My delicious bookmarks for 2009-07-02

• The Book Seer
  Get book recommendations from Amazon & LibraryThing

More of my links

My delicious bookmarks for 2009-07-01

• Zazzle
  Custom T-Shirts, Posters, Art and more…

More of my links

My delicious bookmarks for 2009-06-29

• RSS Readers – e-mail

More of my links

My book is now available!

I have been working on a project for some time that has kept my writing more in Scrivener files and Word documents than this blog. And that project is finally available for others to see. My book, So You Want To Be A Librarian, is out! You can see the (very fun and relevant) cover here:

I’ve also started a blog to go along with the book, aimed at providing information for people interested in the field. If you’re interested in that, you’ll see more action over there in the near future. If you know of people who might be interested, please point them in that direction!

If you’d like to see the book, would like buy a copy, get it signed, or would just like to say hi, I’ll be at the Library Juice Press booth in the exhibits at the ALA Conference in Chicago.You can find me at booth 1637, Exhibits Hall, McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago at 10am, Sunday, July 12, 2009. There’s even a Facebook group if you’d like to RSVP.   If you’d like to order a copy for someone you know who seems like a future librarian, you can now order it from Amazon.

I’m thrilled with the final product and am so happy to have been able to do something like this. Working with Rory Litwin was great and Library Juice Press is a top notch operation. Speaking of which, Litwin Books/Library Juice Press’s 2009 catalog just came out, and is filled with books that I’m adding to my Amazon wishlist. You should check it out, too.

Writing a book was an entirely new experience for me. I am a big projects type of person, always adding to the list and rarely turning down something that sounds promising. This was the biggest one that I’ve taken on alone without being part of a committee or group. The process was longer than I expected it to be, much more all-consuming, and I learned a lot about myself in the process of working on it. I even went through a period where I could only read graphic novels because reading others’ text-based books became a bit too stressful. As with any project that is life altering in these ways, it made the completion of it all the more rewarding. And when the box of author’s copies showed up on my doorstop, I was beside myself.

My parents have reminded me that as soon as I could read, I proclaimed that I wanted to write a book, so it’s especially exciting to me to have done so. And it’s even more exciting that perhaps it can help our field in some way. Since getting into librarianship I’ve been interested in mentoring, even starting up a mentoring program for my library school while I was in the student association. I see this book as an extension of that part of my interests. It’s pretty basic. The book was designed to give an overview for those just getting started. I tried my best to address both traditional and evolving aspects of the field to paint a realistic picture for those who might be interested. We also aimed for a length that would be long enough to have some depth while short enough to not be intimidating.

There are also several interviews featuring perspectives from other librarians. Sue Kimmel, Kim Duckett, Amy Kearns, Rachel Walden, Mary Cimato, Ellie Collier, Melissa Rethlefsen, Courtney Stephens, Kathleen Burlingame, Audra Eagle, Cat McDowell, and Cliff Landis all contributed interviews to this book. (If you have a link you’d rather me use, let me know!) And the book is better for having multiple perspectives.

So, expect to see me in this space a little bit more, as this project has wrapped up (and a few more are wrapping up in the wings). I’m so pleased to have been able to work on this project, and I’m hoping it’s helpful for those who are thinking about entering the field. Please let me know if you have questions!

My delicious bookmarks for 2009-06-28

• Twitter Guide Book – How To, Tips and Instructions by Mashable
• Six technologies soon to affect education

More of my links

Update: My personal journey into ebooks

Back in March I wrote a longish post about “My personal journey into ebooks.” Things have since changed so I feel that I ought to add some commentary to those thoughts.

As a caveat, these comments only pertain to me, at least as intended. They may apply to you as an individual reader but I do not intend for them to be generalized.

I have for all intents and purposes currently quit reading ebooks on my Touch. None of the issues I mentioned in the original post are the issue though. Simply put …

I came to the realization that the circumstances in which I was using my Touch to read books were not good circumstances in which to do so. Other than as stated in my previous post, and to no greater extent, there are no interface issues that have brought about this change.

Context: I was reading books on my Touch during bus rides to and from campus, waiting for the bus at the end of the day, and at lunch. My bus rides are about 10 minutes long and my average and usual bus wait is 10 minutes.

Trying to read while watching for the correct bus or the correct stop does not make for quality reading. Perhaps if I had a longer bus ride reading on the bus would be better. But I don’t. So I quit.

