Daily Thoughts 9/11/2010 (Common As Air, Social Media 101, Brooklyn Book Festival

Poster design by Alex Keil, featuring book cover, Germany, 1930 Blickfang - The Eye-Catching Covers of Weimar Berlin on A Journey Round My Skull Flickr Photostream , Creative Commons Attribution From ,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajourneyroundmyskull/3981015443/ 

Daily Thoughts 9/11/2010

I read some more of Self Esteem, Third Edition this morning.  Right now, I am creating a long list of everything which I think I should be doing.  It is definitely too much for me to accomplish in a realistic manner in the next couple of centuries.  But, I am very much like that.

Some of the books on social media like Social Media 101 by Chris Brogan which I am reading right now,  tell you that you should not write too much about yourself, people are not that interested in the mundane things like the toast you made this morning, the coffee you drank, or the time you spent cleaning the sink.  I think it has more to do with the ability to make the mundane interesting.  I got my coffee from the local deli owner who is a bald gentleman with a goatee, I like my rye toast with grape jelly and butter, and I rinse the sink out after I use it every morning.  The little details of your personality can make a blog very interesting.  The mundane with the plain is what kills interest.  I read the first three chapters last night and will probably read a little more of it each day until I am done.

I am almost finished reading Common As Air by Lewis Hyde.  He is arguing against excessive control of intellectual property.  Lewis Hyde hide quotes the term "De minimis non curat lex", law is not interested in trivial matters to challenge the increasing focus on control of individual consumers by the music industry. This book is very much in the tradition of professors writing for the interested lay public about important ideas.

I went back and added June and July of 2008 book reviews to my list. It is clear that I will have to go back and edit many of my entries to get them to appear cleaner.  It might take some time to do this. I also have been copying a few of the reviews into Goodreads.  Goodreads allows the user to cross post their reviews to Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

I am going to the Brooklyn Book Festival tomorrow.  There is a librarian breakfast at 10:00 a.m. at the Brooklyn Historical Society.  There also should be several people from the New York Librarians Meetup at the breakfast. http://www.brooklynbookfestival.org/BrooklynBookFestival/festival.html

Daily Thoughts 9/9/2010 (Common as Air, Fundraising, libraries)

Reading In The Study

Daily Thoughts 9/9/2010

Today has been very quiet.  I spent some time cleaning off my desk.  I usually end up with a variety of things on it.  Now it has that prepared for takeoff look again.  It is quite clean.  I also worked on a new flyer for our research databases.  The staff were collecting different bookmarks and marketing material for the business fair this weekend at city hall on Sunday.




I had my book chat today.  It went fine.  We were also discussing the final touches for the bimonthly report for the collection development and technical services department.  I am going to put in some of my orders tomorrow.   Other than that it was a very even day.

I usually plan on working on 2 to 3 projects every day.  More than that and it becomes too much.

Overdrive is going to start having comics from Marvel and Tokypop available as ebooks.  I think it would be interesting to try reading an ebook from Marvel. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/comics/article/44394-overdrive-offers-single-issue-comic-downloads-for-libraries.html?utm_source=Publishers+Weekly%27s+PW+Comics+Week&utm_campaign=109e4538e8-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email

I also like the description of the Birmingham Alabama fundraising campaign for materials.   They are using a combination of cards and postcards to raise funds for their materials budget.  http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/09/with_its_books_budget_cut_the.html 




I read some more of Common As Air on the train home.  The author is describing how public domain creates a common space to share ideas and invention.  These ideas help everyone because they are no longer under commercial control.  He uses Benjamin Franklin for many of his examples.  Benjamin Franklin never patented his lightning rod, Franklin stove, spectacles, or typefaces that the created.  He left these things for the public to use.

Daily Thoughts 9/8/2010 (Howl! , Common As Air)

Michel Gobin, Young Man With A Candle, 1681

Daily Thoughts 9/8/2010

Today has been a pretty solid day.  The new bookmarks for starting a business have been put out.  I am working on creating a list of business resources for our community weblinks.  It is towards the end of summer, so we are taking down the display of cookbooks and putting up a display on adventure.  This would include mountain climbing, kayaking, travel, safaris, expeditions, and historical travel.  We have an oversize collection of books which include quite a few travel books. Many of these are books of photographs. The proper term for the size of the books is quarto.

I spent a little more time in the storage area.  We are having a gentleman from Book Wholesalers Incorporated come talk about any issues with implementing electronic data interchange.   One of the main advantages for us with having electronic data interchange with our catalog is that it allows us to notify people that items are on order and place holds for books before they come in.  This increases our circulation of items.  We are trying to get our circulation up.  The meeting went very well.  There will be a few things which I think will make things easier.


On another thought, Howl! is coming out on September 24, 2010 as a movie.  It kind of makes sense that the graphic novel drawn by Eric Drooker would also be coming out in the same month.  There has been a lot of material that is on Allen Ginsberg written recently.  Another book which we just purchased is The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation by Bill Morgan.

I stopped by city hall to drop off some bookmarks at the civil service office for Learning Express which is a database which has practice tests for civil service positions, professional skills, and GED skills.  It is the most asked for database at our library. There is going to be a business event at city hall this weekend so the business bookmarks were made just in time.

On the way home, I read some more of Common As Air by Lewis Hyde.  He is writing about the concept of public domain in the context of feudalism versus freeholders which is very interesting.  In monarchy monopoly control of the press was often controlled by the king. 

Tomorrow, I am going to try to do another book chat.  Hopefully, it will go well.  Everyday something is happening.