Good Evening

Marcel Proust 1900.

Good Evening.

Today was another very busy day. I put in my requests for conferences with my boss and am negotiating with him and the director about them. I will have to see exactly how it goes.

I spent some more time weeding the social science section. I contacted the system office to get a circulation list to check for items with low circulation to speed up the process. I am hoping I will get it soon.

I also had a meeting with reference staff and the library director discussing collection development and weeding. We are going to rearrange the layout of the library soon. It should be an interesting challenge.

I also spent a bunch more time ordering from the Baker & Taylor Paperclips catalog. I finished doing it today. I've gone through a years worth of mass market paperback titles and selected the ones which I think we should have. This covers fantasy, fiction, historical fiction, horror, mystery, religious fiction, romance, street lit (urban fiction), suspense, and a few nonfiction titles. There were also some computer titles as well.

This morning I read some of Copyediting & Proofreading for Dummies on the train. The book gives descriptions of the job duties of a copyeditor and a proofreader. It also explains the process and gives examples of copyediting and proofreading. There is a complete listing of all the major proofreaders marks with examples of how they are used. I am finding this very helpful in understanding how to make a document presentable to an editor. The book recommends, Woe Is I, a book on grammar which I have put on hold.

The book had a few interesting things which I had not seen before. There was a section with four different stylesheets from editors which was interesting to look at. The stylesheets set down rules on grammar and design for a particular publisher. I have seen proofreading tests, but not stylesheets.

The book also covers an interesting phenomenon. Most books are edited and proofread completely electronically. Manuscripts are forwarded back and forth by email between the editor, publisher, and author. A lot of proofreaders work from home. Reducing the amount of paper used in making books reduces costs and saves time. Yet, the physical book itself is still mostly a printed object.

Occassionally, you come across an interesting tidbit of information. Google has a define: command which allows you to look up information like a dictionary. I don't use dictionaries that often, unless I am looking up words for someone else. Then I tend to use The American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam Websters 11th Edition. The last dictionary I used was http://www.dictionary.com

A few style manuals are suggested. I have the Chicago Manual of Style at home. It is currently in storage in the attic. I tried to read it from front to back, but found it was very boring and hard to read. It was something which you would use as a reference not something to read for entertainment. In contrast, I have Words Into Type, a now long out of print style manual which I found quite enjoyable to read.

Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Library News

Woodcut of the Roman, Cicero writing his letters.

On the train in to work this Saturday, I read some more Getting Results for Dummies. It had a few very nice tips, "A schedule is a list with an established time frame." He reminds the reader to include the amount of time they are going to give each item on your daily to do list. He also gives the truism that I believe wholeheartedly television is a waste of time.

The author, Mark H. McCormack also ties in a daily to do list and time schedule to the management practice of management by objectives or (MBO), showing how organization and time management combine to make for successful planning and goal setting. He reminds us that to become truly effective we must schedule both our home and business life, include time to rest in a schedule, as well as allow for interruptions and emergencies. This book looks like something I might read again.

I spent some more time this morning weeding the social science books. Right now, I am in the law section of our library. We have a lot of Nolo self help law books, Nutshell Books, Sphinx Legal, and Legal Almanac books. These four series are books which explain the law for the layman. They are summaries of different kinds of legal practice; everything from neighbor law, music law, criminal law, business law, patent law to school law is covered in these three series. Of the four publishers, I find the Nolo books are the easiest to read. Nolo has several different blogs on a variety of legal subjects. http://www.nolo.com/blogs.cfm

I am doing more ordering from Baker and Taylor, from the Paperclips catalog as well. Basically, I am trying to fill in some of the gaps in our mass market ordering so the collection is a little more complete.

Good Afternoon

Once again, I am placing books to read on hold. The first one is Razor Girl by Marianne Mancusi. It is billed as a postapocalyptic zombie romance novel. The heroine is seeking the Magic Kingdom in disneyland. Sounds over the top.

The next one is James Blaylock, The Knights of the Cornerstone. This is supposed to be a modern fantasy novel like Jonathan Carroll, Neil Gaiman, or John Crowley's books. I am hoping it will be entertaining.

