43 Things and 43 Places

New Years is a time to look forward, a time to set some goals and objectives. Of course, the there is now social software on the Web to help. 43 Things is a free website that lets you list things that you want to do before your demise and compare your desires with those of others who have made their lists.

Starting a list is easy. Go to the main page and put your first idea into the box under "what do you want to do with your life?" There are lots of examples down the page. Some are mundane, like "walk the dog," while others are more ambitious, such as "become a movie director." You will then be prompted to log in or start an account. It takes only moments. As you set each goal, you are asked if you would like to add a photo to go along with the goal on the list or write an explanation of your goal. You are also given the opportunity to schedule an email to remind yourself of your goal or invite someone to help you with your goal.

Once you have set a goal, look at your list. 43 Things tells you how many other people have the same goal. Click on the number and find a list of these people. You can then read their lists, see their photos, and read their thoughts. You can also give them "cheers" of encouragement.

As you would expect, the level of seriousness varies. Some people have some very straight forward general goals. Others list specific things to do. I have taken an in-between approach with my list. I have not yet posted many photos or written many explanations. Some of the goals do not need any clarification. I can always log in and add, delete, or otherwise edit the goals. I can change their order. I can also claim "I've done this" when I accomplish one of the goals. I am the only person wanting to do many of the things on my list. Some of these things are very specific. Perhaps if I edited the wording on others I would find more people. I can also add tags, which again would connect to other people's lists. "Meet Michael Palin" has eight people!

Linked to 43 Things is 43 Places, which lets you list all the sites, cities, states, countries, or continents that you want to see before you die. Again, you get to see who else wants to visit these places. I have added only 18 so far, but I am still thinking.

Enjoy the lists. Make some of your own. Happy New Year.

New Year Wish

Have a happy and safe new year.

Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild

When twelve men, mostly Quakers, met in a print shop in London on May 22, 1787, slavery was an accepted fact of life. There had always been slavery. All the great empires had had slaves, and Great Britain was keeping a tradition. Without slaves in all of its colonies, especially in the rich sugar plantations of the West Indies, there would be no British Empire. There would be no great halls and wealthy families in London without slaves working from before sunrise until after sunset in the sweltering sugar cane fields in St. Domingue and Jamaica. Liverpool would not be a great port city. English men and women had to have their sugar, coffee, tea, and tobacco. According to Adam Hochschild in Bury the Chains, the idea of ending slavery was very radical thinking.

Of course, before the movement began in the print shop, there were individuals who had had conversion moments. Granville Sharp was shocked by the story of a captain of a slave ship who had thrown 133 slaves overboard because he had miscalculated the provisions for the Atlantic crossing and did not want to risk losing the rest of his "cargo." Sharp wrote letters to government officials and newspapers trying to get the captain tried for murder. One of these, perhaps in a copy, reached the Anglican minister Peter Peckard, who after delivering a sermon on the topic chose the question for the important Cambridge Latin essay contest "Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?" Twenty-five-year-old divinity student Thomas Clarkson won the contest with an essay arguing that slavery was not legal. His conversion moment came soon after as he was basking in the glow of having won the contest. It occurred to him that he had to act on what he had written. He became one of the twelve men.

The campaign to stop the British slave trade preceded the campaign to emancipate the slaves in British colonies. Central to that effort was authorship. Clarkson and others wrote pamphlets decrying the slave trade, they wrote and delivered speeches at Quaker meeting houses and other sympathetic venues, and they wrote to lobby Parliament, where they gainned the support of William Wilberforce. Clarkson reworked his essay into a book. Former slave Olaudah Equiano wrote a best selling book about his experiences on slave ships. Much of working class England, a population oppressed by terrible working conditions, poor pay, and the threat of naval impressment, was quick to support an end of the slave trade. Parliament, however, was filled with plantation owners, whose "property" was threatened by the movement.

It took until May 1, 1807 to ban the slave trade. It was 1838 before the slaves in the British Empire were emancipated. In Bury the Chains, Hochschild tells the story of the men and women who worked tirelessly to end slavery. He also shows how their efforts sparked other movements for expanded suffrage, labor rights, women's rights, and reform of Parliament. American abolistionists appear late in the book to study their British mentors. Hochschild also tells how the promise of slavery's end failed to improve the lives of the former slaves. The plantation owners were compensated for the loss of their slaves, but no aid was given to the ex-slaves. Most became poor share croppers.

The story of Bury the Chains should inspire contemporary activists facing great odds against reform. It should also warn them that changing the law is not sufficient. This is an important part of history few Americans know. Every public library should have this book.

Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. ISBN 0618104690

The Annual Report: A Look Back at ricklibrarian 2005

Thank you for reading ricklibrarian. I hope you have found books to read, movies to see, and new ideas for your libraries. Before I continue with 2006 I want to reflect on the past year. Perhaps this report will encourage some others to blog, and it will highlight some of my earlier reviews and comments on libraries and librarianship that recent ricklibrarian readers missed.

2005 was my first year of blogging. I started on February 17 by taking about fifteen minutes to start a Blogger account and post a review of Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry, which I had already written for an occasional review I write at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library. Though I tend to read nonfiction, I started with a review of a novel because I felt it was one of the best books that I had ever read. I am happy that this review has been found often by readers via Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. Berry is one of my favorite authors and I have reviewed Fidelity: Five Stories, Clearing, and Given: Poems in 2005.


