Daily Thoughts 9/30/2010 (reading, libraries, well being, outsourcing)

Poster of book exhibition, by Vladimir Taburin, 1910,
http://www.plakaty.ru/posters?id=1685 , Wikimedia Address
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TaburinPoster.jpg 

Daily Thoughts 9/30/2010

Today has been a quiet, peaceful day.  I did some more weeding in the oversize books, some spot checking in 300s, and checked on the shifting in the storage area.  I am focusing on the 800s in storage right now.  Things are moving along nicely. I like to keep track of the small details so things go right.

We have a program today by John R. Howard who is reading Faces in the Mirror, Oscar Micheaux and Spike Lee  from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m..  John R. Howard used to be on the library board.  We picked up a few of Spike Lee's movies; Do The Right Thing and When The Levees Broke as well as the videocasette for  Body and Soul by Oscar Micheaux.  We also picked up a few books on their films as well. 

Last night, I read Well Being The Five Essential Elements by Tom Rath and Jim Harter.  This is a study by the Gallup organization on the elements of what makes a person well.  The five elements are career wellbeing, social wellbeing, financial wellbeing, physical wellbeing, and community wellbeing.  This book speaks volumes about how the general wellbeing of Americans is slipping.  We are 19th in overall wellbeing.  It also describes how poverty causes more than a lack of monetary wealth.   It also increases the amount of pain people are in because of lack of healthcare, and limits physical safety.  There are some interesting insights in this book.  A lot of the interviews in this book were done in person because the book has international coverage where many people do not have phones or electronic equipment.

On the train home, I started on The Glamor of Grammar A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical Enghlish by Roy Peter Clark.  This is a surprising book.  The author manages to make grammar fascinating.  He argues that one should be immersed in language.  Grammar is a tool to improve language, not a prescriptive or descriptive device.  His argument is very likable.  In chapter 3, he asks the reader to adopt a favorite letter.  I chose Z because it reminds me of the Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz in Dr. Seuss's A B C.

Web Bits

From the Wall Street Journal, an article that argues that the internet is killing superstores, but will allow small stores to flourish. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703440604575496290813315552.html
 This is an interesting idea. Maybe, we might see some of the specialty bookstores come back.

The New York Times article about outsourcing public libraries.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1  I find this to be a little bit disturbing.  There are two reasons.  The first is sucking money out of the local community by sending it to a corporation that is not necessarily part of the local community.  I would think this would have a similar effect to Walmart.  You might get cheaper services, but the money does not go back into the community.  The second problem is one of transparency.  Libraries are public institutions run by the government where you can see how the money is spent.  LSSI is a private corporation which does not release its financial figures.   This is very short term oriented thinking.

Quer saber o que eu fiz?

Taí a minha obra:

Só a Helena acertou! Parabéns Helena! (Rê, você não passou tão longe assim, eu tenho um monte pra fechar mantimentos!)
Eu venho namorando essas guirlandas de pregadores a um tempão! E agora que decidi por deixar a área de serviço em preto e branco com pitadas de vermelho comecei a fazer os enfeites.
Eu coloquei neste ganchinho só pra tirar a foto, mas não é aí que ela vai ficar, aliás, nem nesta casa é. E quando ela estiver no seu devido lugar, junto com outras coisinhas que estou fazendo, mostro de novo.
Beijos!

Qual é o seu palpite?

O que você acha que eu vou fazer com tantos pregadores forrados?????
Vai, arrisca um palpite!
Beijos!

Daily Thoughts 9/29/2010 (Spook Country)

Die Allegorie der Poesie, Raffael 1508 - 1511. Fresco im Deckengewölbe der Stanza della Signatura, Vatikan,Kopie von H.-P. Haackhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Allegorie_der_Poesie,_Mosaik_von_Raffael.jpg

Daily Thoughts 9/29/2010

I finished reading Spook Country by William Gibson.  I noticed that every single book mentions steganography.  All the books are full of slightly masked details.  They Bigend Series also uses a mix of various acronyms for secretive organizations or law enforcement, the NSA-- National Security Agency (United States), DEA--Drug Enforcement Agency (United States), IXO-- Information Exploitation Office (Swiss), and many other organizations.

Today, I did a little more checking in the 300s, and had someone do shifting in the 800s in the storage area.
It was a quiet, pleasant day.

Daily Thoughts 9/28/2010 (Spook Country, Electric Cars, Directors Station)

English: Painting "Still life with red material", by Russian artist Anatoli Nenartovich (1915-1988), 1979
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nenartovich-Anatoly-Still-life-with-red-material-pos04bw.jpg

Daily Thoughts 9/29/2010

Today I took the train up to Chappaqua.  We had a user group for Sirsi Dynix, Directors Station.  Mostly it was about how to get circulation statistics for books.  There were a few other surprising applications.  Someone was tracking fines with it, another person was generating lists of missing items, another librarian was checking for duplication, and another person was keeping track of the last activity date patrons used their cards to determine if they should be kept on the mailing list.

The reports were exportable to microsoft excel which allows people to change a few things so they are more useful.  The auditorium was fairly nice and it was easy follow.  It was a chance to meet a few of the library directors and people working in the library system.  They served coffee and cake. 

I'll probably try to get a better sense of it tomorrow. 

The day went well.  I printed up some bookmarks on material on AIDS & HIV.  I also did some checking in the oversize 300s and regular 300s.

