is in some ways more of a social innovation and a new way of thinking about organizing people than a technological breakthrough.

There are a lot of fascinating ideas in this book. For example a search engine does not need a volume number nor does it need for terms to be alphabetized for it to work. Also, a lot of the information from Wikipedia came from public domain sources like the census and the CIA World Fact Book. Wikipedia essentially took the CIA World Fact Book and expanded it with lots more information to make many of the Wikipedia country entries. A lot of the town descriptions are compilations of United States census data that have people adding additional information to make a more complete entry.

Daily Thoughts 4/2/2009

Theo van Rysselberghe, The Reading by Verhaeren (1903)

Daily Thoughts 4/2/2009

April is National Poetry Month. Don't forget to take some time to read a poem or write one too.

Flowing

Flowing water

Rolls over rocks

Down stream

Today was incredibly busy. So busy I almost had no chance to write anything. I'll write about today tomorrow. As they say, "When I get around to it."

Daily Thoughts 2/23/2009

Salomon De Bray (1597-1664)
Book and Picture Shop
Pen and ink, 1628
29 7/8 x 29 7/8 inches (76 x 76 cm)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Daily Thoughts 2/23/3009

I was on vacation this last week. I go back to work today. I am looking forward to it. I like what I am doing. Hopefully everything is going well. As I came back to work today, I realized that there were many more people coming into the library than usual. The economy may be down, but library usage seems to be going up considerably.

There was a stack magazines waiting for me on my desk; Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Searcher. I found two articles from my reading to be particularly interesting. The first was Is That A Computer In Your Pocket The Incredible Shrinking Computer by Robert Oppenheim, Searcher The Magazine For Database Professions, February 2009, P.12. This was about smartphones and how information professionals might use them. Apparently the Hoovers Database is available via smartphones. We just started a new subscription to Hoovers online. The second article I found particularly interesting was Step Into The Digital Future by Judith Rosen, Publishers Weekly, February 16, 2009 Pp. 17-19. This article was about the different new ereaders; Plastic Logic, Kindle, and the Stanza software for the Iphone.

In addition to stacks of magazines, I had a few books which I had put on hold waiting at the circulation desk, Regenesis by C.J. Cherryh and The Caryattids by Bruce Sterling. I returned all the books and videos I had checked out for my vacation.

When I got back I checked my phone as well. I will be going to The White Plains Supreme Court Law Library on Monday with two of my colleagues to take a tour of their library. They have a special office there called The Office of the Self Represented.

Everything seemed to be in order when I got back. Both of the Sunday Matinees for family films were shown and the workshop on using computers for business on Wednesday went well. I also had a chance to call and arrange for a poetry workshop on April 29m 2009 for National Poetry Month. As part of my focus on poetry, I checked out another book, Aloud! Voices From The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, edited by Miguel Algarin and Bob Holman. The book won the 1994 American Book Award. I started reading it on the train home. The book has a kind of smooth flavor to it; much more intense than beat peotry.

During my vacation, I tested out some of my old skills. For a while, I was doing human resources sourcing for a new defunct internet service provider during the dot com boom. I looked for philanthropists in our county, corporate donors who gave to libraries, and local library foundations. I searched the internet, newsgroups, blog search engines, and magazine and newspaper databases to find people. It was like peeling the rust from a door hinge.

Tomorrow, I am going to go through the city paper and one of the county papers to look for the same thing. The online city paper is only for two months and we have the complete run for a couple years in our periodicals department. I put another book on hold related to this kind of activity, Fundraising for Libraries: 25 Proven Ways to Get More Money For Your Library by James Swan.

Todays Thoughts

Jan Van Eyck

Todays Thoughts

I haven't really had a chance to write up a summary of The Other Wind. Life has been too busy. I napped on the train coming in to work. I'm a bit tired today. I had three cups of coffee at lunch time to keep myself awake.

Right now, I am working on three programs. The first is an estate planning workshop from a local lawyer. We have found that creating a sign up sheet beforehand guarantees a certain amount of audience. We have seven people signed up for the workshop tomorrow evening. Usually we get another group of people who come in who don't sign up as well. In addition, I do traditional announcement over the intercom half hour before the program starts as well as make sure there are fliers around the building for the program.

