Adding Reviews to Open WorldCat

OCLC has announced that as of October 9, everyone is free to add content to the records in Open WorldCat. Click here for the announcement. Any book enthusiast can now put a review onto an Open WorldCat record as easily as putting one on Amazon. Karen Schneider did it on Thursday and urged others to try. I tried it Friday and found it was easy.

For those who do not remember or have not heard, Open WorldCat is OCLC (a very big library company) putting the bibliographic records from WorldCat (a very big database showing what libraries around the world own) onto the Web so that they can be found through popular search engines, like Google and Yahoo, and other non-OCLC web sites, such as Alibris and BookPage. These records tell anyone who finds them the closest libraries with the books they seek. While this might seem to a knowing librarian as a fairly easy thing to find otherwise, it should help nonlibrarians who do not know the URLs for their area libraries' catalogs. Librarians can also use Open WorldCat (as they do in FirstSearch WorldCat) to find library holdings in multiple systems in one search.

Joe Janes, Roy Tennant, and many others in the library community have called on librarians to use the Web to take library services to the public, reminding librarians that it is the libraries that are remote, not their public. Using Google and Yahoo to get the libraries to the public is one attempt.

Furthermore, online library catalogs are adding features, such as book covers and reviews, to make them more attractive to the public. Open WorldCat is going a step further adding an interactive component. Any reader can add reviews, the table of contents, or notes to Open WorldCat records.

Here is what you do to add a review to an Open WorldCat record.

1. Find Open WorldCat. There are several ways of doing this. The easiest way is simply go to http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/open/tryit/default.htm. Save this link. (An intended way is at the end of this piece.)

2. Enter your title in either the Google or Yahoo search box. Click "Search." I do not recommend the Google Scholar box, as it takes an extra step and it did not find many of the titles for me.

3. Click the correct title on the results list.

4. Click the tab that says "Reviews."

5. Click "Write an Online Review."

6. Open an Open WorldCat account if this is your first visit. It is free. If you have an account, sign in. (Karen had some difficulty signing up because she already had an account that she did not remember having.)

7. Select a rating for the book.

8. Give the review a title. I just used author and title of the book but you could give your review its own title.

9. Paste in your review. You can write the review at this point, but you are much better off having written it in advance. Open WorldCat will not time out as you write, and you will have a second chance to catch typos. Your readers will appreciate a better edited review.

10. Click "Submit Review." You will be returned to the record and your review will be on the screen. (Karen said her review took awhile to appear, but my reviews appeared instantly.)

I added five reviews to Open WorldCat on Friday:

Given: New Poems by Wendell Berry
Active Liberty by David Breyer
Before Lewis and Clark by Shirley Christian
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck

I was the first to add reviews to these titles, which I chose to see how a variety of short and longer reviews would appear. As the trial is so new, there is little contributor content, but I did find the publisher had added the table of contents for Before Lewis and Clark. The reviews do look rather plain, as there is no way to use bold, italics or underline the text.

I found adding the reviews was easy for all the titles except A Year Down Yonder, which is available in hardcover, paperback, and compact discs, all of which were separate records; I had to paste the review into each of the records. This is not necessary on Amazon, where the submitted reviews post to all the editions of a title. Perhaps OCLC will find a way to connect the editions, too.

Back to step 1. You can get to Open WorldCat records directly from Google and Yahoo by using the phrase "find in a library" within quotation marks and the title and author. At this point I would recommend Google, which found three editions of A Year Down Yonder. Yahoo only found the hardbound edition. Remember to use the whole phrase "find in a library." I forgot the "a" once and it did not work. I wonder how many people will try "find in library" and be disappointed.

I will follow Open WorldCat developments and report when there is anything interesting. The review writing feature is promised for FirstSearch WorldCat in the near future.

A Small Mystery to Solve Regarding Peter, Paul & Mary

In the past three days, I have noticed unusually high interest in my short review of old Peter, Paul & Mary recordings. It has been the most popular individual page other than my main page in this blog. Of course the numbers are small really: eight people have accessed the review, which usually has a visitor every week or so. After the fourth visitor I began to worry: had one of the members died?

I have been to the Peter, Paul & Mary website and to Back Porch News, and can find no bad news about the trio - though it does seem a lot of other folk singers have died in the last month, according to Back Porch News. I have also checked Yahoo News and Google News: no recent news. I guess there is a small resurgence in interest in Peter, Paul & Mary: that's good news!

Active Liberty by Stephen Breyer (with thoughts about libraries)

Stephen Breyer believes that the U.S. Constitution and the statutes passed by Congress must allow interpretation that maximizes the participation of the public. "Active Liberty" is his term for a method of judicial interpretation that considers the intent of the framers of the Constitution, the wishes of the legislators who wrote the laws, the administrators who enforce the laws, and the public in whom all authority rests. While it calls for judicial restraint, it is not a method of literal interpretation. Breyer shows in the text of his new book Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution that word by word analysis sometimes leads to mistaking general Congressional intent and often serves the public badly. Breyer wants as a Supreme Court Justice the ability to look beyond the statutory text to form decisions; he will often use texts of hearings, commentaries, and testimonies that suggest the consequences of law.

In Active Liberty, Breyer discusses the application of his concept to free speech, federalism, privacy, affirmative action, statutory interpretation, and administrative law. He discusses cases brought before the Supreme Court, telling why he agreed or disagreed with the court's decisions. He points out that most Supreme Court decision are unanimous; most attention is given to the cases that divide the court. The colleague he quotes most in the book is retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

I thought about libraries in his discussion of administrative law. Breyer points out that democratic control of government has to be tempered by expert knowledge in our technically modern life. The wishes of the public and the public good are not the same in areas of civil liberties, the environment, and other areas of controversy. The experts who work for governmental agencies and have to interpret their jobs daily should be listened to closely in judicial inquiries, according to Breyer. Librarians are such experts. Justices should listen to us in cases involving libraries and information.

The public library would never work as a totally democratic institution. We could never get our community of users and nonusers to agree to the hours of service, the services to provide, and the materials to stock. The public library has the mission to serve the informational, educational, and recreational needs of all its residents, and only professional librarians with the authority to sometimes do the unpopular can complete the mission. The role of the library, however, is to support active democracy, and librarians should listen to the library users; librarians should incorporate as many of their ideas and buy as many of the books they recommend as possible. We must make our users feel that the libraries are theirs.

Active Liberty is a more readable book than you might imagine would be written by a Supreme Court justice. Taken from a series of lectures, it is also fairly short. It includes a really good explanation of why we have many elected officals with differing lengths of service. More libraries should buy it.

Breyer, Stephen. Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. ISBN 0307263134

Where Are the Stories? Where Are the Bloggers? U.S. Cash Fuels Human Trade by Cam Simpson and Aamer Madhani

In Sunday's Chicago Tribune were two articles by Cam Simpson and Aamer Madhani about the exploitation of foreign workers in Iraq by subcontractors working for Halliburton. Halliburton, as many remember, is paid tons of money by the U.S. government to provide meals, housing, housecleaning, fuel, and other support services for U.S. military forces in Iraq. To get non-Iraqi labor to reduce the possibility of terrorist infiltration, Halliburton turns to local subcontractors who use Middle East brokers in contact with South Asia labor recruiters. The recruiters often take money from both the brokers and from the desperate laborers who want good paying jobs. The laborers are often told they are going to work in Jordanian hotels for good pay, when they in fact end up in compounds in Iraq for poor pay. The subcontractors confiscate their passports and may only pay them at the end of the contract, making it impossible for the laborers to flee. Halliburton and the U.S. military do not question the subcontractors, brokers, and recruiters about their practices. This seems to me an important story.

As of Tuesday morning, I do not see any reporting on this story by the New York Times or Washington Post; a search of Google News does not find the article either. One of the articles was an exclusive for the Chicago Tribune, but I would think that such an important story would some how be commented on by the other papers; when I search for Halliburton, I find many stories but not the story about expoited Asian workers. Using Google and Google News, I find plenty of news about Halliburton and Iraq, but again I can not find the article by Cam Simpson nor comments about it. I also do not see anything about the story on CNN, BBC News , National Public Radio, or Reuters.