While reading through Publishers Weekly, I noticed the book Jolt The Impending Dominance of the Electric Car by James Billmaier.  This is very interesting.  If you follow http://www.teslamotors.com/ like I do, you might see some very interesting things coming up with electric cars, specifically the S Class sedan.  Also Phoenix Motors is promising as well http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/  I know it is a bit off topic with this one.

I read some more of Spook Country by William Gibson on the train home. You could call the trilogy The Bigend Trilogy. On P.106 of Spook Country , there is an excellent quote which says a lot about the book."Secrets," said Bigend beside her, "are the very root of cool."  This ties a lot of the themes in the book together.  His characters in the series are partaking of or searching for secrets.  Their jobs are usually cool; fashion is cool, spies are cool, music is cool, locative art is cool, and even advertising is cool in the novels.

Web Bits

Blio the new ereading software from Baker and Taylor was released today.  http://www.blio.com/

Daily Thoughts 9/27/2010 (Spook Country)

Gerard Dou (1613, Leiden – 1674, idem), Painter With A Pipe and Book, Self Portrait, Oil On Panel (1650)

Daily Thoughts 9/27/2010

We have a community program on AIDS tomorrow.  I am putting together a bookmark with recommended book titles and pulling some books on AIDS and HIV for the program.  We also have the Directors Station meeting tomorrow at Chappaqua.  This should be interesting.

Today has been a steady day.  I checked the displays, did some spot checking in the 300s, and did a small amount of weeding in the oversize 300s.  I also did a little bit of checking on BWI.

The book Spook Country by William Gibson came in for me to read.  I also finished reading Third World America by Arianna Huffington on the train in to work.

Spook Country is revealing some common themes in the trilogy of Spook Country, Pattern Recognition, and Zero History.  Each book seeks to find something hidden, has ornate background descriptions, uses music as a kind of subtheme to add to the mood of the writing, and usually has some right wing secretive group as the opposition.

Hubertus Bigend is a kind of representative of a hidden war that is going on in the United States for control of our ideals through advertising, hidden messages, and shadowy deals.  There is a theme of secret brands, hidden artwork, and shadowy figures playing a game of cat and mouse with hacking, corporate espionage, and memes.  It has a very different feel when you look at the books together.

There is a lot to think about.

Clementine by Cherie Priest

Clementine by Cherie Priest

This is a chase novel. One main character, Captain Beauregard Hainey seeks to recover his stolen property, a war dirigible.  Another character, Maria Isabella Boyd, must make sure the stolen dirigible, the Clementine reaches its destination.  This creates opposing chases.

The characters are also described in opposition.  Captain Beauregard is an African American air pirate, arms smuggler, and wanted man.  Maria Isabella Boyd is an ex-confederate spy hired by the Pinkertons.  This makes for a novel with strong clashes.

The clashes between the opposing sides happen at a whirlwind pace.  The reading is as fast as the storyline.  It is nonstop action mixed with intrigue;  aerial dirigible battles, dirigible hijackings, and quick thinking.

The setting is a steampunk version of the American civil war replete with clockwork technology.  The book makes some references to her previous novel, Boneshaker, but it is not necessary to read it to understand the action.  There are a few cliches in the novel like a man portable gatling gun and a diamond powered deathbeam.  This is the only real flaw I found in the writing.

I sat and read the book on the train home, then finished it that same night.  It works very well as an action novel.  If you want a couple days worth of fast paced escapism, this novel is worth reading.

Brothers

Missing again for a week and this time I wasn't even painting!

I have been trying to catch up with mundane things though, like all this blasted administrative work I seem to be surrounded with lately.  But I've promised myself, it's painting tomorrow, come rain or shine!

This painting was done a few weeks back and submitted for our Annual selection day.  Unfortunately the judges didn't like it, so it didn't make it.  But I was quite pleased with it, and after the initial disappointment, am still happy with it.  Hope you like it too.

Daily Thoughts 9/26/2010 (Where The Wild Things Are)

"Where The Wild Things Are" graffiti, in Kelsey-Woodlawn, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, 27, May 2009, 16:59, Scott Woods-Fehr (Freedom of panorama)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama#Canada , Creative Commons Attribution 2.0, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Where_The_Wild_Things_Are_graffiti_04.jpg
Daily Thoughts 9/26/2010

I watched the new film of Where The Wild Things Are which was released to dvd in 2010.  It is a live action film.  I very much liked the monster costumes.  My favorite was the minotaur.  The film was about anger and being wild.  Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak was one of my favorite books as a child.



I also read some more of Third World America by Arianna Huffington. I liked the line, "There are no lobbyists for the American Dream," on p.133.  She argues that there are too many lobbyists and moneyed interests for change to effectively take place for the better in congress.  Arianna Huffington also describes how infrastructure from bridges, roads, dams, electricity to broadband internet is falling apart and costing the United States leadership in business.  The book mainly attacks republicans, but also does not spare some democrats incompetence.  It is very much a call for change.

Era uma vez um cofrinho que...

Vocês não pensaram que depois da minha decepção de ontem eu ainda iria voltar para casa de mãos vazias, pensaram???? Passei na loja de 1,99 (pois é, Jô, eu também frequento...). Fui batendo o olho nesses cofrinhos e reconhecendo o que eu queria há tempos!

E eis que, retirando as tampas, saem de cena os cofrinhos e surge um porta lápis e potinhos para clips, bem coloridinho

Esclarecendo: A Jô, do Vi por Aí, vive fazendo graça comigo depois que eu disse que loja de 1,99 é a maior concentração de  porcaria por metro quadrado.

Que é verdade é, mas ainda assim a gente compra...

