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Publisher's Weekly has a list of the Bestselling Books of the Year, 1996-2006. The list for each year features the top 15 fiction and 15 nonfiction books that year. Think of the displays, the bookmarks, and just the fun you can have with these lists.
I'm off on vacation for a couple of days and then will be at PLA. I may post occasionally, but will probably choose not to haul my rather large laptop with me everywhere.
Hope everyone has a wonderful Easter and great spring break.
Regular posting will return in a week or so.
Jing is a very cool application that allows you to quickly capture images, record video of what you are watching or what you are doing, and then share it online by uploading it to email, IM or blogs.
You do have to download software to your PC or Mac to get it to work. It then resides as a half-sun at the top of your monitor, waiting for you to need it. By running your mouse over the sun, you will get some options of what you can do.
It is easy to use, but I warn you that you can get lost in the menu system wondering why you can't click some options. Just make sure you don't have another menu listed under the area you are trying to work in.
Just found out that Arthur C. Clarke has died at age 90. He's the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as over 80 other fiction and nonfiction books and more than 100 short stories.
His life of storytelling is nicely described in the link above and may serve as a great way to highlight your science fiction books and films.
The Wausau Daily Herald reports that Librarians accept new jobs in Marathon County Public Library. Sad but inevitable news for veteran library employees who have worked a considerable amount of time in a community. Truly, what other choice did they have?
In the same article, you will see a report of a husband of one of the librarians standing up and doing a nice piece of civil disobedience. He read aloud a letter by Terry Dawson, director of the Appleton Public Library, and great blogger. Sadly, not only was he not allowed to speak, and the meeting was adjourned.
So that is what happened, but what should happen now? SHOULD being the operative word. The library board SHOULD make sure to have public comment allowed in their next meeting. The library board SHOULD enter into their public records the letters they received about the situation. The library board SHOULD be interested in what the public has to say about their local library.
I look to the library director to lead the library board to do what they should do. Let's hope it happens. The last thing any library needs is to appear unresponsive to the communities they serve. If that happens we quickly move from what they should do to what they now must do. Perhaps we are at that point already.
BookLamp.org is currently in beta version. It describes itself as a Pandora for books. The matching process involves you selecting a book from their list of titles and then through an analysis of writing style, patterns, elements of writing, perspective, tone, and tense, they give you a recommended title list.
In order to play around, you have to register on the site, but it is free and painless. Then you can try it out.
Now remember, beta version! It has a very limited list of titles, mostly science fiction. And as it loads the title's recommended matches onto the screen it seems to be redoing the matching process. This doesn't make much sense to me, because the factors for these books have to already have been entered. Why not just give us the matches immediately?
And also let me unleash my librarian on them and say that simply looking at text and matching according to tense, tone and perspective are not enough. One needs to really match according to less tangible factors as any librarian can tell you.
Pandora has a very intricate matching system that works sometimes and fails amazingly others. I suspect this will be true here as well. I respect them for wanting to do this scientifically, but reading and books are so personal (as is music) that it is going to take some additional finessing to get it to really be an amazing engine for readers.
Something to keep an eye on, but not something to use with the public yet.
Foodsel is a site that has information on various foods. The foods range from general foods to more specific brand-name information. You will find not only the caloric value of foods and also the energy, carbs, protein, minerals, vitamins and more. Nicely, the data is provided in both numerical form and on a graph.
Phonezoo is a free place to get ringtones for your phone! You can create ringtones and photos for phones, send ringtones, games and photos to your phone and find great ringtones already to use. Just sign up for free and enjoy!
The ringtones are varied from baby laughs to clips from songs to very strange but funny sound clips. Something for every taste.
Flickr Storm is a very handy search engine for Flickr with especially nice features for public libraries.
No need to register, the site offers you a tray to store photos you are interested in, a history file to show the photos you have clicked on, and keyword search. But best of all, you can click on "advanced" and really refine your choices for what sort of Creative Commons license you are looking for.
Nicely, the images you receive as your results are small but clear. You can click to see them in more detail. When you scroll to the bottom of the results, you are also offered handy single-click ways to further refine your search.
InviteShare is an exciting new way to get invitations to closed betas. You create an account and list the invites you are searching for. Then people with extra invites offer theirs up. You get a quick email and then make sure you head back to InviteShare to accept your pending offer.
Very easy to use, even if you just want to take a look at their site, you will find the top invites that people are requesting which will lead you to some of the hottest betas online right now.
I know, I know, social networking sites are everywhere. All vying for your attention. But I have another for you to try out.
Faves.com is a site that offers popular links in categories of your choice. You can choose from many different categories. My current topics I follow include blogging, food, Web 2.0, reference, books and technology. And I can add as many as I like. Then when I head there each day, I get a quick list of the top links in those categories all mixed together and wonderful to browse and explore.
It's a fast way to see what is hot in the areas you are interested in. Very fast to set up and even faster to check every day.
Vertigo is one of my favorite new plug-ins for Firefox. It takes all of my tabs that used to be across the top of the browser and has then run down the left-hand side of the screen instead. It works really well for me on my laptop which has a lot more screen room side to side than top to bottom.
In April I'm doing a program at WAPL (Wisconsin Association of Public Libraries) about great plug-ins for browsers. If you have a favorite let me know! Here are the ones already on my list:
LibX
Del.icio.us
Morning Coffee
ScreenGrab
Vertigo
Windows Live Writer
Please share your favorites too!
Where the Locals Eat is a site that offers a guide to restaurants in 50 cities. Even those of us in the Midwest will find cities to search, including Milwaukee, Chicago and Minneapolis (where PLA is later this month). The restaurants are a nice blend of different types from coffee shops to high end eateries.
The interface is friendly, a little flashy, and the content is nicely detailed. Icons offer further information on hours, handicapped accessibility, kid friendliness, whether vegetarians can eat there and much more.
Definitely worth a look if you are headed to PLA or to any other of the 50 cities on the list.
My posting has been down this week because of the firestorm I seem to have started about the situation at Marathon County Public Library here in Wisconsin. Here are links to the news items in case you have missed the goings on:
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008803010335
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008803010336
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008803040364
Here is a link to the discussion on the WISPUBLIB list.
Letters must be sent, our protests must be heard and we must stand together to say that such attitudes towards our profession cannot be tolerated.
The Washington Post announces that Dell is toughening up its notebook PCs by launching its first notebook PC that meets Department of Defense standards for use in extreme conditions.
Gets a public librarian wondering if it would extend the life of public laptops at the library! Talk about extreme conditions and use in combative situations!
Alright, just kidding. I've used laptops for the public for years and they last really well. But the joke just had to be made. Plus, look at that price! Not on a public library budget!
We have the discussion at our library all the time about whether we should program for the people who already use the library or create programs that attempt to draw in our non-users. Interestingly, Seth Godin just posted about this very thing and wonderfully, he used book examples to illustrate his point.
We attempt to do both, sometimes with the same program. We want to create programs and collections so wonderful that we draw people in while continuing to reward our loyal patrons. Now that I read Seth's post I wonder. Do we need to focus more? Or is it just part of being a public library that we are trying to reach out, find underserved populations, convince them of our value and grow. Perhaps it is part of being a library in this day and age that we can't just happily rest with the devoted and cater to them. We have to prove our worth each and every day.
So what do you say? Do you focus on the devoted users or on the masses? Do you attempt to do both? Should you?