Finally, using Yahoo News I find the story from the Chicago Tribune itself and a parallel release from the Baltimore Sun. Maybe I should have started with Yahoo News.

I thought I might find more by checking the search engines that search blogs. Using Technorati I found one posting, two using Feedster, and two using Google Blog Search. That is not the buzz I expected for this story. At the LITA Forum ten days ago, Danah Boyd said that bloggers keep the mainstream news organizations honest, reporting what the latter pass up. In this case, most of the bloggers must not even know the story, unless they are Chicago Tribune readers.

Michael Gorman said at the LITA Forum that access to content on the web is poor. Someone else, it may have been Danah Boyd, said Google and Yahoo and other search engines are often blocked from indexing and linking by the sources of exclusive content, such as the news sources. Whatever, everyone seems to agree that information is lost to the readers who are not persistent.

I wonder if this story will be found in next year's Project Censored (The News that Didn't Make the News) annual report. Censored 2006 is already on sale. 2007 seems a long time away.

Cam Simpson and Aamer Madhani. "U.S. Cash Fuels Human Trade." Chicago Tribune. October 9, 2005. Section 1, page 15.

Cam Simpson. "Desperate for Work, Lured into Danger: The Journey of a Dozen Impoverished Men from Nepal to Iraq Reveals the Exploitation Underpinning the American War Effort." Chicago Tribune. October 9, 2005. Section 1, page 1.

Cam Simpson. "Into a War Zone, on a Deadly Road: Worker's Chilling Call Home: 'I am Done for.' " . October 10, 2005. Section 1, page 1.

Update for Wednesday, October 12

As of this morning, the big national newspapers are still not mentioning this story. CNN, NPR, BBC News, and Reuters still have not chosen to report on it either.

My search in Yahoo News found a new article in the Seattle Times from a Los Angeles Times writer about the same subject. I then found the original article. Perhaps I should look west as much as east for news.

Twenty-four hours allowed a little more blog activity. I found two blogs on the topic through Technorati, five (including this posting) through Feedster, and still two through Google Blogsearch. Still, bloggers must be focusing their attention elsewhere.

Update for Saturday, October 15

Through Google News found a new article of the topic from AlterNet, an Internet reporting project from the Independent Media Institute. Two of the Chicago Tribune articles are now posted at CorpWatch (click here also).

Yahoo News shows that several other newspapers are republishing up the Chicago Tribune articles and the Los Angeles Times article.

Blogging activity seems to be increasing. I found more postings through both Techorati and Feedster. Google Blogsearch had fewer entries than the other two. I noticed that plurals did not matter in Feedster searches.

Bookmarks Found in Library Books

When I am reading library books or when I am looking in a book for an answer to a reference question or when I am browsing through the books that I might weed, I find lost bookmarks. They may be bookmarks that my library has printed to promote our programs or recommend books; they may come from the government agencies and nonprofit organizations that supply the library with bookmarks to market their services or promote causes, such as daily dental care or recycling plastic; occasionally they are fine bookmarks of hand-made paper or embroidered silk that I am sure are sorely missed. People also leave items that become bookmarks only because they were used as such: grocery lists, church bulletins, train tickets, movie tickets, utility bills, wedding invitations, unused tissues, torn strips of paper towels, newspaper clippings, notes passed in class, post-it notes, postcards, baseball cards, cash register receipts. I recently found a hand-drawn doll dress pattern on very thin paper in a book about dolls. I can only imagine the story behind each lost item .

Friday, while I was reading A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, I found a Dominican University GSLIS Alumni Council bookmark. On one side of the wine colored bookmark with white lettering is a list of the alumni council members, including the names of some librarians that I have met. The other side lists the council's 2005 events, including the McCusker Lecture to be held in October, no date, "call for further details." How did the lost bookmark get into a book about getting lost?

Someone I know may have read this book before me. Three of the librarians in my library attended the library school at Dominican University, one when it was still called Rosary College, and our neighboring libraries are full of GSLIS alumni. I know several residents of our community who are currently attending the library school, and several Dominican students come to our library every semester to interview us for their class assignments. Who could it be?

I am enjoying the book and this mystery seems very appropriate to the mood of the book.

Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. New York: Viking, 2005. ISBN 0670034215

How Libraries Deal with Donated Books

Marilyn Oorbeck of the Riverside (Illinois) Public Library recently polled the readers of RefList (a listserv for reference librarians, mostly in the Metropolitan Library System) about their procedures and policies regarding donated materials. She thoughtfully reported her summary on reflist and gave me permission to pass along to other readers. I particularly like her last paragraph.


Hello Everyone,

I received 11 responses concerning my posting [on reflist] about donations and library booksale procedures.

Here is a summary of the responses:

At 4 libraries Friends of the Library volunteers sort the donations, manage and run book sales and/or Friends stores.

One Library is in a state of transition because the Friends Book Sale coordinator will be stepping down after managing the book sale for 20 years.

Several libraries have one big book sale a year, with a smaller ongoing sale. The ongoing sales are usually managed by library staff.

At one library a large annual sale is not possible due to lack of storage space.

Of the libraries in which staff (not volunteers) manage donations, usually the Technical Services Manager, or T.S. staff, sort the donations. Sometimes the Reference Librarians manage donations. In one library the administrative secretary sorts through the donations.

The person(s) who triage the donations separate them into: discards, possible additions to the collection, and book sale items.

Often the Technical Services staff (or Friends volunteers) will alert selectors to the arrival of choice items. It is the responsibility of selectors or managers to look over the donations at least once a week to claim items for the collection.

Either a staff member or volunteer decides which items are saved for the annual book sale and which are immediately added to the ongoing sale.

One library keeps its ongoing book sale fresh by tagging items and removing them if they have not sold after a couple of months.

The consensus from the group about the possibility of adding items of marginal value that would only have to be weeded sooner rather than later was: don't worry about it. Selecting materials is an art. We all make miscalculations. If an added item needs to be weeded - it's ok.

Donated copies are often used to replace fiction or nonfiction classics in poor condition. If space is available items can be saved for future addition to the collection.

Several librarians commented that while most donations are not added to the collection, the time and effort necessary to manage donations is worth it. All of our collections have been enriched by our patrons' generosity.

Thank you for emailing me your responses. It was very helpful.

Marilyn Oorbeck, Adult Services Manager
Riverside Public Library, Illinois

Library Journal with Aaron on the Cover

Library Journal with Aaron on the Cover
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Look for the October 1, 2005 issue of Library Journal with Aaron Schmidt among other bloggers on the cover. The article can be found at the Library Journal website.

Brazilian Turns His Home into a Public Library

Library Link of the Day sent another wonderful article to me through my email. (I know I could move this service over to Bloglines, but I like having something to look forward to in my inbox.) Yesterday's article is This Illiterate Brazilian's Home Speaks Volumes. It is humbling to read what some inspired individuals can accomplish.

Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich

The author Louise Erdrich went on a spirit quest through the land of the Ojibwe, boating through Minnesota and Ontario, visiting islands in Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake. In her 1995 blue Windstar minivan, with her eighteen month old daughter, she left Minneapolis to seek out the literature of her tribes (Ojibwe and Caucasian) captured by the atisikan or eternal paint on the rocky islands and found in the collection of a special library of rare books on an isolated island. Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, a title in National Geographic’s The Literary Travel Series, is her account.

Though Erdrich is a modern woman who has forsworn smoking, she took tobacco to offer to the spirits, to strengthen her connection to the past by practicing its traditions. Her daughter enjoyed sprinkling the bits of tobacco from the bags before the ancient symbols. At very special places she also left food and ribbon shirts. She sought comfort and good fortune for herself and her daughters.

The author thought Ojibwemowin had become like Latin, a language of prayer, until she found on a previous trip the older people who speak it daily. Now she studies to learn the many verbs; two thirds of the vocabulary is descriptive verbs that need few adjectives. Erdrich says that the best speakers of the language are always creating new words; there are now words for computers, animals from other continents, and other ethnic groups; Asians are “the tea people” and Europeans are “frog people.”

