Thing #14

The 14th “Thing” in our library’s program to do 23 Web 2.0 activities is to explore www.technorati.com.  It’s a site where you can search blogs.

I had some fun with it, searching for my own posts.  I did not find the Great Falls post I posted most recently, but I did find my goodreads post.  It was fun to look for authors I have recently quoted on Sonderquotes and find other people quoting the same authors.

Then I looked up a title of a book I just checked out, Keturah and Lord Death.  It came highly recommended on the YALSA-Book Listserv, and I thought it would be interesting to find bloggers reading YA literature.

Sure enough, I really like the sound of one of the first blogs I looked at–“Jane on Books,” (http://janeonbooks.edublogs.org/)  with the subtitle–“I Love Kids’ Books.”  I’m going to have to start following that blog….

But wait, there’s more!

The Librarian Soul: http://sonjjjah.wordpress.com/

Talking Teen Books: http://talkingteenbooks.blogspot.com/

Everything Under the Sun: http://everythingunderthesun-booklady.blogspot.com/

The Book Blog: http://anderson8th.blogspot.com/

Book Trail: http://booktrail.blogspot.com/

Pell Mel:  http://melindamorley.com/blog/

So Many Books, So Little Time: http://tannergirl.livejournal.com/

Liz’s Book Buzz: http://lizsbookbuzz.blogspot.com/

Wow!  I was only getting started!  I think I like this method of finding blogs I will enjoy following.  Probably too much.  It’s not like I need more blogs to follow!  But I did want to add to the Blogroll on my site, and I think I’ve hit on a good method.

Oh, by the way, everyone enjoyed the book!

Great Falls

My son and I went to Great Falls, on the Potomac, the Saturday before last.  It was hot, it was crowded — but there’s something about the outdoors, and there’s something about waterfalls.  I’ll include some pictures.

GreatFalls1.jpg

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Kayakers out on the river.

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The water’s very low, so more rocks are showing than usual.

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I saw this bird — An egret? — on a rock in the river.

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Here’s the bird flying away.

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The Falls from another outlook point.

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Better than LibraryThing?

I just found another site for cataloging your books–www.goodreads.com.  It is positioned as social networking for readers.

It seems very similar to LibraryThing.com.  However–and this is a big however–it doesn’t seem to charge you after you’ve entered 200 books.  It does allow you to post reviews and rate your books and all that good stuff.

I’m curious–Do people out there have an opinion on www.goodreads.com as opposed to www.librarything.com?  I’m thinking perhaps I should make a goodreads account and post my reviews to that site as well…  But I will probably only go with one of those two sites, and I already know of a few friends who use librarything.  What do you all think?

Thing #13

Our 13th of 23 Things for my library’s “Learning 2.0” program is to explore http://del.icio.us and tagging.

However, they didn’t want us to install del.icio.us buttons on our work computers, so it seemed to me that kind of defeated the purpose.  The idea is to tag your bookmarks–the more easily to find them later.  I’ll have to try it on my computer at home.  I do like the idea.

I was interested in the articles I read about tagging.  Especially so because next week, I’m starting a graduate class called “Content Representation.”  It’s about indexing.  I’ve already started doing a little bit of the reading.  It seems to me that tagging on websites is like a grand indexing project done by laypeople.  You won’t have standard terms used, but the sheer power of hundreds of thousands of people doing it will create some useful links.

It’s going to be interesting to see if my Content Representation class talks about how wildly popular tagging has become.

One of the articles–I can’t seem to find it now–said that the strength of Google’s gmail is that they allow you to tag e-mails rather than assign them to only one folder.

When an item can only be in one folder, that’s hierarchal organization.  But with tags, you don’t have to stick to a hierarchy.  You can assign multiple tags to each file.

I’m loving this aspect of tags with my book reviews.  I still have my main site, www.sonderbooks.com, organized in a hierarchy.  I have reviews divided into groups:  Nonfiction, Fiction, Teen Fiction, Children’s Fiction, Children’s Nonfiction, and Picture Books.  Within those categories, I have the books divided by genre.  But I can only put each book into one genre.  What do I do with the Thursday Next books, which are part Science Fiction, part Fantasy, part Humor, part Mystery, and part Literary Farce?  I think I chose Science Fiction, but it was a tough choice.

Enter tags.  Now I have a blog alongside my site, at www.sonderbooks.com/blog/.  In the blog, I post the reviews as well–but now I can tag them according to multiple characteristics.  Lovely!

In Memory of Madeleine L’Engle

I was saddened to read, a few moments ago, that Madeleine L’Engle has died, at the age of 88.

I’m not sad for her.  I’m sure she’s gone on to a glorious adventure in heaven.  I’m selfishly sad that there will be no more wonderful books coming from her pen.  And sad that I never got to meet her–someone who has affected my life deeply with her wonderful words.

Children’s Writers

I’ve decided that people who write for children and young adults are an extremely intelligent bunch.

I’m reading my new issue of The Horn Book Magazine, and this month it’s got many short essays by children’s writers on gender issues.  I’m struck afresh by how brilliant these people are.

