Daily Thoughts 2/23/2009

Salomon De Bray (1597-1664)
Book and Picture Shop
Pen and ink, 1628
29 7/8 x 29 7/8 inches (76 x 76 cm)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Daily Thoughts 2/23/3009

I was on vacation this last week. I go back to work today. I am looking forward to it. I like what I am doing. Hopefully everything is going well. As I came back to work today, I realized that there were many more people coming into the library than usual. The economy may be down, but library usage seems to be going up considerably.

There was a stack magazines waiting for me on my desk; Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Searcher. I found two articles from my reading to be particularly interesting. The first was Is That A Computer In Your Pocket The Incredible Shrinking Computer by Robert Oppenheim, Searcher The Magazine For Database Professions, February 2009, P.12. This was about smartphones and how information professionals might use them. Apparently the Hoovers Database is available via smartphones. We just started a new subscription to Hoovers online. The second article I found particularly interesting was Step Into The Digital Future by Judith Rosen, Publishers Weekly, February 16, 2009 Pp. 17-19. This article was about the different new ereaders; Plastic Logic, Kindle, and the Stanza software for the Iphone.

In addition to stacks of magazines, I had a few books which I had put on hold waiting at the circulation desk, Regenesis by C.J. Cherryh and The Caryattids by Bruce Sterling. I returned all the books and videos I had checked out for my vacation.

When I got back I checked my phone as well. I will be going to The White Plains Supreme Court Law Library on Monday with two of my colleagues to take a tour of their library. They have a special office there called The Office of the Self Represented.

Everything seemed to be in order when I got back. Both of the Sunday Matinees for family films were shown and the workshop on using computers for business on Wednesday went well. I also had a chance to call and arrange for a poetry workshop on April 29m 2009 for National Poetry Month. As part of my focus on poetry, I checked out another book, Aloud! Voices From The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, edited by Miguel Algarin and Bob Holman. The book won the 1994 American Book Award. I started reading it on the train home. The book has a kind of smooth flavor to it; much more intense than beat peotry.

During my vacation, I tested out some of my old skills. For a while, I was doing human resources sourcing for a new defunct internet service provider during the dot com boom. I looked for philanthropists in our county, corporate donors who gave to libraries, and local library foundations. I searched the internet, newsgroups, blog search engines, and magazine and newspaper databases to find people. It was like peeling the rust from a door hinge.

Tomorrow, I am going to go through the city paper and one of the county papers to look for the same thing. The online city paper is only for two months and we have the complete run for a couple years in our periodicals department. I put another book on hold related to this kind of activity, Fundraising for Libraries: 25 Proven Ways to Get More Money For Your Library by James Swan.

Daily Thoughts 2/21/2009, Magazine Reading

This is a photograph of renowned Egyptian novelist,Naguib Mahfouz. I find his writing to be exceptionally beautiful. It is poignant and well worth reading.

I put The Claws That Catch by Travis S. Taylor and John Ringo on hold at my local library.

I took a short walk up to my local library. It takes me about fifteen minutes walking uphill to get there. My doctor has asked me to do some mildly aerobic exercise two to three times a week, so I kind of count this as such. This is in addition to the 25 minutes of floor exercises I do each night from Yoga RX. I picked up a copy of How To Disagree Without Being Disagreeable by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D.. She is the author of The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense. Hopefully this will be of some use.

This article from Information Week which interviews Tim O'Reilly, may give you a better sense of the changes in the publishing world which are coming very quickly. Most libraries are not ready for this. Many are not even aware that it is happening. http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/02/tim_oreilly_unp.html

Magazine Reading

I am on a routing list at work for magazines. Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and Searcher are routed to me every single month. On occassion, I will also read The New York Review of Books because of the quality reviews it gives.

When I have time, I will read Wired Magazine online http://www.wired.com/ . I also read Locus Magazine online http://www.locusmag.com/ , Bookselling This Week http://www.bookweb.org/ , I like the reviews section of the online version of http://www.libraryjournal.com/ . Mostly, I read magazines that give reviews of books and other material. I actually prefer reading magazines online.

I think in some ways, blogs are replacing many magazines. I still like the feel of paper. I don't like tearing up or marking magazines that much. Although, occassionally, I will mark a review which I like a lot.

Afternoon Thoughts

Michelozzo Di Bartolomeo Library 1396-1472, Marble 1437-1451, Convent of San Marco, Florence. A different view of what a library looks like. Books were rarer then.

Afternoon Thoughts

I am on vacation next week for Thanksgiving week. I'll probably go visit relatives and eat turkey and stuffing until I am bursting. In a way, I am looking forward to it.

This morning, I wrote my monthly annual report because I am gone next week. I also did a little bit of organizing files. I am about half way through my files. There is the usual clean up of small things to make sure everything goes smooth when I am on vacation.

This morning, I got up very early and the trains ran perfectly, too perfectly. I got to work a little early so I spent a few minutes drinking tea and reading the Daily News waiting for the building to open.

I put in a small order for financial literacy books, then tried to convince my boss to order some monster movies unsuccessfully. He was willingly to do a few Godzilla films, but that was it.

I also did a small amount of weeding. The head of the library might want me to pick up the pace on weeding so we have more space.

Right now, I have three books which came in for me, The Green Collar Economy How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones, The Ten Roads To Riches by Ken Fisher, and The Host by Stephenie Meyer. I also picked up another book, Big Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell because of an article in Bookselling this Week, http://news.bookweb.org/6431.html

It was rather interesting. I learned that U.S. News and World Report will no longer be in paper next year, PC Magazine is also going to online only in January 2009, The Christian Science Monitor in 2009 will only be available as an online edition. These are big changes for the world of magazines. I guess the online world is thoroughly shaking up the magazine business.

More people use the computers to look up information than read magazines right now. I can imagine as the technology for blogs and websites get cheaper and more accessible, many magazines will go the way of the dinosaurs.

The only magazine I ever subscribed to online was Consumer Reports. I did it when I was buying a car. I didn't renew the subscription, but I found it to be quite useful. It is articles like this which make Consumer Reports a great resource. How to save $500 a month.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/money/personal-investing/saving-money/overview/saving-money-ov.htm

Poetry, Thoughts

Poetry

I am in a poetic angry mood. I could write all afternoon. I don't know if anyone will actually read this. When my feelings are burning I write.

Spaghetti Western Gunman

Lone man silhouetted in leather hat draws gun and fires.
blam blam blam.

Down crumples man in black blood running magenta red
cough cough cough

Dirty uncurling fingers drop steel revolver...
thump thump thump

Lone man boots track across the desert floor.
click click click

Looking down at corpse he gets harmonica and blows
wah wah wah

Thoughts

I am still thinking about the New Yorker. Despite its claim to represent the average American, the readership of the magazine is much richer per household than the average American family or $80,957 annual combined income in 2005 compared to a national average of $51,466. This shows how far from the roots of the average American family that this magazine is. It was originally published in the 1930s to sell in New York to sell to upper middle class families aspiring to be rich and cultured. As such, the style of the stories is aimed at that particular demographic. It has a feeling of pretentiousness to me which often comes from social climbers. It is effectively a yuppie magazine before there were yuppies.

The majority of the magazines readership is in California and New York, both democratically oriented states. If our library was in Chappaqua, New York, or possibly Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, it might be an appropriate place to look for reviews for our readership. I've said it before, I am not a fan of this magazine. The quality of the writing and choice authors are not in question. It is the style aimed at the readership. Also, the Obama cover bothered me a bit. I did not like it. Harold Ross, the founder of the New Yorker would have approved of the Obama cover, he was that kind of guy.