A small foundation granted Erdrich an invitation to visit the island that was the home of Ernest Oberholtzer, who collected thousands of books and studied the Ojibwe and their language. Spending days thumbing through his vast and varied collection, she mused that children could learn much if they were given one school year devoted strictly to undirected reading; she would put children in libraries and let them discover literature for themselves.

The author has the book collecting addiction. Recently, as an antidote, she started an independent bookstore called Birchbark Books in Minneapolis. In the final chapter she discusses its operations and the joy she has arranging the displays when no one else is there.

Readers of Erdrich’s novels and book lovers in general should read this personal travel account, which reveals much about the author’s reading and literary culture.

Erdrich, Louise. Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2003. ISBN 0792257197

Information and the Quality of Life: Environmentalism for the Information Age by David Levy

I was very pleased to learn the final keynote speaker at the LITA Forum in San Jose was David Levy. I heard Dr. Levy, a professor from the Information School at the University of Washington, at the Public Library Association Conference last year in Seattle. I was impressed with his presentation then and have since read his book Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age. This year's presentation was Information and the Quality of Life: Environmentalism for the Information Age.

Dr. Levy began his presentation reminding us of a train accident that occurred in Japan earlier in the year. The train was running 90 seconds late and the engineer was running the train beyond the recommended speed trying very hard to get the train on schedule. Being late was unacceptable. Many people died. The author Richard Ford recently said, “The pace of life seems morally dangerous to me.”

Dr. Levy told a personal story. His daughter had a very busy imaginary friend when she was young; when asked about the friend, she would say that the friend was too busy to talk that day. Even five year olds know about information overload and the hectic pace of life.

All of us are too busy. Dr. Levy says his addiction is his email. There are many fine things about email, but he gets too much of it and he feels compelled to answer it all. He anticipates getting wonderful messages, such as news of grants or acceptance of his writings in publications, and dreads bad news. He will not check email on the Sabbath, but finds himself thinking about it anyway. He is still trying to work out a sane way of dealing with it.

In 1945, Vannevar Bush, science advisor to President Roosevelt, said that people were suffering from too much information, and he suggested a “memex,” a device that would store and make retrievable data from books, records, and communications. The memex would help organize the information and give people more leisure. The computer does everything that Bush hoped the memex would do, except it does not lessen the stress of information overload; instead, the load is heavier.

Dr. Levy said that the dangers of the stress of information overload include poorer physical health, poorer mental health, falling productivity, decreasing quality of work, less satisfaction from work, bad decision making, less socialization, and less democracy.

In his book Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper claims that work has become the sole purpose of being for many people. Our society needs to provide leisure to allow individuals to reclaim perspective. Attending football games, racing cars, partying, surfing the web, listening to Ipods, are not leisure. Pieper means contemplation and stillness. “Only the person who is still can hear.” People need to find silence and sanctuary.

Dr. Levy said that there are two types of thinking: ratio (pronounced ratzio) and intellectus. Ratio is based on taking facts, doing research, calculating. Intellectus comes by just looking, contemplating, meditating. The Web and information technology is strong on ratio and weak on intellectus. To restore quality of life in our hectic lives, we need to create an ecology that balances ratio and intellectus.

Dr. Levy described the movement of which he is a part. He organized the Conference on Information, Silence, and Sanctuary last year and will be leading The Workshop on Mindful Work and Technology in March 2006. He is starting a Center for Information and the Quality of Life at the University of Washington. Redesigning technology and promoting new applications that offer contemplation are some of the goals of the movement. An important book is Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

The question and answer period following the formal presentation was lengthy. Many librarians asked questions about the library role in bringing a balance to the world of information. Dr. Levy noted that libraries already have a reputation as a place to go for quiet, though the reality is that libraries are often busy places. He thinks libraries should restore the reputation somewhat and market it. There would be many grateful people.

Clearing by Wendell Berry

Clearing by Wendell Berry is a collection of poems, all between four and fourteen pages in length, that deal with stewardship of the earth in general and more specifically with the caring for a farm. Berry has been a farmer, poet, and novelist since the 1960s, and is revered by environmentalists. This book is one of his best.

Berry selected a very appropriate quote to highlight in the introductory pages:

What has been spoiled through man’s fault can be made good again through man’s work.
I Ching

Like Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, Berry says that history and the future are present in the present moment. Berry refers specifically to the spring, when life arises out of the frozen ground; without the springs of the past there would be no present life, which is preparing for future life. The poet refers to his farm labor also, which follows the work of the sod busting farmers and which he will pass on to future generations. In his poem “History” he says:

All the lives this place
has had, I have. I eat
my history day by day.

In the title poem “Clearing” he takes up the theme of restoration, a healing of the land after the bad practices of many poor farmers:

Vision reaches the ground
under the sumac and thorn
under the honeysuckle,
and begins its rise.
It sees clear pasture,
clover and grass, on the worn
hillside going back
to woods, good cropland
in the bottom gone to weeds.

Healing work is a calling, according to Berry, and no person can be truly happy who does not work for good. Work is to be enjoyed. It is to be a song and should bring people together.

We will write them a poem
to tell them of the great
fellowship, the mystic order,
to which both of us belong.

It would truly be a good earth if every person, urban and rural, loved their work and made of it a song in the manner of Wendell Berry. This older collection of poems should be retained and read.

Berry, Wendell. Clearing. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. ISBN 0151181500

Blogging Out Loud: Shifts in Public View

Danah Boyd is not a librarian; she is a Ph.D student at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley. She appeared before the LITA Forum as a keynote speaker in a big furry hat, which made her look like a wolf, and she was not at all happy that Roy Tennant had called Google and Amazon the enemy in his presentation. She believes that she heard a call for librarians to be the gatekeepers of information in Tennant’s keynote speech and she is alarmed. She desires a more democratic system of information. She wants librarians, who so strongly support civil liberties, to extend a hand to bloggers, remixers, and other innovators of digital communication.

Boyd took exception to Michael Gorman’s complaints that blogs do not meet the traditional standards of journalism. She first said many of the charges made against blogs can often be made against news sources - who can claim that FoxNews is unbiased? The main point she said was that blogging is not journalism or publishing; she says it is correspondence or communication. Blogs should be compared with letters, which archivists collect for future researchers.

Boyd is a social scientist who has worked for both Google and Yahoo. She has studied the ways that youth use various services on the Internet for social interaction. She suggested that these services work as important forums and safety valves. She told of how suicides among gay youths have fallen as more youth became involved in Internet communications; they were able to find others of like minds; they no longer feel alone.

Blogging is increasing in popularity; Technorati reports that the number of blogs doubles every five months. A blog can do everything a piece of paper can: tell a story, show a picture, promote a product, etc. Blogs empower individuals to speak their minds and can be a check on the mainstream media that reserves comment to those selected by the news industry.

Boyd said librarians need to decide how to react to blogs. She doubts there is real value in archiving all blogs, but there is some preservation worthy work. She urged librarians to read blogs and use them in their work.

Boyd gave very articulate answers to the many questions after her formal presentation. I would have enjoyed listening to her longer. One of her blogs is apophenia. Her presentation was definitely one of the high points of the conference.

I am missing some of the many things that she said. You can find more about Boyd's speech from LITA bloggers Sarah Houhton and Michelle Boule

The LITA Forum in San Jose

The 8th Annual LITA Forum in San Jose began Friday with a welcoming presentation by Roy Tennant (User Services Architect at the California Digital Library and a columnist for Library Journal) called Googlezon, Episode VI: Return of the Librarians. First he showed a little film that he made that tells the history and future of Google. Stating afterward that he can not really predict the future, which is "always more bizarre than we expect," he wanted to make the point that Google may seem strong right now, but it could be gone in five years; it is a public company with a commitment to stock holders; big companies fall; it could be bankrupt and gone. Libraries are here “for the long haul.” We have to adapt to survive, but we can do so.

To outlast the Internet giants, libraries need to learn from them. They all became big by taking simple ideas and applying them to new services. Not only should we use their methods, we should use their services to push our content through their pages.

I gather from reading other reports that Tennant has some oft repeated statements, including one he used today: “Librarians like to search, everyone else likes to find.” He especially picked on library catalogs, saying they need to be scrapped and replaced by better systems. “Stop putting lipstick on pigs,” he repeated several times.

Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft have lots of money, but libraries have lots of skilled, dedicated people. He thinks we can beat them.

