It's the Book Blog!!

A totally different direction?

2011-01-15T06:04:00.001-08:00

I'm not even sure if this will work, but I'm going to try to turn this into a broader culture blog. "Not even sure if this will work" really means I don't know if I'm going to continue doing things that I think are worthy of comment, or if I will lose interest in writing about my life before maintaining this blog becomes a real habit, but I'm going to give it a try.

The totally different direction from the Title is that I am now going to talk about things I've seen or read (plays, movies, art displays, books, even magazine articles) and what I think about them. A broad cultural critique, or sometimes just some suggestions of how an experience might be enriched. I remember driving across the George Washington Bridge as "New York State of Mind" came on the radio. Yes, that sounds like a cliche but I remember that song making me SO happy as I came closer and closer to home. Would connecting those two experiences work for everyone? Of course not, but they did for me. I also wished that I could have listened to "The Day Off" and "It's Hot Up Here" from Sunday in the Park With George while I was at the Art Institute in Chicago looking at A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. So two weeks into the beginning of a new year, I'm going to return to this blog and see what comes of it. Stay tuned!

Readalikes

2010-05-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

Three Cups of Tea is still on everyone's lips. I think people who read Three Cups should not only read Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi, but also A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah.

Cory Doctorow

2009-09-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

Now that I have read 3 books by Doctorow, and listened to one audiobook, I am riding the bandwagon of fans. Neil Gaiman's opinion led me to Doctorow (OK, someone I work with told me to read Doctorow, and someone else told me Gaiman thought Doctorow was great) and I'm very glad.

Read Little Brother, Eastern Standard Tribe, and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Find a copy of Wastelands Stories of the Apocalypse or just click on the title of Doctorow's story, "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth," depending on how you prefer to "take" your stories. I listened to the podcast of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and was thrilled with it. Go! Now!

Yes, Doctorow's stories are dystopic; they're not happy, but Little Brother has a good attitude of fighting authority and damn it, I'm on the bandwagon and you should be sitting next to me here!

Graphic Novels

2009-09-16T14:54:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine prefers to call them "funny books," and we don't call them comic books anymore, mostly because comic books makes people think of books printed on poor quality paper that rips too easily and tends to bleed ink. I like some graphic novels and I'm going list them here.

Spiegelman's memoirs; Maux, Maux 2, Breakdowns, and In the Shadow of No Towers are wonderful. Breakdowns shows Spiegelman's talents as an artist and show how he uses art to further his narrative. Maus and Maus 2 are great books to introduce people to graphic novels who might shy away from the format. Breakdowns and In the Shadow of No Towers are really for people who enjoy graphic novels, because they both use the art to move the story more than (I think) the earlier two books do.

Marjane Satrapi's memoirs also are a wonderful example of how art should be used to tell stories. The art allows the reader to look at the horrors of life before the revolution but still maintain some distance.

Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot is what happens when someone decides to write a literary biography in a graphic novel format. It is a brilliant idea, because it allows the reader to access the literature on different levels. It's got a full bibliography in the back for people who NEED the references, but there's no reason that literary criticism can't be fun, and this was a brilliant way to address Lewis Carroll's work.

Talbot also wrote "Tale of One Bad Rat," which is both about Beatrix Potter and her short story of the same name, but also how abused children can use both art and literature to help them cope with awful things that happen to them. The heroine of this book is an incest survivor who has run away to escape her abuser. Like Satrapi's books, Talbot uses art to make us look at awful crimes and see them for what they are.

Old Man's War Tie-in

2009-09-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm showing my nerd shirt now, but one of the lines I really liked in John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" was when a character would say (and he said this several times), "I'd explain it to you, but you don't have the math." "The Black Hole War," by Leonard Susskind, will help you understand the math. Susskind's book is about Quantum Mechanics and Black Holes while Scalzi's books are science fiction, but Susskind made me think that I actually understood how things worked. So if you've finished Scalzi's series about John Watson, and think you want to understand the math, try "The Black Hole War."

Then, when you're finished with "The Black Hole War," try ""The Day We Found the Universe." And don't come crying back to me when you realize you've LEARNED something.