Beijos 

Ebooks, Ereaders, and Digital Content Meetup

Roland Lange, Manager for Strategic Partner Development at Google, explains Google Book Search at the Innovation Forum of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2007. 11.10.2007, User Weltach. Gnu Free Documentation License


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Google_booksearch.jpg




Ebooks, Ereaders and Digital Content....

I might have been a little bit exhausted this time. I was offered a business proposition to work on a social networking site on the way home. It was a serious enough offer for me to spend some time talking about it. It is a very interesting idea. This made me a little late for the meeting. I got there at 7:00 p.m. The meeting was at the Landmark Tavern in Manhattan. I also walked to the tavern from the subway. It was a fairly long walk.

I am going to mainly go over some of the ideas which I ran into. There was too much to put in a single post.

The Landmark Tavern was a nice place. The service was good.  The selection of beer was also very solid.  I had a Guinness Stout.  There was enough space to sit down.  It did a get a little loud at points because it was quite crowded.

One of the most striking things which I saw was the ability to synchronize the iphone and ipad so they worked together. Robert Forrester of Forrester  Networks was showing different applications on his ipad.  He showed how his ipad, iphone, and computer all synched together. One of the applications he showed was Evernote, a clipping application for the internet and documents.

A lot of the people were marketers, researchers, or media strategists. Bowker which owns the Proquest magazine and newspaper database as well as Books In Print was there. Bowker was there to discuss marketing. Most of the people were from a corporate background.  I admit, I felt a little bit like a fish out of water.  The language I heard was very different than the language of econtent.  I did not hear the new terms like "Internet Producer" or "Creative" that much.

It was a bit different than the librarian meetups.  I go to. http://www.meetup.com/nylibrarians/   I think I have the tech meetups and library meetups pretty well figured out.  I am not sure that I have the publishing meetups that well down. 


I rather liked the one line pich of The Idea Logical Company, "The Idea Logical company is a book publishing futurist." It has a nice ring to it.Very similar to a tech evangelist style.  http://www.idealog.com/blog

How Elaine Bloom's business card read, "LinkedIn In Strategist, LinkedIn is more than just your profile."  http://www.linkedinstrategist/   I took a look at her site, and followed up on a suggestion to join interest groups.  I joined one on science fiction and one on blogging.

Part of our discussion was about people being out of work. This is one of the reasons I go to these things. From my experience and what I have seen, many recruiters are forgoing resumes and going right to the social networking sites to recruit people.

http://www.ere.net/2010/09/13/social-media-recruiting-by-the-numbers/

 I have had some interesting experiences. My father got his job not because he sent in a resume, but because he posted his profile somewhere. His view is put up a public profile if you are looking for a job.

I have talked to people who have been looking on job boards for years. Sometimes social media works better. http://www.meetup.com/, Bernardo's List
http://www.bernardoslist.com/, and other places list events in the tech community. Some people are not aware this is happening. Even if you don't want to put your profile up, go to social media events to make contacts.

I remember that I got my job at an internet service provider partially because I proved that I was web savvy by selling on ebay as eye-in-the-sky-books which I no longer maintain. Blogs are free to put up. I freely admit to being one of those people who scare recruiters. I like talking to them, but don't easily match with many recruiters ideals.

There is a kind of long chain back with eye-in-the-sky-books. I used to hangout in Manhattan at a now defunct science fiction bookstore. This is where I got most of my books. I also learned about http://www.bibliomania.net/  from selling specialty and signed science fiction books on ebay. This is where Bibliomania started. Most of the specialty science fiction bookstores in Manhattan are gone.

It is a kind of sad thing to happen. It reminds me that I have to go back to look at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art http://sohodigart.com/ which is owned by John Ordover. John corrected me, there used to be a sceince fiction bookstore further down on Sullivan street from the gallery.


Elaine Bloom asked me what I thought about the future of the book. I gave a half an answer because I was a bit tired, but this is how I see the future of books. I see the publishing companies switching to a mix of print on demand and ebooks. Dorchester is an excellent example.  http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/publishing/dorchester_publishing_switches_to_ebook_printondemand_model_170114.asp .

If you follow the big distributors, they are planning for more ebooks and print on demand. The platform which Baker and Taylor is banking on for ebooks is called http://www.blio.com/ , Ingram, the largest distributor for bookstores owns Lightning Source the largest print on demand company.


I also see print on demand becoming far cheaper with new technologies like the HP Inkjet digital printer. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100309a.html  Eventually, I think that print on demand will integrated with 3D printing making for much more interesting books made of different materials than paper. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/technology/14print.html   If you go to the childrens section of bookstores, you can find books full of textures, embossing, popups, photographs, and other innovations. I think this will carry over into the adult generation.



A good example of a this  is Cradle to Cradle Remaking The Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. The pages are made of lightweight, tough recycled plastic.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/technology/14print.html  The book is designed to be completely recyclable. I have seen a number of books which  are both 100% post consumer material and completely recyclable.

I also see many large content providers aligning themselves with print on demand technology. Google Books is in alliance with Espresso Book Machine. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/google-books-publish-on-demand/  Google Books is also providing a free public access terminal to every public library in the United States. http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2009/2009-01.pdf

There was a question about what happened to the Google Books settlement. Columbia University law school has quite a bit on the future of the google settlement in relation to copyright and authors rights.
 http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/special-topics/google-settlement/


Ebook devices will most likely become much cheaper and more flexible. The Copia which integrates an ebook reader with a social network for $100 is an interesting example of this. I find the site intriguing. http://www.thecopia.com/  which . I applied for the beta but did not get in.   There is also the cheap Indian laptop which costs $35 which is in the works. http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/07/23/going-for-cheap-indias-35-laptop/   This makes me think we will see ebook readers for less than $100 very soon.