There is a more detailed report on his presentation at LITA Blog. You will also find my report on the difficulties of web harvesting government information at LITA Blog.

Portola Redwood State Park in California

Deer on Sequoia Nature Trail
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

I spent several hours hiking in a park that I think very few people find called Portola Redwood State Park yesterday. I was driving along Skyline Drive, meeting very few cars despite being only a few miles west of the highly populated Santa Clara Valley. I saw a sign for the park, noting the wood redwood, and turned at the next road. If I had known it would still take half an hour of driving narrow twisty roads, I might not have gone; I would have missed a beautiful park. At 9:45 a.m., I was only the second visitor of the day. If you like hiking and solitude, I recommend Portola.

Glimpse of a Fountain at Stanford University

Glimpse of Fountain
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Stanford University has one of the most beautiful campuses that I have ever seen, mixing Mediterranean architecture and California landscaping. Unlike most universities with buildings spanning many decades, Stanford has kept a consist look about its buildings; they all have the clay tile roofs and the creamy colored stone. The Main Quad is a stunning space; no photo can really represent its vastness. I can imagine anyone lucky enough to work or study at Stanford would be very sorry to leave.

I got a little lost getting to the campus. I made a wrong turn off of Pasteur Drive and found myself boxed in by medical centers and then I was in a shopping complex. I eventually made my way through the Arboretum to approach the Oval and the Main Quad. Because it was after 4:00 p.m., I was able to park across from the Cantor Center for the Visual Arts for free. There I found the Rodin Sculpture Garden. There is a lot to find if you can find it. Look at a map carefully before you attempt to visit the campus.

I saw more people on bicycles on the Stanford campus than I have ever seen anywhere. I was reminded of Chinese bicycle commuting. I took a lot of photos. Click on this one to find more.

Unformed Landscape by Peter Stamm

Peter Stamm sets Unformed Landscape in the remotest area of Norway, in a village that can only be reached by boat, where most people either fish or work for the fish factory. It is near the borders with Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Stamm describes the political borders, covered by snow and darkness, as irrelevant and ignored. "The real borders were between day and night, between summer and winter, between the people.”

The central character is Katherine, a young woman who works for the customs service; she spends much of her time inspecting Russian boats for illegal cigarettes and vodka. She is only twenty-two at the beginning of the story, but she is already divorced from the father of her son, a boy who is never referred to by name until half way through the novel. She likes her job because she meets many people who have seen the outside world; Katherine has been to Hammerfest twice, but she has never been south of the Arctic Circle. The best day of her life was the day she rode in a helicopter to make a raid on a Russian trawler; she enjoyed seeing the fjords from the air. She has very few options in her life. She is agrees to marry Thomas because it might improve her situation; this proves to be a bad decision.

I do not want to reveal too much, to spoil the mystery of the story, which covers six years of Katherine’s life. It takes most of the novel for the reader to come to know the quiet woman, whose past is revealed very slowly by the author.

Reading Unformed Landscape feels a lot like watching a Scandinavian film; I was surprised to learn the author is Swiss. He probably has seen many European films; he has one of his characters watch Truffaut's Belle du Jour. I suspect anyone who enjoys Ingmar Bergen films will enjoy this novel.

Stamm, Peter. Unformed Landscape. New York: Handsel Books, 2004. ISBN 1590511409

I learned about this book by reading the Review-A-Day from Powell’s Books.

I'm Heading to the LITA Forum in San Jose

I am flying today to California to attend the annual LITA Forum, which is being held in San Jose this year. The LITA Forum is a gathering of several hundred librarians interested in information technology, which runs Friday through Sunday. During that time (and for the next day or so) I will be blogging on the LITA blog, which is called LITA Blog. Activity on this blog was heavy during the American Library Association Conference in Chicago this summer, as a dozen or more members of the organization reported on the programs and events that they attended. I expect the Forum will be very well covered. I know I am going to report on programs about the Michigan eLibrary and Blake Carver's LISNews. Feel free to follow the reports.

During this time, I may post to ricklibrarian as time allows, especially if I finish reading a book or two or take an interesting photo.

Updates

I wore my new reading glasses hanging from my neck today for the first time. I got a couple of "oh, my!" comments, but I never lost my glasses.

You may still sponsor me for the October 16 CROP Walk in Downers Grove. Go to my CROP Walk webpage to contribute. I have almost met my goal. I would be very happy to exceed it with many $10 contributions.

Sam from Writely is working to troubleshoot the bug that keeps me from sending text directly from Writely to Blogger. I have used the web-based word processor to work on several of my postings, and The Big Read group to which I belong has used it to collaborate on a page for our website.

Identifying Scientific Journal Articles Though Blog Engines

Can blogs be useful reference tools?

Yesterday a library user asked me for a just-released journal article about panic disorder and cardiovascular disease that was highlighted on one of the local television stations. The station promised further information on its website, but our client could not remember which of the local stations ran the story. We visited the websites of Chicago's ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates, scrolling through lists of recent stories and trying keywords in search boxes; we found nothing. We then tried EBSCO and Firstsearch databases, hoping the article would be indexed, but we found nothing. After a Google search yielded nothing, I tried Google Blogsearch. There I found several bloggers who were commenting on the three-day-old article and one gave a full citation.

I then tested Technorati and Feedster and found many of the same blog postings. So, yes, blogs can help the reference librarian. Try the search engines devoted to blogs when you need very recent information.

The Demise of Marshall Field's: A Librarian's Viewpoint

A lot of people in the Chicago area are stirred emotionally by the announcement that May Department Stores is going to retire the Marshall Field's name and replace it with the Macys logo. Many people who have known and loved the Chicago store and its famous public service are upset by what they feel is a senseless and heartless act. They feel something is being ripped away from them. The men in suits respond that it is a good business decision. Their vision is of opportunities for national marketing - a homogenization of our country.

Many people in this area have Marshall Field's stories. Mine actually has a library tie-in. When I arrived in the Chicago area in the early 1980s I had no credit cards; I had believed that I needed little and that I was better off without a temptation to go into debt. The realities of commerce were changing and writing checks was getting to be a hassle, so I decided to get some credit cards. It was not so easy, because I had no track record, having gotten into my late twenties without ever testing credit. I got several rejections, including one from Marshall Field's Department Store. Having read a booklet on credit from my library's pamphlet file (remember pamphlet files?), I went to the offices of Marshall Field's in their State Street store and asked to speak with a credit reviewer. I was taken to the desk of an older woman who looked at my application and my bank statement and said that she saw nothing on which to base a recommendation. (With my library salary, I could have qualified for public housing.) Then she said, " I see you are a librarian. Did you have to go to college for that?" I affirmed that I did, telling that I had a master's degree, to which she replied, "If you have a master's degree, you deserve a credit card." I have shopped at Marshall Field's ever since.

Eric Zorn's column in the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, September 22 was an eye-opener. He listed many Chicago and national business names that have disappeared during the last twenty-five years: Montgomery Ward, Kroch's and Brentano's, Poppin' Fresh, Stuart Brent Booksellers, Chas. A. Stevens, Illinois Bell, Polk Brothers, Wiebolt's, Union 76, Rose Records, and many more. (Oh, I loved Rose Records store on Wabash - three floors of LPs - heaven!) I can imagine taking a time machine back twenty years to any Chicago area shopping district or mall and being surprised by all the old names. We have lost so much tradition. At least our public libraries are still here with the same names. Mostly.

When I think about it, our libraries have changed much in the past twenty years and not all of our clients have been thrilled with the changes. While I see much good from our technical advancements and new buildings and new ways of providing services, some longtime residents have not kept up. Perhaps some are no longer inclined to adapt: they have seen too many changes and symbols of their pasts are being taken away; they have fond memories of the old, poorly-lit buildings where the books overflowing the shelves. We have to be more sensitive than the men in suits and try to find ways to soften the shock to our public when we institute change. We want them to stay with us through the changes.

We have not totally escaped the name change phenomenon here in Illinois. On the positive side, a couple public libraries merged to form a bigger, stronger library with more resources: the Indian Prairie Library was the result of merger; it is unfortunate that so few communities were able to do what Darien and Willowbrook did. All other public libraries that I know in our area are under the names they were twenty years ago.