Most Visited Book Reviews

Perhaps my most read review of the year is that of a children's book about the Holocaust, Luba: The Angel of Bergen-Belsen by Michelle R. McCann. Readers find this review almost every day.

A close second is First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, a book about growing up in Cambodia during the terror of the Khmer Rouge.


Some of my most frequently read reviews are for books often assigned to or chosen by teens:

A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt

Persopolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

A Step from Heaven by An Na


Many of my reviews have hightlighted history or biography. Some that have often been found include:

Slave: My True Story by Mende Nasar

Mistress Bradstreet: the Untold Life of America's First Poet by Charlotte Gordon

Love and Hate in Jamestown by David Price

Founding Myths by Ray Raphael

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs by Christopher de Bellaigue

Ogden Nash by Douglas M. Parker

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

Chicago Apartments: A Century of Lakefront Luxury by Neil Harris

My Detachment: A Memoir by Tracy Kidder


I have reviewed some mostly unknown novels found in few libraries. I enjoy finding that someone has read the reviews of The Fish Can Sing by Halldor Laxness and Unformed Landscape by Peter Stamm.

I was surprised by the popularity of my review about the Star Wars short story collection Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina. It has staying power.

I wish more people would read Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins, but I can not force people to read huge, serious books. It did get a nice comment from a Kenyan.


Music and Movies

Some of my obscure music reviews get surprisingly good traffic, such as Peter, Paul & Mommy by Peter, Paul & Mary, Just the Right Sound: The Association Anthology, and The Steeleye Span Story: Original Masters.

None of my movie reviews have gotten much traffic. There are so many movie reviewing sources on the Internet that it is hard to wade through them. Still, someone found my review of Mad Hot Ballroom and added a long comment. I also find occasional readers have viewed my reviews of Les Choristes and Bride and Prejudice. My most visited movie review is Muppet Treasure Island.


Library Matters

Until recently, my most read library related item was an interview of readers' advisory librarian Joyce Saricks .

My most read reports from conferences are these two reports from the American Library Association Conference last summer in Chicago: Taking the Guesswork Out of Nonfiction Readers Advisory and Hear Here: Audiobook Trends in Libraries.

More of my conference reports can be found at the LITA blog.

I have been watching the Open WorldCat project. My most critical comments are in Open World Cat for Rural America. I do hope people contribute and wrote instructions for posting reviews.

I sometimes react to items in the news. My favorite is Examples of Corporate Thinking: A Danger to Libraries and The Demise of Marshall Field's: A Librarian's Viewpoint.

My favorite reflective pieces are I Learned to Be a Librarian Collecting Baseball Cards, Reading Glasses, and Bookmarks Found in Library Books.

The two items that got the most visitors were A Day in the Life of a Reference Librarian 2005 and IM Shorthand for the Monty Python Fan. The latter has nearly thirty reader comments.


Closing Thoughts

Though it has seemed at times no one was reading, lately many more readers have come than I imagined ever would. Thanks especially to all the readers who have linked to ricklibrarian, bring in more readers. I hope that I can continue to write something worth reading.

Christmas Eve at the Brookfield Zoo

Laura's first trip to the zoo. 1988
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

We often go to the Brookfield Zoo on Christmas Eve, as in this photo from 1988. We see the annual display of Christmas trees and, of course, the animals.

We did so again today. It was a great day for seeing cats. Both leopards came down from their loft in the rocks, and one even passed right behind the window. The sand cat sat in a basket right behind its window, and one of the caracals got into a cardboard box. The lion was asleep on its heated rocks. All four snow leopards were out. One of them looked up, obviously right after a nap; a wood chip was stuck to its cheek for several minutes until it finally wiped it away.

We also saw Payton the polar bear beating up a blue thirty gallon plastic barrel. He lifted it up from his moat and threw it into his pool after knocking it about the rocks. We wondered whether the zookeepers had put fish inside the barrel. He was very persistent.

There were many trees decorated by scouts, school groups, and families. Though we have seen many, many trees over the years, each year we discover some wonderful new decorations made from everyday items. Some one should have made a book of the best.

The zoo is open every day of the year. Christmas Eve and Christmas are great days to visit.

Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays by Ernest J. Gaines

Ernest J. Gaines might be called a perfectionist because he writes and rewrites his novels over many years. It took him seven years to write A Lesson Before Dying, and he rewrote The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman from several perspectives before submitting it to his publisher. As a result of his exactness, the publishing of his novels is a rare event. In Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays , he tells about writing these and other books and about the influences on his writing career.

The public library in Villejo, California played an important role in the author's development. Gaines spent the first fifteen years of his life on a plantation in Louisiana, living with his aunt, listening to all of her friends and relatives tell their stories on the front porch or in the kitchen. Then he took a bus to California to live with his parents, so he could attend junior high and high school. When his parents moved out of the projects, but into a still tough part of town, the library became his refuge. There he read Twain, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Cather, de Maupassant, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Turgenev.

