Virtual Author Tour for Inheriting the Trade

When I think of book blogs and websites, I think of the content as spontaneous, created on the spot for the moment. I should shelve that idea. These sites are now established and somewhat planned, as evidenced by Thomas DeWolf's virtual author tour to support his book Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. A look at his website shows a schedule for interviews and other events to be posted on website, such as Bookzillion, Powell's eNewsletter, and Library Thing. He is tireless in his effort to address our country's racial past and present.

We will be reading DeWolf's book at Thomas Ford this fall, too. Our book discussion group is focusing on it at our October 7 meeting, and our film discussion group will be viewing his cousin Katrina Browne's Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North on October 30. Anyone in the area is welcome to come.

Awful Library Books

Ulotrichous twitted. Librarian.net noticed. I am re-blogging.

Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner, two librarians from Michigan, have a crusade to get public libraries in their state to weed. They have a blog Awful Library Books, which shows books that should have been removed from collections long ago. They are kind and do not reveal the libraries at which they find these "gems." Take a look. You may both laugh and cringe.

ricklibrarian on Google Book Search

When I was at the annual conference of the American Library Association in June, I saw that Google Book Search was building pages about books with content drawn from across the web. The treatment seems to vary book to book. Some have sample chapters, illustrations, reviews, other book recommendations, and, of course, links to buy the books.

Yesterday, someone found one of my reviews there and then visited my blog. Above is the proof. Click it to get a larger view.

I got the impression at the Google Book presentation that some Google editors are selecting items to load onto these pages. If so, it would be great if libraries with book reviews could claim some of this space regularly. It would also be great if Google would link to library holdings (Worldcat) on all of these without readers having to know to load a gadget.

Prelinger Library

If you subscribe to LISNews, you may have seen the Prelinger Library already. The reason it was highlighted at LISNews is that in its May 2007 issue Harper's wrote about the "appropriations-friendly" library, which exists physically in San Francisco and virtually on the Internet with 2098 books. The Prelinger is a research library that free for anyone to use and holds many unusual items. The focus is "landscape and geography; media and representation; historical consciousness; and political narratives from beyond the mainstream." It sounds like a nice place to spend an afternoon.

Right now it is the free to view eBooks that impress me. Take a look at The Bird Book by Chester A. Reed (1914). On the left of the description page is a box with viewing options. I really like the simplicity and easy use of the flip book version, which is much nicer than netLibrary books, but the display is a little small. The DjVu version has a larger display and works almost as easily. Both version make reading a book from a computer with a 17-inch monitor possible. Avoid the PDF version, which takes a long time to load.

There are many items that will interest readers of history. Having grown up in Texas, I might want to come back and read Sam Houston: Colossus in Buckskin. (Maybe not, as it glorifies Houston without criticism.)

It looks as though the online library is really a collaboration with other online collections. The digitization of the book I chose may not actually have been Prelinger Library work, as there is an Internet Archive logo in the top left corner of the webpage and links to other institutions in the navigation. For the reader, the origin of the book probably does not matter. The Prelinger Library website provides the portal.

I am making a bookmark.

"Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?" in the New York Times

Many major newspapers in the U.S. are reducing or eliminating their book sections at a time when blogging about books is rising. In "Book Reviewers Out of Print?" in the May 2, 2007 issue of the New York Times, page B1, Motoko Rich asks authors and bloggers about the situation and whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship. The bloggers say "no." They do not want to replace the newspaper reviewers, who are career writers or academics. Many of the authors think the threat comes from newspapers intent on cost cutting. They are mostly unaware of bloggers.

The idea that newspaper reviews are too stodgy, serious, and academic is discussed. They often print long reviews of books that have little public appeal. I see the Chicago Tribune each week and wonder if this is a fair complaint. To the newspaper's credit, it is often highlighting little known books that should get more exposure. However, I am then surprised (or used to be surprised) by how few requests we get at my public library for the books reviewed in the Chicago Tribune Book Section.

Authors in the article claim that the newspapers in question (Atlanta Constitution, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times) need to remember their role in promoting regional literature.

The article is interesting and provides links to literary blogs. Here is a link to the article, which may require you to start a free NYT account.

Aggrevating Aggregators: A Note to Bloglines, Google Reader, and Other Readers

If you are reading this blog through an aggregator, you have missed some content. Several times lately I have posted pieces in which I embedded a form from Zoho Creator. Bloglines and Google Reader do not show these. So, if you notice a gap in the text and wonder what should be there, click on the item title and come to the home site of the blog. There you will find a form and be able to easily contribute to a survey.

Yesterday, I asked for help identifying who should be on a core biography list. Click here to see the post with the embedded form. The data you submit goes directly into a database. I will report the results later in another posting.

It is a good idea to occasionally go from the aggregators to the originating sites because there are often sidebar material that you are missing. Many bloggers have posted their favorite links, and some bloggers have created special features, like their own search tools, which you can access from their sites.

The aggregators are great help to readers trying to keep up, but you should not stay within their lines. Stray a bit to see what you might find.

Reader's Club at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County

The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County must be library heaven. It does so many things so well, which includes Reader's Club, an online co-operative book review. Started in November of 1998, it now has over 2000 reviews written by librarians, staff, and the public. Here is what I like about the service:

1. The reviewers choose lots of interesting books. I placed three reserves just now based on what the Reader's Club reviewers recommended.

2. There are guidelines for writing the reviews, which keep them short and to the point.

3. The books do not have to be new, though many do seem to be recent. There are lots of great older books that people have forgotten, and Reader's Club reviewers are noting some of them.

4. The categories include many subcategories of nonfiction, which is where I chose a microhistory, a memoir, and a collection of poetry to reserve.

5. There are spotlights profiling some of the frequent contributors. Lydia says she likes fiction and autobiography by Asian and Asian-American women. Hey, I do, too. I could mine the list of Lydia's reviews for a long time.

6. There are many RSS feeds, so you can subscribe to all or just some of the feeds based on your reading interests.

When your library is well organized and inspires many people to contribute, it can do wonderful things.

MADreads from the Madison Public Library

Librarians looking for good models of library book reviewing blogs should look at MADreads: Book News and Reviews from the Madison Public Library. News and reviews of fiction and nonfiction books are added to the website daily. What I like are that the book reviewers (there are several from different branches of the library) go ahead and say if there is something that bothers them about the books they review. It is not just publicity fluff to push their books at MADreads.

The MADreads blog has a menu of categories for readers who wish to specify a genre. All the categories have at least five reviews, most have many more. The blog links to the library home page, with which it maintains a consistent design, and to a library news blog called What's New. The book reviewing blog seems to have been started in April 2006.

Thumbs up for MADreads.