A bigger name change in our area came from the Illinois State Library's push to consolidate regional library systems. The Suburban Library System combined with a portion of the old Chicago Library System (minus Chicago Public Library) to become the Metropolitan Library System. Not everyone was thrilled, and fifteen months after the official merger, not much has happened to excite reference librarian about the new name. In time, we may have the promised collaborations between city and suburbs and involving public, academic, and special libraries, but I see no structure to foster joint projects yet. We lost the system's reference service and the resources to which it subscribed in the state of Illinois' underfunding of library systems. MLS seems a lesser entity. Like the name Marshall Field's Department Store, the name Suburban Library System evokes some good old memories.

Will I shop at Macy's Department Store? My first reaction is "No." I may eventually find myself there, but I will never have any fondness for it. It will always just be a corporate box filled with dry goods. I am sticking with the Metropolitan Library System; there is still hope for good times to be remembered later.

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Amy Krouse Rosenthal may claim that she has led an ordinary nothing-spectacular-kind-of-life, but she has an extraordinary drive to write and comment on her experiences and observations. She has been hawking her compositions to publications like Might, Parenting, Utne Reader, and the Chicago Tribune for the last eight or so years, and she has been a commentator for WBEZ radio in Chicago during part of that time. She started a zine/newspaper called Oyster and a CD-based audio magazine called Writer’s Block Party, both of which were loved by a few and ignored by many. She has written several books, including The Mother’s Guide to the Meaning of Life: What I’ve Learned in a Never-Ending Quest to Become a Dalai Mama, the humorous The Book of Eleven: An Itemized Collection of Brain Lint, and the children’s book Little Pea. The author has also been raising three children and managing a husband. I imagine that her fingers are always on her laptop.

Her latest effort is Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, which has a subscript “Volume One.” I suspect that she could easily put out a second volume; she probably has an extra disc drive to attach to her laptop loaded with her stories and comments. I hope she gets a call from a publisher saying “Do it!” Reading her book is a lot of fun.

Why will readers enjoy this book? They will identify with her. Too much analyzing will spoil the humor, but let me say that I found myself nodding my head in agreement with her comments often. Like Rosenthal, I want to know what happens when movies end; I agree that chain-letters are a total waste of time; I feel better when we use up the groceries that are filling our refrigerator; I too try to cross a street quickly when there is a car waiting. Like the author I usually prefer reading nonfiction to fiction. I also differ from the author: I do not enjoy sleeping late; I don’t drink coffee or read many magazines, staples in the author’s life; I would never leave money in public places as a social experiment.

What kind of book is Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life? The Library of Congress and many other libraries seem to agree that it is a biography. Granted, there are details of the author’s life in the chronology section and some tragedies are listed in the entry “Lows,” but the items only outline her life. A case could be made that the alphabetically arranged entries work together to build a profile of the mind of Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Still, if it is a biography, it is very unconventional. The author claims that it is a harvest of details from an ordinary life, which could be the reader’s life as much as hers, but the reader may notice there are some surprising stories. This may be her point: even ordinary lives are filled with wonder, drama, and heartache.

Being the hip person she is, Rosenthal has a companion website to go with her book. Visit www.encyclopediaofanordinarylife.com and leave a Purple Flower Moment or a Moon Description, if you are so inclined.

Rosenthal, Amy Krouse. Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. New York: Crown Publishers, 2005. ISBN 1400080452

Reading Glasses

I have new contact lenses that give me better distance vision, so I should be able to read highway and street signs from greater distances, but the change comes at the expense of my close vision - vision I need every day in the library. I had been living with a compromise, trying to balance my near and far vision in a single prescription, but it was no longer working. My optometrist thought my cornea was too steep for bifocal contact lenses, so I now have reading glasses, an inexpensive pair that I purchased at a drugstore. It has been two or three (or four) weeks, but I have not figured out yet when to have the reading glasses on hand and when I do not need them. It seems a small change in my life, but I need to stop and think about my routines - which may be a good thing.

I have amused colleagues and friends at the library in these weeks, as I am constantly putting the glasses on and taking them off and laying them down and having to find them. Several people have told me I look cute in glasses, when I can find them, which is a surprising thing to hear. I am getting fashion advice about frames as well. It has been a long time since I got so much attention.

I really goofed Saturday and left my reading glasses at home. I was able to use the computer without any problem; I could have enlarged the print but did not do so; I can sit fairly far from the screen and the back lighting must help. At arms length most of our reference books were still readable, but some circulating nonfiction books were fuzzy, the newspaper was difficult, and I had to look at a Baker and Taylor bill very carefully to distinguish an 8 from a 9. Telephone books were impossible to read. I don't know where the magnifying glass went. I also has trouble with spine labels in aisles with dim lighting. I am getting a lesson in how dependent I am on my vision.

The solution to my problem is two-fold. I will buy more reading glasses and leave them everywhere I need them, and though I have hesitated to do so, I will hang a pair of reading glasses around my neck; it will probably make me look like (gasp) a librarian.

Dreaming About Old Libraries

In Free Range Librarian two weeks ago Karen Schneider wrote Being a Good Former Employee; she set out helpful guidelines for anyone leaving one job to go to another. I have left several wonderful jobs in the past to take on new challenges and I think I behaved well according to Karen's ten rules for leaving. As she would probably agree, these rules were easy for me to follow in most cases because I moved to another state; I had no opportunity to stay involved in the affairs of the libraries I left; my moving predated widespread Internet, email, and instant message access. Now there are easy ways to violate rules 7, 8, and 9 from wherever you are, but you should not. I recommend everyone who will be changing jobs take a look at Karen's essay.

Karen wrote her essay after dreaming about an old job, a position she obviously enjoyed with people she liked; in her dream something went amiss. This struck a cord with me, for I also have had dreams about my old libraries. In most of these dreams, I have gone back to the Daniel Boone Regional Library in Columbia, Missouri, where I had my first professional library job as a reference librarian with a desk right beside the reference collection. The big picture windows to the north are still there and I look forward to again watching the drama of approaching storms. The second floor still overlooks the first and I look forward to the annual hanging display of quilts, which added so much color to the public space when I was there. Many of my former colleagues are still there in my dream, and I am eager to answer reference questions. Upon entering the dream everything is perfect, but then complications arise. I get lost in the new underground passage to the new staff room, or I misplace my desk, or I realize than I am still in my pajamas (or worse) and need to run home to change. I never answer a reference question. I awake with a melancholy feeling.

In reality, the Daniel Boone Regional Library has a totally new building. I am sure most of the staff have changed as it has been 24 years since I was there. I would like to see it some day. Daniel Boone had the most impressive community outreach program I have ever seen, and we had an energetic public service team. As my dreams indicates it still has a place in my heart.

Request for Crop Walk Sponsors

With another hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast, this is a good time to ask for your help. I will be cropwalking in Downers Grove, Illinois for Church World Service on Sunday, October 16 and am in need of sponsors. This is my twelth Crop Walk, but the first for which I have my own Crop Walk web page. You may click here to get to my page and make a small donation.

Church World Service works to eradicate hunger and poverty and promote peace and justice in the US and around the world. The organization has posted statements about its hurricane relief efforts here. Click here for report on Church World Service from Charity Navigator.

The South Dupage Crop Walk through Downers Grove and Westmont is always well attended, but there is always room for more walkers. Join us if you can or join a Crop Walk in your region. Thanks.

Writely: A Web-Based Word Processor

Several years ago Bill Gates said that we soon would have web-based software and not bother having any on our desktops and notebook computers. His forecast was a little premature; people seem to like having software on their computers and are a little frightened by the idea of all their work in cyberspace; they can work offline with computer-bound software. Still many people have gone to totally web-based email; the precedent is set.

Yesterday I learned about Writely - The Web Word Processor while reading the blog The Distant Librarian. It is so new that the instruction page is not complete; there are several gaps were the editors have not yet decided what to say. What they do say is that their web-based word processor is free for anyone to use in its beta phase; later there will be a variety of free and fee versions. They suggest the product will be useful for people who like to collaborate with others; start a document and tell your friends by adding their email addresses to the permissions for document access; they can then add to the document online. The editors also suggest Writely will be handy for people who travel; if they can get to the Web, they can get to their documents.

