Daily Thoughts 3/4/2009

Advertising poster by American illustrator Louis John Rhead (1857-1926). "William Caxton made his own ink, but you can have yours made by The Ault & Wiborg Co., Cincinnati." c1896

Daily Thoughts 3/4/2009

Know Thing, No Thing, Nothing

I know know thing

The thing I know

Is not something

Do u know something

That I don't no

That Some Thing u know

Must be something

Full of my knows

That No Thing matches

I read some more of Words In Your Face. There is an interview with Bob Holman the founder of the New York City Poetry Calendar which is a weekly listing of poetry readings. It used to include all of the readings in the city. I would pick it up at Shakespeare and Company books when they were still open. I used to read it to find out when the science fiction and fantasy book readings were happening.

Today has been a fairly busy day. I spent some time having a new librarian shadow me at the reference desk and showing her where the different things were in the reference room. I showed her a few things which are kind of interesting. We keep a big binder with flyers from all the different community service agencies, several different files for career material and an annual reports drawer.

I also spent some time with Westlaw. Apparently a lot of libraries are restructuring their law collections. Computer databases are replacing a lot of the law digests. Keyword searching in Lexis and Westlaw are much easier than in the legal encyclopedias. Westlaw is finding itself in a facing lots of library budget crunches. My understanding is that on average the cost of law books goes up 12% per year or more and law databases go up in price 3-5% per year. Westlaw is making the books less and less affordable. They told me that they were cutting prices everywhere.

Other than Westlaw, I have been looking at places that offer grants. I thought this was interesting. This place sends free art books to libraries. http://www.ducprogram.org/orderform.php

Random House is opening a free library for science fiction books. I rather like this. More for me to read, and a little competition with the Baen Free Library. http://www.suvudu.com/