Daily Thoughts 10/4/2009

Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany (1878-1957) The fantasy writer.

Daily Thoughts

I watched a bit of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was kind of entertaining. It was only for a few minutes.

I also spent some time reading more of Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. It is quite enjoyable to read, but it is not like most science fiction I have read. It has a lot more cultural variety than most science fiction. There are Chinese, Thai, Japanese, and American characters. There are also some interesting religious images from buddhism as well. There is also quite a bit on biology and ecology in the story. It is hard science fiction from an ecological and biological standpoint. It is not as much about big machines that fly into space. It is also a near future book. This makes it have a unique feeling to it. I read it mainly in the laundromat.

The Cost of Bad Behavior How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business And What To Do About It by Christine Pearson and Christine Porath

The Cost of Bad Behavior How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business And What To Do About It by Christine Pearson and Christine Porath, Foreward by Warren Bennis

This book is about how civility effects performance in a business setting. It describes the consequences of uncivil behavior; reduced productivity, lost work hours, and increasing employee attrition are a few of the consequences.

It is more than just about people being treated uncivilly. It is also about the consequences to people who are acting uncivil; lack of promotion, loss of sales, and bad reputation. No customer likes seeing employees arguing or acting inappropriately.

There are some examples of companies who benefit from having employee conduct standards; Disney, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Starbucks relate how civility has improved their bottom line.

The writing in the book is grammatically tight, polite, and gratifying.

The last section of the book is on how to solve problems related to poor employee behavior. I especially liked the chapter on how manners effect ones future social and professional status.

This is an excellent and timely book.

Daily Thoughts 10/3/2009

From New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Daily Thoughts 10/3/2009

Today I am at my local library. I returned three books and did not see anything which I wanted to check out. Right now, I am sitting at the public computers.

I also picked up a few bookmarks. One is on green jobs and another is on jobs based on the stimulus package. They look like something which we might want to redesign for our library. I like picking up material from other libraries occassionally for ideas. It is a practical thing to do.

I am reading The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. This is a different kind of science fiction with strong social commentary. It is a dark future where giant agribusiness companies control the food supply with crop plagues and genetically tailored seeds. Smaller countries try to keep control of their seeds and food. The sea levels are rising, and money is measured in calories. The setting is in Thailand which makes it even more interesting.

Daily Thoughts 10/2/2009

Leonard Bernstein seated at piano, making annotations to musical score 1955

Daily Thoughts 10/2/2009

We have an art gallery in the rotunda in our library which is currently showing paintings by local artists. There are four cases on the walls. We put in a display of oversize art books this morning. I like to think that the best books to display are those that are visible. You should first see them from about seven feet away, then be drawn to the cover of the book by the artwork. After the cover is seen, you should be hooked by the content of the blurbs and copy enough to start reading the first chapter of the book. Usually, reading the first chapter of a book is what determines whether or not you want to continue reading the book. This is why many bookstores let you sit and read the book in a cafe. Bright colors and interesting artwork for the cover and inside flaps are a very good idea.

We chose oversize art books on Dali, Modigliani, surrealism, saive art, Klimt, Japanese brush painting, and Caribbean art. The art work in the rotunda is a very interesting mix of different paintings.

I also did some more weeding this afternoon of the 800s. I am looking forward to reading a large graphic novel, Locas II: The Maggie & Hopey Stories by Jaime Hernandez next week. I already have quite a bit to read right now.

On the train home, I finished reading The Cost of Bad Behavior. The last chapter on how civility leads to higher social standing was rather interesting. I also am looking at Noah Wyle, The Librarian Quest For The Spear on dvd. It is an Indiana Jones style adventure with a librarian as a lead character.

I found out that Google limits the number of labels that can be used to search a blog to 2000. This means that I have to eliminate some of the labels I used for previous entries. It also means that I cannot review more than 2000 individual titles. It is an interesting quandry.

Daily Thoughts 10/1/2009

Hemingway's Desk From Key West

Daily Thoughts October 1, 2009

Today is another quiet smooth day. I handed in my monthly report today, did a little weeding, and made sure the displays were updated.

My colleagues also redid most of the displays today with banned books week book displays. I was not part of this set of planning. There was a display on censorship, a display on teen banned books, and a display of adult banned books in the front entranceway. It was very thematic.

I am still reading The Cost of Bad Behavior. The book is describing the cost of incivility to customer service right now. It describes how incivility can drive away customers and even affect stock prices in companies. A rude conference call with stock analysts does not lead to good corporate performance.

There is a very interesting article on Book Industry Standard and Classification versus Dewey classification for libraries. I have never seen BISAC in a library, but I have visited many bookstores with this classification scheme. It is far better for browsability, but it can fail when looking for very specific books. Dewey is much more granular than BISAC. I really liked the idea of partial categories for books using BISAC and individual dewey labels for specificity.

I am a big fan of merchandising for the purpose of increasing circulation. The issue with breaking the collection into smaller categories is that there are many more places to look for a book. Also there is a lot more work in processing materials. At the same time, it creates very nice browsable categories and increases circulation. We merchandise our displays; pulling displays for career books, graphic novels, and other categories. Also our "new arrivals" section is merchandised into romance, science fiction, mystery, audiobooks, dvds, and fiction books.

Building separate special collections is a big task. We do have separate sections for African American fiction, mystery, audiobooks, job information center books, short stories, and romance paperbacks. There is also a separate Local History room, law collection, multicultural reference collection, reference collection, and periodicals collection.

I enjoyed reading the article quite a bit. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6698264.html