All This Heavenly Glory

2009-08-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

You don't like chick lit. But you like novels about women, just women who aren't stupid and who don't still hang out with people they don't like anymore. Like how in Julia and Julia someone says, "I don't think you like your friends." If that's what you think, read "All This Heavenly Glory," by Elizabeth Crane.

Fringe Festival 2009

2009-08-15T10:06:00.001-07:00

I saw Vote and was very amused, and it wasn't until I was leaving the theater that I realized the play was about the campaign and voting, not about the election. The play ends before we can learn who is the new Student Council President!

Scourge of God

2008-05-22T07:20:00.001-07:00

I liked "The Scourge of God" by William Dietrich. It's about the fall of the Roman Empire to the Huns, but also about Attila himself, and was engrossing. I have no idea about its historical accuracy (there is a historical note at the end, addressing the lack of reliable histories of that time) but it was a really good story about love and power.

New Author/book and movie

2008-01-02T14:18:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm reading books about communities in New York City and gentrification and I got out the book Boombox by Gabriel Cohen. The residents of Cobble Hill are caught in a struggle between the people who've been there forever (mostly minorities), and the urban professionals who realize how convenient the neighborhood is to Manhattan, and all these people share the backyard area where their spaces collide. Cultures clash and what begins as a very easy novel about New York City takes an ugly turn. If anyone has read this novel and liked it, I want you to go find Shoot George! an independent film about what happens to the quiet guy in the office (you know, the guy who everyone teases, who never says anything back) when he gets a gun.

Thing #23 What Did You Learn From This Experience?

2007-12-17T14:48:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed posting pictures up on the web and it was interesting to think about how we could use these tools to better engage our customers (see my post about podcasts). I hadn't stopped to look at a lot of the new things on the Internet for a while, and I was glad for this opportunity.

I'm probably going to spend some more time looking at our electronic collection, too. I really hadn't paid any attention to it, until I realized that we had Douglas Adams.

It was fun to try to see the Big Picture of how we can make these Web 2.0 tools work for the library and IF we should make them work for the library. The half hour of work time per week really wasn't enough to do it properly, though. I think we should allow people to budget more time for this program, should we offer it again. Would I do something like this? Yes, I probably would. (I think I'm going to maintain this blog and put more information about the books I'm reading on it, so I can keep track of them all, share ideas for readalikes, etc.)

Audiobooks, Thing #22, or we're getting closer.....

2007-12-17T12:34:00.000-08:00

I have dial-up at home. I'm changing over to a faster internet connection, but in the meantime, downloading an audiobook from dialup takes FOREVER (over an hour), and I'm not sure if the customers who listen to audiobooks are going to want to wait that long for an audiobook. Also, I downloaded "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary Edition," which was actually an audiobook of "Life, the Universe, and Everything." I would have been annoyed if I'd been really interested in listening to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," so maybe somebody needs to go through the catalog to ensure that the digital media is cataloged properly.

Also, while I was downloading the audiobook, there was a box in the bottom right corner of the screen telling me that I could purchase the item from Napster. I think we should be careful about mentioning for-profit services on our webpage. We are still a non-profit organization; if we don't allow people to offer services for a charge at programs at the library, I think it's equally important not to offer fee-based services on our webpages as well.

Podcasts Thing #21 (almost there....)

2007-12-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

OK, I can't open the podcasts from podcast alley, because the pc at work is demanding that I download another application; but Podcast.net gave me no problems at all, I just wasn't sure exactly what to look for. (I was pretty sure that The Daily Show and the Colbert Report were available via podcast, but I couldn't find them.) I tried looking through Podcast.net for humor, but then I had to figure out how to limit my search results to humor IN ENGLISH, because I won't understand humor in other languages. The see also suggestsion (marketing, sermons, electro, funk) made no sense at all to me. Now, the Old Time Radio Shows might be of interest to our customers, but are these the customers who will be able to find them? (Right content, wrong format problem.)

