PLA Blog

Back in October 2007, we posted a survey request from Alexis Linoski and her colleague for their forthcoming book Federated Search: A Librarian’s Guide.

The authors would very much like to add your experiences with federated search to the book:

We are writing a book entitled “Federated Search: A Librarian’s Guide”. We are searching for library practitioners with implementation experience to get a complete picture of what the profession is looking for and what the current / forthcoming options are. These contributions will be combined with a guide on selecting and implementing a federated search tool. The aim is to illuminate all of the decisions necessary in order to alleviate the pitfalls of the process.

If you are interested in contributing your experience with implementation to the book, please contact me (kewllibrarian02 [at] gmail [dot] com) asap!

Thanks,
Alexis Linoski

Read for the Record is an organization strives to raise awareness about issues of inequality in early education, and improving education for at-risk preschoolers.

Through this campaign, Jumpstart is asking Americans to support early education opportunities for all children by reading the official campaign book, The Story of Ferdinand, together on September 20, 2007 to break the record for the largest shared reading experience ever, which was set by 150,000 people on August 24, 2006 [with the title The Little Engine That Could] during the inaugural year of Jumpstart’s Read for the Record campaign. Reading activities on September 20 can range from personal sessions between an adult and a child to big group events with hundreds of people gathering together for a large community reading session.

For each person who promises to read the book on September 20, the company Hanna Anderson will donate $1 to the cause. Other ways to get involved include donating a copy of the book, running a book drive, and organizing a reading event. If your library decides to host an event, be sure to list it in the Event Finder on their site.

The best description of The Quill Awards can really be found on their web site:

The Quill Awards are the only book awards to pair a populist sensibility with Hollywood-style glitz. They are the first literary prizes to reflect the tastes of all the groups that matter most in publishing— readers, booksellers and librarians.

The Quills Voting Board, which consists of 6,000 booksellers and librarians selected by invitation only, weed out the best of the best into the 19 categories, with 5 lucky titles per category.

However, the winner of the coveted Book of the Year award is selected by votes from readers like you. Readers have one month to cast their vote at www.quillsvote.com for #1 starting Monday, September 10, and ending on Wednesday, October 10.

Are you surprised by the list of nominees? Shocked, horrified, delighted, thrilled, unaffected? Who would you vote for (even if your pick is *not* on the list)? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

How very exciting! It turns out that Sophie Brookover and Liz Burns, two of the intrepid librarians who blog over at Pop Goes the Library, are working on a book titled Pop Goes the Library: Using Pop Culture to Connect With Your Whole Community, to be published sometime in 2008.

And they need *your* feedback! Here’s why (via a quote from their post about the book):

So while we feverishly research, write, and revise the manuscript, we have a request of all of you, dear Readers & Friends of Pop: we have this survey, you see, and it would help us out tremendously if you’d be willing to answer our questions. It’s one thing for us to write about what we think makes a great marriage between pop culture & libraries; it’s quite another, more powerful thing to quote our experienced colleagues on this topic.

Please take a few minutes to help by filling out their survey. Understanding the fit of popular culture in the library is one of the many keys to staying relevant with our patron communities, so this is a very worthy cause for your time. Thanks!

Indeed, this was the weekend of Harry Potter. Devotees lined up at bookstores everywhere to pick up their copies at midnight. Many readers stayed up all night and then some reading the book, sometimes only stopping for food and bathroom breaks. “NO SPOILERS!” signs are popping up on blogs and discussion forums all over the web, for those who are taking the slow and scenic route, savoring every last moment of the final chapter in the story.

Public libraries were right there with the fans to celebrate the 7th canon. The Allen County Public Library coordinated a huge evening chock full of activities and music at their new library on Library Plaza, which you can read about care of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinal online (they also have a listing on their home page in the scrolling news graphics for a house elf clothing drive, which is very clever). Thanks to All Things Web 2.0 for the tip via your post! You can also peruse their entire photo set devoted to the party on Flickr.

