Everytime We Touch... in the library

Wow, a friend [thanks reyn!] sent me this link to a YouTube video of "Everytime We Touch" by Cascada. That definitely happens in my library. Daily.

Excellent.

BookSwim

Apparently books will soon be swimming around the U.S.!

BookSwim claims to be the "Netflix for books". According to the site, it plans to launch the service on February 14th - Happy Valentine's Day, book lovers!

Not sure what I really think about this. The website is certainly unimpressive, and they are soliciting for investors on the homepage (not that there are any other pages to the site) . Who's behind this? What will it cost?

I will be very curious to see if it sinks or "swims".

Miscreants in the Library

A friend [thanks Elizabeth!] forwarded me this article: Lock the Library! Rowdy Students Are Taking Over

I work at an academic institution, so we don't encounter this problem. However, I remember it all too well from my days at a public library. They had to hire a separate employee to work in the afternoons JUST to watch the teenagers who arrived after school. It was insane.

Closing the library for a few hours after school doesn't seem like the answer, but many things have been tried and few, if any, work.

LISZEN

I just posted about LibWorm not too long ago, and then today I read about LISZEN on the ALA TechSource blog. If aiming for a Google-like look, LISZEN's your search engine. Perhaps that's because the creator used the Google Co-op to build it.

I'm really not sure which one is better though - they both pull from library blogs. LibWorm has 1500 feeds, and LISZEN has 600. Perhaps LISZEN has superior search capabilities because it uses the Google platform. I'm really not sure.

Once again though, I have to sign up for something to get my blog added. I am supposed to add my blog to the wiki first, and in order to edit the wiki, I have to create an account. Sigh. I have way too many accounts to keep track of.

Pimp a Nutcracker!

In the spirit of the holidays - enjoy.

Pimp My Nutcracker. hehehehe!

And for your listening pleasure, I highly recommend David Sedaris' "Six to Eight Black Men." It's definitely my favorite of his stories and had me laughing so hard I cried!

LibWorm

Hmm, not sure what I think about this since my blog isn't included and all (hehe), but LibWorm is interesting... and it looks pretty. The little worm guy is cute. :)

I suppose I could create an account and get myself added, but frankly, I can't keep up with my current list of blogs - why would I want the opportunity to find so many more wonderful things to read? :)

"Raunchy books"

A coworker forwarded me a post linking to this particular article: Raunchy books pulled from NYC school. I'm glad to see book banning is alive and well. I love that detailed instructions on French kissing are so taboo!

And I don't know if it's an unfortunate wording in the article, but I wasn't aware that one really needed instructions on homosexuality.

[Found by my coworker on LISNews.org]

HUZZAH!

Blogger has finally deemed me cool enough to allow me to upgrade to blogger beta. Too bad I have to go Xmas shopping or I'd monkey around with it all afternoon. :)

I got tags! Woo hoo! Of course, I have no idea what tags to assign to this post. Hmmmm.

Where, oh where, has Kat been?

I haven't been so good with this blogging thing as of late. Things have been busy. Then again, when are they not?

Most recently I have found myself with four less teeth. That was a wondeful experience.... The drugs weren't nearly as fun as my friends promised they'd be. It actually went pretty well, as it is only the 5th day and the swelling is already nearly gone. I return to work tomorrow and it is nice to know that I won't look too terribly much like a chipmunk. :) I could very easily get used to the whole 5 day weekend thing though. Too bad it has to end so soon.

Now the Christmas holiday is drawing close and I have yet to do much Christmas shopping. Ooops. I always put it off though, so this is nothing new. Hopefully I'll get a decent amount accomplished today.

Perhaps I'll return to blogging with a slight bit more regularity at some point in the future...

[And if anyone needs a good oral surgeon in Zanesville, I highly recommend Larry Towning. :o) He rocks!]

What Kind of Reader are YOU?

Someone named Kate (not me, unfortunately) made this awesome quiz:

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Literate Good Citizen
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

[Found on Annoyed Librarian]

Cheaper Road Runner

This is not necessarily the most relevant post I've ever made, but then again that's really not that unusual for me.

Yesterday, I called Time Warner Cable to find out if something called Road Runner Light really exists. It does. And it is a lot cheaper than regular Road Runner. $26.95 a month as opposed to $44.95 a month. Supposedly, it is slower than regular Road Runner, although I was assured it is faster than DSL. It probably makes a difference if you do a lot of downloading or streaming, but since I don't do a whole lot of that, it doesn't seem any different to me. Plus, I used to have DSL and loved it.

So, if you have Time Warner Cable, and you are looking to reduce the amount you have to spend on it per month, ask about Road Runner Light. I actually almost like Time Warner Cable now, because the switch was so easy, you just ask and they do it and it takes place immediately.

Moral of the story: "beep beep!" can be cheap... -er. :)

A Use for Recycled Books

A friend (thanks reyn!) forwarded this website: This Into That. It belongs to an artist who turns old books into shelves and furniture. The gallery of funniest shelves are entertaining. And I really think I need to make me one of those bookcases.