I am composing this document on Writely. I am assured that I can post it directly to Blogger when I am ready; Blogger is the only weblog that is so supported at present, but the editors are taking requests. I have given Aaron access to the document, so he can collaborate.

I tried to post directly from Writely to Blogger, but it did not work. I kept getting an error message : " 'o' is an undeclared namespace. Line 1318, position 2." I have no idea what that means. I double-checked my blog settings. So I pasted the message here instead. Maybe the beta product is having a blogging problem. I'll try another item in a few days.

The word processor itself seems at first glance to have all the basic features I use. You can see this document at www.writely.com/View.aspx?docid=aks2wccr3jj. Maybe Aaron will have added a comment.

Poetry for Cats by Henry Beard

Readers of Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse by Henry Beard will notice how much influence humans have on cats. Cats will not enjoy having this pointed out. They work hard to protect their free will and try to dictate the terms of their relationships with humans. You can not just pick up a cat and expect it to be happy being held; you have to wait until the cat is ready. Cats will not play with toys just because you want to play. Cats appear to think independently, but their poetry betrays them.

Here is a bit of verse written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s cat:

I chased a mouse beneath the stair,
It went to ground, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it ran, my sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

Sound familiar?

There is more. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s cat wrote the following:

In Xanadu did Kubla Kat
A splendid sofa-bed decree
With silken cushions soft and fat
A perfect feline habitat
Set on a gilt settee.

Here is another sample, this time by William Shakespeare’s cat:

To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That nature rains on those who roam abroad
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet …

Have you noticed a trend? It appears that cats listen more than they let on, and they even identify with the humans with whom they relate. They certainly borrow verse as freely as they claim their favorite chairs.

Cats do deserve some credit for knowing what poetry to borrow and adapt as their own. They are able to turn bits of Chaucer, Keats, Frost, or Ginsberg into works that serve their purposes, such as catching goldfish, breaking vases, or berating Whitman for sleeping too late. In near unison they raise their voices to complain about their vets.

One thing that surprises me about Poetry for Cats is that Henry Beard never reveals the cats’ names. I can not imagine that Emily Dickinson had a nameless cat!

Poetry for Cats is an attractive book with colorful illustrations and is still in print after eleven years. I found our copy when inventorying the poetry collection. I am afraid few people have borrowed it lately, so I am going to put it on display. The cats need to be heard.

Beard, Henry. Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse. New York: Villard Books, 1994. ISBN 0679435824

Andy Young Singing at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library

Andy Young Singing
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

When I took over my job, I did not suspect that I would enjoy running our occasional coffee house called Friday at the Ford as much as I do. I've gotten to hear a lot of great music and meet many wonderful people. We enjoyed Andy Young from Chicago last Friday night, who played mostly Scottish and Irish tunes on hammer dulcimer, tin whistle, Irish flute, and guitar. He'd like to play more libraries.

A Look at Google Blog Search

Google has released a beta version of Google Blog Search, which it promises will do a better job of searching blogs than Google; it will be more precise than the main search engine in finding items posted on blogs. I have noticed in the past when searching for a specific review that I had posted that regular Google sometimes pointed me to a later review that had the wanted review as a previous postings link on the left side of the blog page. In some cases Google only pointed to my reviews in the monthly archive instead of the individual postings.

I have taken a quick look at Google Blog Search, comparing the results with my postings list in Blogger, which is also owned by Google. Only one of my last 50 postings is missing. Every entry is an individual post; I do not see the archive. Nothing posted before April 27 is represented.

Searchers can have their results list sorted two ways – by relevance or by date. By relevance brought all my postings including photos to the top. Do photos have more weight in Google’s algorithm?

Google Blog Search looks a lot like Google, so people will probably find it easy to use. Results can be updated as Atom or RSS feeds.

The Value of a Good Old Textbook: The Riverside Shakespeare

As students have been returning to their campuses, much has been written and said about the cost of college textbooks. The Wall Street Journal reported in its August 16 issue that textbook prices were increasing at twice the rate of inflation. On August 25 the Chicago Tribune reported that the first year, fulltime student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who must take a range of introductory courses, spends on average $698 for used textbooks or $931 for new textbooks. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on September 2 told about ten college bookstores selling downloadable electronic textbooks.

All of this news was fresh in my head when I started moving everything in our house to have the carpets cleaned. We carried end tables, lamps, dining room chairs, the coffee table, crystal, china, record albums (vinyls), CDs, videos, DVDs, photo albums, high school annuals, and books out of the living room, dining room, and family room into the kitchen, laundry room, and extra bedroom. I found among the books the following:

The American Tradition in Literature, 4th ed. Grosset & Dunlap, 1974.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Revised, vol. 1. Norton, 1968

The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter Edition. Norton, 1970.

The Riverside Shakespeare. Houghton Mifflin, 1974.

These four books used in my literature classes, some of the vinyls, a laundry bag, several letters from friends, a tool for splicing reel-to-reel audiotape (unused for 30 years), my last student ID, and my diplomas are all the physical remains of my six years at the University of Texas at Austin. I did not keep any old clothes or hats; I did not own a camera, so I have no photos; I have replaced my dictionary; I have none of my school papers. I used to claim that I was unsentimental, and I gave away or sold many things as soon as I decided they were of no use to me, but these four textbooks have never been in danger of my tossing them.

In the six years during which I got my bachelors and masters degrees, I owned a lot of textbooks. I recall spending about $100 on books each semester, which was about half of what I spent for tuition and fees each semester - attending the University of Texas in the 1970s was incredibly cheap! The most that I ever spent on a single book was $42 for a thin title required for a library class that the instructor never used; I am still a bit upset over the waste. I bought many used textbooks and sold most back to the bookstore at the end of the semester. When I left Austin, I had few of my textbooks.

I did keep some library school texts for a few years, but I found I was not using them. I donated my AACR2 and Sears Subject Headings to a sale run by the Friends of the Daniel Bonne Regional Library long ago. I do not even remember most of my library school textbooks.

The four books that I still have are special. They are really more anthologies of great literature than traditional subject textbooks and are never out of date. All but the Norton Anthology of Poetry are hardbound and still look good on the shelf; I removed the tattered paper covers long ago. I still refer to them when I have a literature question or when I want to reread a short story or a poem or a play. They were all worth more to me than whatever I paid for them. Only the trade paperback poetry book has a printed price - $3.95.

My favorite is The Riverside Shakespeare, which I remember buying for a course in which we read a dozen of the plays. It was a handsome book that stood out among my ragged collection of textbooks. Even then, I thought that it was something to keep. Every other year or so I find myself reading one of the plays; Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are my favorites. It is still one of the best things I have, which is something to think about as my own daughter goes off to college in a couple years. What will she keep? I wonder.

Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika by Giles Foden

As I read Mimi and Toutou’s Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika by Giles Foden, I thought of how it could be made into a darkly comic movie. It has all the necessary elements. The central character in the story is Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson, a British naval officer who had been confined to a desk job after several disastrous assignments in England, Gambia, and China; he was adept at sinking and beaching ships under his command. No one really wanted to associate with him, for he was a ridiculous braggart; he was always claiming great acts of heroism that listeners could not possibly believe. He also told terrible jokes and broke into song, singing off-key. When the First World War began, the Royal Navy sent him on a seemingly impossible task in a remote region of Africa. Maybe he would not return.

The task was to transport two forty-foot wooden motor boats from London to Cape Town, South Africa and from there across the continent to Lake Tanganyika. When the Navy would not let Spicer-Simson name the boats Cat and Dog, he submitted Mimi and Toutou, which the Navy accepted, not knowing they meant “meow” and “bow-wow” in French. The train from Cape Town would only carry the boats part of the way to the destination; Spicer-Simson and his men would have to drag the boats through a jungle and over some mountains! Moviegoers will think of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, of course. Once the boats arrived, the assignment was to sink a German ship five times their size that was controlling the lake. What the Royal Navy did not know was the German Navy had a ship twenty times their size on Lake Tanganyika as well.

