Morning Thoughts, Society of Midnight Wanderers, Afternoon Thoughts

A Bookcase

Morning Thoughts

The process has started. I spent a little time this morning discussing the idea of collection development with the new director. She made a few suggestions for me to follow. I think things could become very interesting shortly. Tomorrow we have a meeting to discuss collection development at noon with my department. I have been working up to this slowly. I hope it gives me the break which I have been seeking for a while. I already have been handed more collection development responsibilities. This is what I hope I get more than doing more programming. The least I am asking for is a partial change in title to Reference/Collection Development Librarian.

I also handed in a few books which I had read this weekend. I read some more of Ken McArthur's Impact. It gave a suggestion to write down every single skill which I could think of that I had. If it was a skill no matter how trivial, I should write it down. Also, it told me to focus on doing five things every single day towards achieving a goal. I did not have to succeed at them, I just had to try them. Again, the exercises and the daily suggestion make it leagues ahead of many business self help books.

I think I found another event to go to. Metropolitan New York Library Council is holding a networking reception with a tour of the New York Public Library Schomburg Center For Black Culture. I think it will be very interesting to go to.
http://metronylibrary.augusoft.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=1011&CategoryID=2&SubCategoryID=44

Society of Midnight Wanderers

I wrote my first post to the Society of Midnight Wanderers. It is a form of poem if you can call it that called Backward and Forward In Time.
http://midnightwanderersociety.blogspot.com/2008/09/backward-and-forward-in-time-thoughts.html

Afternoon Thoughts

A couple of books came in for me which I reserved, Stalking the Unicorn A Fable of Tonight by Mike Resnick, and Green Investing by Jack Uldrich. Also, the film Persepolis came in through interchange. I am really looking forward to watching Persepolis, the graphic novel of the same title was quite enjoyable. I often write these things down so I can know what I read at a given time.

I also requested Too Many Curses by A. Lee Martinez. It is humorous fantasy. Earlier, I reviewed The Automatic Detective on this blog. I like his writing. It has a strong sense of sarcasm and black wit to it. He also wrote Gil's All Fright Diner. He can write humor in fantasy, science fiction, and horror settings.

Good Morning, Good Afternoon

Brain in a vat. I don't know why I chose this image. Maybe, I feel a bit dreamy today.

Good Morning

I read Black and White on the train in to work today. I reserved By Schism Rent Asunder, a new David Weber in his series Armageddon Reef. This series reads very differently than his books published under the Baen label. This book is published under the Tor label so the editing should be considerably different.

I also found a review for The Automotic Detective on http://www.sfsite.com/ This is the exact link to the review http://www.sfsite.com/07b/ad276.htm . I liked the review enough to recommend it. It is accurate.

Good Afternoon

During lunch, I noted down the outline for the review of Don't Make Me Think A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. I am not going to write it out today. One review in a day is enough. I think more than one review would be rushed and a little sloppy.

I am feeling a little better than this morning with two cups of coffee fortifying my thinking.

One of the reasons I am doing this blog is for self motivation to get myself to do a little bit every day of different library and literature related things...

I weeded some of the graphic novels in the adult section. I did not get rid of a lot of the classics. People still read Milton Caniff, Rube Goldberg, Jules Feiffer, Al Capp, Gary Trudeau, and Berke Breathed. I know these are often quite old, but people are still checking them out. As soon as the new graphic novels I order are here, they go out very quickly.

Often the people who sit at the computers have a waiting time of half hour or longer. Many of them read graphic novels while they are waiting for their turn on the internet computers. Graphic novels are quick and easy to read.

I checked out a few graphic novels for me to read this weekend. I always check out the books which I am going to use. It is the right thing to do for librarians. Check out your books. It increases the amount of circulation for your library. Libraries are partially funded by circulation.

I have the following graphic novels, The Facts In The Case of the Departure of Miss Finch by Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli, and Todd Klein, Usagi Yojimbo The Mother of Mountains Volume 21 by Stan Sakai, and The Savage Sword of Conan Volumes 1, 2, and 3 written by Roy Thomas. These are Dark Horse comics compilations. They should remind me of when I was younger and liked to read Conan. It is a bit nostalgic to look at these three volumes.

Also, I have The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain. This should be interesting. Finally, I am looking at Fueling Our Future An Introduction To Sustainable Energy by Robert L. Evans.

Afternoon Thoughts

Unknown Master Artist, Vanitas With Sun Dial

Afternoon Thoughts

This morning, I spent three hours answering peoples reference questions. It was rather interesting and busy.

Anyways, I am reading Steve Krup, Don't Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Second Edition, New Rikers, c2006. Usability is how to make it easy to use and navigate websites. This book makes many suggestions on how to do this. It is a quick read. I am already half way through the book.

