Daily Thoughts 12/8/2010 (Graphic Novels Club, Advocacy)

Childe Hassam, Reading, 1888



Daily Thoughts 12/8/2010

Mount Vernon Heights Congregational Church on258 Columbus Avenue (btwn Millington and Elliot Streets) is hosting Vice-Chairman Lyndon Williams for a Public Meeting on the Fiscal Year 2011 County Budget in Mount Vernon on December 8, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. on 2011 proposed county budget.  This will affect our library as well.  The county partially funds Westchester Library System which is also going through cuts.  They just cut the driver for the bookmobile and the professional development manager both of which affect our ability to provide services to Mount Vernon.  There was talk earlier of possibly stopping the bookmobile service which goes to the aged homes in Mount Vernon.  The cuts also affect how Mount Vernon Public Library will receive computer training for its staff.  It is all tied together.

There is also the City Council meeting in city hall in Mount Vernon.  The library director, the head of the union, many members of the library staff, and library supporters will be there.  I hope that people will speak up in support of the library.  We are getting a lot of people who are asking about it.  They want to know if the rumors they are hearing are true. Some people have a hard time believing it.

Today, I talked to a vendor about getting reinforced shelving for oversize books.  I also did the graphic novels club.  It turns out well each time.  I have a few regular members as well as teenagers who come for the fantasy card games club that meets in the library.  I usually leave the graphic novels out for the cards club.  I checked out a graphic novel called The Amazing Screw On Head and Other Curious Objects  by Mike Mignola.  It is dark fantasy set in the 19th century.  It was on the Diamond Comic Distributors Bestseller list. I read it on the train home. The story, The Amazing Screw On Head won the Eisner award for comics in the short story category. The book is hard to describe; whimsical, very funny at points, not quite rational, a sense of being part of a toy, or in a dream.  I looked through it twice after I read the story.  Mike Mignola writes Hellboy. He has a very original style.

Even if you do not come to the library, all of the senators supporting New York as well as the assembly people are listed on the city website.  You can write them via email, or if you want to, look them up on Facebook and send them a brief positive message.
Web Bits 

Biblio-Social Objects,Copia, Mendeley, Librarything, and Mongoliad

http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/12/biblio-social-objects-copia-mendeley.html

Back Talk: We Need Big Tent Librarianship from Library Journal
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/887733-264/backtalk_we_need_big_tent.html.csp

Daily Thoughts 10/20/2010 (Graphic Novels)

Stilleben mit Juwelen, Musikinstrumenten und Globus, Öl auf Leinwand, 46 x 62 cm,19th Century, Anonymous

Daily Thoughts 10/20/2010

Today has been a quiet day.  I did a little bit more work with the request an item form.  Also, I think the form for our survey will be up soon.

The book Brains for Lunch drawn by Gahan Wilson with haiku by K.A. Holt came in for me to read.  It is quite fun, it is a series of haikus turned into a novel.  I especially like the zombie teenager, Loeb.

I am going to read two books, Burton & Swinburne, The Strange Affair of Spring Heel Jack by Mark Hodder which is a steampunk novel.  It is the authors first novel.  The second book is The Art of Non-Conformity Set Your Own Rules, Live The Life You Want and Change The World by Chris Guillbeau.

Today was very busy.  We had our graphic novels club.  It has a kind of built in audience because the teenagers who play magic cards use the room and one of the mothers who helps with the middle school and junior high school graphic novel club comes each time to request material and take suggestions.  I gave away several comics from my visit to New York Comic Con. Also, we get some circulation because people take the material we talk about out.

We also had a collection development meeting which went quite smoothly.  I am going to put some more of my orders in tomorrow.

I still have to talk with someone about setting up a poetry reading series.   People have started signing up for the SCORE Counselors to America's Small Business sessions.  I am going to work on a display for books tomorrow on business.

Web Bits

Be a librarian just add books. Little Librarian http://www.littlelibrarian.net/

Daily Thoughts 5/19/2010

Bust of Honoré de Balzac by Auguste Rodin, bronze (1891 – 1892), in the Victoria and Albert Museum., Taken by Andrew Dunn, 3, December 2004, Public Domain

Daily Thoughts 5/19/2010

An excellent article from Harvard Magazine on the changing role of libraries in the digital world. http://harvardmag.com/pdf/2010/05-pdfs/0510-36.pdf

Did my graphic novels club today. It did decently. We have a regular group of teenagers who come every Wednesday to play trading card games who usually take some of the material being presented. They also come to the anime club later in the week. One of our attendees mentioned a self publishing service for comics called http://www.ka-blam.com I also checked out the movie, Coraline which is also a book and graphic novel.

One of our clerks is working on a web page for a bestsellers, awards, and staff picks page using Bookletters widgets. It is coming together.

I focused on getting my ordering together before I go to Book Expo America next week. I read Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist.

Several books came in for me to read, Changeless, An Alexia Tarabotti Novel by Gail Carriger, Steamed A Steampunk Romance by Kate McAlister, and Ship Breaker A Novel by Paolo Bacigalupi. I am looking forward to reading all three of them.

Daily Thoughts 1/15/2010

Library of William Jennings Bryan, 1896

Daily Thoughts 1/15/2010

Right now, I am thinking about donations. We get a lot of them regularly. They are handled by our friends group. We occassionally add some of them to our collection, but we are selective. We also sometimes pick up donations from other places as well. This is always something worth thinking about.