Spicer-Simson’s behavior alternates from sensible to bizarre. No one can read his semaphore; he designs himself a skirt to wear in the heat; he enjoys showing his snake tattoos to the local Holo Holo people. If John Cleese were not so old, he would be the perfect cast. Also on the trip are the patient Dr. Hother McCormick Hanschell and the loyal, clever transport officer Lieutenant Wainwright, who is the real genius behind the transport operation. There would be many good roles for actors in a movie version of Mimi and Toutou’s Big Adventure. Even the title sounds good.

I should state before I go any further, that this is nonfiction. This is not comic novel.

The story has some disturbingly tragic elements. The English, Belgians, and Germans have no qualms about forcing the local tribes to haul their boats and build their ports and forts; many of the Africans were beaten into compliance. Many of the soldiers contract diseases, tropical and venereal, and when the navies finally do battle, some sailors die grizzly deaths. Mimi and Toutou’s Big Adventure would probably be rated R if the book were closely followed.

The concluding chapters of the book tell follow-up stories. One is about the making of The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, a story inspired by a part of the Mimi and Toutou story. The final chapter tells about the author’s fact finding trip to Lake Tanganyika; he found one of the German boats is still in service, carrying thousands of local people and their livestock around the lake.

Until the movie is made, you will have to read the book.

Foden, Giles. Mimi and Toutou’s Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika. New York: Knopf, 2005. ISBN 1400041570

News on Libraries in the Path of Hurricane Katrina

The American Library Association changed the URL for its page with news about libraries in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and other places touched by Hurricane Katrina or its aftermath. The new address is http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/hurricanekatrinanews/katrinanews.htm.

Rating the Charities in Times of Need

With many people interested in helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina and with stories of charity scams in the news, it seems a good time to remind library users that they can research their charities before they write their checks. At the Thomas Ford Memorial Library, we subscribe to Charity Rating Guide & Watchdog, quarterly publication that also has a website. Other online sources to check are Charity Navigator (which has some nice articles on avoiding scams) and Give.org (which is a service of the Better Business Bureau).

By the way, libraries that are collecting for hurricane relief should check to make sure the funds they are passing on get into the right hands. We, too, should do our homework.

Meredith's Survey of Library Bloggers

Meredith Farkas, who is the new Distance Learning Librarian at Norwich University in Vermont, has posted the results of her survey of library bloggers at her blog Information Wants to Be Free. Some of the results are what you would expect, while others are a bit surprising.

I most liked seeing that I am not alone as an over 50 blogger; 19 of us admitted to being at least that old, 11.5 percent of the pool.

I was also surprised to see that more bloggers come from small public libraries than medium-sized public libraries, 10 to 5; actually that may make sense as small is defined as serving populations of 10,001 to 40,000 and medium-sized gets up to 99,999, and there may be many more small libraries than medium-sized by that definition.

I am not typical in that I read only a few blogs. Many of the people responding claim to read a lot of blogs.

Bloggers seem to do many jobs at many kinds of libraries, and most claim to be happy, which is contrary to the idea of bloggers as malcontents.

When looking at Meredith's survey, start at Survey of the Biblioblogosphere: Results.

A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck

It is 1937 and Mary Alice has been sent down to southern Illinois to live with Grandma Dowdel, while her parents try to survive the Great Depression in Chicago. Mary Alice has never traveled by train alone; her brother Joe was with her every summer that she spent with Grandma; now he is in the Civilian Conservation Corps in California. With her radio, her cat Bootsie, and her trunk, Mary Alice meets Grandma on the station platform. There are no hugs; Grandma is not the hugging type.

If you read A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck, you know all about Grandma. Most of the neighbors are a bit afraid of her, as she is rather large, rarely smiles, and has been known to carry an antique rifle when she has a mind she needs it. She does what she needs to do to get by and is a bit of a Robin Hood. She slips under the barbed wire of the Piatt County Rod and Gun Club to catch catfish to provide a good meal for old Aunt Puss. When the bank tries to foreclose on Mrs. Wilcox’s house, she finds a way to leverage her friend’s antiques at a rummage sale with the banker’s wife. Grandma is clever and mischievous.

In A Year Down Yonder, Mary Alice loses a lot of sleep, as she and Grandma are often out in the dead of night catching privy tippers and gathering ingredients for pumpkin pies. Her math grades suffer, but she learns many valuable lessons otherwise. Being a city girl and being related to Grandma make finding friends at school harder, but she gets to play Mary in the Christmas play and even studies with the star basketball player. Grandma is always there to solve any problem.

I enjoyed the humor and the historical detail of both of these books. Almost every library has them, as they should. They may be aimed at young readers, but adults can enjoy them, too.

Peck, Richard. A Long Way from Chicago. New York: Puffin Books, 1998. ISBN 0141311827

Peck, Richard. A Year Down Yonder. New York: Puffin Books, 2002. ISBN 0142300705

The Doctor's Dilemma by George Bernard Shaw

As the curtain rises in The Doctor’s Dilemma by George Bernard Shaw, the eminent doctor Colenso Ridgeon has just received word that he has been knighted, and all his friends in the medical profession come by his house to congratulate him. Sir Patrick Cullen, Mr. Cutter Walpole, Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington, Dr. Blenkinsop,, and Dr. Leo Schutzmacher are welcomed into Sir Colenso’s infirmary for a lively discussion of advances in medical science. Ninety-five percent of all disease is the result of blood poisoning, says Walpole. Stimulating the phagocytes is the best cure, any antitoxin will do, is Sir Ralph’s belief. Sir Patrick claims that he saw all the new cures thirty years ago. It is a lively discussion; Sir Colenso could not possibly find time to see the woman in the waiting room – but then he does.

Jennifer Dubedat’s husband Louis has tuberculosis, and she comes to Sir Colenso with a plea to save him, but the newly knighted doctor says that he has room in his clinic for only ten patients, which he has already chosen – ten people whose lives are worth saving. He could not possibly add another, he says, until she shows him Louis’ wonderful drawings. Perhaps he can make room for him. Then Sir Colenso learns that his friend Blenkinsop also needs treatment. Who should he save? Who is most worthy of being saved?

George Bernard Shaw and his socialist views were so well known by the time of the staging of The Doctor’s Dilemma in 1906 that he was able to incorporate a joke about himself to please the audience. Following his success with Major Barbara, he took aim at the hypocrisy of British physicians in the new play. He also characterized the young artist as a scoundrel, who rejects conventional moralities, but with good reasons for doing so; the audience is left uncertain whether to admire or dislike him – it is the audience’s dilemma.

I listened to The Doctor’s Dilemma on compact discs from LA Theatre Works, which staged the play with an audience for radio. I likes it so well I listened a second time. It would be a great addition to public library audio collections.

Shaw, George Bernard. The Doctor’s Dilemma. Los Angeles: LA Theatre Works, p2000. 2 discs.

Mad Hot Ballroom

Do you know the steps to meringue, rumba, foxtrot, tango, or swing dancing? I don’t, but many eleven year old students in New York sure do; they get ballroom dancing instruction from the American Ballroom Theater’s Dancing Classrooms program, and they take it seriously. For ten weeks they learn the dances and prepare for competitions. The best team wins the city trophy for its school. Only one school wins the competitions, but all the students benefit: school pride is raised, each student’s sense of accomplishment is strengthened, and they learn how to dance, which will stick with them forever.

The cameras of Mad Hot Ballroom followed teams from three schools closely through the 2004 dance season, so moviegoers get to see the students from first lessons to the final competition, witnessing all the missteps and frustrations of children just beginning to mature. They also see what can be accomplished when dedicated people care enough to work with students in all economic classes.

I especially liked the interviews with the students. Michael from Public School 112 is really funny, talking about girls while playing foosball with his friends. All the girls in Public School 115 want to dance with Wilson, who already seems to possess quiet charm and ballroom style. Tara from Public School 150 is already planning to be an actress, dancer, and singer; you get to see her practice in front of her mirror. Because there are many kids involved, there are many stories to follow; I’d like to see the film again to get them all straight.

Aaron will be showing Mad Hot Ballroom as one of several documentaries in our fall film series at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library. People are already telling me they are coming. You can see a bit of the film at the Official Mad Hot Ballroom website.

