LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Over 1500 RSS librarian sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest headlines from journals and sites in the Non-fiction interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:51:34 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Opzft0zHepo/fiction-non-fiction-kapuscinski Every writer of reportage ought to learn from the Kapuscinski controversy. Creative non-fiction is a slippery slopeHad he lived a few years longer, Ryszard Kapuscinski might well have won the Nobel prize for literature. Although these things are shrouded in Vatican-like secrecy, I bet that he was on the Swedish Academy's rolling shortlist. Journalists in many countries would then have hailed him as the first "non-fiction" writer to win it since Winston Churchill in 1953. Now a huge row has broken out in his native Poland over a new book which suggests that his non-fiction was not so non-fictional, after all. This row has already blown round the world, because Kapuscinski's name is a global byword for a certain kind of literary-political reportage.I have just read the book, which is called (in Polish) Kapuscinski Non-Fiction. Its author is the journalist Artur Domoslawski, to whom Kapuscinski had been model, mentor and friend, and it has been criticised on several grounds. These include his handling of the travelling writer's allegedly numerous love affairs, which I do find insensitive, and of his communist past and occasional contacts with the secret police, which I think Domoslawski handles well.More broadly, the book is condemned as being a denunciation of a former mentor. Kapuscinski's widow calls it "patricide". This is not how I see it. I find that the author tries to be fair, allowing many different voices to speak. He captures the Ryszard I knew, starting with a brilliant evocation of his warm, nut-brown, disarming smile. Literally disarming in Ryszard's case, because that almost pantomime-humble smile got him through many a dangerous confrontation with armed men, in Africa and elsewhere. But this book is the protracted cry of a worried and even a disappointed disciple – one who, in his nearly three-year journey of investigation, found things that deeply disturbed him. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:04:00 +0100 825225 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PegasusLibrarian/~3/124BjFKiRk4/15-things-about-me-and-books.html Photo by Lin Pernille A while back, some other librarians revived an old meme. Way back then, I started this list. Today, I found it in my drafts. I was a late reader. I don’t remember exactly how late (being home schooled at that point was probably a blessing). I do remember being a little mortified when my younger sister and I were both reading the Little House books at the same time. She’s six years younger, and was a very early reader. I think she was four at the time. Part of our normal school day included my mom reading aloud to us. She did this well into my middle school years (at which point my youngest brother was probably 4-ish). She read everything from Charlotte’s Web to the Lord of the Rings while we kids did quiet crafts on the living room floor. The saddest I’ve ever been at the end of a book was when the dogs died in Where the Red Fern Grows. Mom was reading it aloud, and we kids were scattered around the room trying not to look at each other as we each bawled softly. What a day. I remember being curled up under the coffee table and pretty sure I’d never come out again. Dad tried to read to us at bedtime up until I was about 11. He was insanely busy getting a PhD from Harvard, though, so books would take us an astonishingly long time to finish. To this day I think of Great Expectations as a 1000+ page book. Each time we sat down to read, Dad would have to recap the entire book up to that point and then read a chapter. Luckily, Swallows and Amazons fell at a time when he could read to us at least a couple times a week. The first librarian I ever knew worked in the children’s section of our public library in Dorchester, MA. She had a cupboard way up high where she’d hide new books that she thought I’d like so that I could be the first one to check them out. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:44:25 +0100 825342 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/qfjmfRiMcTE/ On the A List Apart website, Joe Clark has written an extremely good, extremely long essay on why HTML-based formats are becoming the new standard for e-books, and what needs to be done to clean that standard up. Clark points out that HTML “is great for expressing words”—and not just words in websites, but the form of words used for most fiction and some non-fiction books—what Craig Mod called “Formless Content”. Every e-book reader on the market can display some HTML-based formats—everything but the Kindle can do ePub, and the Kindle’s AZW format is just HTML-based in a different way. Of course, every format decision blocks off other avenues, possible roads not taken. Clark is not equivocal that in advocating adoption of HTML, he may be blocking off new forms of “book” that have yet to be invented. But on the other hand: I am happy to contribute to the death of “vooks” and other multimedia websites masquerading as books. (I do not want a rectangle of video yammering at me while I’m trying to read.) They’re like animated popunder ads in that no actual “user” wants them, but somebody with an agenda does. Exterminating that species is something to which I am proud to contribute. For other forms of books, advocating strict HTML markup will cause as-yet-unknowable harm. He then goes into details about problems that need to be solved in order for HTML to be successful as an e-book format of choice. The semantics have to be cleaned up and standardized, so that e-books can be created with valid HTML code. Also, production methods have a lot of room for improvement—especially the early generations of e-book created largely out of unproofed scans of paper books. Clark goes so far as to suggest that manuscripts should be written in HTML, then converted to Word for editing and change tracking, then passed to InDesign. (Though he does admit this point of view is “so optimistic as to be ridiculous. