Daily Thoughts 1/4/2010

Their First Quarrel Charles Dana Gibson 1914.

Daily Thoughts 1/4/2010

The Book Review Blog Carnival is up with its 34th set of reviews. If you would like to look at a variety of different reviews covering a wide range of subjects, it is a chance to see something new. There are reviews on mysteries, childrens books, and nonfiction this time. It offers a chance to see a variety of different book review blogs. http://www.bookdads.com/book-review-blog-carnival-34th-edition/

I am going to take the Collection Development and Management Course from the American Library Association to refresh my skills a bit. It is an online course. It will be a first for me in terms of taking course work online. http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webcourse/focollection.cfm

I am going to the Morgan Library and Museum on Sunday, January 10, 2009 for a New York Librarians Meetup. It looks interesting. I especially like the idea of a Jane Austen exhibition. There have been so many puns lately on Jane Austen as well as a variety of spinoff novels based on her characters. http://www.meetup.com/NYLibrarians/calendar/12133220/

Today, I had a sign made for a display on African American leaders. We also discussed moving around the fiction collection. Things are steadily being relocated. It is a matter of patience and planning. Lots of new books have been coming in.

The assistant director made a signup sheet for 52 Books, 52 Weeks as well as a folder to record books which people have read. It looks very nice. I signed up today and put down my first book as Usagi Yojimbo Yokai by Stan Sakai.

We are also working on a flyer for the graphic novels club.

Daily Thoughts 12/17/2009

Design for a Metalwork Book Cover. Pen and black ink with black, grey, and yellow wash on paper, 8.1 × 6 cm, British Museum. This is a design for a book cover to be made with black enamel patterned over gold (Foister, p. 84). Small girdle books of this sort were attached to the belt by a ring, as drawn at the top. Clasps are shown to the right. The initials may be those of Thomas Wyatt the Younger, who was later executed for leading a rebellion in Kent during the reign of Queen Mary. Date c. 1537, Hans Holbein The Younger

Daily Thoughts 12/17/2009

I was looking at Tony Geer's website who helped design Tobias Buckell's blog. He has a few books about design on the frontpage of his site. One of them which I requested is Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students (Design Briefs) (Paperback) by Ellen Lupton http://www.tonygeer.com/

I was looking at William Bentrim's blog The Pick of Literate which is on my sidebar. He reviewed something which I want to read, The Better part of Darkness by Kelly Gay. Looking forward to getting the book soon.

Right now, I am reading Six Pixels of Separation Everyone is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone by Mitch Joel. This book is not a giant collection of tools. So far, it is a reminder that social networking is about building connections over time and finding new people using tools like Google and Facebook.

I am thinking about the 52 Books, 52 Weeks program from the Bensonville Public Library. The goal is to get people reading every single week. I rather like the idea and think it could be an excellent program if done right. http://www.52books.org/about/index.htm

Fool's Gold Why The Internet Is No Substitute for a Library by Mark Y. Herring, McFarland and Company, North Carolina, c2007

Fool's Gold Why The Internet Is No Substitute for a Library by Mark Y. Herring, McFarland and Company, North Carolina, c2007

This book provides clear arguments to why the internet and also ebooks are no substitute for a physical library.

He argues against the uncluttered, unauthoritative, often inaccurate nature of the information made available on the internet. Mark Y. Herring abhors internet pornography, spam, the presence of hate sites, and plagiarism rampant on the web.

There are reminders that internet sites disappear quickly; a phenomenon called link rot and are not cited or footnoted like in books. There is an excellent set of footnotes at the back of the book with extensive, often ironic commentary.

Some of the most striking ideas were that Wikipedia is a secondary source; copyright has not been sorted by Google and the best electronic information is still in propietary databases.

I do not agree with some of his points,especially the ones on book, this book was written in 2007, so it was just before the advent of the Kindle and the expansion of many of the archives of free information on the web like wikimedia.

Also, his statements about the pure decline of reading because of the internet are starting to change. People have become much more aware of the decline in reading. This may be in part because of books like this. This is a link to the latest National Endowment for the Arts study
http://www.arts.gov/news/news09/ReadingonRise.html

This book was ironic and coherent; a strong statement against web evangelism. It gives solid arguments on why we should keep a physical library and not just turn everything over to the internet.

Mark Y. Herring, the author, is the Dean of Library Services at the Dacus Library, Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He has written extensively for Library Journal and other academic publications.