It was interesting hearing about a person who was using a kindle which she checked out from her library.  Someone donated 16 kindles to her library to circulate.  She had kept the kindle out past the due date and was charged one dollar a day until she renewed the item.  The idea of circulating kindles is very interesting. 
It would be nice to circulate ebook devices.  We have video games, video game controllers, Transparent language flash drives http://www.transparent.com/ , and playaways that can be checked out as devices.  We are looking at MP3s players and ereaders.   These are expensive and we of course have to look closely at the security of the devices in a library setting to prevent loss.


I think we are at the begining of changes to the publishing business.  Media will become a lot more integrated. 

Another conversation was about science fiction books and music. There is a fairly strong tie with many science fiction authors with music.This is an article about the soundtrack for Finch performed by Murder by Death http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/10/06/murder-by-deaths-soundtrack-for-the-novel-finch/  . Margaret Atwood sells hymns of a fictional group she created from The Year of the Flood.
http://www.yearoftheflood.com/us/music/  Linnea Sinclair listens to trance music while she writes. http://www.blacktigerrecordings.com/  It fits very well with her books.



I was a bit tired. We talked a little about libraries and ebooks. The main thing which we have right now is Overdrive http://www.overdrive.com/  which has lots of ebooks and audiobooks which are available for download. I have recommended it a few times. We are getting steadily increasing usage of overdrive. We also buy playaways which are preloaded audiobooks http://www.playaway.com/ . These seem to do best with assignment books for high school and junior high school at the library I am at. We interfile the playaways next to the book on the shelf in the young adult area.

We would like to get more devices, but there is quite a bit we still have to figure out about security for things like MP3 players, Nooks, and other devices. Most of the books on Overdrive are single use licenses. There is some drm free material on Overdrive as well http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/?p=672 . I  sometimes recommend free ebooks that are classics to patrons. It is alternative way to get them what they want. Even if you pay for classic books, many of them are $2 each as downloads. The formatting is better on the pay downloads most of the time. Stanza is also an excellent free ereader http://www.lexcycle.com/ . I am also partial to Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/



I mentioned two authors that gave away their ebooks under creative commons license as a strategy to sell more of their paper books. These were Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. I should have also mentioned The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain which is available as a free download. I was a bit tired at the time. http://futureoftheinternet.org/download


I could not help but hear snippets here and there. People were talking about the next George R.R. Martin book and showing different things on their ipads. There was mention of a George R.R. Martin television pilot for A Game of Thrones. http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/11/12/hbo-greenlights-fantasy-television-pilot-for-george-rr-martins-a-game-of-thrones/


I saw a lot of ipads, but no kindles. I think the ipad is becoming the tool of choice now. The most obvious advantage it has is the color. It also has a lot of applications. http://www.pomodoro.com/  was an application for time management which Robert Forrester was showing on his Ipad.


I think I might have caught a few more things if I was less tired. I know that Kobo which makes the ereader was there. I know I still made a few mistakes. I still have not gotten a more professional business cards for my blog; just a card with my name and email. Sometimes, I think it is better to have a LinkedIn connection than a business card. It is more permanent and it is harder to lose.


This reminds me of another discussion. This one was about how to use Facebook. I am on Facebook under my name. Facebook is based on building communities. You go out and choose who you want to follow in your specific interest. I follow lots of library related content, author related content and some people that I know. Some of the library and book related content I follow is, I Love Libraries, American Libraries Magazine, Book Expo America, and Book Bloggers Convention. Some of the authors, editors, and publishers I follow are John Ordover, Ellen Datlow, Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, For Beginners Books, Fantagraphics, and Robert Sikoryak.

I stayed at the meetup from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. It started at 5:30 p.m.  The conversation flowed freely, the drinks were pleasant, the appetizers were tasty, lots of business cards were exchanged.  This one of the first meetups of the group. 

It is very much a ground floor opportunity like the Book Bloggers Convention was at Book Expo America.  The LinkedIn group is seeking to grow.  http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=1515307  I am fairly sure they will be having another meetup in New York announced on LinkedIn.  Bill Glass, the person who confirmed my invitation is seeking to grow the group.


There are other things which I remember clearly, but might be better for another day.

It was a long day. I meditated a bit on the train home. It does not look that different from napping.

You wonder sometimes when you write these posts. I am not sure exactly why I am doing it. I don't really consider myself a journalist, even though I have been given access to news areas at conventions sometimes. As with so many things, you can't include everything, but it is worth the try. 


As always, I try to say something positive.  Feel free to comment, make corrections, ask for inclusions. I don't mind a little bit of pointed conversation so long as the language remains clean. 

I am trying to include full urls in this post. It makes it a little bit harder to edit. Blogger is really designed to change the links into captions. The reason I do this is that I like to be able to see full urls when I search for things. I parse urls into sections. The recruiting term for this is x-raying a url. This is a tool which lets you see the full url for shortened urls http://urlxray.com/

Ele acabou com as minhas ilusões!

Lembram que eu disse ia me arriscar novamente com as tintas? Acabei não indo... Não por desistência, é que marido esqueceu que eu ia precisar do carro no dia seguinte e emprestou pro irmão dele. Eu, como esposa boa e compreensiva que sou, calmamente remarquei a minha consulta. (Marido está bem viu, gente! Já levanta da cama sozinho e os médicos garantiram que ele não terá sequelas.)

