Daily Thoughts 3/2/2009

Joseph Skelton (1888-1893)
A Forgotten Author
Oil on board

Daily Thoughts 3/2/2009

Today it was snowing very hard outside. I took the train up to the White Plains Supreme Court Law Library to do a tour. A gentleman there showed me and my new colleague around the law library. It was a very interesting experience.

Recently, the size of the White Plains Supreme Court Law Library collection was reduced. They had to move from having a full floor for their collection to a section of the floor, one third the size. To do this, they now have twelve workstations for patrons with Loislaw, Lexis, and Hein for their subscription. They seriously reduced the number of federal print books and focused on keeping their New York law books in print. They also only keep the most recent copies of the print journals and rely on Hein for most of their journal subscriptions on the database. Keeping lots of paper is not an option for them anymore.

I found the collection to be fascinating. It shed a new light on our collection. There was also the Office of the Self Represented which was in the same office as the White Plains Supreme Court Law Library for New York state. They were there to help people with legal information for people who did not have a lawyer. This was not legal advice, but forms for things like how to change your name, file a motion, register your case and similar things. We took a set of forms for our library to keep. One of the forms listed many of the agencies which provided pro bono work for people.

Two books were waiting for me when I came in, Haunted Heart The Life and Times of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak and Words In Your Face A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz.

On the way home, I read some of The Sword by Deborah Chester. It is a fantasy novel. I almost finished reading it. The trains were very slow because of the snow.

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.