By the looks of several Flickr photostreams, there were lots of libraries that had a really good time Friday night:

• Olds Municipal Library (Canada): Dumbledore, book reading, trivia, and more
• Kettleston Memorial Library (Alaska): potion mixing, quiz by Professor Trelawney, prophecy reading, and more
• Rancho Cucamonga Public Library (California): the “storm,” house elves, Hagrid, and more

You can also see library events on YouTube. Wellesley Free Library (Massachusetts) had quite the celebration, and you can see it all edited up quite nicely into 4m30s by video blogger Wellesley Townsman (a.k.a. Brad Reed). In a play on the epilogue of the book, you can watch Harry’s future as a library employee at the Hays Public Library (Kansas) battling the evils of vending machine vandalism and book theft.

I leave you with a video of the magical 2 minutes at the Land O’ Lakes branch of the Pasco County Libraries (Florida), when they opened the box at midnight:

Did your library have an event on Friday night? Post links to your photos, videos, articles, and more in the comments on this post! And, don’t forget a link to your library’s web site.

Sunday was a very busy day full of programs.

Nancy Pearl
First I arrive bright and early to see Nancy Pearl speak. It was fascinating to hear how each of her books came into being, especially her lastest book, Book Crush. She gave some suggestions of books for children and teens such as :
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Alex Rider Series by Anthony Horowitz
The Paperboy by Pete Dexter
Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Lee
Each Little Bird that Sings by Deborah Wiles
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
The Great Good Thing by Rod Townley
Ragweed by Avi
The Teacher’s Funeral by Richard Peck
Thirsty by MT Anderson
Feed by MT Anderson
Looking for Normal by Betty Monthei
Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis

Off the Chain: Reader’s Advisory for Exploding Genres
I really enjoyed this program. I won’t go into too many details because one of my fellow bloggers have done a great job detailing the program. I know that RUSA/PLA CODES will be having the handouts from their program on their websites. I found the program very interesting and has given me more authors and books to add to my list of books to read. I liked the many ways of finding out about new literature online, such as lit blogs and email lists as well as MySpace.

English Only: Censorship and its Impact on Latino Children and Young Adults in Schools and Public Libraries
I came into this program about half way through but I am glad I did. This program was given by AFL REFORMA. I missed the presentation part, but I did come in just as they started the discussion groups for different types of libraries. The public library discussion group was led by Rose Trevino. This gave people from different library systems a chance to ask questions and talk about how their library systems have their foreign languages materials placed in the collection and any programming that they have in foreign languages. Suggestions were also given on how to start a collection or to grow your current collection.

Future Friends: Marketing Reference and User Services to Generation X
This program was given by RUSA RSS. The handouts for this program will also be posted on RUSA’s blog. First the presenters went into defining Generation X and the facts about this generation. They then presented what this particular generation are looking for when it comes to services and potential segments of this generation. After defining Generation X, the presentation then went into how this would pertain to advertising to this generation and the different stages to planning advertising.
The next part of this program had St. Charles Library system in Illinois talk about their programs that they have for 20- and 30-somethings’ as well how they market those programs. They also gave examples of different programs, such as a cooking for 1 or 2 program, white elephant exchange, creating a safe online presence, a course on wine, and an history crawl of the town. Then they followed with some of the challenges that they have had with marketing as well as what they have learned.
Following this presentation was another presentation on the Young Friends of the Kansas City Public Library a.k.a BooksEnds. They went over what the group was and also how they marketed to their Generation X population.

Final Thoughts on ALA Annual Conference 2007
Unfortunately this was my last day at the conference. After attending different programs on Sunday, I took the time to go to the Library School Reunion Event at the Rennaissance Mayflower Hotel. It was great being able to see some fellow alumni from University of South Florida along with some of the professors that I had taken classes from. It was a good way to end my last day at the conference. I have had a blast at this year’s Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. I am looking forward to the next time I can attend an Annual Conference. I have found out a lot of useful information to take back to my library. I also have had a great time blogging about my experiences and the different programs that I have attended. So it’s been fun and I hope all those staying through Tuesday ave a great rest of conference. This is Catherine Moffatt signing off.

The Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) is pleased to announce the launch of National Reading Group Month (NRGM) in October 2007 to mark the 90th anniversary of the association’s founding. “Part of WNBA’s mission is to promote reading and the value of books, so we are proud to organize the first-ever National Reading Group Month. Reading groups inspire, transform and educate. They foster community and instill an appreciation for the written word,” says Laurie Beckelman, president of the Women’s National Book Association. “The mission of National Reading Group Month is four-fold:

To bring about public awareness of the joy of shared reading.

