Daily Thoughts 9/24/2010 (Ebooks, overdrive)

The Scott Monument in East Princess Street Garden in Edinburgh, a Victorian Gothic monument to Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. John Steell's statue, made from white Carrara marble, shows Scott seated, resting from writing one of his works with a quill pen and his dog Maida by his side. Picture by Ad Meskens.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scott_Monument_Statue_4.jpg

Daily Thoughts 9/24/2010

This morning we had a general staff meeting.  It was a chance to meet the new president of the board of directors and hear a little about what was happening.  There was some discussion of retirement packages, a number of people were offered packages, holding a gala by the library foundation in the library, and our 156th anniversary as a library.  Our building was built in 1904, but our library was started much earlier in a local school.

We also have an exhibition of local artists in the rotunda.  There are a number of landscape paintings, abstract paintings, photographs, and pencil drawings their now.  We also have a number of books on display from our oversize book collection of art books.  The oversize art collection has books close to the date when the building was built in 1904.

I did some more weeding in the oversize 300s.

On Tuesday, I am going to a demonstration of the Directors Station for Sirsi Dynix which allows people to look at the statistics for usage in our library.  Hopefully, I will learn a little more.  I am hoping I can look at our statistics to be better able to choose what people use.  http://www.sirsidynix.com/products/directors-station

Also, I should be visiting a local library media center soon to look at the way they have their computers setup for Overdrive Digital Media catalog. I have also been noticing that patrons have been taking out dvds and watching them on the computers in our Job Information Center.

I am going to the Linkedin group meetup for Ebooks, Ebook Readers, Digital Books and Digital Content... this afternoon at the Landmark Tavern in Manhattan.  Hopefully, it should be very interesting.

Today was a bit challenging.  I like equilibrium.  The director commended me for helping clean up the collection.  The number of missing items has dropped considerably.  I also was complimented on the display of art books in the rotunda. There is stilll quite a bit to do.

Daily Thoughts 7/22/2010

Niels Hemmingsen, Author Unknown, 1500s

Daily Thoughts 7/22/2010

I am taking the online Advocacy class from the Public Library Association. It is very generic and designed to fit with most people. It feels like a good way to clarify my thoughts more than anything else so far.

I put in my orders this morning. I also have taken some time to look at devices which are compatible with the Overdrive Digital Media Catalog which our library is a member of. There are quite a few nice ebooks, audiobooks, and a selection of MP3 music. I found out that the three main ebooks which are used with this system are the Nook, the Kobo Reader, and the Sony Reader. The Overdrive blog has a little bit on the Kobo reader http://blogs.overdrive.com/library/post/2010/07/09/Kobo-eReader-review-A-simple-eBook-reader.aspx . I also learned that Overdrive sells Sansa MP3 players in batches of 10 which is kind of interesting.

This is an article about Library 2.0 and Readers Advisory. It is part of my class reading. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6495211.html?q=neal+wyatt+redefining+ra+annotations Reflecting on the article, I use Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/ to track the books I am reading which I want to fully review. I am not sure that I want to use the full style of annotation which goes with readers advisory work.

I also changed the books in two displays. I put in books from storage on civil rights, and also did a small display of comics lit books. One of my favorite comics lit books is Remembrance of Things Past Combray by Marcel Proust, drawn by Stephane Heuet.

I also am checking out two books, Blonde Bombshell a Comedy of Intergalactic Proportions by Tom Holt and Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus Creativity and Generosity In a Connected Age.

OCLC report on fundraising and libraries. http://www.oclc.org/reports/funding/fullreport.pdf

http://csea860.org/laid-mt-vernon-workers-reinstated This is the unions side of the story about the reinstatement of the workers at the Mount Vernon Public Library

Daily Thoughts 3/11/2010

The Reader, plaster statuette by Jules Dalou, circa 1871- 1879. Petit Palais Museum Collection, Paris. Photographed between 1902 and 1904.

Daily Thoughts 3/11/2010

We had a person over from the system to explain Overdrive for us which provides a variety of ebooks and downloads. They also showed us the itouch which is a internet only version of an apple device, a sony reader, a mp3 player, and a toshiba netbook. The netbook seemed to be the most complete of the inexpensive internet devices. It ran around $300. It is a little smaller than a laptop.

We looked at a variety of formats of ebooks, varying from Adobe epub, to the propietary apple download format. We should be getting a link to ebooks fairly soon. I am looking forward to it. I might take a look and see if there is anything which is worth downloading. We are also going to do a session on Microsoft Publisher.

The one thing which impressed me most about digital rights management part of Overdrive for libraries is the amount of software which people had to download to use the ebooks as well as all the extensive agreements which you have to click accept before using a digital book. It seemed quite long and complicated. Hopefully, they will streamline this in the future. It is much easier to just download a book for free from Creative Commons or Project Gutenberg.

Today has been fairly quiet. I checked the displays and checked on the shifting of the paperbacks. They probably will be done with the paperbacks in the next couple of days. I also spent some time going over how the projector works for a film on Saturday.

There are a couple more books on my desk, The New How Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy by Nilofer Merchant and A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel. I am particular fond of Alberto Manguel's writing. I enjoyed reading his last book, The Library At Night.

I read some more of The Time Paradox. They are writing about the different advantages and disadvantages of having a future orientation, present orientation, and past focused orientation. Sometimes, I find it enjoyable to just relax and be in the present. The Time Paradox was Library Journal best book of the year in 2008.