Gaines always writes about black life in Louisiana. He says that he has tried to write about California but he is never satisfied. While his subject is narrow, his audience is not. He writes for no one reader, hoping everyone will read his work. When asked how much of his story he knows when he starts a novel, he tells about riding a train from San Francisco to New York; he knows from where he starts and his intended destination, but he will be surprised by the weather, the people he meets, and incidents that occur on the trip; he might get off in Philadelphia instead.

The short stories in the center of the book serve as examples to illustrate his methods. "Christ Walked Down Market Street" has a nice twist in the plot. "Mozart and Leadbelly" is an essay that tells how music influences his writing. The topic is revisited in the lengthy interview that completes the book.

Readers interested in Gaines or in the art of writing will enjoy Mozart and Leadbelly.

Gaines, Ernest J. Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. ISBN 1400044723

Fun at Christmas

Fun at Christmas
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

My daughter Laura made a skater much like this from Sculpey polymer clay several years ago. She also made a little nativity set, a set of angels, and a couple of girls throwing snowballs from their snow forts. The colorful clays are fun to work into little figurines. We also used the basic white Sculpey to make ornaments that we painted. Christmas is a good time to do such work. Skating is fun, too.

The Nutcracker by the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago

Seeing the Nutcracker is a Christmas tradition in our family. Long ago we started watching Mikhail Baryshnikov and the American Ballet Company in a studio performance of the ballet shown annually on our PBS station. Filmed in 1977 it features the twenty-nine year old Baryshnikov, who had defected from the Soviet Union in 1974, with Gelsey Kirkland as Clara. We still have this performance on a video we made in the early 1990s. It is now available on DVD. (I could find only video on Open WorldCat.)

Since the mid-1990s we have often seen the Nutcracker performed by the Salt Creek Ballet in the crowded auditorium at Hinsdale Central High School in Hinsdale, Illinois. For the annual Nutcracker, nationally-known dancers take principal roles and the company of high school age dancers serves as the corps de ballet. Instructors from the School of the Salt Creek Ballet are cast as the adults in the opening Christmas party scene or as Mother Ginger in Act II. The sets and costumes are colorful, and the music is superb. My favorite parts are always the Dance of the Snowflakes (when the chorus sings "ah ah ah ah ah" and the snow begins to fall) and the Russian Dance (when the dancer kicks his legs from the near-sitting position.)

This year we had the opportunity to see the Joffrey Ballet's Nutcracker in the historic Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. The ballet company moved to Chicago in 1995 and has been in residence at the Auditorium Theatre. Robert Altman's film The Company features the Joffrey in some dances that we were able to see two years ago. This was our first time at its annual Nutcracker. I was surprised that we could walk up and buy tickets several hours before the performance. Sadly some tickets in the first balcony went unsold. Bonnie said that there are many performances this year, including matinees, so it is not reasonable to expect the theatre to be packed every time.

I hope many people did see this year's Nutcracker, as it was excellent. I especially liked Brian McSween as a very active Dr. Drosselmeyer, the uncle with the huge cape, and Kathleen Thielheim and Fabrice Calmels as the Arabian dancers. McSween's transforming of the Nutcracker Doll into the Nutcracker Prince was the best I have ever seen. (Or did not see - the change was magic.) A huge puppet danced the part of Mother Ginger from whose skirts appeared many young dancers. The costumes and sets were colorful and the orchestra was great. I am still humming various themes from the ballet.

If you are in Chicago, you should resolve to see the Joffrey and the Auditorium Theatre.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Thank you for reading ricklibrarian. I hope that you may enjoy whatever holiday you celebrate with family and friends. May your blessings be many. Peace on Earth. Rick

P.S. We have have a penguin much like this one on our tree. It is one of the many ornaments Bonnie has given me. Decorating the tree and recognizing all the ornaments is one of my favorite traditions.

Good Night And Good Luck: A Film Review

Remember a time when the U.S. Government was not playing fair, arresting people without presenting charges, trying people without showing the evidence, claiming national security trumped civil liberties considerations? Good Night, and Good Luck is about such a time.

Good Night, and Good Luck, which recreates the televised clash between Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy, looks like a documentary. The dramatized scenes are shot in slightly soft black and white, and David Strathairn is made to look very much like Murrow. Old CBS studios are effectively recreated, and period jazz helps establish a 1950s mood. Worked into the film is restored footage of Congressional hearings, old commercials, and newscasts. Joseph McCarthy looks like Joseph McCarthy because he is Joseph McCarthy. The same goes for President Eisenhower and Liberace. The scene of Murrow interviewing Liberace is worth the price of admission itself.

George Clooney directed and co-wrote the script, using many of Murrow's own words. The result is a very quotable film that should become a classic. The audience of aging baby boomers attending the film Friday night laughed, sneered, and cheered. No one fell asleep during this relatively short but powerful film.

David Strathairn and George Clooney should be commended and nominated for Oscars. Aaron should consider this film for his film discussion series when the DVD is available. It should be added to most library collections.

One further thought - the warning about the future of television that Murrow delivered at a banquet honoring him in 1958 was not heeded.

Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English by Edith Milton

Like the children in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edith Milton and her sister Ruth were sent by train to live with strangers in the English countryside to escape the dangers of World War II. Unlike in the C. S. Lewis story, the sisters were not English. They were Jewish, born in Karlsruhe, Germany, and were part of the Kindertransport program, which sent 10,000 Jewish children to live in England. Their mother, who was born in Alsace and claimed that she was French, was on her way to America. They would not see her again for seven years.

In The Tiger in the Attic, Milton tells the story of her seven years in the kind care of "Aunt Helen" and "Uncle Bourke," the British couple who accepted the sisters and treated them like their own daughters. Uncle Bourke's job as a prison warden took them to several regions of the country where English accents varied. Always conscious of her foreignness and afraid of being revealed as a German to her schoolmates, Milton tried to become very English, even winning a Shakespeare recitation contest. With her adoptive parents she struggled with the rationing and other hardships of wartime England.

The strength of The Tiger in the Attic is its frank descriptions of the author's experiences and her reflections on their meaning. In the latter chapters she tells of her life as a writer and her visits back to England and Germany. Avid readers of memoirs and World War II readers will enjoy this book.

Milton, Edith. The Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005. ISBN 0226529460

Tis the Season to Weed the Travel Books

As the snow piles higher and the wind chill gets lower and lower, you might think that a lot of people would have taken our travel books away to exotic places. The reality is that the travel shelves are pretty full right now. The guides to Florida are out, as are a few books on the Caribbean, but most of the collection is here. With recent deliveries of Fodor's, Frommer's, Lonely Planet, Moon, and Mobil guides, all over on the new books display, it is a great time to weed.

I have it somewhat easy. I have been weeding the nonfiction collection at our library for over ten years now, and I go through the travel books every year, so I have my decision making process ingrained. I can slide along the shelves spotting books whose departure time has come. It helps that the Mobil Guides have changed colors every year recently and most of the Fodor's guides are dated at the bottom of their spines. Other candidates for weeding can be spotted by their conditions: curled corners, yellowing pages, smudges, peeling tape, loose binding.

We keep some of the series, such as the Fodor's and Mobil guides, only three years because there is a lot of out-of-date information by the third or fourth year. Users expect the prices to change, but critical information like hours of operation, business names, locations, and menus change. The guides sometimes also change their ratings.

We keep some series, such as National Geographic, Eyewitness, Insight, and Moon Travel Handbooks, longer. The emphasis of the first three series is timeless descriptions of the local attractions. They are filled with maps of neighborhoods and parks, floor plans of museums and archaeological sites, and photos of natural wonders and architecture. These books are useful for travelers and for students doing country or state assignments for years after the Fodor's and other guides are gone. The Moon Travel Handbooks we keep longer because they update less frequently and are less used.

With our moderately tight budget for books, we try to get as many travel books as we can. The Internet has not reduced our need for a good collection of travel guides. We can not buy every series for every location, but we do try to have at least a representative book for even less visited locations, like Jordan or Kenya. Some even less visited countries are covered only in regional guides. I see that we have let our African and Asian collection slip a little. I have some work ahead.

In the meantime, I may look at our new Let's Go New Zealand. Swimming with the dolphins in Kaikoura sounds nice. I like the name Bay of Plenty. Oooo, we could go to Hobbiton, Rivendell, and even Mordor. Book a flight.

A Visit to the Orland Park Public Library

Every year on the second Friday in December, the Thomas Ford Memorial Library closes for an inservice day and we visit another library. Being in the Chicago area, there are always plenty of choices, often a public library in a new building, though we have also visited the Newberry Library, the Morton Arboretum Library, the Chicago Historical Society, and libraries at the University of Chicago. All the staff that can come (a few do have other part time jobs) get to see how other libraries work. Often we come home to our building with a few new ideas. Even without the ideas, I think we gain a better understanding of the libraries from whom we often borrow materials or to whom we make referrals. We also bond as a staff on the outtings, which always including a good lunch.
Last Friday we visited the relatively new Orland Park Public Library located in a quickly growing suburb with rapid retail and residential development. The tax dollars there seem endless to us, and the library's new building, planned to serve for twenty years, is huge. There were many knock-your-socks-off features in the new library. Here are my favorites:

1. The meeting room is totally loaded with equipment for multimedia and online presentations. The projector lowers from the ceiling. The huge screen in the front of the room is supplements by two huge monitors hanging halfway back the room. A piano can be rolled out of one of the huge closets. It would be a great place for big presentations and gaming nights for teens.

2. The youth services department had a huge programming room with separate areas for story telling and for crafts. The ceiling has an interesting maze of lights. The room was totally connected electronically, too. A huge storage room gave the department room to store props, puppets, craft supplies, over-sized books, etc. I seem to be using the word huge a lot.

3. Outside the children's programming room is a large mural showing flora and fauna of the tallgrass prairie. The library has the rights to use the image in greeting cards, on the Internet, etc. I suspect it is a great diversion for kids waiting for a program to start. The key to the mural lists 109 species.

4. All the employees get lockers. I haven't had one of those in 25 years.

5. The library had a special room just for first aid.

6. There are many empty shelves for growth of the library collection.

7. Best of all, the library has outside lockers that are available 24 hours a day. Should a person be coming after library hours, circulation staff can load library items into a locker that the person can open with a personal code.