We might be able to use podcasts to record Library program's musical performances, so that people who can't make it to that branch or wish to listen to a concert again could be able to attend a "virtual" program; and we could also put links to other items that might be of interest to our customers as part of a podcast pathfinder; a page that had a podcast of a concert of Cole Porter music could also have links to CDs we have of Cole Porter's music; books about Cole Porter and Jazz in general; and movies about Cole Porter (though the only movie I know that would qualify is De-Lovely.

YouTube Videos Thing #20

2007-12-06T13:09:00.001-08:00

I'm undecided about YouTube. I think it's a wonderful resource in many ways and it makes me wish I had a much faster computer at home. Now I go to YouTube, let the video run once in the background while I do something else (check my email, usually), and then, after the video has been loaded into the cache, I can watch it all the way through. Since YouTube is such a bandwidth hog, I'm not sure it's appropriate for our webpage, because it would be telling our users that we are creating a webpage that is more easily accessible by those who have the money to have a really fast connection as opposed to those of us who have dialup.

However, it was easier to post that YouTube video to my blog than it was to post pictures to my blog.

Speech at the White House Correspondent's Dinner (2006) p1

2007-12-06T13:00:00.001-08:00

I think this was a wonderful speech and I was so pleased that I got a free copy on DVD before CSPAN decided that demand was enough to justify charging for it; fortunately for everyone else, someone else put it on YouTube.

Tools for 2.0 Task #19

2007-12-04T17:02:00.001-08:00

I had a lot of trouble exploring picasa and picnik. I wanted to put some pictures up on the web (see the Cat in Lucca, the painting from the hotel, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa) but picnik took a very long time to upload the pictures from my laptop to the website. I had downloaded all of my pictures (23 of them) with Picasa before picnik had finished downloading one picture. I would recommend using Picasa to our customers over picnik (if I'm ever asked) because of this time difference.

However Google has some interesting Terms of Service that I'm not sure are appropriate; Google explains that the Terms of Service were written in English and if there's any difference between a foreign language translation and the English version the English version is correct and a user will be held to the English Terms of Service. I don't feel comfortable pushing a service that is that unfriendly to people who don't speak English fluently enough to read (and understand) Terms of Service in English.

Rethinking Facebook

2007-12-03T07:25:00.000-08:00

I think we should rethink using Facebook anywhere. As a public entity that is committed to protecting our customers' privacy any public library should be very careful about endorsing and using a resource provided by a private entity that is less interested in privacy than in making a profit. Facebook's recent bad press might give customers' pause if we were using Facebook even if we did explicit state that any information gathered by Facebook is the property of Facebook. I know that our Terms of Use already address this issue, but I still think it's a slippery slope if we are using the Internet resource for a program or service (like a online reading group) that is endorsed by the Queens Library.

Cat in Luca

2007-12-02T09:02:00.000-08:00

I just liked this cat.

Painting from vacation

2007-12-02T08:59:00.000-08:00

This was one of the paintings at my hotel. Some patrons of the hotel thought it was a little racy.

Italy pictures

2007-12-02T08:56:00.000-08:00

Library Applications on Facebook Thing #17 1/2

2007-11-25T05:46:00.001-08:00

I found the UIUC Library Search Assistant on Facebook and wanted to know how other libraries were using Facebook. However, I ran a search and found that most of the information was blocked because I didn't have an ID number that the University of Illinois recognized (big surprise). Relying on this sort of technology may be demanding more from our customers that we should. People assume that what they can get to through our webpage is freely accessible. I once had a very irate man tell me that he didn't understand why he had to pay for an article from the New York Times. He was accessing the article through the New York Times database, as opposed to one of our databases. I showed him how to use the databases we subscribe to through our webpage, but he told me that those databases were "for librarians." I tried to explain why the New York Times was now charging for articles that were over two weeks old but he clearly thought that being at the library meant that he should be able to get the article in a way that was easy and free for him. We're going to have to be cautious about advising people to use these other resources because they will have to know that not all websites are completely accessible to everyone.

Let's Collaborate or Oh, no! I forgot to bring a disk! Thing #18

2007-11-25T04:59:00.000-08:00

My first thought is that these online applications would be great for those customers who have forgotten to bring a disk but don't want to print a document they're working on. If you can save it to these web based applications that would be a great asset to our customers. Then I wasted 10 minutes trying to upload a file to Google Docs before Google told me that the document was too big. This was annoying.

