Daily Thoughts 8/6/2010 (shelf talkers, readers advisory, ebooks)

Christopher Amberger, Portrait of A Man, Oil On Wood Panel, 1540-1560, Wawel Castle, Krakow

Daily Thoughts 8/6/2010

A brief look at a social network http://bookcalendar.wackwall.com/  I found Wackwall on the Ning Bookblogs.  It is interesting to look at.




I worked on selecting authors for more shelf talkers today.  These are small signs which you put next to a particular author indicating three to five similar authors.  I focused on initially picking out authors who are popular with a lot of books in our library.  People like Jodi Picoult, Debbie Macomber, W.E.B. Griffin, David Weber, Elizabeth Lowell, John Irving, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, and others.  I will be doing the mystery section once I am done with the fiction.




I also did the monthly requests for the book mobile today.  There were a lot of requests for Daphne Du Maurier, specifically Jamaica Inn and Rebecca.  They also requested Rebecca as a dvd.  Michelangelo is also a very popular topic.  We get requests for books on him almost every time.  They also requested Erma Bombeck and a few other humorists.





In addition, as always, I checked the displays to make sure they were up to date.  I also wrote a flyer for the Brown Bag Book Talk which we are going to have on August 12, 2010.  Someone also asked for us to do a discussion about ebooks in the library setting.  It might take me a little bit to figure out more about this.  I am thinking about signing up for the Ebooks Libraries at the Tipping Point conference on September 29, 2010.
http://ebook-summit.com/




I inished up my class for Readers Advisory 101 online today.  I sent in my final assignment for the class today.  Soon I'll probably get a certificate for the class.  I handed the certificate for the library advocacy class I took online as well.  It has been an interesting time taking the class.  I'll probably go back and look through the transcripts of the chat sessions again for the Readers Advisory 101 class.




I did not have time to read reviews today.  It was simply too busy.  It is evening and I am typing this up.  I did not read anything on the train this time either.  Instead I took the time to write my thoughts down in a journal.  I keep lined journals where I write up my reviews longhand before I put them in the computer.  I take notes in them while I am reading but never go back and read them again.  I have three blank journals right now in my shoulder bag.  I have a Manhattan Portage LTD shoulder bag which I use all the time.  It is the second one I have bought.  They have proven to be very sturdy and good for carrying books to conferences and other places.

Daily Thoughts 8/5/2010 ( readers advisory, yahoo style guide )

Depiction of the Venerable Bede (CLVIIIv) from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

Daily Thoughts 8/5/2010

I am looking at Pligg which is an open source system for building social networks.  It looks quite interesting.  You would probably need a fairly skillful technical person to implement it. http://www.pligg.com/ It reminds me a little bit of Digg.




Today, I checked the displays and talked with some people about doing programs and working on some cleanup in the storage area.  I also finished my Readers Advisory 101 Class this morning doing the final interview.  We had to do a simulated readers advisory session with a patron.  It was interesting.  I ended up suggesting several hard edged detective authors, Max Allan Collins, Mickey Spillane, Robert Crais, Robert B. Parker, Donald Westlake, and Sara Paretsky.  My compatriot in turn recommended some techno thrillers including Stephen Coonts and Craig Thomas. He also recommended Keith Laumer who is a science fiction author who I really like.  It was an enjoyable thing to do for an hour.




I also finished reading The Yahoo Style Guide in print.  It is also on the internet http://styleguide.yahoo.com/writing .  One point that really stuck out for me was that I need to rewrite my headers so search engines will find what I am writing about.

Daily Thoughts 8/4/2010 ( yahoo, literary tea )

Harper's August 1898
Daily Thoughts 8/4/2010

Today has been a steady day.  We talked about doing a "Literary Tea" for our end of Adult Summer Reading program where we would serve tea, cookies, small sandwiches, and fruit.  The Friends of the Library would be there to help.  People will sit and discuss the books they read during the summer.  Then we will hold a raffle for a bag of books and goodies for those who participated in the Adult Summer Reading program.  It should be interesting.




I spent some time going through my orders, reading Library journal and Publishers Weekly,  and looking over grant materials.  There is a preservation grant from New York state which might be worth doing. 




I also put the book, The Outlaw Josey Wales by Forrest Carter on hold.  It is the book which the film starring Clint Eastwood is based on.  I sometimes like reading a good western.  The paperback was released in February 2010.

This morning while I was on the train, I read some of The Yahoo! Style Guide.  There are numerous exercises on how to determine what your ideal user is.  This is a sample of a model user. I wrote it for both entertainment value and what I think a user might be like.