Frank Miller is directing the film Buck Rogers. I think it might be interesting to see. I actually haven't seen 300 or Sin City. I might see them one day, but not now. The Spirit is also coming out soon directed by Frank Miller. I want to see Buck Rogers more than the other films he has done. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i8cb71d29182efee693ef8a7f2501824a

Library News

I regularly read Library Journal online to see some recent news about libraries. http://www.libraryjournal.com/ . There are also two news aggregators for libraries that are kind of interesting.

Library Information Science News

http://www.lisnews.org/

Library Information Science Wire-- This is mainly press releases.

http://www.liswire.com/latest

Good Morning, Conferences

Isaac Asimov in his younger days. Did you know the early term for science fiction in 1925 was scientifiction?

Good Morning

On the train to work I started reading Getting Results For Dummies by Mark H. McCormack. This book is really interesting because the author is in sports management. When he gives examples he uses famous sports figures like Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer. He also uses a lot of anecdotes and real world examples. I rather like this quote, "A pen, a legal pad, and a plan are all you need to get organized."

When I came into work the book Copyediting and Proofreading for Dummies was waiting for me. I think that will be the next book which I read.

I organized the main display on the floor, did some weeding in the social sciences, and made a phone call to confirm that Westchester Residential Opportunities was going to do a "Foreclosure Information Workshop" at the library on January 29, 2008. I am looking forward to seeing this done. I have also contacted the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America about doing another workshop on foreclosure as well.

Today was a snow day. City employees got to go home early. I rushed to finish another set of orders for mass market paperbacks from Baker and Taylor's Paperclips and finished an order with ten minutes to spare before one o'clock.

Then it was into the snow and freezing rain. The trains were very slow and crowded, but I still had a chance to read some more of Getting Results for Dummies. I also had a large cup of coffee to keep my insides warm. I am enjoying the book despite the mundane subject. The author is a surprisingly good writer.

Conferences

I am hoping I can attend a wide variety of conferences this year.

On February 6-8, 2009 is New York Comic Con at the Jacob Javits Center. It looks to be a very good conference this year. I look forward to going there. Hopefully, I will collect a lot of material for the library there. http://www.nycomiccon.com/App/homepage.cfm?moduleid=2577&appname=100453

On Friday, May 8, 2009 is the Westchester Library Association. I am going there as well. The conference is titled: Making A Difference: Changing Libraries for Changing TimesDoubletree Hotel, Tarrytown NY

On May 28-31, 2009 is Book Expo America at the Jacob Javits Center. I am definitely going to try and be there as well. Book Expo America is held every other year in New York. I plan on collecting a very large amount of publishing catalogs when I go there as well as requesting to put our library on publishing mailing lists.

http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/

Truman Capote A Christmas Story

Truman Capote, 1959

One of the friends of the library is a storyteller. She did a trial run for a program of reading stories for adults. She read the short story, A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote. It has a ghostly quality to it which I found quite applealing. She read for about an hour. She mostly reads to elders, often in the nursing home setting. http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/capotechristmas.html

This morning, I spent a bit of time with a colleague designing a brochure on services available at our library. It will take up quite a bit of time to do it right.

I also spent some time going through Baker and Taylor's Paperclips which is a catalog of mass market paperbacks available through the distributor. It is going to be rolled into Forecast in the future which is the monthly list of forthcoming titles from Baker and Taylor.
http://www.btol.com/pub_details.cfm?id=30

The reorder list of titles which were damaged is done as well. Today was a productive, but very predictable day again. I did not get any chance to do any weeding today.

On the way home, I read some more of The Taint and Other Novellas by Brian Lumley. It is a collection of Lovecraftian stories. I don't want to spoil it by commenting on the stories until I have finished reading all of them. There is the constant reminder of "cosmic horror", or that we are mere tiny things in the immense darkness of the universe. H.P. Lovecraft considered himself to be primarily a poet. The Fungi From Yuggoth is his long work. It is a long, strange, and frightening poem.
http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/poetry/fungi.htm

Lovecraft was supposed to have gotten his idea for Cthulhu from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, The Kraken:

The Kraken

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson