I was listening to On Point early last week, when Tom Ashbrook hosted a show on recommended summer reading picks for 2008, with 3 guest hosts: one buyer and manager of a bookstore, and two book reviewers. I’ve listened to this episode two years in a row, and I still find myself wondering when they’ll invite three librarians as their guests… I really should email them about that and see what happens (you should, too). It’s definitely worth a listen (.mp3 file), if for no other reason than to know what books your NPR listener constituency might be seeking. I’ll be adding some of the recommendations to my ever-growing queue of books to read.

So, I’ve decided to grab the opportunity that Tom Ashbrook missed and ask you, the public library and librarian readership: What are you recommending for summer reading this year? It can be any age group, any genre, any format, anything. Scroll down to Leave a Reply on this page and post your picks as a comment to this post, we’ll be listening! While you’re in the comment box, what are you planning for summer programs? Share your ideas, plans, and links to web sites and photos with us and fellow readers.

Also, feel free to comment on the picks listed by the OnPoint guests, I’d be interested to hear what you think of them. You can read about what other listeners thought, and what they’re recommending, and chime in yourself in the 2008 Summer Books OnPoint message board.

For knitting, I have to consider the ideal “en route” project, and then have a few “projects in reserve” in my checked bag.  Since this is the PLA blog and not my knitting blog, I won’t bother addressing that issue further.

Now for the books – what do the rest of you print-addicts do?

I generally like to take only old, ratty-looking paperbacks – usually one each of mystery and romance (nothing like some cheap schlock to calm me down on a bumpy flight). They can be picked up and put down so easily, and even though they’re library books, if I lose one I won’t be out much moola to pay for it. Paperbacks are also suitably light and small. This time, however, I’m reading Free for All by Don Borchert. Have you seen it yet?  It’s the story of his library life, repleat with stories of customers who sound so familiar I find myself visualizing the whole of it in my own library branch.  I’ve been laughing out loud with nearly every chapter because Borchert has a way of putting words together that makes me hear is sarcastic smile. This is not the Feel Good Librarian, though, so don’t expect delightful, smiling children and kind, sweet librarians throughout. It’s gritty and honest and hits the urban library nail right on the head.

I know it’s terribly trite to be reading a Librarian’s Memoir while traveling to PLA, but I just can’t resist – it’s hilarious reading, and I’m only 1/3 of the way through. I am forcing myself to pack it in the checked bag, though, and only read it in the privacy of my hotel room. I have standards, afterall.

I’ve got a mystery to read en route, my first book by Nevada Barr. I’ve given it the “10 page test” and like it so far, so I think it’ll do me for tomorrow. I can sleep much better tonight, knowing my reading and knitting . . . and for that matter my first PLA Blog post . . . are ready.

 Looking forward to blogging with/for you all.

 Cat

Clara Bohrer reported on the finances of PLA. Fund balance was about $25,000 lower than expected partly because the Spring Symposium was not as successful as budgeted. The other reason is a printing cost which will be recovered when the published book is finally sold. Clara then reviewed the current year. The reports do not show any revenue for the conference which will occur in March. PLA is set with a cyclical budget for spending more in one year and capturing revenue from conferences in the other years. Registration for the conference is running ahead of Boston.

Budget assumption for the future is that there will be an endowment transfer in the years in which conferences are held. BARC has created a new series of budget review guidelines. One item noted was that the budget to actual variance should be no more than 5%. It is not clear whether that is on the overall budget or for individual line items.

Molly Fogarty reported on the Deliberative Dialog meeting on December 12. She explained the purpose of the meeting was about getting groups within ALA to consensus on a stand. In the particular case it was over GPO standards. The goal was to establish a protocol if units cannot agree.

There was discussion of the Emerging Leaders Program about participants and how the project worked.

Carolyn Anthony reported on the Library Support Staff Certification Program which is an IMLS program jointly with Western Council of State Libraries. They have developed a set of competencies. This expected to be completed in the summer of 2010. The next year is policy and procedure and on assessment (tests, portfolio, experience). It will then be field tested using the CPLA model. It is an exciting idea.

Sunil Iyengar, director of research and analysis for the National Endowment for the Arts, reported on a survey on reading. Survey of adults showed less than half had read a book of poetry, fiction in the past year. Lots of data. Partly in answer, they created the Big Read to encourage communities to read the same book.

Battery dying. More to come.

It’s curious to me how the story used being bored with video games as an angle for drawing boys into nonfiction books, and it made the astute point that not all boys are Harry Potter fans. Do boys really get bored with video games? Really? Perhaps gaming isn’t the only way to get boys to read, or get them into the library?

Has your library had success with promoting nonfiction to encourage boys to read? Are there any lines of books you can recommend that can hook this elusive audience?

The webinar’s speaker, Nina Hess, is a Senior Editor at Mirrorstone, an imprint of the very famous and popular gaming company, Wizards of the Coast (publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and much more). She edits fantasy fiction for children and teens. She is also the author of A Practical Guide to Monsters, which follows the company’s New York Times bestseller, A Practical Guide to Dragons. Needless to say, she is quite the expert.

I was invited to attend a preview of the webinar, and it’s an excellent Fantasy 101 crash course. Nina talks about:

• her experiences working at Mirrorstone (where she works in a “fantasy world”),
• why fantasy is so popular with kids, especially boys, and keeps them reading,
• the different flavors of fantasy plus a little on fantasy vs. science fiction,
• how fantasy and gaming can go hand-in-hand, and how tabletop role-play can lead to more kids in the library *and* more reading,
• program ideas that incorporate fantasy and fantasy reading

This webinar is a great place to start if you’re lost in fantasy, or just need a push in the right direction. Nina also talks about the many resources offered by her company (many of them free!) to help your library begin its journey into fantasy.