Yesterday, I worked a bit on flyers for the graphic novels club. Hopefully, it will go well this time. I am looking forward to doing it again. We are focusing on Watchmen this time. In February we are going to focus on shojo-- girls manga for the graphic novels club which would be a good choice for valentines day. Manga like Fruits Basket, Maison Ikokku, Blackbird, Nana, and others.

I also did a little more weeding. I am trying to do it a little bit every single day.

This is a new button for my sidebar. It is also a pledge to continue reading the printed word, not just ebooks.

Sometimes, you find things that are interesting. There is a Book Blogger Convention on May 28, 2010. I am not sure about this one, but it looks quite interesting. http://bookbloggerconvention.com/

I learned that Shannon Hale has a new graphic novel, Calamity Jack out. It is drawn by Nathaniel Hale. She drew Rapunzel's Revenge which I enjoyed a whole lot. I think it might be worth getting.

Daily Thoughts 12/18/2009

Photograph of author Michael Chabon at a book signing at WonderCon in 2006. Taken by Charlie Reiman. Licensed under Creative Commons attribution 2.0.

Daily Thoughts 12/18/2009

Thinking about how you might incorporate reading challenges into the library environment. We are going to do the 52 books 52 weeks program where people log what they read each week. It is an encouragement for reading. I'm thinking that there are ways to incorporate smaller challenges throughout the year like a graphic novels reading challenge, a classics reading challenge, or a poetry reading challenge.

Today is a day to think of programming. People have been asking about poetry programs. We are also going to continue with the Graphic Novels Club. I am thinking about which writer or artist to do next. People also like manga. We may have the local high school comics club coming to the library Graphic Novels Club.

It is almost time to make my new years resolutions. Haven't decided on what I am going to make as a resolution.

It has been a while that I have been writing on this blog. I am past my 1000th post which I think is pretty impressive. I will continue writing every day. I think it is a good exercise to improve my writing as well as reach out to people.

Writing this blog has led to some very interesting experiences. I got to go to Tools of Change for Publishing because of it. It also encouraged me to get out more and try a lot of different things. I feel like social media has opened a lot of new venues for me which I would not have tried before like the New York Librarians meetup, attempting to build contact lists on Linked In, and reaching out to authors on Facebook. I would have never been so willing to reach out to colleagues without the impetus of a blog. It gets me to try new things.

Sometimes, you find interesting things while going through the internet. This is a relatively new human powered search engine. It looks to have fairly high quality content. The content reminds me a bit of the newspaper site, Arts and Letters Daily. http://www.findingdulcinea.com/home.html
Finding Dulcinea Librarian of the Internet. The tagline is what makes me interested.

I checked out two more books today; Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld which is on the Locus Bestseller list and The Very Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology edited by Gordon Van Gelder.

I think somewhere I lost my focus a bit. It is becoming apparent to me, I should cut back on reading about social media and start getting back to reading about business and science fiction. My readership has been dropping a little bit.

Please let me know what you would like to read about. It would be helpful. I would like to get back to my original focus. I probably should be getting back to writing a little poetry as well.

Anyways, I noticed something interesting. Apparently, New York Public Library is working on a new website. This is a link to the preview. http://new.nypl.org/

Daily Thoughts 12/15/2009

Textile vendor in Pakistan reading the newspaper. Photo: Steve Evans "babasteve", Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Daily Thoughts 12/15/2009

This is a list of the top 100 authors of the decade from the United Kingdom. This is a list of the top 100 authors of the decade.http://thebookseller.msgfocus.com/files/amf_bookseller/project_140/Bookseller_decade_roundup.pdf

On the way to work, I finished reading Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence. It is a very interesting book.

I spent some time checking for books on psychology. I looked through the Psychology Today book column today. It lists three titles every other month. Choice magazine also has reviews for psychology and philosophy titles.

I also looked through Kirkus Reviews for December 1, 2009 and Deceomber 15, 2009. These are the last issues of Kirkus Reviews in print. One of the issues had the best young adult books of the year and the other had the best books of the year. There is a certain ambivalence reading these magazines because these are the last issues. Kirkus Reviews has always been one of the best review journals. Unfortunately, I don't think it did that well with promoting online reviews.

Today we have the first Graphic Novels Club. We are going to hold it in the fiction room. I have some light refreshments and we have tables and chairs set up. I've also got a number of Neil Gaiman's works. The Story of Miss Finch, Coraline, and Sandman. I could probably also get a couple of his novels, American Gods, Neverwhere, and Anansi Boys. Neil Gaiman is the honorary chair of National Library Week on April 11-17, 2010. http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2009/october2009/nlwgaiman_pio.cfm

We did the first meeting of the Graphic Novels club and discussed Sandman and various manga comics like Vampire Hunter D and Bleach. I also brought out copies of Theodor Seuss Geisel: The Early Works Volume 1 & 2 which are quite interesting to look at. Dr. Seuss did a lot of advertising comics before he wrote books for children.

On the way home, I read some of Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Diving into the Wreck which is about a woman who salvages space ships. I like the concept of taking dangerous risks to search for salvage in wrecked spaceships.