The library is still new and seems not to have settled on its floor plans yet. I had some trouble finding the different sections of the adult book collection. The library's graphics department is replacing signs from the original plan already.

I would also like to see more color in the library, which may just be my personal preference.

The service desks on both floors have huge areas to monitor. I think the library may need more employees and more desks.

Overall, I think the Orland Park Public Library has made great strides and should be an asset to its community for many years.

The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler

Why are some people poor? How can people fail to make a living wage in a prosperous country? Many of the answers you hear are politically influenced. The political right says that the poor are generally lazy and unmotivated. The political left says that the poor are unfortunate and exploited. One side blames the individual and the other blames society. David K. Shipler says that both answers are overly simplistic. In The Working Poor: Invisible in America , he says that the causes of poverty are very complex and there is plenty of blame to go around.

It took Shipler seven years to write The Working Poor. In that time, he interviewed many people defined as poor by economic measurements and witnessed the results of legislation that forced them off the welfare rolls and into the workforce. Ironically, many of these people became poorer, as the costs of work took much of their earnings. After paying for necessary child care, clothes, transportation, cellphones, and such, they often had less. Hunger and homelessness increased.

In The Working Poor Shipler tells many stories, some of which are encouraging. He profiles single mothers forced into the workforce, sweatshop workers, migrant farm laborers, adult victims of child abuse, and school dropouts. He shows that people who have escaped poverty had holistic assistance. They were helped with work training, child care, health care, money management, and more. Most government programs aimed at reducing poverty have failed because they address only one aspect of poverty, not the many needs. They also often train people for jobs that do not exist.

Who should read this book?

1. All elected officials
2. All corporate executives paid 10 or 100 or 1000 times what their employees are paid
3. Chamber of Commerce lobbyists who argue against the minimum wage while earning six figure salaries themselves
4. Social workers, nurses, doctors, teachers, librarians
5. Government workers who decide which applicants are granted aid
6. High school and college students about to enter the workforce
7. Anyone considering illegal immigration
8. Anyone who buys cheap goods at discount stores
9. Anyone who eats at a restaurant
10. Anyone who knows someone who is poor

Have I left anyone out?

Shipler, David K. The Working Poor: Invisible in America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. ISBN 0375408908

Second Thoughts on Harriet Klausner

I have been fretting for several days over my post about Harriet Klausner from last week. It sounds a little mean-spirited and elitist. Who am I to suggest her work is not honorable and worthwhile?

Ms Klausner is a former librarian and has worked in bookstores. While I question how she can read so many books and write so many reviews, I should consider that I am sometimes driven to do things out of the mainstream, like blogging very early in the morning.

I did a little research, wondering if Ms Klausner was really a group of people using a common name. She appears to be real, as there are profiles of her in the Philadelphia Inquirer (October 18, 2000) and the Wall Street Journal (March 29, 2005, page D6). She reads 400 pages per hour! (There are no photos, perhaps she still isn't real.)

Ms Klausner's book review output is interesting in that it is so positive and prolific. In the Wall Street Journal she states that she sees little purpose in reviewing books she does not enjoy. She is certainly promoting reading and reviewing books that you would never find in the professional journals. She is very dedicated.

We need to get her back into libraries. OCLC should hire her to contribute to Open WorldCat. She already has over 10,000 reviews she could load into the database!

Country Pie Chart from Sitemeter

Country Pie Chart from Sitemeter
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

A big thank you to Jenny at ShiftedLibrarian for linking to this blog yesterday evening. She has readers in interesting places, as shown by this pie chart I found this morning, which shows from where the overnight readers came. I like seeing Oman and Singapore. She has a good following in Australia and New Zealand. I'm sure she'd be happy to accept an all-paid invitation to visit. Thanks again, Jenny.

A Day in the Life of a Reference Librarian 2005

Monday started with so many chores that it seemed a good day to chronicle. Maybe a library school student can gain some insight into the work of a librarian from this posting. Then again maybe I'm not typical. Perhaps this will just be amusing.


Before work:

1. I took my daughter to school.

2. I bought packing tape at a big box pharmacy.

3. The nob on the front door pulled off when I got home so I took an early run to a big box hardware store to buy a door set. The installation was easier than I expected.

4. I finished sealing boxes containing Christmas packages to mail to relatives.

5. I changed the cat's litter box.


At work in the workroom:

1. I turned on the public computers. No problems this morning.

2. I listened to phone messages. I needed to fax an obituary to a social service agency.

3. I checked the bulletin board for out-of-date fliers. None were out-of-date, a surprise for a Monday morning.

4. I delivered candy from my daughter's choir fundraiser to a colleague.

5. I replaced the battery in a clock. Kris had one battery left.

6. I wound the grandfather clock.

7. I redirected some mail into others' mail boxes.

8. I found my missing cup so I could make some cocoa.

9. I rolled a cart of withdrawn books to the library friends' closet.

10. I recorded statistics for the withdrawn books.

11. I lugged two boxes of income tax instruction booklets to my desk.

12. I left a phone message for a prospective lecturer.

13. I recorded program attendance statistics.

14. I checked the library email. I redirected some emails to the director and some to the head of circulation. I read several messages about reference topics.

