Daily Thoughts 8/26/2010 ingram, the facebook era, acquisitions

KAST kast designed by Marcel Douwe Dekker in 1992: The KAST kast is a interior sculpture build with the letters K, A, S, T on their side (This picture was first published in Viva magazine The Netherlands, 18 sept 1992), Creative Commons Share Alike Attribution 3.0




Daily Thoughts 8/26/2010

It is interesting times again.  My library is going to be open on Sundays for half a day instead of a full day Saturday.  http://www.lohud.com/article/20100826/NEWS02/8260346/Yonkers--Mount-Vernon-public-libraries-may-remain-closed-on-Saturdays-in-fall




Today I talked to two other libraries about Ingram which is a distributor.  People have used them for standing order plans and to get new books.  Apparently, they have very fast turnaround time in delivering new material.  It is something to consider.  Ingram uses BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications)  for their classification scheme which is what is used by the publishing industry and bookstores. Public libraries tend to use the Dewey Decimal classification scheme, and academic libraries in the United States use Library of Congress classification.




I also spent some time updating the Bookletters web page for recommended widgets, created a form for tracking missing items and made sure the new book displays were in order.  Today went very smoothly.




I read a little more of the Facebook Era.  The author is writing about how to create connections in networks like Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter.




I am considering taking the Fundamentals of Acquisitions Class in September.  It is a four week course.
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webcourse/foa/syll.cfm

Daily Thoughts 6/8/2010

Joseph Conrad, 1916

Daily Thoughts 6/8/2010

Today has been a quiet day. I worked a little bit on the Bookletters page, we are almost ready to post the first example to our website which should be interesting. I also worked with a colleague on writing a bookmark for books in Spanish in our collection. I have a couple of periodicals to read, Booklist and Library Journal. I also did a search for books to be sent out on the book mobile. The book mobile stops at the armory which is mainly older folks. I usually get requests for history, biography of actors and politicians, World War II, art, mysteries, and bestselling fiction. There is an occassional request for family sagas.

Last night, I finished reading Rex Riders which was a lot of fun to read. I'll write a review of it later this week. Right now, I am reading Drive The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Daniel H. Pink writes a lot about intrinsic motivation; autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Things which don't fit easily into a top down command structure based on managers and workers. He is making an argument that many new jobs that are being created have artistry built into them and don't follow the reward and motivational structure of modern corporations. He also tells us that 18 million Americans are self employed as well as 11 million Americans work from home at least occassionally. This makes the top down command structure not work very well in many jobs. So far, the book is quite interesting.

Daily Thoughts 5/18/2010

Jan Baptist Weenix Portrait of Rene Descartes, Circa 1647-1649

Daily Thoughts 5/18/2010

I spent some time in the morning changing the layout and background of my blog. I am using Blogger in Draft which allows a variety of new features and upcoming templates to be used for blogs. It is a kind of beta testing tool for new features. http://draft.blogger.com/ . I am hoping that it makes my blog look better.

I also spent some time going over Bookletters http://www.bookletters.com/ with the childrens room so we could have some book widgets for the childrens area. Also, there are two new biography signs in the biography area. I am going to work with a colleague on creating a few dewey decimal banners to put up.

We are working on shifting in the storage area and I have started weeding in the short story collection. Things are moving along smoothly. Things are starting to look a little more organized. Tomorrow, I have the graphic novels club.

Guy Gavriel Kay has a new novel coming out Under Heaven which is a fantasy set in ancient China during the Tang dynasty. It should be quite intriguing.

Looking forward to going to the Book Blogger Convention on May 28, 2010 after the Book Expo America convention. http://bookbloggerconvention.com/in-the-news/

Daily Thoughts 5/14/2010

Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire (BNU) National University and Library Strasbourg, France, Room 4, Main Reading Room, Image listed as public domain on Wikimedia

Daily Thoughts 5/14/2010

I was looking at the Book Expo America exhibitor list and I noticed that Powell's book which is the largest bookstore in the world in Portland, Oregon has also become a distributor Powell's Books Wholesale
http://www.powellsbookswholesale.com/ . I find this rather interesting, because Strand Bookstore is also distributing books to libraries http://www.strandbooks.com/app/www/p/libserv/ . It seems as the giant independents grow in the United States, they are also expanding into the wholesaling books. I like looking at Powell's and the Strand because they have many titles which I cannot find in Amazon, Baker and Taylor, and many other companies. They stock a lot of obscure and academic titles.

Today has been pretty quiet. I have been working a bit on signage and shifting books in the storage area. There is an African American Books festival this Saturday so I had some more bookmarks printed, printed up some flyers for the graphic novels club and the poetry club for promotion. We are working on putting together a Bookletters page as well.

A few graphic novels came in today that look interesting; Halo Helljumper, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight graphic novel, and Penny Century by Jaime Hermandez. I am cutting bookmarks printed from card stock right now. I have three bookmarks I am looking at one for inspirational Fiction, another on graphic novels, and another on writing books.

I started reading War At The Wall Street Journal Inside The Struggle to Control An American Business Empire by Sarah Ellison. The book focuses on the people and families in the story. It is character driven. The characters are people like Rupert Murdoch, Peter Kann, the Bancroft family, and Arthur Sulzberger. The names are of the people who run the big media conglomerates.

My book for the Readers Advisory 101 class was delivered today, Readers Advisory Service in the Public Library, Third Edition by Joyce G. Saricks.

Daily Thoughts 5/11/2010

All Over the World Library, Clifton Johnson

Daily Thoughts 5/11/2010

I printed some more signage for the shelves, and checked for duplicates in the storage area. I have another big shifting to project to work on as well. I am also getting ready for my ordering meeting tomorrow.

I am getting ready for a webinar this afternoon from Bookletters. They create widgets for library websites. It is not that hard to get the code done. A lot of it is bestseller lists and award lists. The New York Times Bestseller List and the Indienext Bestseller list are available as widgets as well as numerous awards like the Pulitzer Prize, the Pen/Falkner Awards, the Caldecott awards and others.

The webinar on Bookletters was quite interesting. Their images for books are used on many different libraries. The two libraries which were most interesting to look at were http://www.kclibrary.org/ which uses Drupal as its system for managing content and http://www.parispubliclibrary.org/ . I am probably going to have to do some work with the content management system which is a new thing for me to try.

I also took some time to look for books for the Book Mobile tomorrow which is going to the senior citizens center.