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +0100 825317 http://lisnews.org/world_without_public_libraries On the whole, I'm not much of a book reader. Most of my reading is done online; I read a handful of books every year, mostly non-fiction, based on various whims. Right now, I'm reading The World Without Us, a captivating exploration about how the world would revert (or not revert) back to a pre-human emergence. Some of these things have been dramatized into a series on the History Channel by a different name, providing the added element of CGI to show how buildings would collapse, infrastructure would fail, nature reclaims the suburbs, and how all that would remain for future archeologists is our stainless steel cookware. For the scientist in me, it's fascinating to see everything humans have made becoming undone by the natural forces of this world. So, in touching upon the premise of the book, I thought, "What would the world be like without libraries?" How would our demise come? Unlike the book, which asks the reader to suspend disbelief and accept the total sudden disappearance of humankind, I cannot propose nor fathom asking the same for libraries. In attempting to avoid hyperbole, I think the mechanisms of the library’s demise have already proven themselves present. It will not come through lack of innovation or adoption of technology or practices; our relevance and willingness to change in this digital information age has certainly been established. No, the end will come as it has for some libraries over the past two years: through budget cuts. Funding for all library types (public, academic, school, and special) has hung in the balance for the last couple of years after budgets tighten and communities and companies look to trim their expenditures. You need go no further than typing in the words “library budget” in a Google News search to see the current toll that is being exacted.  One problem, as I see it, is that the library as a community service does not fit nicely into any government spending niche. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:47:19 +0100 824748 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Fhrup2zjY6U/dave-eggers-zeitoun-hurricane-katrina Author, publisher and literary trendsetter: Dave Eggers is all those, and he's fast becoming the conscience of liberal America too. Here he tells how he went from 'staggering genius' to the man who gives a voice to the downtrodden and dispossessedI'm a little nervous of meeting Dave Eggers. On the way to San Francisco, where he lives and runs his groovy and influential publishing empire, McSweeney's, I consider his reputation. When Eggers published his first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he mostly refused to do interviews except by email, and then his answers were spiky and oblique, and occasionally just a joke. He once railed against a journalist who he said had quoted him off the record with a fury that seems to me to have been just a touch disproportionate. Sure enough, before I leave London, I get an email from an assistant warning me that he will only talk about his new book, Zeitoun, and that it will drive him nuts if I ask him "what he had for dinner the night before last" (I reply that I have never asked anyone, ever, what they had for dinner the night before last and I certainly would not dream of flying half way round the world to pose such a question). As for his human rights work and many charitable projects, these things are so intimidating. Faced with such abundant goodness, I furtively examine my conscience and find it wanting.As it turns out, though, I am wrong. Entirely wrong. Granted, he is not big on self-revelation. But he is neither difficult nor mean. McSweeney's is in the Mission district of the city: it's like Camden only with wider roads and more second-hand bookshops. When I arrive, I'm led past the desks of half-a-dozen bright young things and into his office, which is small and gloomy and womb-like. Time to break the ice. You hate doing interviews, don't you? I ask, sitting down (there is no desk; he works on an old sofa). "No, not at all," he says. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:08:07 +0100 824118 http://lisnews.org/former_book_designer_says_good_riddance_print A recent blog post by Craig Mod, a self-titled computer programmer, book designer and book publisher, offers a thoughtful and distinctive perspective on the move of books from paper to interactive devices like Apple’s iPad. Mr. Mod summarizes his argument in the subtitle of his post: “Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused. Good riddance.” Mr. Mod divides content broadly into two categories: content where the form is important, such as poetry or text with graphics, and content where form is divorced from layout, which he says applies to most novels and non-fiction. This kind of thinking makes a key point: instead of arguing about pixels versus paper, as many book lovers tend to do, it is more useful to focus on whether the technology is a good match for the content. Full article at the NYT Bits Blog (Source: LISNews.org) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:47:44 +0100 823843 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/GhiFur-3RQc/ian-mcewan-solar The novelist explains to Nicholas Wroe why he's chosen to grapple with climate change in his new book, SolarJust inside the front door of Ian McEwan's London home, the one in the shadow of the BT Tower made famous in his novel Saturday, is the obligatory recycling box full of paper, plastic and glass. "Of course we recycle," he laughs. "Who doesn't? And I'm all in favour of cutting 10% off our carbon. And of domestic solar panels. Anything that slows our consumption is useful. But ultimately I don't really think the bottle bank is going to get us out of this. And being virtuous is not going to get us out of it either. Civilisation is going to need another energy source."McEwan's own view – having been persuaded by thinkers such as Stewart Brand, and despite his own long-held suspicions of the industry – is that nuclear energy is probably our best bet in the medium term. Michael Beard, Nobel prize-winning physicist, glutton and the protagonist of McEwan's latest novel, Solar, has an even more technologically complex solution. His work in the field of artificial photosynthesis as a way of harnessing the sun's power has made him rich and famous. Beard got his Nobel for "modifying Einstein's photovoltaics", and McEwan enthusiastically explains that the bleeding-edge science in the book is real, if some way from practical application. "If you go to America the amount of ingenuity being deployed, and the private capital – until this present recession – being invested in nanotechnology and solar energy is astonishing."For McEwan science is the road not taken, and he talks slightly enviously about his geneticist son's work and training. At the age of 16 he "agonised" at school over the arts or science route. "My maths was actually pretty mediocre, but I did love science and eventually even 'got' calculus, although I always felt if I so much as sneezed I would probably lose it again. ... Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:08:11 +0100 823792 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/03/05/a-real-lulu-john-edgar-wideman-to-self-publish/ It’s one thing when a first-time author self-publishes a book — it can be a great way to get noticed, as we learned from David Carnoy. It’s another thing entirely when a well known and widely respected author turns from traditional publishing to self-publishing. But that’s exactly what John Edgar Wideman (Fanon, 2008) is doing. (And, come to think of it, I asked Carnoy about that very same prospect.) According to a press release on Lulu.com, Wideman — a National Book Award finalist and the winner of other noteworthy honors — will publish Briefs, Stories for the Palm of the Mind on March 14, exclusively on Lulu. (A free preview is available now.) According to the release: “I’ve been thinking about alternatives for a long time,” said Wideman, whose works of fiction and non-fiction include the award-winning Brothers and Keepers, Philadelphia Fire and Fanon. “Lulu seems to represent a very live possibility as the publishing industry mutates. I like the idea of being in charge. I have more control over what happens to my book. And I have more control over whom I reach. “I have a very personal distaste for the blockbuster syndrome,” Wideman continued. “The blockbuster syndrome is a feature of our social landscape that has gotten out of hand. Unless you become a blockbuster, your book disappears quickly. It becomes not only publish or perish, but sell or perish.” Wideman will also make several backlist titles available. It will be interesting to see how all this pans out, of course, but right now I have only one question: will this literary lion succumb to the temptation to give himself a good review? (Source: Likely Stories) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:25:03 +0100 825040 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/-DzB-m9oW3w/ Yesterday we covered Penguin CEO John Mackinson engaging in a fair amount of hyperbole concerning the future of the e-book in a post-iPad world. “The definition of the book itself, as far as we can see, is up for grabs.” Now blogger Craig Mod, a six-year publishing-industry veteran, goes into more specifics, at considerable length, about what the iPad might mean for the format of electronic books. This is a long and thoughtful article with plenty of illustrations that is definitely worth a read. Formless vs. Definite Content Mod divides books into categories of Formless and Definite Content. Formless Content is your average fiction book, or non-fiction without many illustrations and tables. The text is the all, and it does not matter how it is paginated or reflowed—it still reads the same on any device. Definite Content is designed and formatted to be read in a particular way, with pictures and charts embedded in text at specific places. Textbooks are a good example. Devices such as the Kindle or iPhone, Mod