15. I read my own email, including a message about the Sony CD mess. I found a website listing the CD titles. Quickly I posted the info to my blog and made a notice for the bulletin board.

16. I took a call from a resident's having problems with her email. When she comes in on Tuesday I will try to troubleshoot with her.

17. I edited the programs list on the library website, deleting last weeks programs.

18. I discussed more obituary searches with a social services agency.

19. I sent an email to a folk musician.

20. I listened to 4 songs on a CD from another prospective performer while I checked Bloglines.


After lunch at the reference desk, with a little wandering around the library:

1. I learned the history behind Zane Grey's King of the Royal Mounted comic strip, which started in 1935. Grey died in 1939 and the strip continued without him until 1954. The strip was not based on a book.

2. I showed an Internet user on how to enter a URL to find a website.

3. I found 32 makers of commercial ice cream making machinery.

4. I found instructions for wiring light emitting diodes (LEDs) - in series and parallel. Client is lighting a doll house he is building.

5. I checked in issues of the ValueLine and Morningstar.

6. I consulted with Aaron about changes to make to our website.

7. I found an illustration of the Czech flag.

8. I found the latest issue of People for a reader.

9. Aaron and I traded shifts during the week after Christmas.

10. I helped an Internet user understand a flight itinerary on a ticketing website. He did not want to change planes.

11. I recorded some Internet use statistics.

12. I helped a client make coffee with the coffeemaker we have on trial during December.

13. I refilled the water tank in the coffeemaker.

14. I discussed making an obituary index with Beth. It is her idea.

15. I posted some bookmarks to the library's del.icio.us account so they would feed to our website.

16. I moved 8 more boxes of tax instruction booklets. There is not much room under my desk now!

17. I read blogs Aaron found pointing to Thomas Ford's website and podcasts: LibrarianInBlack and Rhodarian and Tim Lauer. The attention is encouraging.

18. I verified the title of a book for a client. It was amazing to get so late in the day before doing this. It was kind of a slow day.

19. I showed an email user whose printout cut off the right side of his message to click the link to printable view.

20. Aaron shows me how to clean a CD or DVD with our new Azuradisc disc care and repair machine.

21. I deliver more candy. Chocolate is always appreciated.

22. I added a couple of books to my Baker and Taylor cart.

23. I helped a client print 11 x 17 to out networked printer.

24. I found a photo of a statue in Chicago using the Chicago Tribune microfilm.

25. I replenished the paper in the photocopier before I left.


After work:

1. I picked my daughter up after her choir rehearsal.

2. I made dinner using leftovers.

3. I put the garbage and recycling by the curb.

4. I continued reading The Working Poor: Invisible in America for my book club.


As I look back on the list, I see some universal themes recurring: death and taxes and chocolate and the Internet. Tuesday will be much the same but different.

Sony's CD Exchanges

Here is a link to get to the webpage for exchanging the CDs produced by Sony that have the XCP content protection software that spies on the musical files on personal computers. The page claims to have a complete list of the titles that were used to distribute the software. Sony must have been trying to distribute widely, as the musical genres are greatly varied. Can you imagine that someone who listens to Pete Seeger or Flat & Scruggs as a threat to Sony? Luckily for me, my new Bob Dylan CD is not on the list. Do I trust Sony? I think I will wait awhile before I load it on the laptop. So far it has only been played in the car and in the Walkman.

The Renaissance: A Short History by Paul Johnson

The story of the Renaissance is filled with great names: Gutenberg, Dante, Erasmus, Leonardo, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Raphael, the Medici family, Machiavelli, lots of popes. Many of them were Italian, but not all, as the Renaissance spread across Europe in the late fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In fact, Paul Johnson in The Renaissance: A Short History credits the invention of the printing press in Mainz, Germany by Johann Gutenberg as the single most important event of the era, as the printing of books allowed for the explosion of learning to spread past the church leaders, princely classes, and academics to the growing merchant class.

I learned much in the section on Renaissance literature, as Johnson described the most important authors and their works. I am putting the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio on my reading list. Johnson tells many stories about the people and the period. I most enjoyed hearing about the painters and the development of oil painting on canvas in the Netherlands; the author explains how oil and canvas allowed artists to broaden their markets and paint non-church subjects; the modern tradition of portrait painting began with this innovation.

I listened to The Renaissance on compact discs, which had the advantage of letting me listen in the car and while shoveling snow. It also allowed me to hear all the names pronounced, many more than listed above. What I missed was learning how to spell them. It would be good to consult the print edition after listening. There are so many ideas introduced for further study, and seeing the table of contents and index would help. Reading The Renassiance by Paul Johnson is only a good beginning.

Johnson, Paul. The Renaissance: A Short History. New York: Modern Library, 2000. ISBN 067964086X.

compact discs edition. Santa Ana, California: Books on Tape, 2000. ISBN 0736663029

Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life by Steve Leveen

Steve Leveen is an advocate for reading. In The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, he suggests ways to help people find more time to read and get more out of their efforts. He advocates creating a list of candidate books for reading, having at least one "to read" shelf full of books, writing in the books while reading (obviously not library books!), keeping a shelf of "just finished" books for reviewing and giving to friends, and writing a journal full of thoughts and quotations from the books. He says that it is more effort to read this way, but the reader will remember more long after finishing the books; retention is the reason for reading he contends; anything less is killing time.