I then tried to upload something to ThinkFree from home. ThinkFree spent 15 minutes trying to upload something with Java (which would annoy our customers because it would waste their time on the machines) and then it opened up an empty document. When I tried to upload the same document from work (because the document is showing as in my ThinkFree account) I had to sign on, try to open the document, at which point another window opened and I had to sign on again, and then it couldn't open the document because it was a Microsoft Works document and not MS Word (though I swear I've got MS Word at home as part of MS Office Suite) Then we tried another document that was created with the same word processing program and it downloaded the Java program, then it told me to look at it with Power Edit, and then told me to "please sign in to open the document" ignoring the fact that I was already signed in. That's how I was able to get to the screen that let me choose which document to open. But ThinkFree insists I have to upgrade to ThinkFree Premium before I can edit anything, so this program will not be useful to our customers.

So these free applications would not be helpful to our customers (if they've got the bandwidth to use them properly at home, they've got the bandwidth to send themselves attachments via email and just pass documents back home that way, as opposed to needing a desk), and I'm not really sure they'd be of much help to us, either for the same reason. They're not opening up on my computer.

I could successfully upload and open MS Works Documents with Google Documents, but I wasn't able to share them with people who weren't using a Google, Gmail or Yahoo account. This would be useful as a means to send a document to yourself (when our customers forget to bring disks), but I still feel uncomfortable pushing one company over another (yes, Google Documents is a better service, but only if you're using their email accounts).

Facebook vs. usenet/newsgroups/bulletin boards Thing #17 1/2

2007-11-24T09:31:00.000-08:00

Everything's moving to the Web nowadays, as though the World Wide Web (which is merely a way of formatting information using a Graphical User Interface that looks more user-friendly than the old way of putting things up with a DOS prompt) is this Big New thing. It's really not. When I was going to in college in the 1990s (class of 1994) we had these things called "Bulletin Boards" and one of my professors tried to utilize a Bulletin Board to generate more class discussion than we might have had for a a class that met once a week.

Now, I Facebook might be an alternative to doing book groups online, and if we're looking to do outreach that way, Facebook might be a good means of doing that. Facebook would also allow people to be members of book clubs in branches other than the one closest to them. This might be a really good thing in terms of engaging people in their 20s and 30s who would like to participate in book clubs but don't have the time or inclination to get to the physical library.

Thing #17 Rethinking Wikis

2007-11-20T15:46:00.000-08:00

Some years ago I found the site Bullets and Beer, devoted to Robert B. Parker, and his main character, Spenser. I loved this site; it listed all of the books, gave brief little synopses of the books, it was a wonderful site. I took everything on this site as fact; figured anyone who had put so much effort into creating must know what he (yes, I assumed anyone that much in love with the Spenser character must be a man) was talking about.

My first impression of Wikipedia was skeptical; who knew who was posting what, and for what reasons? However, that was before examining Wikipedia. I'm still a little suspicious; Wikipedia spends an awful lot of time citing different articles that also appear within Wikipedia, and that always makes me suspicious. I would prefer it if a source cites someone other than herself when proving her point, but of course, the different article in Wikipedia isn't the same source, it's just "published" (disseminated seems a more appropriate term) by the same resource. But the resources listed at the end of each Wikipedia entry are marvelous, and very imformative. If I just wanted to give people a place to start researching, I'm not sure I'd tell them to read the Wikipedia article, but I might suggest that they start looking at the sources Wikipedia lists.

I then went to the Wikipedia on Internet Filters, or "Content Control Software" as Wikipedia calls it. I didn't think I could add anything to the entry, but it did need some proper citations. I spent more than 15 minutes trying to figure out how I could edit the citations in the entry. Wikipedia's citation method is so basic that it's counterintuitive to those of use who learned citation standards in school (at least, that's my opinion).

