Professional Reading...or "Sarah Louise is having too much fun reading her American Libraries emails"

Happy Labor Day Weekend--a panoply of links from the library world! if the text seems out of order, its b/c I just switched the not so geeky librarian stuff to the END of the post. Please read far enough to see the item from the Onion...

What babies love about books: "Open. Shut. Open. Shut. Openshut." What preschoolers love about books: "They can be propped open on the floor to be like a tunnel for a toy car...or a tent for a doll." What Kindergarten and beyond-ers love about books: "If you read every single book in a series you'll feel really cool." And of course, we in the industry love it when an article says go to your library!! (Parenting Magazine article.)

Google is offering pdfs of some of its Google Book Search items, ones that are in public domain. "Starting today, readers can find new, and free, downloadable versions of some of the world's greatest books on Google Book Search (http://books.google.com/)." Dante, Goethe, Hugo are some of the available authors. (Google Press Release.) (Note: while discovering new blogs via Walt Crawford, learning that a lot of library bloggers don't think this is the cat's meow.)

And you can also get public domain audio books for free if you have the right software!! A New York Times article talks about LibriVox, a program where volunteers submit readings of public domain books. As an audio book lover that still hasn't jumped on the MP3/ipod bandwagon, this may be what I've been waiting for...

An amazing article in the Decatur, IL Herald & Review talks about a librarian who received a note in her hotel room from a member of the cleaning staff. This particular librarian had a "treasure trove" of books from the vendor's tables in the exhibit halls.

"But on one evening, she returned to the room to find a note on the coffeepot:
'Are you selling books? If so, I'd like to buy some. Please call me at home. This is not my regular floor.'
So Popit called and the following morning, a woman in her early 20s came, saying, 'I cannot tell you how scared I was to write that note. I don't have any books any more. I used to read all the time.'
'At this point,' said Popit, 'I was in tears.'
Popit not only gave the woman some books but wrote a note to go with them saying the books hadn't been stolen."

WOW! I think if we are learning anything from Katrina, it is how much people want to be able to read and congregate around books. Kudos to any and all who have helped in the post-Katrina restoration projects.

An Onion article on the Dewey Committee flummoxed at how to categorize the new Jim Belushi book..."Real Men Don’t Apologize. "With all due respect to the author, we remain unsure how to categorize this particular work," said committee chair Leslie Buncombe, who, despite repeated readings, still wasn’t sure if Real Men was "an actual book." "What is it? Autobiography? Self-help? We can’t even tell if it’s fiction or nonfiction." Here's a post from the Dewey Blog on the subject.

If you're in the library world at all, you've heard the phrase "Library 2.0." You may not know what it is (it's, um, yeah.) This link is the funniest thing I have seen in a very long time. Warning: you may get addicted to the "Library 2.0 Idea Generator." Oh, it is precious. It is laugh out loud, if you are a library geek like me. (Hey, if non-librarians find it funny, tell me in the comment box!!)

A scary article about how searches are being cached...you might not want to do a personal search on say "sarah louise" and right after start researching your novel on bank robberies. (e.week.com article.)

Pop-psychology on browsers: what your browser says about you: a blog post from Terminally Incoherent.

Those Charlotte-Mecklenburg librarians are learning about Library 2.0 and winning prizes! You can learn along with them but not win prizes...

To justify writing this at work (yes, Eileen has inspired me to virtue) I'm going to write about library stuff. I get emails from the ALA every week on Weds or Thurs, called "American Libraries." They are the bomb. I love them so much. Since I was out for 3 weeks, I had 3 to catch up on!! Also, every day or so I get LIS News.

So today, I learned about technolust (like your director goes to a conference and comes back saying "we must get the newest xy or z" even though it doesn't really match your demographic, it's just KEWL.) So instead, you should have a technoplan. (Library Journal article)

I found a list of "quality web resources providing free full-text article content" (say that five times fast--I'll wait.) (Multimedia and Internet at Schools article.)

Then I found the motherlode: the Judges Report for the Children's Book Council of Australia, 2006. I wonder if any of these books are available in the US...It was a pdf, and I deleted the AL email it was in, I'll try to look up a link...found it! But, it is 21 pages long. If you just want a list of the books, go here. There is a link for a printer friendly pdf if you want something to carry to the library...

The juiciest, though, is Walt Crawford's Cites and Insights. This guy writes a 30 page PDF every month. I used to get it via email but I couldn't keep up. Now I rely on the good folks at ALA to let me know when there's a good one: this one is perspectives on library blogs. Mmmmm...Again, it's a pdf, so I'll hunt up the link. (Note: I've finished reading the report and am discovering some new blogs--stay posted!) This post is being written over two days: and I got a new AL email today!!

And finally, a romantic find: a story about an old Harlequin, called Hospital Librarian, on the Canadian Health Libraries Association website. T-shirts of the cover image are available...