E eis que chegou o dia da minha consulta. E consequentemente, de ir à casa de tintas. Claro que devidamente acompanhada de mamis, porque fazer compra sozinha não tem a mesma graça.

55km de viagem (de ida), 20 minutos de parada esperando liberar a pista na estrada, duas blitz da Polícia Rodoviária, mil planos na cabeça, uma listinha na mão, lá vou eu, toda corajosa.

- Eu queria ver as cores de tinta epóxi.

O vendedor explica que só por encomenda, que poderíamos escolher as cores e tal. Até aí, tudo bem. Então ele resolve chamar o dono da loja, para dar uma melhor orientação.

- Vocês querem pintar o quê?

- Plástico. 

- Ahã. Plástico. Que tipo de peça?

- Uma mesa e seis cadeiras, dessas de piscina.

- Olha, não vai valer a pena. Você vai precisar de um fundo (e toda a explicação do porquê) e só esse fundo vai te custar R$200,00.

Pronto. Era o fim. Mas mamis, não se dando por vencida, segue em frente.

- Eu queria pintar a minha cozinha, azulejo também precisa deste fundo?

- Não, pro azulejo é a tinta direto sobre ele. Mas eu não gosto. Não acho que fica bom. Acaba com o rejunte, fica grosseiro, nunca um bom trabalho. (Seguem-se mil opções de coisas melhores a serem feitas, inclusive com a tinta epóxi.)

Morri! Volto pra casa abatida, triste e desconsolada da vida! (ai que brega!)

Deixei mamis lá, comprando um esmalte sintético à base de água pra gente dar uma transformação no quarto dela quando eu for pra lá.

Mesmo acabando com minhas inocentes ilusões, tenho que reconhecer que ele foi legal. Afinal, pra ele seria fácil simplesmente vender e pronto. Não era aquele material que eu queria? E o negócio do comerciante não é vender? Pois ele fez questão de saber exatamente o que eu queria fazer para poder orientar qual o melhor produto. 

Somou muitos pontos comigo. E ganhou minha confiança.

Para um próximo projeto, volto lá. 

Mas agora eu preciso de um projeto... (snif snif)

Beijos

Daily Thoughts 9/24/2010 (Ebooks, overdrive)

The Scott Monument in East Princess Street Garden in Edinburgh, a Victorian Gothic monument to Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. John Steell's statue, made from white Carrara marble, shows Scott seated, resting from writing one of his works with a quill pen and his dog Maida by his side. Picture by Ad Meskens.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scott_Monument_Statue_4.jpg

Daily Thoughts 9/24/2010

This morning we had a general staff meeting.  It was a chance to meet the new president of the board of directors and hear a little about what was happening.  There was some discussion of retirement packages, a number of people were offered packages, holding a gala by the library foundation in the library, and our 156th anniversary as a library.  Our building was built in 1904, but our library was started much earlier in a local school.

We also have an exhibition of local artists in the rotunda.  There are a number of landscape paintings, abstract paintings, photographs, and pencil drawings their now.  We also have a number of books on display from our oversize book collection of art books.  The oversize art collection has books close to the date when the building was built in 1904.

I did some more weeding in the oversize 300s.

On Tuesday, I am going to a demonstration of the Directors Station for Sirsi Dynix which allows people to look at the statistics for usage in our library.  Hopefully, I will learn a little more.  I am hoping I can look at our statistics to be better able to choose what people use.  http://www.sirsidynix.com/products/directors-station

Also, I should be visiting a local library media center soon to look at the way they have their computers setup for Overdrive Digital Media catalog. I have also been noticing that patrons have been taking out dvds and watching them on the computers in our Job Information Center.

I am going to the Linkedin group meetup for Ebooks, Ebook Readers, Digital Books and Digital Content... this afternoon at the Landmark Tavern in Manhattan.  Hopefully, it should be very interesting.

Today was a bit challenging.  I like equilibrium.  The director commended me for helping clean up the collection.  The number of missing items has dropped considerably.  I also was complimented on the display of art books in the rotunda. There is stilll quite a bit to do.

Artemisia Gentileschi

 Self - Portrait

Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome on 8 July 1593, the eldest child of the Tuscan painter Orazio Gentileschi. Artemisia was introduced to painting in her father's workshop, showing much more talent than her brothers, who worked alongside her. She learned drawing, how to mix color and how to paint. Since her father's style took inspiration from Caravaggio during that period, her style was just as heavily influenced in turn. But her approach to subject matter was different from her father's, as her paintings are highly naturalistic, where Orazio's are idealized.

 

(Biography from Wikipedia) The first work of the young 17-year-old Artemisia (even if many at the time suspected that she was helped by her father) was the Susanna e i Vecchioni (Susanna and the Elders) (1610, Schönborn collection in Pommersfelden). The picture shows how Artemisia assimilated the realism of Caravaggio without being indifferent to the language of the Bologna school (which had Annibale Carracci among its major artists). It is one of the few Susanna paintings showing the two men planning their sexual harassment. It is likely that Artemisia had been sexually harassed and painted Susanna as a reflection.


In 1612, despite her early talent, Artemisia was denied access to the all-male professional academies for art. At the time, her father was working with Agostino Tassi to decorate the vaults of Casino della Rose inside the Pallavicini Rospigliosi Palace in Rome, so Orazio hired the painter to tutor his daughter privately. During this tutelage, Tassi raped Artemisia. Another man, Cosimo Quorlis had helped Tassi with the rape. After the initial rape, Artemisia continued to have sexual relations with Tassi, with the expectation that they were going to be married. However, Tassi reneged on his promise to marry Artemisia after he heard the rumour that she was having an affair with another man. Quorlis had threatened that if he could not have her, he would publicly humiliate her. Orazio pressed charges against Tassi only after he learned that Artemisia and Tassi were not going to be married. Orazio also claimed that Tassi stole a painting of Judith from the Gentileschi household. The major issue of this trial was the fact that Tassi had deflowered Artemisia. If Artemisia had not been a virgin before Tassi raped her, the Gentileschis would not be able to press charges.

