Daily Thoughts 1/4/2010 (Budgets, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web)

Franz Volkmar Reinhard in his study, reading, 1811, Oil on Canvas
Daily Thoughts 1/4/2010

Today was a quiet steady day.  I checked the displays and printed some more flyers for the Library Tour.  I also made sure some programs went into the Calendar of Events.  I also checked out some books, I Live In the Future and This is How It Works Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted by Nick Bolton and Running The Books The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg.

We had a session discussing budgets for the collection which I think was productive.  We also discussed book donations.  I pulled together a receipt for material donations and suggested a picture of children reading.  I felt it was quite productive.  I am also thinking about how we might get to help the older people in the Armory who want to get books without a bookmobile.

There was a little bit of discussion of how to handle donations.  I like going through book donations.  I find it enjoyable.  It is like digging for gems in the rough.  It reminds me a bit of when I used to go to flea markets to look for comics and other memorabilia. There is Booksalefinder which lists all the different booksales across the United States.
http://www.booksalefinder.com/

On the way home, I read some more of Information Architecture For The World Wide Web.  The authors are writing about search engines.  They are explaining the differences between precision and recall in search engines.  I am enjoying reading this book.  Many of the concepts read like they came out of my class on cataloging in library school.  I learned that 40% of information architects have a library science background.  The next chapter I am going to read is on Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies, and Metadata.  This is a hot topic in library science. They are often looking for librarians with taxonomy skills.

I started reading I live in the future and here's how it works by Nick Bilton.  Nick Bilton is the Lead Writer and Technology Reporter for the New York Times Bits Blog. He opens the book by describing how he prefers to read the paper in digital form over the print form.

Web Bits

Steve Haber, The Changing Role of Libraries In The Digital Age from The Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-haber/the-changing-role-of-libr_b_803722.html