[I have also not been reading much in the way of print lately either but for other reasons. I am trying to get back in the swing since between all the other things I have going on I do need to "relax" and sustained reading is good for that.]

Today I did start reading from my Touch again at lunch (The Importance of Being Earnest). Lunch is a longer sustained period than the bus waiting/riding and it is easier to choose my stopping point so retention is greatly improved. Also, truth be told, it is easier to read from the Touch at lunch than a print book. It lays flat and stays open with no problems. If I need to eat with my fingers it becomes a small problem but I eat at a place where I need a fork (or chopsticks) most days of the week.

I have no aversion to reading on my Touch at home if need be and I will on occasion. But then I also have several 100s of print books here that need reading (A very conservative estimate).

I did read several more books than those mentioned in my earlier post before I quit using the Touch to do so. Assuming I can find more sources of free books for the Touch I imagine I will continue to use it for reading at times where I can have a semi-sustained reading experience but it is inconvenient to carry a print book.

So I guess the main point is I realized that the situations in which I was trying to read ebooks were generally not good for reading for me.  It was the situations and not ebooks or the Touch itself that caused me to quit. I will just have to see where it goes from here.

Twitter for Libraries

I have been asked to give a few workshops on the value of Twitter to libraries and librarians. So far, I have collected a series of articles and guides and wanted to share the list with you all.

• 5 ways for libraries to fail at Twitter
• 5 terrific twitter research tools
• How twitter will change the way we live
• Twitter your books to LibraryThing
• Twitter & its value to librarians
• Tweetworthy Twitter Policy
• How Twitter can Make History
• Companies take time to Twitter
• Twitter for Libraries
• Conference twittering
• Twitter Mindmap

Please feel free to recommend other links I should read or share with my students.

Technorati Tags: twitter

This is how it’s done

Calling all library conference organizers!  Please look at this website:  http://thatcamp.org/

This is one of the friendliest conference websites I’ve seen in a long, long time.  Why?

The When, What, and Who are neatly laid out in the top navigation bar (as “Schedule” “Blog” and “Campers” respectively).

The conference’s name could not be clearer – front and center on the main page with the acronym spelled out and a very brief description underneath.  Wonderful!

The home page is simple:  navbar, info, blog and twitter.  That’s it.  The other pages are also neat and clean, with the schedule laid out in a simple table and the Campers all presented with little icons for eye-candy and plenty of white-space to make for easy skimming.

The only things I would do differently:

Put the Campers in some sort of order (!) … are they in any order?  I know the alphabet is arbitrary but it’s better than nothing.

Create a “Trends” tab that gives some auto-generated visuals of the current hot topics — such as a tag cloud from the blog or a Wordle cloud from the tweets.  Some sort of topic browsing somewhere would be nice as a way to filter the information from those lucky, enthusiastic campers. 

I must say the website alone makes me a little jealous, but the content coming out of THATCamp *really* makes me wish I was there.  All sorts of fascinating questions coming up!  I only wish I had time to follow it all.  Keep up the great talks, THATCampers.

irrational superstition survives in me

from Milan Kundera’s, The Joke,
Czech: 1967 / English: 1992, Harper Perennial

p. 164

“… I only asked with a calm (and well-rested) heart: why did I meet her? what did the encounter mean and what was it trying to tell me?
Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to me also has a sense, that it means something, that life speaks to us about itself through its story, that it gradually reveals a secret, that it takes the form of a rebus whose message must be deciphered, that the stories we live comprise the mythology of our lives and in that mythology lies the key to truth and mystery. Is it an illusion? Possibly, even probably, but I can’t rid myself of the need continually to decipher my own life.”

Me:  But more specifically, I want to decipher the now of my life as it is happening.  Some things I have deciphered – long after the thing passed and was just ready to be forgotten completely.  But that doesn’t satisfy.  I want the sense of right now, the meaning of right here.

Now for something random

The good:
…this quote from a news story I read this morning:

“The rarest of all commodities in this world is love. It is that thing that we all yearn for at some level — to be simply loved unconditionally for nothing more than who we are — not what we can get, give or become.”

The bad:
It’s from the S.C. governor who admitted to having an affair with an Argentinian woman.

The ugly:
Their emails to each other have been made into a news story ( http://www.thestate.com/sanford/story/839350.html )  and what sounded like a very beautiful relationship has come to an end because of politics.  I actually feel very bad for the man.  He certainly made a lot of bad decisions but I think the worst one was choosing to go back to the career and give up the love. When he says he spent a week crying in Argentina… I kinda believe him.