Using Wikis to create communities Thing #16

2007-11-20T15:27:00.000-08:00

I think we might be able to create communities of readers with Wikis this way; I have a book journal in which I record the books I've read, and I record in a book wiki that I've really enjoyed "No Pretty Pictures; a Child of War," by Anita Lobel. Someone else could then comment that they thought Lobel's book is a good companion to Anne Frank's Diary, being that Lobel survived the camps. In this way we could harness the collective knowledge of our librarians and use it to provide our customers with better service.

You know how bookstores frequently have a collection called "Employee picks?" Why couldn't we do something like that using a Wiki? The Princeton Library did, and I think it looks like a good idea.

Task #16 Wikis and completely different libraries

2007-11-20T15:12:00.001-08:00

Wow! I'm reading about Best Practices Wikis, and somebody thinks it would be a great idea if they had a wiki community for people who wanted the newest book by Patterson, this way they could form an online community and pass the book amongst themselves.

I think the idea that there's a library somewhere with a community so small that a popular book could just be passed around without people getting upset that "Joe got it before I did, and I read so much faster than Joe," is just amusing. I'm sure those communities are out there, small towns where most of the people know each other, it's just that I've never worked in one.

OCLC and Web 2.0. Thing #15

2007-11-17T11:55:00.000-08:00

"In my library, we’ve seen a 55 percent drop in circulation rates over the past twelve years, making it harder and harder to justify the continued buildup of a large “just in case” print collection. As a Web 2.0 reality continues to emerge and develop, our patrons will expect access to everything – digital collections of journals, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. You think they can’t have everything? Think again. This may be our great opportunity." http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/2.htm

How useful is the idea of listening to your users needs in a system such as mine? We serve over 1 million people, some of whom are very tech-savvy, many of whom think they're tech-savvy but aren't, and many of whom (still!) who barely know how to move a mouse. Why should we be ignoring our print collection because the cool people aren't using it? We've all had those awful days when the computer system goes down and we don't have access to it. This is when the "just in case" collection comes in handy. To say that it is impossible to teach everyone to use the print material, or to teach people to surf the Internet successfully, isn't helpful. We can't be everything to everyone, as much as we can try, and I don't think that the tools of Web 2.0 will help us bridge the digital divide.

Kindred spirit? Other people's commentary of Web 2.0 Thing #15

2007-11-17T11:32:00.000-08:00

I want to thank Annoyed Librarian here, and particularly mention her opinions of Web 2.0. I was trying to say something very much like that, but I think she said it very well. (I'm just assuming she's a woman, sorry.)

Technocrati or the World Live Web? Thing #14

2007-11-17T09:19:00.000-08:00

World Live Web? Oh, please. First there was ARPANET, created by the Department of Defense in order to create a communication network that had several means of distributing information from one computer to another. ARPANET was more likely to survive a Nuclear attack than our telephone system because there was no centralized source that would be destroyed. Then, in the 1990s we created the World Wide Web, a graphical user interface for displaying information. The World Wide Web was always static, because people could put up webpages at any time, and change them whenever they wanted.

I don't even know how Technocrati is tagging the blogs it's tagging. The Widgets are of no value to me. I don't care what everyone else is looking for right now, I only want to find what I'm looking for. Again, Show Me They Money! (with all due respect to Tom Cruise and Jerry Maguire.)

Stalk Other Users? Men on the Internet Thing #6

2007-11-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

Habit number 5 of Several Habits of Wildly Successful Del.ici.ous Users suggests that we stalk other users. Reminding us that this may be a community for good, or maybe not. The use of the word stalk is probably not intended to be disturbing (another reminder that the person writing this piece probably isn't thinking of the women reading it) but it bothers me. Why couldn't we find another less intmidating word?

Show Me The Money!!! Or the dirty underside of social networking sites

2007-11-17T07:34:00.001-08:00

How are these informal tagging sites profitable? Is the information gathered from my browsing habits going to be sold? To whom? I've basically told people that I'm letting them peek into

By encouraging our users to use these networking sites, are we just giving data away to marketers to be used? Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

OCLC has published a study, Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World, that looks very pertinent to my concerns.