The author is somewhat practical. He says that no one should ever read a book just to please someone else. He recommends skipping introductions, which are better understood after reading the text. He also champions dropping books quickly if they do not entertain or inspire. Life is too short to finish inferior books. There are too many better books still waiting. He also suggests that if you are finishing every book, you are being too conservative in your choices or a slave to convention.

The author also includes chapters on listening to audiobooks and on joining book discussion groups. Both are full of his advice and quotes from experts that he interviewed.

I liked how he emphasized that people become better readers as they age. We should reread classics and other books we enjoyed in our youth because we will bring much more to a second or third reading.

The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life will appeal to people who like to plan and write, as well as read.

Leveen, Steve. The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life: How to Get More Books in Your Life and More Life from Your Books. Delray Beach, Florida: Levenger Press, 2005. ISBN 1929154178

I Learned to Be a Librarian Collecting Baseball Cards

Notice that I did not say I learned EVERYTHING about being a librarian by collecting baseball cards as a kid, but it really did start me down the path to my vocation.

1. Acquisitions. As a eight year old I began learning how to acquire cards for my collection. I know my first dozen or so cards were a gift (donation). Then I learned how to take pennies, nickels, and dimes to the grocery store (vendor, jobber) and add to the collection. This may sound like I come from an ancient time, but in 1962 you could buy a penny pack with one baseball card and one stick of the world's worst gum. The grocery store also had nickle packs with five cards and a slightly larger stick of gum. Because I had limited funds, I had to budget my acquisitions and stagger my purchases.

2. Selection. Of course, when you bought a pack of baseball cards wrapped in brightly colored paper, you did not know what you were getting. The packs held random cards. Librarians select their books and other materials and usually know what they are getting. The kid collecting baseball cards at that time selected cards on the secondary market - cards from friends' shoe boxes. I used to study the checklists of cards and read Sporting News and Baseball Monthly to chose what player cards to acquire through trades. It was not far different from book selection. It also required some skills in negotiation to actually acquire the cards.

3. Collection maintenance. Once I had several hundred cards, I had to keep them in some order so I could find them again. Topps numbered its cards randomly, but numerical order was not a good choice. Why should Bob Anderson of the Tigers be next to Ernie Banks of the Cubs to be followed by Frank Baumann of the White Sox? Random order did not make retrieval of cards easy. I usually kept my cards in team sets. Even that was sometimes difficult because a card might say a player was an Angel when I knew he had been traded since the card was printed to the Red Sox. Where did I file that card? Where did I put a card showing rookies from two different teams? I was learning the shortcomings of filing schemes.

I did experiment with other arrangements of the cards. I once grouped the players according to the teams that had first signed them to minor league contracts; this was an interesting academic exercise but I was unable to remember where to find most players. I once grouped players by age, and I also tried pitchers with pitchers, catchers with catchers, etc. (I had a lot of time on my hands living on a ranch for a year with no friends handy.) I always went back to team sets.

4. Preservation of materials. I never put a baseball card in the spokes of a bicycle. I never flipped them. I never glued them into scrap albums. I did, however, bind small sets of cards in rubber bands, wearing the edges and corners. I know better now.

5. Reference. I was constantly referring to the statistical tables on the backs of the baseball cards to see how many home runs Jim Wynn hit for the Astros in 1966 or how many seasons Ferguson Jenkins of the Cubs won twenty games. I consulted the cards for player ages, home cities, and whether they batted from the right or the left. I also enjoyed reading fun facts that were printed on some cards, such as "Dal Maxwell is called the 'human vacuum cleaner" or "Steve Stone enjoys reading." I was a reference librarian in training, who always wanted a fact verified.

I like to think mine was not a youth misspent. My obsession trained me for my vocation. Call me "The Natural."

Harriet Klausner, Top Reviewer at Amazon, She's Everywhere

It is 1:00 p.m. central standard time, and Harriet Klausner has already posted 30 reviews on Amazon today. I guess she is catching up. She had only posted 5 in the past week after posting 45 reviews on November 30.

Looking at the reviews, I see that 27 of today's 30 reviews (so far) have gotten a full five stars from Ms. Klausner. These include Leather Lace and Lust, S is for Silence, and Hot Pursuit. She has over 10,000 reviews on Amazon to date.

Guess what? Her review of the brand new S is for Silence is posted on the Barnes & Noble website, too. If you Google Ms Klausner, you find her reviews all over the place. She must be the queen of content distribution.

I will let you draw your own conclusions.

SuprGlu

Among the first subscription Aaron set me up with when he gave me the gift of Bloglines was Researchbuzz. Tara Calishain posts so much I sometimes get behind. Last week, she pointed her readers, of whom there are very many, to SuprGlu, a service that combines content from several sources into one blog-like stream.

Setting up a SuprGlu account is easy. I chose to send this blog's content and added the photos I post at Flickr, the web links from my del.icio.us account, and the book recommendations I post to the Thomas Ford Memorial Library website. I chose a pretty wild looking template. Take a look at ricklibrarian.suprglu.com.