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt

Jethro Creighton was only nine years old when word reached his family farm in southern Illinois that Confederate forces under the command of Brigadier General Beauregard had fired upon the 1st U.S. Artillery stationed at Fort Sumter in Charlestown, South Carolina. Important news traveled very slowly in April 1861; for four years the youngest son of the farmer Matt Creighton would rely on old newspapers and slowly delivered letters and wounded soldiers for news of the war and of the fates of his older brothers, cousins, and friends. Though he and his parents were many miles from the battlefields, the war brought sorrow and hardship to them daily. When his father fell ill, Jethro took on most of the farm work.

What I like most about Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt is the authenticity of the story. In the notes at the back of the book, the author says that stories her grandfather told her inspired her novel to which she added much historical detail. The result is a blending of family saga and military history. The names of battles and generals become meaningful to the reader because they are important to Jethro, who must know what has become of his brothers and his sister’s fiancée.

Across Five Aprils has several great characters: Jethro’s sister Jenny who worked as hard as Jethro, her fiancée Shadrach Yale who was his school teacher and mentor, and the local newspaper editor Ross Milton who befriended the young man. It was Milton who explained that the freeing of the slaves by the Emancipation Proclamation was only a beginning in a long quest for justice and equality for blacks; he foresaw the Ku Klux Klan and bitter reconstruction of the South.

Southern Illinois was an interesting place during the Civil War. Many of the residents with families living in the southern states sympathized with the Confederacy; some of the young men joined the “Southern Cause.” Others hated the South; local vigilantes burned barns and killed livestock to punish anyone they thought disloyal. The woods also filled with deserters. The night was dangerous.

Across Five Aprils gives readers much to ponder. I recommend this Newberry Medal Honor book to readers of all ages. Every library should have a couple of copies.

Hunt, Irene. Across Five Aprils. New York : Berkley Jam Books, 2002, c1964. ISBN 0425182789

Sand cat at the Brookfield Zoo

Sand cat
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

We spent Labor Day at the Brookfield Zoo with friends. This sand cat in the Fragile Desert exhibit was posing for lots of pictures.

A Book to Discuss: When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

At the One Book, One Community program at the American Library Association Conference in Chicago this summer, I was given a bag of books, including When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. During the program, a representative from Random House Books promised us that this would be a good book for community discussions; it had already been popular in the Seattle Reads program. Now that I have finally gotten around to reading it, I agree.

When the Emperor Was Divine has a lot going for it as a community reading choice. It is a short, well written book about the experiences of a Japanese-American family that is divided by federal security officials and sent to internments camps during World War II. The father is carried off in the night without even being allowed to dress; the son and the daughter both dream later of their father returning to them still wearing only a robe and slippers. The children and their mother remain in Berkeley for several months, becoming poorer and more isolated, until they too are sent to a series of camps, mostly in forbidding locations; they suffer form heat, cold, saline dust and boredom. Most readers will sympathize with the family, whose habits and aspirations are so much like their own.

Though the setting of When the Emperor Was Divine is the 1940s, the book is timely: we still have the fear of foreign people leading to angry words being said and rocks being thrown through windows. We may someday have books like this one about the families of American Muslims who were unaccountedly held without ever being charged with crimes after September 2001. When we do, we should discuss them, too.

Prince Wanted

Prince Wanted
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

There were many reasons to go to the Bristol Renaissance Fair. Click the photo to find more photos.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

It was a beautiful day at the Morton Arboretum. This was near the new maze. The new children's garden is opening soon.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

My daughter Laura complains about my writing. My sentences are too short. Their structure is too simple. It looks pretty boring.

I have intended to read Eats, Shoot & Leaves by Lynne Truss since it came out in the United States in 2004. Now that I have, I have some more ideas to improve my writing: use more punctuation. I will start again.

My daughter Laura complains about my writing: my sentences are too short; their structure is too simple; it looks “pretty boring”. [Note British positioning of these marks.]

I wish I had read Eats, Shoots & Leaves earlier: it is very entertaining -­ I didn’t laugh out loud, but Bonnie did - and is full of useful punctuation advice. I now know why I have been confused about the use of quotation marks with other punctuation marks at the ends of sentences: the British and Americans have different rules; I read both. It might be interesting to compare British and American editions of books (will I ever have such time?) to see if the editors have changed the punctuation.

It would be nice if this book had an index to facilitate re-finding the rules and illustrations. Oh! It would be nice to have a package of Starburst (once called Opal Fruits), too!

Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. New York: Gotham Books, 2004. ISBN 1592400876

Use of Google Maps to Show Hurricane Damage

The Katrina Information Map is a Google Map to which people are adding markers for specific addresses in Louisianna. There are a few markers in Mississippi and Alabama, too. Click on a marker and you may find out whether there is flooding at that location. The creator has asked people to only add markers if they have information, but some are using the map to ask for help. Some are leaving phone numbers and email addresses in the balloon that appears when you click on the markers.

Wandering around the map gives me the impression that ther are still people wandering around New Orleans. Could emergency personnel be stopping to add markers to this map? Maybe they are if the addresses are important to themselves or their friends. I'm sure a lot of people would like to know.

Working: A Musical by Stephen Schwartz

Working is a different kind of musical: there are no main characters, no storyline, and no plot. What it has is what the Studs Terkel book on which it is based has – many voices, dramatic, comic, and tragic. I have been listening to a full-cast production by LA Theatre Works on compact disc while I commute to work, enjoying the songs and the many monologues of workers from all walks of life. I’m very glad I work at the library and not up on some girder high above the city nor in a cubicle deep inside some building!

The voices you hear while listening to Working are blue collar and white collar, young and old, happy and very sad. The most outlandish characters are the least effective; I do not think the one boss, who enjoys having thousands of workers do his bidding and who wants to pass his “values” to future bosses, was a very fair characterization; it did not fit with the many moving stories of other workers. The best are the steelworker, the immigrant who works in the produce department at a grocery, the receptionist, and the mother who stays home with her children; they all have good points about the unfairness of stereotyping. I was most incensed by the description of the job of the factory worker making luggage on an assembly line, who is always at risk of being hit by moving pieces or scalding steam. I was most disturbed by the newspaper copy boy who is about “to go postal”; I skipped his part the second time I listened.

Skipping is not easy: the two compact discs have no tracking. You have to sit on the fast forward button to move ahead. Tracking would help listeners who want to just hear the songs again.

My library purchased Working along with other compact discs, DVDs, and lots of books with an LSTA Weed and Feed Grant from the Illinois State Library. We spent $3200 improving our drama and theater collection this year. Last year we added many novels read by honors English classes with LSTA funds, and we hope next year to improve our science collection. In Illinois, the Weed and Feed Grants seem fairly easy to get, as long as you are willing to do a lot of paperwork.

We have Working if you want to borrow t, but I recommend you get one into your own library.

Schwartz, Stephen. Working: a Musical. LA Theatre Works, 2000. ISBN 1580811310

Libraries in the Path of Hurricane Katrina

Here are a few items about libraries in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama that have been hit by Hurricane Katrina. In many, libraries are just mentioned as part of the story.

Evacuees in West Shreveport, Louisiana are getting meals at the Shreve Memorial Library West Shreveport Branch again this morning. Library staff and patrons are arranging a buffet and will also entertain the needy with a children’s story time and a movie.

Libraries in the Shreveport area are providing Internet service for many evacuees trying to find their family and friends.

The Chicago Tribune reports on Gulfport, Mississippi, “In what was once the public library, wet books formed a mound of soggy pulp.”

Students slept in the library Tuesday night at Jackson State University.

The Mobile Register will be unable to run its Yesterday’s News column until its staff can get back into the public library to use the microfilm.

Libraries outside the three states are beginning to respond. Here are a couple of items.

The American Red Cross is training volunteers who will work at shelters at the Tyler Public Library in Texas.

Students at Kansas City’s Westport Middle School are raising funds for disaster relief by reading school library books a penny a page.


The websites for the New Orleans and Mobile public libraries are down. The website for Jackson, Mississippi is up but has no hurricane news.

A search on the website for the Times-Picayune retrieves only pre-hurricane items.

The American Library Association has set up a page with news items about libraries that suffered from the hurricane.