There was an interview with Jon Scieszka.  The man is wonderfully funny, and his books are full of boyish pranks (no surprise to learn he’s from a family of all boys).  But how amazingly insightful he is as well.  Part of why I love reading Horn Book Magazine is that big issues are dealt with in a thought-provoking, powerful way.

Then I realize it’s not the first time I’ve heard wisdom from children’s writers.  Susan Patron’s Newbery Acceptance Speech.  David Wiesner’s Caldecott Acceptance Speech.  Okay, every single author I heard speak at ALA–and for the Printz Awards, even the Honor winners had to speak.  Then there’s John and Hank Green’s Brotherhood 2.0 site–full of tremendously clever, tremendously funny, nerdy humor.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that people who can express profound truths through fiction also turn out to be deep thinkers.

Thing # 12

Okay, I just did the 12th “Thing” for my work’s 23 Things program:  Create your own Search Roll.

I made two.  One searches yarn shops.  After all, if there’s a specific yarn I’m looking for, I like to see who has it (or the equivalent) for the lowest price.  That’s at: 

http://rollyo.com/sondysue/my_yarn_shops/
I also did a search for several blogs that cover children’s books.  That search roll is: http://rollyo.com/sondysue/my_childrens_lit_blogs/

Could be useful, but usually I’ll just search the sites individually…. 

School Schedules

It was easier to have a kid in school when I wasn’t working.

Tonight I got the school schedule for my son starting 8th grade.  In the first month, there are already four days where I will have to move around my work hours to accommodate school stuff.  Urghh!

Math Counts is the only after school activity which I have the faintest hope of getting my son to participate in.  Fortunately, this year the Math Counts coach knows about him–so I’m hoping she can keep him from skipping it and saying, “I forgot.”  🙂  He’s completed Geometry and is good at Math, so I think he could enjoy this.  But they start September 19th–and the late buses don’t start until October–so there are 2 times I will need to reschedule my work hours.

Back to School Night is held at 7 pm, so working parents should be able to go.  Unfortunately, they picked Thursday night, which is the one night per week that I work.

Then, the first Wednesday in October, they’ve scheduled a parent information meeting about the local magnet high school.  It’s supposed to be strong in science and technology, and so might be just the thing for my Nerdfighter son.  The meeting’s from 3 to 4:30, however.

Still, I only work half-time, and my boss is very supportive and accommodating.

And the truth is, when I think back to last year, even though I wasn’t working, things were a whole lot more stressful.  We weren’t in our apartment yet and didn’t have our household goods, but were living in my friend’s basement–so we had to register as Homeless!  We had to buy all new school supplies.  I was trying to get my older son ready to start college in Florida.  I was trying to get myself ready to start online graduate school.

Yeah, okay, I’d rather be settled in and working!

Thing #11

I’m back at work, continuing in the “23 Things” program.

For Thing 11, I tried out Library Thing.  My account is at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/SondySue.

Library Thing is a site to catalog your library books.  A fun idea!  You can catalog 200 books for free–seems like a kind of piddly amount.  Still, for $25 you can get a lifetime subscription and catalog as many as you want.

One fun thing about this–After cataloging five books, I decided to see what books Library Thing would recommend I should read next.  Sure enough, most of the books listed are ones I already have–and love.  But the first one was new to me–so I’m going to check it out and read it–the comments do make it sound like a book I’d like.

So, the question is:  Is Library Thing worth it for someone who has a bad habit of buying books?  Would I really even begin to get them entered?  Would it maybe embarrass me and help me finally control my book-buying?

I do have my own system of keeping track of my books–and I review everything I read (Well, okay, I’m a year behind–but I try!) on www.sonderbooks.com.  Library Thing could be interesting in “meeting” people who enjoy the same books, but I’m not sure I have time or interest in keeping it up….  Maybe I will enter some more books, or maybe enter books as I review them, and see what I think.

I Love Libraries!

Today our branch manager mentioned that last month our juvenile circulation was up by 40%.  She said she believed this was because a second children’s librarian and I have been added to the staff.  When the library only had one person in the children’s department, she naturally wasn’t able to keep the children’s desk manned.  Now we have someone sitting among the children’s books almost all the time.

It felt good to be told that my presence has made a difference.  Sometimes I sit back there and feel like I’m only getting the opportunity to smile at babies, hear clever children read, and start the computer for kids.  Fun for me, but is it helping anyone?

But yesterday I got to help a Dad find summer reading books for his first grader.  I got to find more train books for our little friend Miles.  And I even got to help my friend Darlene’s adorable children find books to check out.

(I know my former boss will wonder if the stats are up simply because I use that library now.  However, I’ve been checking out more YA books than Juvenile ones, honest!)

And really, even if I don’t hand them a book, surely it’s a good thing to win the heart of a toddler, as I got the chance to do today, simply by smiling at him.  The mother was one of our many, many immigrant patrons, and I think she felt a little more welcome when I obviously thought her son was adorable.

I do love libraries.  You get to meet parents who care about their kids enough to read to them.  You get to share amazing books with amazing kids.  It was nice to be reminded today how privileged I am to work at a library.  Also nice to hear that my having fun at the library might even be making a difference!