Daily Thoughts 8/19/2010 (Book Blogger Appreciation Week)

Daily Thoughts 8/19/2010




I am breaking my usual reticence and signing up to be interviewed as part of Book Blogger Appreciation Week.  It should be interesting.




Today has been quiet and steady.  I did some spot checking of the shelving to make sure things are in order and checked the displays.  On Friday, I am going to start weeding again in the oversize books.  I also took a little time to print up some flyers for some upcoming programs, an Open Book Chat, and the Graphic Novels Club next month.  One of our patrons suggested it would be better to call it an open book chat than a brown bag book chat.  There is also a business program coming up from the Women's Enterprise Development Center which comes every year.  It is called First Steps.  It is a combination of checking your entrepreneurial spirit and learning basic computer skills for business.




We finished our second year doing a program for Adult Summer Reading on August 17, 2010.  We had a few events associated with it; author talks, book chats, and a final literary tea.  It went well for our first time combining program with adult summer reading.




We did a little shifting of the audiobooks and checked the labeling.




I also checked out Starting an Online Business All In One For Dummies 2nd Edition by Shannon Belew and Joel Elad.  Hopefully it will explain valuation for online setups.  It is 814 pages long.  The book so far is a basic outline of how to start online.




 I read some more of Bring On the Books For Everybody by Jim Collins.  He is talking about how literature is becoming a source of deep personal satisfaction.  He cites Harold Bloom with his book How To Read And Why.  We get a lot of copies of Blooms Notes which are like Cliffs Notes   except for with Harold Blooms name on them.  When I checked the index there was no citation for librarian as a subject.  However, he did have a section on Nancy Pearl.

Wandering Thoughts 7/18/209 ( Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg )

Franz Kafka 1906 Photographer Unknown

Daily Thoughts 7/18/2009

I was watching Fleischer studios Popeye this morning while doing my floor exercises. Something which I learned was that Popeye is quite often set in Manhattan. In the cartoon King of the Mardi Gras, Bluto makes a reference to Coney meaning Coney Island. Betty Boop has a Brooklyn, New York accent, also produced by the Fleischer brothers, and the early Superman cartoons look like they are set in New York in the 1930s. I find the idea rather interesting.

Last night, I read some more of Say Everything. This time the book was discussing journalism. Are bloggers journalists? Does my conference coverage count as journalism? Or my coverage of library events or visits to bookstores? The very nature of the First Amendment in the United State means anyone has the freedom to publish their thoughts. Blogs are syndicated content. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a form of syndication. Most blogs have this. Unlike "real journalists", bloggers don't have to be stuck on todays news. They can beat a dead horse and obsess on any subject they like. I don't pretend to have journalistic aspirations, but I do know that I have a professional knowledge of books.

Maw Books invited me to Book Blogger Appreciation Week on Septembr 14th- September 18th http://bookbloggerappreciationweek.com/ . I signed up as Anon Ymous , another variation which works is Sue Doe Nim.

Thinking back to Spanish language literature, there is also Schoenhof's in the United States. The selection looks quite interesting. http://www.schoenhofs.com/Spanish_Literature_s/1400.htm

I had a chance to finish reading Say Everything by Scott Rosenbrg this afternoon. I especially like a quote from P. 319, "We publish then filter. Say everything first; ask questions later." Scott Rosenberg is referring to an inversion in the publishing process where anyone can practically publish many things over the web. There is often no way to know whether it is good o not until you look at it. This is the opposite of editing first. Now, to filter out the junk you often turn to blogs and social networks to choose what is good. Those blogs with higher ratings get read more. We also turn to services like Twitter to pick out blogs or news stories which are interesting. There are many places exactly like this. I use the Ning Bookblogs group and Blogcatalog for this. On a more professional level, I use American Library Association Connect and Linked In.

This book does a very good job of both providing a history of blogging as well as give a much better understanding of the purpose of blogging. It is not a how to book, there are no tips and tricks. However, it does give many examples of the best and most historied blogs. The notes section has lots of citations from the internet. It is very much a list of some of the best posts on blogs.