To provide a time for existing groups to celebrate their accomplishments and make plans for the future.

To encourage libraries, bookstores, and various organizations to host special events for reading groups.

To provide opportunities for individuals to get involved in an existing reading group or start one of their own.

Further information is available at http://wnba-books.org.

The Women’s National Book Association, which is about to celebrate its 90th anniversary, was established before women in America even had the right to vote. It is a broad-based non-profit organization with members across the country, three distinguished national awards, and a history of lively events in its eight chapter cities and elsewhere. As a national organization of women and men who work with and value books, WNBA exists to promote reading and to support the role of women in the community of the book. WNBA is non-governmental organization (NGO) affiliated with the United Nations/Department of Public Information, and a NGO partner with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and supports the Fund’s education alliance for women and girls in Afghanistan.

Let’s say you had the Sophie’s Choice of reference books: in all the world, you could only keep your top 5 favorite print resources. What would they be?

This question is inspired by a message I read in the April 25 (Vol 25, Issue 26) digest of the WebJunction Publib listserv:

Hello,
I am a library student with a question for reference librarians. My reference class is evaluating different resources, and I am wondering what your “Top 5″ are - which general reference books you consider invaluable and are most used by your reference staff. Also, are there any that your library purchases regularly but which are very rarely used?
Thank you so much in advance for your responses!

The message is from Kathy (Brown) Gregory, a library school student in her second semester at Southern Connecticut State University who works at Hartford Public Library. The original assignment, for her Reference Materials and Service class, is really quite interesting and nifty: subscribe to a library listserv, post a question, and record your responses. It’s an excellent opportunity for students to realize that listservs are a resource for reaching out to the library community, and an interesting way to examine how responsive and active some lists actually are.

There were several responses from the listserv, published in the very same digest, that also proved interesting. Favorite print resources included: almanacs, ValueLine, Morningstar, town histories/reports/stuff, state laws, atlases and maps (especially local), dictionaries, guides to grants, and self-help law, to name a few.

Two things happened: 1) I wanted to help Kathy obtain more data, and 2) I got really, really curious. In a day and age of electronic resources, what print resources are considered “favorite children,” near and dear to the hearts of public librarians who can’t live without them?

We want to know! Tell us what your fave 5 print resources are by replying to this post. We’ll send the information on to Kathy, who can use it in her report.

The New York Times has posted their 100 Notable Books of the Year list, which includes titles from The Book Review since the Holiday Books issue in early December 2005. The titles are conveniently divided into just two categories: Fiction & Poetry and Nonfiction.

Also of note is that on that very same page you can sign up for the Books Update E-Mail to have the NYT book reviews sent to you via email every Sunday. Check out the sample email to see what you could receive in your email inbox each week.

Visiting the forum, you can log in and share your views on the chosen books on the list by posting a comment (if you don’t have an account, creating one is free), or read what other people think about the selections. Just want to read the posts, but don’t have an account, and don’t feel like signing up for one? Try using a free NYT login through the free bugmenot service.

Walden Media, Paramount Pictures, HarperCollins and other partners are teaming up to “Break a World Reading Record With Charlotte’s Web” to break the current reading record in the Guinness World Records database. The record attempt is for MOST PEOPLE READING ALOUD SIMULTANEOUSLY - MULTIPLE LOCATIONS where we plan to break the record for the largest number of people to read the same piece of literature aloud, simultaneously, in multiple locations.

On Wednesday, December 13, 2006, at 12 noon (EST), you are invited to join students, educators, librarians, and fans of Charlotte’s Web who will gather in schools, hospitals, libraries, and community centers to read a passage from E.B. White’s classic tale of friendship, kindness, selfless giving and miracles. The passage highlights the moment when Charlotte and Wilbur meet for the first time. It is our hope that this event will introduce Charlotte’s Web to new fans and to reintroduce the story to adults who read it in their youth.

Visit www.walden.com for complete information, activity ideas and to register for this exciting event.