In the ensuing 7-month trial, it was discovered that Tassi had planned to murder his wife, had enjoined in adultery with his sister-in-law and planned to steal some of Orazio’s paintings. During the trial, Artemisia was given a gynecological examination and was tortured using thumbscrews. Both procedures were used to corroborate the truth of her allegation, the torture device used due to the belief that if a person can tell the same story under torture as without it, the story must be true^{[Citation Needed]}. At the end of the trial Tassi was imprisoned for one year. The trial has subsequently influenced the feminist view of Artemisia Gentileschi during the late 20th century.

The painting Giuditta che decapita Oloferne (Judith beheading Holofernes) (1612–1613), displayed in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples, is impressive for the violence portrayed.

One month after the trial, in order to restore her honour, Orazio arranged for his daughter to marry Pierantonio Stiattesi, a modest artist from Florence. Shortly afterwards the couple moved to Florence, where Artemisia received a commission for a painting at Casa Buonarroti and became a successful court painter, enjoying the patronage of the Medici family and Charles I. It has been proposed that during this period Artemisia also painted the Madonna col Bambino (The Virgin and Child), currently in the Spada Gallery, Rome.

While in Florence, Artemisia and Pierantonio had four sons and one daughter. But only the daughter, Prudenzia, survived to adulthood — following her mother's return to Rome in 1621 and later move to Naples. After her mother's death, Prudenzia slipped into obscurity and little is known of her subsequent life.

Daily Thoughts 9/23/2010 (Third World America, Banned Books Week)

"Banish lonely hours in camp! Help provide libraries filled with books for soldiers A million dollars for a million books for a million men--Leave your money at the public library or at any bank. The Library War Council - appointed by the War Department through the American Library Association - is raising one million dollars during Camp Library Week, Sept. 24-30, to build and maintain a library at every training camp and cantonment for soldiers, sailors and airmen, at home and abroad. Massachusetts Library War Council."

Daily Thoughts 9/23/2010

Today has been very steady.  I started on weeding the oversize 300s.  Sometimes even doing a small amount is enough to get things going.  I also gathered together some bookmarks and flyers for my colleagues who are going to a career fair at the local high school.  A lot of our focus during the last week has been very much about business and jobs.  There is going to be a workshop from the Women's Enterprise Development Center for computers for business.

I also did a few minor things, bringing out some things that needed to be mended from storage, shifting some paperbacks around, and spotchecking the 300s for orderliness.

The young adult department is doing a display for banned books week.  Two books which I suggested for the display are a young adult novel by Laurie Halse Andersen called Speak and the graphic novel Bone by Jeff Smith.  There are of course many of the classic books; The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  Attempting to censor books often has the opposite effect on reading material.  It makes the books more popular, not less.  Banned Books Week runs from September 25- October 2, 2010 http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm

The book, Third World America How Our Politicians Are Abandoning The Middle Class And Betraying The American Dream by Arianna Huffington came in for me to read.  I started reading it on the way home.  It is about the dismantling of the middle class by government and business.  It describes the process of creating massive industries based on personal credit and foreclosure of property. Arianna Huffington describes how some elements in government and business feed off the middle class pushing people into poverty, then create mechanisms like payday loans, complex bankruptcy and foreclosure laws, and expensive healthcare to reinforce this poverty. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thirdworldamerica

There is a strong liberal theme in this book.  It argues against the dismantling of the safety net for the middle class.  There is a lot to think about in what this book is saying so far.  Hopefully, it will spark some interest in change.

This book would also tie in well with another book Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.How the Working Poor Became Big Business by Gary Rivlin who is a journalist for the New York Times.  This book also has strong polemics in it.  It is about the poverty industry, payday loans, credit repair groups, pawnshops, rent to own furntiture and similar financial schemes.  Sadly, this is a growth industry in our current economy.
Web Bits

Four color inkjet printers from Hewlett Packard.  This could make print on demand even cheaper.  http://bit.ly/aZB8v8

From Information Week.  People with ebook readers, read more books.  http://bit.ly/bxJwYL

Daily Thoughts 9/22/2010 (Clementine, Audiobooks)

Poster "The camp library is yours - Read to win the war. You will find popular books for fighting men in the recreational buildings and at other points in this camp. Free. No red tape. Open every day. Good reading will help you advance. Library War Service, American Library Association." 1917 Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA C.B. Falls / American Library Association

Daily Thoughts 9/22/2010

I finished reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson this morning.  I will be waiting for Spook Country to come in soon.

We had a gentleman from Tantor Media audiobooks come to discuss his books.  We sometimes buy MP3 CDs, we are slowly getting them, many of the older cd players before 2005 can't play them, so we have to be careful getting them.  He also showed me a new format for classic literature.  It is a combined PDF file of a book on cd and cd audiobook.  This would be quite useful for assignment lists for the schools.  They of course dropped off a few samples.  One of them was John Buchan, The Thirty Nine Steps. 



We are also going to be doing more promotion focused on our collection tied in with programming.  This should be interesting.

The book, The Glamour of Grammar A Guide To The Magic and Mystery of Practical English by Roy Peter Clark came in for me to read today.

