Daily Thoughts 8/6/2011

A little girl raids the family library to cut out pictures for a collage, 1884 

Daily Thoughts 8/6/2011



I spent some time on Facebook this morning.  I am trying find local organizations that have done programs with the library and like them.  It is kind of interesting.  I also read some of Nonproft Management 101 A Complete and Practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals.  Right now, I am reading about fundraising.  83% of fundraising comes from individual donors.  I rather like the idea that most fundraising succeeds from building relationships.

I also finished reading The Successful Business Plan Strategies and Secrets by Rhonda Abrams.  I learned that I need to learn a lot more about financial numbers.  This part was quite hard for me.  I get the ideas behind operations, customer service, technology, marketing and sales, but need work on accounting and finance.  I am starting to read Successful Business Research Straight to the Numbers You Need Fast by Rhonda Abrams.  If nothing else, this will help me get a better grasp of how finance works in business. I spent some time looking at Infotrac database, Business and Company Resource Center going over summaries of the electronic publishing business. On Monday, I'll probably spend some time in Lexis, Reference USA and Hoovers to get some more information.

I read a bit more of Blue Ocean Strategy as well.  They are describing how companies like Home Depot, Jet Blue, and Cirque Du Soleil both differentiate themselves and reduce costs at the same time.

Web Bits


Quotation by John Maynard Keynes in Shelf Awareness
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=1525#m12959

Daily Thoughts 7/31/2011

Jim Collins (James C. Collins), an American business consultant, author of "Built to Last" and "Good to Great". By Mangoed on Wikmedia, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0


Daily Thoughts 7/31/2011


I have been reading more of The Successful Business Plan this morning and doing the exercises.  Two of the exercises are very interesting; they are creating an ideal customer first as a consumer customer, then as a business customer.  It is interesting because it helps give you a sense of what people actually do in the publishing and book business.


Some of the publications they might read are: Publishers Weekly, LIbrary Journal, School Library Journal, The Bookseller, Slate, The New Yorker, The Huffington Post (They have written a number of articles in support of libraries), The New York Times, Slate, Editor and Publisher, and the New York Review of Books for consumers.  For companies, I would add Fast Company, Inc., Crain's New York Business, Forbes, and Teleread.


Part of the profile includes websites that they might visit:   Mashable, Locusmag, Romantic Times, Library Journal Online, LIS News, Mediabistro, Galleycat, O'Relly, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Strand Books, Tools of Change For Publishing, Book Expo America, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Meetup.  I would furthers add subsections of Linked In like (Ebooks, Ebook Readers,Digial Books, and Digital Content Publishing), Ebooks In Libraries, and Tools of Change for Publishing.  For Meetups, I might add Content Strategy New York City,  Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art,  Digital Book World New York City, and others.


This is not the first time that I have done this kind of exercise.  For a while, I sold some books on Ebay and ABE (Advanced Book Exchange) to see what it was like, I also used to pick books and comics from flea markets and garages sales when I had more time to trade a long time ago.   I still get the family discount from Rogers Time Machine in Manhattan. This is too time intensive now.  Also, I used to price sometimes for a small bookstore that no longer exists.  Several months ago, I was also working on the beginnings of an idea for a startup for about three months, but it did not work out.


I put the book Nonprofit Management 101 by Darien Rodriguez Hayman on hold.  Darien Rodriguez Hayman was the director for the Craigslist Foundation.  I saw the book listed on the Social Media For Nonprofits Conference New York which is on August 4, 2011.http://socialmedia4nonprofits.org/nyc/

I spent some time talking to a close friend today, David Grayson.  He is writing a column on The Haiku Foundation called Religio about religion and haiku which is rather interesting.  http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/religio/

Daily Thoughts 7/30/2011

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy

Daily Thoughts 7/30/2011

I spent some more time reading The Successful Business Plan this morning.  I also took some notes and added to a document I have started writing which is slowly taking form.  I am not in an incredible hurry.  I might have something ready by the beginning of September. I also put the books Six Weeks Start Up and Successful Business Research by Rhonda Abrams on hold.  The writing is very easy to follow.

I also spent some time looking at social networks for books, specifically, Bookmesh http://www.bookmesh.com and Red Lemonade which is a publishing network http://www.redlemona.de 

This afternoon, I looked through Publishers Weekly, Teleread, and Mashable for articles.  I also logged into our library network and took some time to look at EBSCO.

Daily Thoughts 7/29/2011

Riley, James Whitcomb: “An Old Sweetheart of Mine” (1902) Study, Chair, and Bookcase

Daily Thoughts 7/29/2011

Today, I checked the Twitter account, checked the book sale, and checked the displays.  I spent some time talking to our new sales representative from Better World Books.  I like to think of Better World Books as a more acceptable way of letting our discards go.  They take old library discards and sell them.  I also like to think of the book sale next to the circulation desk as a way to generate good will.

I read two copies of the New York Times Book Review today and checked the purchase alerts to see what people are placing on hold.  I also placed the book The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan on hold.  It was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review.

We also got some more donations today.  There were a few young adult books worth adding.  I also compiled the monthly statistics today.

On the way home, I read some more of The Successful Business Plan and did some basic exercises to outline questions about the type of business I would be interested in doing.

Daily Thoughts 7/28/2011

Claude Raguet Hirst, The Bookworm's Table, circa 1890

Daily Thoughts 7/28/2011

I am reading The Successful Business Plan by Rhonda Abrams, 4th Edition.  I usually read books on business in general, not specifics for plans.  The book is quite detailed with lots of exercises.

This morning, I checked the displays and updated the Twitter account.  There is going to be a reading from 1:30-4:30 p.m. in the community room for Kabiru Mohammed who has two books which he self-published Life's Passion, a book of poetry, and The Tragedy of Ethelia, a play.  Some libraries don't encourage self-published books.  We actually have some staff members who have self-published books. Also a number of the members of the Writers Networking Workshop have self-published their poetry books.  James Fair the host for the Writers Networking Workshop at the library edited an anthology of local poets called Blood Beats In Four Square Miles of Mount Vernon, New York poets. 

I am going to the Association of Community Based Artists of Westchester http://www.acbaw.org/  tonight on 128 South Fourth Avenue tonight representing the library.  They are holding a Writers Networking Workshop there tonight from 6:00-8:00 p.m.  I will be bringing over some flyers and other material from the library to the workshop to discuss.  We had a Writers Networking Workshop at the library on July 21, 2011 from 6:00-8:00 p.m.  It is important to reach out to local arts organizations.

I spent some time in the computer lab today helping patrons do very basic things.