The program is coming up soon, so now is the time to register!

Event details:
A Practical Guide to Fantasy
Friday, September 28, 2007
11 a.m. – 12 p.m. Eastern Time [10 a.m. CT / 9 a.m. MT / 8 a.m. PT]
To Register: Send your name and contact information to . You may either email or call in your credit card information at 914-241-2117.
Cost: $50 per person
Group discounts:
10-49: $45/person
50-99: $40/person
100+: $35/person

What you’ll need: This is a Web-based seminar. Registered participants will receive participation instructions, log-on information and a toll-free number to dial in by telephone for the audio portion of the seminar upon payment of the registration fee.

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.

I had read an article about this program from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in my Literacy for Special Population course last Fall at Simmons College, so I was curious to hear more and decided to attend this Sunday morning program.

Prime Time is a family literacy program comprised of 6 to 8 week sessions with reading, discussion and storytelling at public libraries and other locations. Each session involves the reading of a few books by a professional storyteller, followed by a discussion led by a “scholar” (usually a university professor). Librarians have the opportunity to market library resources to the program participants during each session. The books are selected for their multicultural representations and the opportunities they offer for discussions of humanities topics.

The program was started in Louisiana in 1991, but has since spread across many other states thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and support from ALA. Librarians who plan to implement Prime Time at their library participate in an intense training session in New Orleans several times a year.

During the conference session, we heard stories from a number of librarians who have planned Prime Time at their libraries. Sue Warner from Kalamzoo City Public Library and other librarians from across the U.S. shared their experiences, the ways they made the program work for their community, and their passion for this wonderful program. They all emphasized that this program requires a great deal of planning and is not cheap, but that the rewards are immeasurable.

Prime Time has applied for more funding for 2008 and hopes to support more libraries in the upcoming year both through training and through funding the first series of programming. Check out the ALA site in late August/early September for more information about available grants for Prime Time. For more information about the program see their web site: http://www.leh.org/html/primetime.html

The meeting began with a bit of history. In December 2004, when Google was rolling out lots of products, it announced Google Print, a project to make full texts available for reading and printing from the web. Within weeks the company also announced that it had agreements with five large libraries to digitize their printed materials and make them searchable on the web. Many librarians thought the idea was great, but publishers and authors objected. The upset parties filed lawsuits against Google and the libraries. In Fall 2005 the project was renamed Google Books.

Adam Smith, the Product Management Director of the Google Book Search summed up the status of the project. As of June 2007, there are 25 libraries scheduled to join the project, whose goal is making searching books as easy as searching the web. He also said that around 10,000 publishers had signed on to provide content at differing levels. Some have full texts, some sample pages, and others snippets with keywords. He said that Google Book Search had been integrated with Google Universal Search, and showed that special “About This Book” pages combining metadata, reviews, book backgrounds, and library holdings are being added to Google Book Search.

The five libraries are Harvard, University of Michigan, New York Public, Stanford, and Oxford University’s Bodleian. Their panelists indicated that libraries themselves have differing objectives, but all admitted they signed on because they were failing to digitize at fast enough rate before Google made its tempting offer. Though the number of items digitized to date is being treated like an industry secret, they all claim that they are much farther along than before the web giant stepped in.

The obvious benefit for the five is items are being made digitally available. There are many side benefits. The work has forced the libraries to pull out seldom used materials. They have discovered items that were never catalogued or added to online database. The Bodleian even discovered many books whose pages had never been cut. They have to varying degrees discovered how damaged their books are by time and usage. (Brittle and breaking spine items are not being scanned.) They are getting new ideas for bibliographic description and finding new ways to share their resources.

Several of the panelists said that Google Book Search is sparking requests for materials in a way that being part of other online catalogs never did. This is where public libraries benefit. Because full texts are searchable, subjects are being found in books that researches had never considered.

The program became more interesting when the audience began its questions. Some of the project’s disappointments began to be revealed. Much was made of the limitations of sticking only to public domain known items for digitization. To be safe, several of the libraries have stuck to pre-1923 books. One speaker said that many 1923-1964 books are now in the public domain but no one knows what titles, as no one has ever reported on copyrights not renewed. The University of Michigan has a team now systematically checking 1923-1964 copyright renewals. It is estimated if these books can be identified, the body of public domain items will double.

The panelist also admitted that the quality of the digital documents is not good enough to be considered preservation. The goal is just to make the items searchable on the web. At this, the project is successful already. What lies ahead is uncertain. One panelist said that until much copyrighted material can also be added and open for reading and printing, the project is not really complete.

This podcast would be great for children and youth librarians who are looking for off the beaten path books to recommend, and feedback from young readers about what they did and didn’t like. And, it’s a great podcast to recommend to parents who are always on the lookout for books to read to their kids.

Podcasting still a blur to you? Watch the archives of the SirsiDynix Institute webinar on Podcasting (Part 1 – A Consumer’s Guide and Part 2 – A Creator’s Guide) by Greg Schwartz of the Louisville Free Public Library. Also, check out a great FAQ on podcasting developed by the Kankakee Public Library in Illinois. The link takes you to the archive of the library podcasts — which are very interesting and worth a listen — and the link to the FAQ is at the top of the page.

Does your library do a podcast that you’re particularly proud of? Have you seen a podcast in your listening travels that might be useful to librarians and/or patrons? Send us an email and let us know.

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.