Today is anothe multi-event day at the library.  We had a class on Internet Marketing from the city Business Expo this afternoon.  One of my colleagues set up a cart of material for the Business Expo; flyers, bookmarks, and a selection of new books.  This evening we had the Womens Enterprise Development Center in the community room, and a computer class for Microsoft Publisher in the computer lab.  It takes a little patience to make sure everything is set up and ready before the people come.  A lot of it is meeting the people at the door and being polite while things are setup/

On the train home, I read Clementine by Cherie Priest it is a steampunk novel set during the American civil war.  It is very much the classic chase novel, where the hero wants something that has been taken from them and is out to get it back.  This makes both the writing and reading very fast paced. What is interesting to me is the setting,  I am seeing both gaslight fantasy and steampunk westerns expanding more into the old west setting.  It seems like writers are seeking to expand the steampunk and gaslight genre outside of Victorian England into other parts of the world.  It would be interesting to see some steampunk set in Russia or France.

Apartamento da Karina Bachi

Eu sei que essas imagens já são extremamente conhecidas, mas que é gostoso de olhar é!

 

É o tipo de apartamento que eu viveria feliz da vida!

Já ia esquecendo de contar! Sabem qual foi o resultado da "faxina" no meu notebook? Míseros 683 arquivos deletados! E mais alguns GB livres na memória!

Ah!

Beijos 

The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee

The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee

This is a fantasy novel set during the American frontier period.  The author in the interview at the back of the book describes how she wanted to combine the American west with an Inuit character.  This makes the novel a little bit different.  It creates an alternate history which combines steam technology with magic.   The magic is spirit magic. This is the first book in a trilogy.

The settlers in this novel are a bit different.  They are driven from their homeland because of religious persecution.  However, they are not greedy for land so much as power.  The Ciracusans have a motif of seven gods. The seven gods represent seven paths to heaven or seven paths to hell.  They wish to convert all of the aborigines to their religion and way of life.  The Ciracusans consider the aborigines uneducated and irreligious.

The novel starts with a young Aniw spirit walker, Sjennokirk, being taken prisoner after she kills a Ciracusan soldier who enters her home unbidden.  She then kills a Ciracusan priest at the bidding of her fathers spirit.  She is not executed, but instead is forced to teach a Captain of the Ciracusan army, Jarrett, to take on the form of a dog.  There are quite a few dog motifs in this novel, the Aniw husky of the far north, the plains dog, and the native coyote.

The novel is written from a number of different perspectives.  I like how Sjennokirk, the Aniw spiritwalker describes the Ciracusans as being horrendous because they eat cooked meat and don't wear furs.  I also like the harsh military edge which Captain Jarrett experiences.

The history and belief systems in this novel are well worked out.  It is refreshing to read a fantasy story based on the conflict between natives and settlers.  Karin Lowachee does a very good job of creating unique characters in an interesting setting.  Karin Lowachee has a website at http://www.karinlowachee.com/

Pra que é mesmo que servem os talheres?

Você ainda responderia que para comer?

Daily Thoughts 9/21/2010 (Coraline, Pattern Recognition)

Why books are always better than movies? Paranormal levitation made with the free software Gimp, 27, September 27, 2009, Massimo Barbieri, Gnu Free Documentation License 1.2http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Why_books_are_always_better_than_movies.jpg


 
Daily Thoughts 9/21/2010 

I read some more of Pattern Recognition this morning.  I also put Spook Country on hold which I will reread once I am done reading Pattern Recognition. Pattern Recognition reminds us that the world changes so fast now, that it is hard to recognize things in a short time period.  I read a bit more Pattern Recognition on the train home.  Somehow, William Gibson manages to fuse fashion, thriller, and near future technology into a unique mish mash in all three books.

I also read some more of Self Esteem by Matthew McKay, Ph.D.  I read the book, but did not finish completing the exercises spread throughout the book.  I have already done severald exercises on shoulds, wants, self assessment, and cognitive distortions.  They are quite interesting.  I still have to do some visualization, meditation, and self-hypnosis exercises.  The book has a lot of material in it.

I got invited to a book signing on October 17, 2010 by a local poet for the book "Blood Beats In Four Square Miles" An Anthology of Poetry. Hopefully, it should create an opportunity to work on doing a poetry reading series at the library.

We did a display for the book, Play Me a Song by Barbara Jo-Lucchine Kruczek.  She sent us photographs of big band musicians and some articles from the local paper, The Daily Argus on her father, Philip Lucchine, who was a composer for big band music.  All of it will go to the local history room when the display is over.

The business resources list is up on the library website now.  I am waiting for them to put up the new library website soon.

I also confirmed that I am going to the Ebooks meetup this Friday.  I think it will be an interesting and useful experience.

Tonight, I finished watching Coraline. I like most all of Neil Gaiman's writing.  This is a short piece on him talking about Coraline.