Del.icio.us/Portability of Bookmarks

2007-11-17T06:51:00.002-08:00

Given that I can think of many times I've wished I had my computer with me so that I could show someone a site that I had bookmarked at home, but now I have to wait to go home to email it to them, I can see an advantage of these social bookmarking sites.

But using these bookmarks to help "“less tech-savvy librarians have an equal voice in the collection,” instead of having one or two librarians editing a static web page."? Don't you have to be rather tech-savvy to feel comfortable using the bookmarks to begin with?

I don't particularly like Internet Explorer, and I much prefer my Firefox browser at home. Del.icio.us looks like it's intended to be used only with IE which I resent. What about people who are using older computers that don't work well with IE? What about people using linux to avoid the Microsoft issue altogether. Why is IE necessary?

2007-11-17T06:51:00.001-08:00

Informal tagging Thing #13 A First Judgement

2007-11-17T06:42:00.000-08:00

I like a formal vocabulary. I like having standarized search terms. I really like having an index where I can discover what search terms are being used. Therefore my automatic judgement of information tagging is that it's not terribly useful from a professional standpoint. I remember in graduate school when Yahoo.com had "categories" so you could limit your search to already sifted areas of the web. I thought it was great when Yahoo.com was using librarians to help "catalog" websites. Informal tagging violates all of this and doesn't necessarily help anyone find anything because we all use slightly different vocabularies; without creating any source where we can discover one another's tagging vocabularies (or what I might have called cataloging terms) the web becomes that more difficult to navigate.

Hidden books!

2007-11-15T06:20:00.000-08:00

I've read two really good books this year and I'm wondering if mentioning them here (it is The Book Blog, after all) will encourage anyone else to read them. OK, one of them hasn't come out in the States yet. I got an advanced readers' copy at Book Expo America of Gods Behaving Badly, by Marie Phillips and I really want to recommend it. The Greek Gods are alive and living in modern London; Athena is a dog-walker, and Apollo has a television show where he pretends to be a psychic. (Are Gods psychic? Or are they just Gods?)

It's not really fantasy; it falls into that middle area where I'd put Rankin's Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse. It's due out in December and I want to encourage people to read it. I think it could be the 21st century Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, in terms of cult classics.

And The Word Was by Bruce Bauman is a powerful novel about the ability to continue living when faced with unimaginable loss. The book was very compelling and I would have stayed up all night reading it, if I hadn't had to go to work the next day. If you know you're going to be on a plane for 2 hours and want to be distracted, And The Word Was is the perfect book for you.

Rollyo? Thing #12

2007-10-30T15:01:00.001-07:00

Why on earth should I care about the rollyos created by Debra Messing, Arianna Huffington, Rosario Dawson, or Brian Greene? OK, after that rant, Rollyo looks really interesting. It's better than the Bloglines account (which I found completely overwhelming), because it's easier to manage and filter, but it fills the same information need.

However, in terms of "sharing" rollyos, it's not terribly useful because the rollyos aren't sorted at all! You can "explore" the rollyos, which is a very unhelpful term because you're not exploring, you're searching through the rollyos looking for ones that use search terms that you're looking for.

Professionally, I think I should be looking at book review sites, and this might be a good resource for it. While I'm designing a My Books & Authors rollyo, I think it would be much easier if the search sites were automatically alphabetized while I was editing them, because it would be easier for me to find one or double check that a particular site was part of the rollyo, however I like that the sites included in the rollyo are listed on the page with the results of my search.

Online Image Generator -- Thing #10

2007-10-27T17:17:00.001-07:00

I'm going to call this guy Fred.

LibraryThing's ease of use or Thing #11.

2007-10-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

I went to LibraryThing.com to catalog the books that are already listed on my "What I've Been Reading" list. However, when I tried to make changes to the list in LibraryThing, I couldn't just go to the LibraryThing page, make the changes there, and allow the link to stay static, even though as far as I could tell the link should take an Internet user to the same page ("What's On My Bookshelf"). It doesn't. I had to go back to LibraryThing, copy and paste what appears to be the same code back into my blog and then it was changed.

