Daily Thoughts 3/22/2011 (The Physics of the Future, Budgets)

Sproatt and Rolph was a firm of architects based in Toronto; the bookplate (Ex Libris) is dated 1915. It shows a woman kneeling with a blueprint or plan of a building which is being constructed behind her, in the Gothic Revival style.

Daily Thoughts 3/22/2011

I read some more of The Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku on the train.  He is writing about advances in medicine which will extend life expectancy.  He describes things like nanomedicine, restricted diets for reducing aging, regrowing organs using stem cells, and genetic medicine.  It is very much a survey of different technologies that are being developed broken into sections.  There are sections on computers, artificial intelligence, health, nanotechnology, energy, and other subjects.  Right now, I am reading about nanotechnology.

This morning, I updated the Twitter account, checked the displays, and tabulated some more of the surveys.  I also reformatted the author lists for African American Novelists and African American Mystery writers.

I was reading Library Journal today.  They are writing about budget cuts.  It looks like there will be both federal cuts to libraries as well as New York state cuts to libraries.  I imagine there will also be cuts at the county level as well.  There are more proposed cuts to libraries in the five boroughs of New York city.  It seems that there are endless cuts.

I did some more weeding in the mezzanine today.  I plan on possibly scanning some old photographs of the library from the local history room to help create a Flickr gallery of the libraries history.

Web Bits

Plan to eliminate Statistical Abstracts of the United States and County and City Data book in US in 2012 http://bit.ly/eiX4Wm

Daily Thoughts 1/4/2010 (Budgets, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web)

Franz Volkmar Reinhard in his study, reading, 1811, Oil on Canvas
Daily Thoughts 1/4/2010

Today was a quiet steady day.  I checked the displays and printed some more flyers for the Library Tour.  I also made sure some programs went into the Calendar of Events.  I also checked out some books, I Live In the Future and This is How It Works Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted by Nick Bolton and Running The Books The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg.

We had a session discussing budgets for the collection which I think was productive.  We also discussed book donations.  I pulled together a receipt for material donations and suggested a picture of children reading.  I felt it was quite productive.  I am also thinking about how we might get to help the older people in the Armory who want to get books without a bookmobile.

There was a little bit of discussion of how to handle donations.  I like going through book donations.  I find it enjoyable.  It is like digging for gems in the rough.  It reminds me a bit of when I used to go to flea markets to look for comics and other memorabilia. There is Booksalefinder which lists all the different booksales across the United States.
http://www.booksalefinder.com/

On the way home, I read some more of Information Architecture For The World Wide Web.  The authors are writing about search engines.  They are explaining the differences between precision and recall in search engines.  I am enjoying reading this book.  Many of the concepts read like they came out of my class on cataloging in library school.  I learned that 40% of information architects have a library science background.  The next chapter I am going to read is on Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies, and Metadata.  This is a hot topic in library science. They are often looking for librarians with taxonomy skills.

I started reading I live in the future and here's how it works by Nick Bilton.  Nick Bilton is the Lead Writer and Technology Reporter for the New York Times Bits Blog. He opens the book by describing how he prefers to read the paper in digital form over the print form.

Web Bits

Steve Haber, The Changing Role of Libraries In The Digital Age from The Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-haber/the-changing-role-of-libr_b_803722.html

Daily Thoughts 6/30/2010

Cover of the pulp magazine Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror (October 1932) featuring "The Hunters from Beyond" by Clark Ashton Smith.

Daily Thoughts 6/30/2010

I recommended Swann Galleries as an auction house for rare books. They have an excellent reputation. http://www.swanngalleries.com/index.cgi

Stores See Google as Ally In Ebook Market. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/business/30books.html?scp=1&sq=google%20e-books&st=cse

Today has been an interesting day. There are budget problems where I am and I waiting to see what will finally happen. It is not pleasant. I am trying to maintain my focus today.

I am starting to come to terms with it and think of next steps along the way. It is a matter of deep and abiding patience.