Daily Thoughts 7/9/2009

Menander, A Painting from Pompeii

Daily Thoughts 7/9/2009

I am off by a little bit today, it really is the ninth, I put the tenth down by mistake and then corrected it. A whole day disappeared. Today was another day. I have been working with the collection. We had a meeting to discuss technical services. I am going to be shifting some books in the 700s pretty soon.

Daily Thoughts 7/1/2009

Daily Thoughts July 1, 2009

Today has been another quiet day. I spent some time ordering a few fiction titles. I still have to check through a couple of different sites for African American, inspirational, mystery and suspense titles. While I was looking at Locus Magazine online, I noticed that The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon was on the bestseller list. I put it on hold. I am going to look at http://www.indiebound.org for fiction titles tomorrow.

I also spent some more time weeding the music section. I have to be very careful. It is one of those subjects like history, biography, and art where books can remain quite relevant for a very long time. I spent some time looking at a book on the discography of Sun records.

I am looking at weeding the mysteries and suspense also. Mysteries and suspense are our most popular fiction titles. Ruth Rendell, Hugh Holton, Stuart Woods, John Sanford, and James Patterson are extremely popular. My current favorite mystery author is Joe Lansdale. I also like Sparkle Hayter, Andrew Vachss, Max Allan Collins, and Sharyn McCrumb. Zombies of the Gene Pool by Sharyn McCrumb is one of my favorite mysteries; it lampoons science fiction conventions. Max Allan Collins also writes comics in addition to novels as well as television shows.

On the train home, I read some more of Building A Special Collection of Children's Literature in Your Library.

Daily Thoughts 6/30/2009

Napoleon Hill, American self-help writer, attorney and journalist, seated in a chair holding his book "Think and Grow Rich". (three-quarter length portrait) c1937 from Wikimedia

Daily Thoughts 6/30/2009

Today was another steady day. We spent some time discussing moving books around. I also did some shifting and relocating books in the mystery section and did some weeding of books in the music section.

Some of the older books in the music section are being moved to storage. We have some old very beautiful books in our collection. I was looking at a few opera books on the New York Metropolitan Opera and Wagner. Sometimes it is interesting looking at the older books.

Today was a solid pleasant day.

Daily Thoughts 5/14/2009

Jack London The Sea Wolf

Daily Thoughts 5/14/2009

Part of this morning was spent shifting books in the 700s, specifically the art books. I still have quite a bit of shifting to do. I also did some roaming reference where I am assigned to seek people out on the floor who are looking for answers. I also weeded some fiction titles with very low circulation. There were a few other miscellaneous tasks to complete throughout the day, starting to file some looseleafs for the law collection.

This afternoon, I spent some time talking to our representative about large print books. We need them to provide us with more African American titles as well as more of the New York Times Bestsellers in large print. I sent them some lists of suggested authors to see if they could customize the standing order to better meet our needs.

Tomorrow, I think I am going to go in the technical service area and check to see if we can order new copies of some books instead of sending them to the bindery. There are quite a few titles that need to be rebound. New copies may be cheaper than rebinding in some cases.

There are a couple of new benches in front of the new books area. They add a nice touch to the area.

Web Bits

Amazon is selling ebooks as a loss leader on Kindle. http://www.teleread.org/2009/05/13/amazon-losing-money-on-999-e-books/

A few profiles on independent bookstores in New York from the Bookweb blog. http://ibnyc.wordpress.com/category/indiebound-spotlights/

Daily Thoughts 5/13/2009

Family Reading, Ehon, c1830

Daily Thoughts 5/13/2009

It is confirmed I am going to Book Expo America on May 29, 2009. I really look forward to it. Yes, really really. http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/

We discussed reference resources today. I also started shifting the 700s to create space. I had the young adult library aide help with the shifting of books. Today was another busy day.

I am reading Got Game How The Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever by John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, Harvard Business School Press. This book is a reminder that people in their twenties and thirties grew up in a world where there were video games their whole lives. More people have video game consoles in their homes than computers. I like to think of social networks as a kind of business simulation game for adults. If you go to ALA Connect, the largest public group in their website is Gamers. I sometimes think teenagers are spending more time playing video games than reading.

Many video games in Japan are what are called "visual novels", a kind of choose your own adventure style game with text, anime style graphics, music, puzzles, and other content. This is an example from Hanako Games called Fatal Hearts . http://www.hanakogames.com/fatal.shtml

Web Bits

I enjoy reading Cory Doctorow's columns from Locus Magazine. http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2009/05/cory-doctorow-extreme-geek.html

Daily Thoughts 4/20/2009

1977 Stamp United States 4 Cents.

Daily Thoughts 4/20/2009

I decided to create a Linked In page. Linked In is a professional social network. It is mainly focused on making contacts for business and networking. I had a page before, but it was never fully filled in. I only have a few contacts right now. This will change rapidly, I think.

Today has been another long day. I have been pulling oversize books from the regular collection to be put in the oversize collection. This is making the shelves a bit more presentable and freeing up some space. Tomorrow, I will start shifting some of the older books in the 700s (art and music) section to the storage area.

I also went over ordering with one of our new librarians. We are ordering job books for the city; building inspector, fireman, account clerk, and payroll clerk. Civil service functions which keep the city running.

We are also reorganizing the cage for technical processing where the new books come in. The shelves are going to get new labels by dewey number or category, and the inside is going to be rearranged. Our first priority is getting all of the reference books done, then processing the books with current 2009 dates on them.

Last Saturday, a carpenter came to inspect the area where our new slat walls are going up for displaying the new books. It should be a big improvement in the way our library looks.

I read some more of Here comes Everybody. As I read and observe more about the idea of software based platforms that become organizations, I am recognizing some additional characteristics of these companies. They are global in scope, they can reach anywhere an internet connection exists, they are multilingual because either they will use translation programs or hire people or recruit volunteers to translate the platform, and they can rapidly gather people together over seemingly trivial activities.