• Name: Adam Finney
• Age: 40
• Gender: Male
• Education: Bachelors with some works on an M.F.A. in creative writing.
• Family:  Married with one child.
• Hobbies: Likes to read, build toy robots, draw comics, and blog.
• Work: Works as a production manager for a publishing house, sells toy robots on ebay.
• Technology:  Very technically savvy, has fiber optic internet, wireless laptop, smart phone.
• Disabilities:  The reader wears glasses and has an anti-glare screen for his computer, his eyes are light sensitive.
• Web savvy:  The reader can put together a wordpress blog, participates in social networks like Book Blogs on Ning and Facebook.  His family is listed in Facebook.  His wife coauthors his blog.
• Business or Personal Goals: The reader hopes to start a small business combining building toy robots, comics, and books.  He has trademarked a couple of characters for the business.  He is also probably setting a goal to read 24 books a year and improve his writing skills.

Daily Thoughts 8/3/2010 ( Librarians Social Networks )

Copyright catalogs at the Library of Congress. Located in room LM-404 of the James Madison Memorial Building, Washington DC. The pre-1978 indexes to the copyright records were manually entered on 3 by 5 inch (76 by 127 mm) cards that were stored in file drawers. 30 April 2009, Michael Holloway, Public Domain.  Card catalogs drawers which are emptied of the cards are the perfect size to store audiocasette containers.  These of course are also obsolete.  Now they make nice places to put items in for art projects.  They use card catalogs drawers to put items in the childrens room of Poets House in New York as part of an art display.

Daily Thoughts 8/3/2010

I am reading The Yahoo! Style Guide The Ultimate Sourcebook For Writing, Editing, And Creating Content For The Digital World by Chris Barr and The Senior Editors of Yahoo.  It is also available online at:
http://styleguide.yahoo.com/




Someone asked about social networks for libraries on Fuelmyblog.  Here are a few which I have seen librarians use. I am on Twitter with many library connections...




http://www.twitter.com/bookcalendar dig around you might find a few. Anyways here is a bit more...






http://connect.ala.org/

ALA Connect-- Social Network. The main use I've found for this online classes...





http://nylibrariansmeetup.blogspot.com/

New York Librarians Meetup Blog






http://www.facebook.com/#!/urban.unite?ref=ts

Urban Librarians Unite





http://bookblogs.ning.com/

Book Blogs on Ning





http://bookbloggerconvention.com/ 

Book Bloggers Convention



http://www.goodreads.com/ Goodreads





www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=40592

Linkedin American Library Association

Undress For Success The Naked Truth About Making Money At Home by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish

Undress For Succes The Naked Truth About Making Money at Home by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish

The central focus of this book is telecommuting. It does not promise the reader that telecommuting will be easy or pay a lot of money. The authors describe the practice of homeshoring where people are hired from home to do customer service work at low pay. The book is honest. The descriptions of lower pay for comparable jobs in an office compared to working at home are covered. Tutors earn $12-15 hour, customer service workers earn $10-12 an hour, and online help technicians $18-20 an hour from home. Low pay for the advantage of working from a home office. Working from home doing research also does not pay as well as in an office.



The book lists a lot of real companies that offer work at home jobs; Tutor.com, Alpine Access, Team Double Click, Smart Thinking, writing for About.com, and other jobs. The jobs that are most lucrative are computer programming and web design jobs. There is also discussion of telemedicine. They also give real job boards for work at home jobs as well as freelance job sites. Rat Race Rebellion and Dreamjobs
Inc are two websites that they suggest for telecommuting job hunting.



The descriptions of teleworking are of being more productive, having more flexible hours, getting paid less and getting less recognition. Telecommuters have to be very technically savvy, they are using the internet to to do their jobs.   Even the customer service jobs require knowledge of how to use computers, hands free headsets and have some ability to type. The better paying jobs require more complex equipment including digital cameras, cell phones, different software packages, and cable internet. This equipment is mostly bought out of the teleworkers salary.  Having a home office with a computer  is often a prerequisite to applying.



The authors preach the environmental benefit of working from home; you don't have to spend money on the commute, are comfortably at home, and you don't pollute as much. They also describe how it costs the company less to hire people from home because they are not paying for real estate or equipment for a person in an office. 

This is an excellent, honest overview of telecommuting jobs. It is comprehensive in scope and covers all kinds of resources associated with telecommuting.  There are many benefits and disadvantages of working from home.