Daily Thoughts 10/23/2011

Page spread from Kelmscott Chaucer. Book was printed in 1896 by Kelmscott Press.

Daily Thoughts 10/23/2011

I have been reading more of Just My Type.  I learned that road signs are easier to read if they are in a mix of capital and lowercase letters, there are over 100,000 fonts, Dr. Seuss is set in Garamond font, and that the man, Cobden-Sanderson, who created the Doves font threw all the metal type into the Thames river so it would disappear forever.  There is something very refreshing about acquiring tidbits of knowledge that are of questionable use.

I also spent a little more time looking at Facebook and Twitter this morning.  Last night and a bit more this morning, I did a little more time studying HTML 5 and CSS on Lynda.com.  It is becoming more understandable.  I am also learning how search engines read html and cascading style sheets.  Different search engines are better at reading web documents.  Web pages look different in different search engines.  What I noticed is that the Opera search engine seems to be the one which is most up to date.

I finished reading Just My Type this evening.  It was quite enjoyable.

Web Bits

Free crowd sourced ebook.  School Libraries What's Now, What's Next, What's Yet to Come edited by Kristin Fontichiaro http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/96705

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Daily Thoughts 10/21/2011

Sibyll, Print shows a seated woman, reading a book while a putto speaks to her.
Date Created/Published: [between 1630 and 1655]

Daily Thoughts 10/21/2011

On the train to work this morning, I finished reading Without A Net Librarians Bridging The Digital Divide.  It is an outline on how to teach basic computer skills in the library setting.  Basic means things like what a mouse is, the keys on a keyboard, and how to set up an email account.  The book is very practical.  There is a website for the book, http://librarian.net/digitaldivide

This morning I did a little bit of weeding in the paperback fiction.  I also did a little bit of weeding in the storage section in the afternoon.  I also checked the displays and updated the Twitter and Facebook account.  We did not have any events today.

I printed up flyers for November events and working on a schedule of events for November and December.

Two books came in for me to read, Now You See It How The Brain Science of Attention Will Transform They Way We Live, Work, And Learn by Cathy N. Davidson and Worm The First Digital World War by Mark Bowden.

On the way home, I started reading Just My Type A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield. I am interested in book design because I think it changes peoples reading experience.  This book is a tongue in cheek history of fonts. It seems to be both about the fonts and the people who created them.

Web Bits

The Challenges of Building A Digital Public Library of America
http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/10/21/the-challenges-of-building-a-digital-public-library-of-america/ 

Google Debuts A Digital Bookcase
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/10/ebooks/google-debuts-a-digital-bookcase/

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/10/ebooks/google-debuts-a-digital-bookcase/