Web Bits
An animated Neil Gaiman is going to star in the children's show Arthur doing a book signing. http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/09/an-animated-neil-gaiman-to-guest-star-on-arthur/

O segredo do meu emagrecimento

Muita gente me perguntou como consegui emagrecer, então lá vai um post esclarecedor e muito, muito verdadeiro.
Eu poderia relatar aquela coisa de fechar a boca + exercícios físicos, mas seria uma imensa mentira!
Tudo bem que eu reduzi o doce a quase zero... O doce! Açúcar não conta, porque eu detesto adoçante, detesto suco separado, assim como tenho pavor de Coca Zero!
Quanto aos exercícios físicos, posso dizer que tive uma grande mudança de hábitos! Pensou em academia? Nem se eu quisesse! Aqui não tem dessas coisas não fia! Mas ao invés de pedir alguém para ir à farmácia, ou ao supermercado, ou à loteria, eu mesma vou! Confesso, não são nem 50 metros da loja... À papelaria eu vou de carro, porque eu não ia fazer essa caminhada de 200m! Ainda não sou tão atleta!
Chega de piada! O segredo está na bendita sibutramina nossa de cada dia! E água, muita água, que eu deixo ao lado da minha mesa! (Você não acha que eu iria tomar muita água caminhando até a cozinha, acha?)
Sabe o que me deixa mais feliz ao terminar esse post?????
Saber que minha médica não vai ler! Portanto, não irá cumprir a promessa de me expulsar do consultório caso eu não mude meus habitos! Viu como ela me conhece?

Mas, se você tiver mais disciplina do que eu, faz exercícios pra nós duas, vai!
 
Beijos

Daily Thoughts 9/20/2010 (Pattern Recogntion, Coraline)

Luca della Robbia, Priscian, or the Grammar (1437-1439). Marble panel from the North side, lower basement of the bell tower of Florence, Italy. Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.

Daily Thoughts 9/20/2010

Today has been a quiet day.  I picked up a copy of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson to read so I can finish reading the trilogy of books.  It will fill in so I can understand Zero History a little better.  



We just had pins assigned to our library cards to increase security.  This happened yesterday which makes things a bit interesting today.  There were a few questions about how it worked.



We also finished creating the business resources list for the library.  We are printing it as a flyer and posting it as a webpage.  It was originally created in publisher.  We create a lot of our documents and flyers in publisher.  A gentleman came by today to look at our community room.  It can seat 49 people. We are having some business programs tomorrow.

On the train home, I read some of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.  It helped me get a better grasp of the series featuring Hubertus Bigend.  Hubertus Bigend is not the main character in the book.  He kind is the theme behind the story.  All of the books, Spook Country (2003), Pattern Recognition (2007), and Zero History (2010) are very intricately detailed and can stand as separate works. In fact, there is an odd quality to them because unlike most series, they were published several years apart.  The complexity of the writing is very clear.  There is a lot of detail which can be very distracting but makes sense when you compare all of the three books together.  I am just beginning to get a sense of how this detail works.  On P.76 of Pattern Recognition, there is a quote from the writing which kind of explains how the books are very different when compared together, "Steganography is about concealing information by spreading it throughout other information. At present I know little else about it."

I also watched some more of Coraline.  I am almost finished watching the film.  I very much like the message of the animated film.  It is about being true to yourself even when giving up yourself is very enticing.  The animation is superb.  I especially liked the cat and the circus mice.  They are my favorite parts of the movie.

Daily Thoughts 9/19/2010 (Coraline, School District Library)

"The Writer", Hampstead Heath, August 2005, Creatives Commons Attribution Share A Like 2.0
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hampstead_Heath_The_writer.jpg

Daily Thoughts 9/19/2010

I finished reading The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee.  She also has written Warchild which is excellent.  Her website is http://www.karinlowachee.com/ 

I added April and May of 2008 to my list of book reviews. I actually erased one of the reviews and did some minor editing on the review on Tony Millionaire's Sock Monkey.  I can see a considerable difference between the writing I am doing now and the writing I was doing two years ago.  Writing this blog has improved my skills considerably.




Ossining Public Library is amending its charter to become a school district library.  This is very similar to the library I work at. They also have two open board of trustee positions like us. They are going to have their budget go up for a vote as well.  We will most likely have our budget go up for vote in 2011.  I think that there has been a push in New York State to put a lot of libraries budgets up for vote and change their charters to school district libraries.   http://yorktown.lohudblogs.com/2010/09/02/ossining-library-board-votes-to-amend-charter/


The changes which I have been experiencing at the place I am working have made things very uncertain.  In the near future the libraries budget will be put up for vote.  There also may be funding cuts.  In addition, there was a recent attempt at a reduction in force.  This creates a lot of uncertainty surrounding the January budget. The general environment in libraries across the nation right now is one of funding cuts and layoffs.

Even if our budget turns out well, we will be facing an interesting challenge in 2011.  In 2003, the New Rochelle Public Library Foundation spent $8000 dollars to campaign for the library budget.  New Rochelle is one third the size of my city.  It could possibly run quite a bit more than this considering inflation and the number of people that have to be reached. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/nyregion/education-stickering-over-that-old-date.html?scp=7&sq=school%20district%20library%20vote%20new%20rockelle&st=cse

I have to evaluate my own position and be prepared in case things don't work out well.  I have some time to systematically look at my options.

I took some time to watch part of Coraline the animated movie.  There is also a graphic novel and a book written by Neil Gaiman. The graphic novel is illustrated by P. Craig Russell one of my favorite comic book artists. I like the message underlying the film so far.  It reminds you that perfection has a high cost and being real is very important.  I think I'll finish watching it tomorrow.

Sexta-feira do aperto!

Aproveitando mamis aqui em casa, promovi o dia do aperto! Aperto de todas as minhas roupas que, graças aos 13kg que perdi não me serviam mais!

Foram sacolas e sacolas de roupa pra experimentar! Umas estavam grandes e precisavam ser apertadas. Outras tinham sido guardadas porque estavam pequenas e já voltaram a servir. Algumas das pequenas até já estavam grandes!
E eu, completamente eufórica!

Bom fim de semana!
Beijos



Foto: fonte