Daily Thoughts 3/20/2009

Evert A. Duyckinick, Portrait Gallery of Eminent Men and Women in Europe and America. New York: Johnson, Wilson & Company, 1873.

Daily Thoughts 3/20/2009

This is a nice little article on the first color ebook reader. http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/03/worlds-first-co.html

Today had a few unexpected things. I went over shelving with the library aides and the person managing shelving. I reminded them that all the books should be edged; one half inch from edge of the bookshelves and even. There should be no books lying on top of the other books. At the end of each shelf there should be a hands breadth; four to six inches of empty space left at the end of each shelf. When the books are not edged, it is often hard to see the spine labels. When the books are too tightly packed together, it breaks the spine of the book and causes books to split in half.

I also walked around and looked at the shelving to check for repairs and sections of books that were out of order. This is called "walking the shelves". It looks like I am walking back and forth systematically between the aisles and looking over the bookshelves from top to bottom. It is more than doing individual shelf reading where you check to see if individual books are out of order.

I am going to be selecting extra pieces with a colleague for the slat wall displays that are going up for new books. This should be interesting. We also got new book detection systems for the library.

I went to a meeting at city hall for Earth Day which is April 22, 2009. The main focus of the discussion seemed to be neighborhood cleanup and recycling. They wanted civic organizations to adopt blocks for neighborhood cleanup. The largest church had agreed to do some pickup of trash and light painting around our neighborhood. We do need it. They are also asking us to do something for Arbor Day. I am planning a display of environmental books for Earth Day. Also, it is about the time for planting flowers.

I read some more of Social Software In Libraries. The author was going into areas which we have not done yet, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), VOIP (Internet Telephony), screen capture software, instant messaging reference, vodcasting, podcasting, and a wide assortment of technology. There is a tremendous amount to think about in this book.

Overwhelmed.

Pay attention to what you say and do.

Overwhelmed

My boss asked me to come into work today because there was no one in the building from our department. I did it. It is probably a mistake. I'm still a bit under the weather.

Still, I think I am doing alright, not great, but alright. I'm trying to focus on light duties. I filed the monthly report, ordered some annual reports, and read the New York Times Book Review. The New York Times Book Review was advertising a new Neil Gaiman book, The Graveyard Book. It is a novel for middle graders. Most all of his books have been for teenagers and adults, so this is something new.

I also read the New York Times Bestseller list and put Killing Sacred Cows, Overcoming The Financial Myths That Are Destroying Your Prosperity on Hold by Garrett B. Gunderson.

It took me a while to pick out books on the financial crisis for the display stand. There are a huge number of subjects the books can fall under; social security, short selling, mortgages, bad debts, politics, economics, globalization, government corruption, hedge fund trading, banking, predatory lending, financial crisis, and recession are just a few of the subjects.

There are many different books which seem to touch on the financial crisis the United States is in. It seems to reach into many corners of the collection. It is not just one cause, if you start looking for information on the financial crisis, it becomes a tangled web that spreads its fingers into every aspect of finance.

I am not surprised by the failure of the initial bailout. It never addressed the people on main street who are the ones who will hurt most. In the last bailout in the United States, the 1988 Savings and Loan bailout, there was not so much information available to everyone. Now, it is impossible to hide. You get it from the news, from the government, from books, from the internet, and many other places.

People have started checking out items from the book display stand. I think the display will do well.

I filed some more Bender's Forms for the Civil Practice in the law collection. I am almost caught up with my law filing. I like it when most of the looseleafs are done.

Things are a lot more caught up than before. I think I accomplished a lot this month. I think I'm starting to feel a little better.

I like to walk around my sections and check to see if everything is in order. I pick up magazines, books and other things and put them on the sorting carts. I do quick checks to see if books are out of order or lying on top of the shelves. Sometimes, I find soda cans, or candy wrappers lying around. I checked the clipboards of the government jobs to see if they were up to date, cleaned off the old flyers from the job information center bulletin boards, and neatened things up a bit.

I got the top image from this list of resources. I do like it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources

There is a new incarnation for the Society of Midnight Wanderers. It has a nice new interface.

http://mwsociety.wordpress.com/