This is tedious, and since the information that should have been embedded in the code that I copied and pasted into the "Random Books from My Library" entry had changed, I don't really understand why the information on my blog didn't change with it. Am I the only person who thinks that doesn't make sense. I assumed that the link to LibraryThing was not static, because if it is, it isn't as useful as I'd like.

Book Blog on LibraryThing

2007-10-26T11:34:00.001-07:00

Serendipity or "push vs. pull" technology : a little more on Thing #8

2007-10-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

A drawback to relying on newsreaders and primarily using the World Wide Web to access newspapers is that it's easier to find only what you're looking, thus avoiding finding out things that don't necessarily agree with your search strategy. You have to use some limits when using newsreaders (what newsreaders you pick, for example) and that limits what information people are exposed to, which frequently means that they further limit their own experience and knowledge to that which makes them feel comfortble and keeps them within their own bubble.

In "The Complete Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" there is a plot point where Claudia is so determined that when she is looking through a newspaper to find out information about Angel, a sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she completely misses an small news story about her parents who are frantic about her diappearance. (Claudia had mailed them a note telling them not to worry, but clearly the note didn't work.) The narrator points out that this is a prime example of letting the goal of your search dictate your search strategy and control what you see, and the nature of your results can be compromised because of one's focus.

Jump Around (Thing # 9, or is it Thing #11?)

2007-10-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

I went to Feedster and looked up Banned Books (does anyone detect a theme here?) and got to LibraryThing (which I see is also part of Thing #11). My first problem with LibraryThing is one of my problems with all of these "everyone can post what they like" sites; I'm really not sure that it's a meaningful resource for a professional. Novelist at least has editors who I know are employed and therefore their work is supervised.

On The Other Hand, I also know that bookstores often have a section called "Employees' Favorites" so that regulars of the bookstores can go to that section and use a similar search strategy (The "I know I like the books Jean likes" algorithm) and I also know from experience that sometimes customers know that they like books that a particular librarian likes, so they go up to her for recommendations.

LibraryThing's Book Suggester is more annoying than helpful, because it requires at least one more step for me to figure out what the book that's being suggested is about. I might have liked "The Other Rebecca" for any number of reasons, and because LibraryThing hasn't figured out how to manage tags (while Novelist has) means that I won't find it professionally useful, yet.

Reconsidering Bloglines or Task #8 part 3

2007-10-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

A lot of the information on Bloglines looks really fascinating and helpful to me as a librarian, but should I be interpreting my job as including looking through these newsfeeds for different sources of information? And what do I tell the parents who are convinced that their children have been told "not to use the internet" for a school project when I have the perfect site that's sponsored by the JFK Presidential Library?

It's Really Too Much!!! (Thing #8, part 2)

2007-10-18T12:14:00.001-07:00

I signed up for a bloglines account. I'm completely overwhelmed by the amount of information that is out there. If part of my job is to help people navigate the Internet and not drown in information overload, my advice might be just not to subscribe to news feeds. When I was in library school my teachers were talking about how the Internet was "pull" technology, as opposed to the television which was "push" technology. When a person looks on the the Internet they have to actively go looking for what they want and even then, what they seek might be elusive. The bloglines account gives me the impression that the creators of bloglines are using the television "channel" metaphor as their model, though they may have just borrowed it from AOL which was using that metaphor back in 1996.

So to sum up, I don't think RSS really makes my life that much more simple.

Rant re: Digg or Thing #6

2007-10-18T03:56:00.000-07:00

I just signed up for a Digg account. I had noticed the icons for Digg and Del.i.cious. on nytimes.com and wondered what they meant. This may be a much more helpful way of bookmarking stories I want to explore at a later date. Great. I just have one annoying comment regarding Digg....

Why are its gender selections so "hip?" What's wrong with my wanting to identify myself as a "woman," not as a "grrl," "lady," or "female"? It's not a BIG deal, I know, but it might just be enough to put off women of a certain generation who fought to be called women in the workplace.