I will work on writing a review of The Automatic Detective tomorrow. Sometimes, I have to let a book sit in my head for a little bit before I start writing a review about it. I don't even seem to think about it in my conscious mind.

The room is set up for my poetry open microphone this afternoon, I have to pick out some poetry books to bring down for the audience to look at. A bit later the refreshments will be set up.

Evening Thoughts

Statue of Niccolo Machiavelli. Supposedly Machiavelli used to like to put on his court robes at night before he sat down to read so he could be in his imagination with the great thinkers throughout history.

Evening Thoughts

Today has been very busy. I haven't really had a chance to write the reviews of two books which I have read, The Public Domain, and A. Lee Martinez, The Automatic Detective. I enjoyed reading both titles. I forgot to bring a pen on the train this morning. Maybe, I am making an excuse. I try to write a little bit on my blog every single day.

I tried to read the manga, Ruruoni Kenshin by Nobuhiru Watsuki a bit this morning, but found myself a little bored. It seemed a bit too formal in some ways to me. The little bits of history on the characters were interesting, but overall the story did not excite me that much.

When I read the history of Japan, I prefer to read about Japan before westerners came. This is just a personal bias. The setting in this manga is during the Meiji period. This means there are elements added like guns and other elements.

The volume I read was the Vizbig Edition, Volume 1, which compiles Volumes 1-3 into a single trade paperback volume. I think people who like more formal traditional manga will like this work. It combines sword fighting with romance and intrigue.

This morning I spent some time weeding the computer books. I am trying to thin out the collection of items that are not being used before more of the new books start coming in. We have to keep many of the older books because of the issue of legacy computing.

Underlying programs like c, perl, java and html remain the building blocks of newer programs like xhtml, c++, css, and other computer programs. Also many people still use older editions of windows, we still get requests for windows 95, 98, and XP. The same thing applies to things like unix and linux. Not everyone is hurriedly switching over to Vista or Ubuntu.

Books on the older programs are often no longer sold in the bookstores even though people are using them. They turn to the library because it is the only place where people can get the material. Not everyone wants to switch to a newer fancier system.

I spent several hours looking at computer books to see if we still need them. I also spent some time looking at some of the new books which just came in. I am going to wait and see what is coming in before I order more new books. I will probably also weed our current graphic novel and manga collection, both to reduce the number of books that are not circulating, and make the newer material look more visible. Very crowded, packed shelves make it hard to find new material. I like to have around 6 inches to one foot at the end of each shelve.

Tomorrow, I also have my poetry open microphone. We moved it down from four o'clock to five o'clock to have a chance for more adults to come. Hopefully, we'll also get a new microphone. I think, I will be ready for the program. I also usually pick out a variety of poetry books for people to look at which I bring down on a book truck. In addition, we will be serving light refreshments. I like to serve water and juice. I don't like serving soda, especially when little children are around, it makes them very jumpy.

I picked out a few books from the new books to look at. One is a manga, Tekkon Kinkreet Black and White All In One by Taiyo Matsumoto. There is a parental advisory on the cover for content. Also, there is a label which says now an animated film. Another book which looks interesting is Don't Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition, by Steve Krug. The final book which I plan on reading is The Future of The Internet And How To Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain.

Once again, I am starting to pile up books to read. Oddly enough, I didn't really have any magazines to read today. I read the paper this morning with my coffee, but that is an almost ritual thing.

Morning Thoughts

19th Century Phrenology Chart. Nothing like a little pseudoscience.

Morning Thoughts

I have been looking at Baker & Taylor online for a little bit. They have a section of selection lists for libraries. I have been looking at their starred reviews lists of books as well as some of their specialized e-lists on different subjects. Some of them are useful for selecting items. Baker & Taylor is a very large book distributor. We buy most of our books through Baker & Taylor. So do a lot of the public libraries in the United States. We do our own technical processing.

I spent some time looking through the Strand Books website http://www.strandbooks.com/ . They are arranged very differently than Amazon or Barnes and Nobles. The Strand has a number of categories for books which are interesting like substance abuse and social work which are worth looking at. We have a fairly high demand for items in these categories.

I also took a few minutes and looked at the different categories at Powell's bookstores. Powell's is another megabookstore like the Strand. I find Powell's categories to be much more refined than Barnes and Nobles or Amazon. http://www.powells.com/psection/psection.html

The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez has come in for me to read. I didn't realize until I picked up the book that the author also wrote Gil's All Fright Diner, a humourous horror novel about preventing the end of the world.

I am also thinking about what I am going to do for my Open Microphone Poetry Reading on Thursday. We moved the time down to 5:00-6:00 p.m., it really should be later, but there is no one who can fill in for the time slot.