The next day, we are showing Cars by Pixar. The director has asked me to show a "Family Film" suitable for all ages. At first I tried Because of Winn Dixie and Madagascar, but they didn't seem quite right. We usually buy small packets of popcorn and apple juice for the films. Next month, I am showing The Jackie Robinson Story starring Jackie Robinson because there is a baseball program in the evening.

Next week, I am doing a poetry program where we do an open microphone. I like to serve fruit and juice for the poetry program. I think we might get eight to ten people who will read poetry next time. I actually get up and read a few of my own poems. There are several audience members who do as well. Hopefully, there will be some momentum and we will get more people.

Programming is not something which I have done that much of before. It seems like it kind of sneaked up on me. I'm just starting to get the hang of creating fliers and get the feel of writing simple press releases for the calendar of events in newspapers.

This morning, I did more ordering of social science books. I went through The New York Review of Books for the last several months looking for titles in the 300s. I am actually not that fond of The New York Review of Books, it seems to be a bit exclusive in its taste aiming for the upper middle class. I did find several titles to order however. Some titles which looked interesting were Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, The Warhol Economy, and I Don't A Contrarian History of Marriage. I also took a look at the latest several issues of Choice magazine.

In addition, I took some time to look at New York Public Libraries recommended reading lists which are quite interesting. They have links to lists of books which have won various literary prizes. Queensborough Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library also have recommended reading lists which I look at occassionally. Libraries tend to compile these lists on their websites. http://www.nypl.org/branch/books/

I also took a few minutes to look at the graphic novels I ordered. Most of them have already been taken out by patrons. I have Fables 1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham in my hands as well as DC Showcase Presents Challengers of the Unknown Volume 2. Challengers of the Unknown is a classic science fiction comic book with golden age science fiction stories.

Several boxes of new books from my orders are coming in as well. The order of Manga and science fiction books is being processed as we speak. Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the new Vampire Hunter D manga are sitting on the cart as well as the science fiction novel, Space Vulture.

There is a lot happening very quickly right now. There are a lot of new books for me to examine. I find myself busier than usual right now.

Tonight, I erased a video game which I had purchased from my hard drive. I had it for about a week. I found that I felt compelled at times to play it a little bit too long. Get to the next scene or go to the next level. It was eating into my time and making me a little bit tired. The game promised 1000+ hours of gameplay. This is a bit much.

Something in me said stop you are spending too much time on this thing. For me video games can be hypnotic and distracting. They are hard for me to stop playing sometimes. It is like alcohol for some people. I enjoy playing them for a short time. But, the games they are designing these days can be very long complex and overly involved.

I think I will step back and go to my other distraction right now, blogging.

National Poetry Month, Thoughts, People's History of the American Empire

April is National Poetry Month in the United States. This is a good time to do poetry events, I guess. We had eight people who stayed through the whole poetry open mike the last time and four people who came in and out. It was kind of fun. Some people read their own poetry, but mostly people read from books of their favorite poems. I think it will grow slowly. There is no money spent on this kind of thing. Flyers and press releases cover advertising. I will probably be going around to post flyers at various places in the community as well.

I chose to fill the front three display cases with poetry books. A mix of beat, black, avant garde, and popular poetry. People like Wendell Berrigan, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Bukowski, Sapphire, Langston Hughes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Alice Walker, Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Diane Wakoski, Sylvia Plath, Gary Soto, Hart Crane, Sandra Cisneros, Jean Toomer, William Carlos Williams, and others. I am hoping that people will take interest in the selection. It is always very hard to know with these things.

Matter by Iain Banks is on the Locus Bestseller list. I am enjoying reading it. It reminds me a little bit of Ringworld by Larry Niven. The action takes place on a giant hollow world with multiple levels and towers between the different levels. There are a lot of different aliens in the story. It is quite intriguing.

A new graphic novel just came out People's History of the American Empire by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, and Paul Buhle. This is a left of center history in comic book form. Howard Zinn is famous for writing A People's History of the United States: 1492- Present. This book has an official release date of April 1, 2008. This means we cannot put the book out for the public without potentially breaking copyright and receiving fines. Publishers do check for this in bookstores to see if you are releasing a book early. One of our local libraries got fined for doing this. I am looking forward to getting a chance to read this book.

I haven't read A People's History of the United States. Sometimes, I can only guess at whether something is good from other peoples recommendations.