One reason I prefer Firefox or Thing #7

2007-10-15T16:44:00.000-07:00

On my Firefox browser there's a link to Scribe on the bottom of the screen, so I can automatically start blogging about whatever page I'm looking at. If there's an RSS feed affiliated with a webpage, that RSS link shows up in the address bar of the browser. In Internet Explorer, there is no link to Scribe, and the RSS link shows up somewhere on the screen, but not in any set place.

I find the standardized presentation on Firefox much easier to navigate than I find Internet Explorer.

It's All Too Much!!! Or Thing #8

2007-10-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

I love the World Wide Web. I really do. I love that I could disagree with someone about tax law and find out that I was right within 5 minutes by going to the irs website, and then copy and paste the correct information into an email complete with a citation.

But there is just so much out there! And some of it's great, and some of it isn't at all interesting, but the medium doesn't give me enough control to limit what I can look at so eventually I'm just overwhelmed. The news feeds make it even worse.

Banned Book Week!

2007-10-15T09:42:00.001-07:00

Banned Book Week has ended, and I forgot to celebrate it.

If you don't like that picture, try my banned books display.

Flickr issues or Thing #5

2007-10-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

I wasn't sure what to make of Flickr. I'm still not. First of all, it needs a much faster connection than I have at home, where I'm relying on a dialup connection, to be really useful. I think it's nice that I can take pictures and put them up on a website so my family and friends can see them, but it's also a little disconcerting. It's too easy to forget that the Internet is in no way a gated community; anyone can see what everyone's posting. Forgive me if it sounds a little paranoid, but I don't want to put my name on anything I just put up without controlling who can look at it.

I know Flickr tries to control for this, because they do give people an option of restricting who has access to what's posted, but it still makes me feel a little uneasy.

I did however put pictures from my grandfather's birthday party up and invited my relatives to go look at them. We live all over the country and never really get a chance to see all the pictures we've taken of one another.

But Mommy, I Don't LIKE Science Fiction/Fantasy!

2007-10-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

I've never really been a Science Fiction fan. I've read some Heinlein, I've read some Asimov, but I never really got into the genre. Then I found "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse" by Robert Rankin, and I was hooked. Jack goes to "The City" to search for adventure. After surviving a carnivorous farmer who traps and kills orphan boys, Jack is taken up by Eddie Bear, a stuffed teddy bear private detective. "The City" is Toy City, inhabited almost exclusively by toys. Someone is killing off the old toys (Humpty Dumpty, for starters). If you need to recommend science fiction to someone who really doesn't want to read it, try offering them The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies.

7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners?

2007-10-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

I think calling "play" only half a habit belittles the value of having fun; I remember things better when I'm having fun. I am more likely to pay attention to things I enjoy, and I do not consider playing "work."

I took piano lessons for 7 years, and I never thought that practicing was "work" until the very last year. I think I got to be pretty good at the piano because I didn't consider exercises or practicing "work."

Beginning with the end in mind often prevents me from enjoying the learning experience, because all I'm concerned with is my intended "destintion;" getting there is half the fun, and staying aware of other possible uses for what I'm studying can make the process more interesting.

Commentary on HTML coding on blogger.com

2007-10-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

I know HTML coding, so I found the HTML coding assistance a little confusing; I was just typing the link to Walmartopia into the text of my post, and I had to hunt around to figure out which of the icons was necessary to link to something else on the web. (That might be because I'm known for making things more difficult than they have to be, but I don't think the icon for posting a link is terribly meaningful.)

I also don't understand why the post time isn't right; I click on "Post Options" and a post time and date are listed, but the time has always been wrong by about 3 hours.

First Play

2007-10-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

Last week I saw Walmartopia, a musical about Walmart and how Walmart treats its employees. It posits that there might be a time when Walmart is the only store in the world, and that is ridiculous. How could Walmart want to be the only store in the world, since at that time its "always low prices" ad campaign would be meaningless?

I just found this fabulous site, Off-Off Blogway, and I think other people should see it because it's pretty impressive. I wish I'd put up a blog like that.

It's the Book Blog!!!!

2007-09-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

OK, if anyone is intersted in this, I will be recording the books I've read, what I thought about them, and what books I might recommend to someone who liked the books I've read.

I'll probably also be talking about the plays and concerts I'm going to, also.