The squeeze button in the top right corner sends you to a randomly chosen SuprGlu stream. Aaron will like that there is a small tag cloud on the right (maybe it will get bigger as more content is added).

Using Google Base to Promote a Library Program

Google Base is a free classified ad service that posts notices for 30 days. I saw that one of the categories is "events and activities." So I made a page to promote my library's Friday at the Ford concert for January. Not all of the fields on the template made sense to me, but they mostly disappeared when I left them blank. Some fields have Xs for deleting them. Here is the result.

How would anyone ever find this event promotion? Well, the Google Base search box works well with keywords, if the seeker knows to seek there. Also, if a person click the "events and activities" link, she can then search by town or zip code; this might be more likely if Google Base becomes popular. I do not know really whether it was worth doing. It was free. It does not hurt to try.

Flickr Slideshow on a Blog

Aaron found out that you can post slideshows from Flickr onto a blog. I decided to try it out. Here is a slide show of scarecrows at the Morton Arboretum in October. It should start on its own momentarily.



The box is a little bigger than I would like it to be, but when I make the box smaller, the photos are cut off.

You can find instruction to do this here. To do a set, replace "tags=foo" with "set_id=xxxxxxx" with your set number replacing the xs.

This feature could be used to show instructions step by step. Aaron thinks he may be able to connect it with sound.

Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles

I am a bit surprised by Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles. The author writes a well balanced history until he reaches the twentieth century, including many of the main developments in the concept of the library. Libraries in ancient Alexandria, ancient China, Jewish synagogues, mosques, medieval monasteries, the early universities, and the Vatican lead to the British Library, Library of Congress, and the libraries at Harvard. Then the story departs from what I expected.

I admit that Battles tells about many fires, much looting, and use of libraries to control society through the centuries. I did not expect that would be his focus for the twentieth century. His recent history sections cover Nazi book burnings, the exclusion of Africa-Americans from libraries in the Deep South, and the systematic destruction of libraries by Serbian forces in breakup of Yugoslavia. He says little about modern library methods, new developments in books and media, or the spread of libraries to smaller communities until his final passages. If the book had not pre-dated Hurricane Katrina, I am sure its destroying of libraries could have been the final story.

Still, he tells fascinating stories. His point seems to be that we should never imagine that the libraries we build will last very long.

Battles, Matthew. Library: An Unquiet History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. ISBN 0393020290

On 6 Compact Discs. Santa Ana, California: Books on Tape, 2003. ISBN 0736698353

One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty

I started a big thick book about Eudora Welty last week. In the introduction, the author kept referring to One Writer's Beginnings, which Welty wrote in the early 1980s after being pestered for years by friends and readers to tell her own story. I decided I was reading the wrong book, took back the heavy one, and checked out this slender volume, which I quickly read.

Welty took three lectures that she gave at Harvard University and reworked them into this memoir with three sections: "Listening," "Learning to See," and "Finding a Voice." Into these she wove stories about her parents and grandparents, memories of the long trips she took with them from Jackson, Mississippi back to West Virginia and Ohio by train or early motor car, and stories about her college years and first jobs. In the third section, she tells how she used her experiences, sometimes unconsciously, in crafting her short stories and novels. In the center of the book she added a small collectioin of family photos.

As she wrote in her works of fiction, in One Writer's Beginnings Welty wrote vivid, often brief accounts, with just enough detail to convey the scenes to her readers. Instead of being exhausted, the readers wish there was more. This memoir should be read by her fans. Other readers who check out family histories will enjoy it, too.

Welty, Eudora. One Writer's Beginnings. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983. ISBN 0674639251

Tales of the Supernatural: Poems by Maura Stanton

You may have noticed I have reviewed a lot of poetry lately. I have been weeding the poetry section where there are many lonely books crying out for readers. I swear that I have not reviewed all that I have read. I even withdrew some I read.

One of the lonely books that I enjoyed is Tales of the Supernatural: Poems by Maura Stanton. Stanton was not a poet that I knew before I started weeding. The use of the painting "The Village of the Mermaids" by Paul Delvaux on the cover caught my eye, and I decided to give her book a chance.

Stanton's poems are not particularly quotable in a snippet (hot word in the Google books debate) sort of way, but they tell interesting stories. As the book title suggests, some of the poems border on the fantastic, such as "Two White Hens," in which a man who is shipwrecked worries about the two chickens he had been transporting; what would the hungry men do if the birds washed ashore? In "Tidal Wave" an older man who immigrated from Ireland to America remembers the young girl friend he lost in a tidal wave. A boy wonders about the hidden world inside a clock in "The Cuckoo Clock"; he wants to go inside the clock.

I particularly liked two poems that dealt with youth and performance art. In "Attendant Lord" a girl playing the part of a man struggles with returning to stage on cue in a play. "The Angry Ballerina" tells about a girl having difficulty with the role of Clara in The Nutcracker; her missteps threaten the ballet. I also really liked "Space," a poem that introduces a mute, wheelchair-bound man who writes science fiction.

You do not have like poetry to enjoy Tales of the Supernatural. You can read the book as very short short stories.

Stanton, Maura. Tales of the Supernatural: Poems. Boston: David R. Godine, 1988. ISBN 087923749x