I already use 4 discarded books to raise my monitor to eye level. Old books do have good uses! :)

We ZAP 'em at the library!

Bad library press. Sigh.

I heard this on the radio up in Cleveland last week - one of the local rock stations was having fun bashing the incident. Then, one of my coworkers forwarded the story around.

Apparently UCPD felt it necessary to taser a guy for not showing ID at the UCLA Library. Well, okay, I'm sure there is more to it than that.

I watched the YouTube video that one particularly quick student created. I love how everyone else just flocks to watch, too. The tasered individual was "leaving this godforsaken place" - what a great library description. More details here.

Good grief.

Cranky thought of the day

We lose students to Google as a result of lethargic library databases - lengthy loading times, etc. When it's slow, it's irritating... it's like being on dialup (*GASP*). We are losing them because Google is faster, even on its slowest days.

Of course, this is just a cranky thought without a suggested solution because I'm not sure what needs to be done to remedy this. Is it bandwidth? Server space? I have no idea. I'm not even sure where the problem is. Is it primarily a local problem? Or is it consortium-wide? Are our databases just too "heavy" and it's the fault of the providers? Yeah, no clue.

But what I do know is that I just love promising students that "it really will load eventually. Really."

Studying while driving

What do you think about students who study for a test while driving? Who spend more time looking at their notes than the road? And can't maintain even a remotely steady speed? And weave erratically?

And scare the crap out of the poor librarian who just wants desperately to pass said student?

At least it took the monotony out of my 25 minute commute to work this morning.

Yesterday morning, I saw a lady with her hair in curlers driving on the freeway. That was entertaining. :)

Bewildering Unpreparedness

What does it say for the current state of higher education when students arrive for class with absolutely nothing but themselves, their jackets, and their cell phones? At least, I'd assume they had a cell phone in a pocket somewhere - they can't seem to go anywhere without that.

No bookbag, no textbooks, no notebooks, no folders, no pieces of paper.

Not even a pen or pencil.

incest, necrophilia, and seduction

Just when I think I've seen it all....

I am slowly working my way through the reference collection, weeding out tons of books. I thought I would have already seen the most bizarre but today I discovered Show Me the Good Parts: The Reader's Guide to Sex in Literature.

This extremly useful book provides the page numbers and brief annotations of sex scenes in various books. For example, the annotation for Call Me Mistress by Tomlin Rede is as follows: "The heroine ends up with the guy who first took her innocence from her some 10,000 intercourses ago."

Or in The Devil in Bucks County by Edmund Schiddel, "A 16-year-old girl from one of the fine families gets mixed up with the town's aging delinquent. This s.o.b. leaves her with an ugly memory of her first experience, which will take a lot of sundaes and church socials to wipe out."

This book is clearly a must-have for every library. It is divided into chapters by type of sex scene, thus the title of this post. I wish I could personally thank the ingenious male librarian who wrote this book. I am surprised it hasn't gotten more use in my library.

No More Typing

In the interest of spending less time typing, since most of my day is spent in front of a computer (both at work and at home), I recently purchased some software that will type for me.

It's called Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 Preferred. I don't know if I really needed the Preferred version, but it was what was selling on eBay. I have only just begun to use it, but I can already tell it's going to be a challenge. I think it's just that there is a learning curve and that you need to have the patience to "train" the software to recognize your voice, as well as to learn the commands to make the software function as best it can.

The most annoying thing about the software is that you can only put it on one computer. I find that really irritating because I am the only one using it and I would like to be able to use it both at work and at home. gar.

Anyway, as time goes on and I slowly become accustomed to this program, and it becomes accustomed to me, I will continue to post as to whether or not this is a good product. I have to say that I was very frustrated with it earlier today but then decided to "train" it some more, and it is already doing a much better job of recognizing my speech. So far I'm pretty impressed.

Browser Wars

I was checking out my stats earlier and it is finally the case that more of my visitors use Firefox (57) than MSIE (39). The other 4 used Safari, Netscape, or Mozilla.

The free version of StatCounter only tracks the most recent 100 visits. Then again, it's probably taken me weeks to amass the above 100 visits....

Podcasting: What, How, and Why

...is a presentation Andrew and I gave waaaaayyyy back in August at the OLC Children's and Young Adult Services Conference (see Andrew's post here). Andrew is good with the technical aspect of podcast creation, and I'm a podcast listener/subscriber (or was, haven't had much time lately). Plus, I worked in a public library for years (during high school and college), which was helpful given our audience. Basically, combined we are an awesome team. :)

Our presentation had excellent attendance (owing partially to the fact that the seating was very limited, so all presentations were well-attended). The audience was great, and overall it went really well.

Podcasting really is pretty easy. We ran through the entire process, complete with various options, in our allotted time period. In addition we covered possible uses, why you should podcast, how to listen/subscribe, publicizing your podcast, various challenges to podcasting, and finally briefly touched on the ways you can go beyond podcasting (vodcasting and screencasting).

The wiki for our presentation is here (the powerpoint is available there as well). A list of ways to use podcasting in children's and young adult services is here.