says, have historically had trouble presenting works Definite Content due to the black-and-white nature of the Kindle, or the small screen size of the iPhone. But the iPad presents new possibilities for e-book formatting, and not just in the tired old “add video to it” multimedia sense. Mod observes that the page-turning metaphor could be entirely abandoned. Books could scroll continuously horizontally or vertically, or scroll horizontally for new chapters and other divisions then vertically within that chapter or division. Ending the “Disposable Book” Mod thinks that, in the end, all Formless Content and some Definite Content will end up on the iPad or devices like it. He feels this could mean the end of the “disposable book”— The book printed without consideration of form or sustainability or longevity. The book produced to be consumed once and then tossed. The book you bin when you’re moving and you need to clean out the closet. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:15:00 +0100 823643 http://146.74.224.231/archives/2010/03/read_and_learn_1.html Kids - would you like to hear a story and learn some cool new facts? Try reading along with Bookflix, an online resource that pairs classic video storybooks with related non-fiction eBooks to build a love of reading and learning. Watch and read today! Find Bookflix on the Library's website in the Electronic Library 24/7, on the Kids page, or click here. (Source: Santa Clara County Library - The Latest SCCoop) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:40:48 +0100 823245 http://www.lisnews.org/what_do_%E2%80%9Clast_train_hiroshima%E2%80%9D Blog post at Swiss Army Librarian: I’m sure libraries across the country are asking this same question. My library purchased Last Train from Hiroshima, but haven’t put it out yet because we’re divided over how to handle it. Based on revelations in the New York Times and Washington Post, I’m opposed to just shelving this book in non-fiction. There are a lot of requests for it, so I do want to make it available for people to read, but I would like to include a note of some kind stating there are significant known inaccuracies in the book. Full post (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:40:58 +0100 823785 http://lisnews.org/what_do_%E2%80%9Clast_train_hiroshima%E2%80%9D Blog post at Swiss Army Librarian: I’m sure libraries across the country are asking this same question. My library purchased Last Train from Hiroshima, but haven’t put it out yet because we’re divided over how to handle it. Based on revelations in the New York Times and Washington Post, I’m opposed to just shelving this book in non-fiction. There are a lot of requests for it, so I do want to make it available for people to read, but I would like to include a note of some kind stating there are significant known inaccuracies in the book. Full post (Source: LISNews.org) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:40:58 +0100 822924 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2010/03/02/what-to-do-with-last-train-from-hiroshima I’m sure libraries across the country are asking this same question. My library purchased Last Train from Hiroshima, but haven’t put it out yet because we’re divided over how to handle it. Based on revelations in the New York Times and Washington Post, I’m opposed to just shelving this book in non-fiction. There are a lot of requests for it, so I do want to make it available for people to read, but I would like to include a note of some kind stating there are significant known inaccuracies in the book. One argument is that it’s not a library’s place to censor books, and if people want to read it we should provide access. However, we do censor resources and information simply by the act of selection, and by choosing which websites to link to based on their factual accuracy and reliability. Mainly I want to protect school kids and other unknowing people from taking portions of this book as fact - which is what the library is confirming by shelving it in non-fiction. But so far, neither the Charles Pellegrino (author) nor the Henry Holt (publisher) has issued an easy-to-print statement to include in the book. As of today, the book is still being promoted on the publisher’s homepage, but the author has addressed the issue in a forum posting linked to from his website. So, what are libraries doing with this book? Shelving it as usual? Not shelving it at all? Including a note inside or on the cover? Putting it in fiction? We still have Million Little Pieces in non-fiction, but I think there’s a difference between a memoir and a book about World War II. (Source: herzogbr.net blog) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:13:03 +0100 822864 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/DNRPGGopRYU/ryszard-kapuscinski-accused-fiction-biography New book claims journalist repeatedly crossed boundary between reportage and fiction-writingHe has been voted the greatest journalist of the 20th century. In an unparalleled career, Ryszard Kapuscinski transformed the humble job of reporting into a literary art, chronicling the wars, coups and bloody revolutions that shook Africa and Latin America in the 1960s and 70s.But a new book claims that the legendary Polish journalist, who died three years ago aged 74, repeatedly crossed the boundary between reportage and fiction-writing – or, to put it less politely, made stuff up.In a 600-page biography of the writer published in Poland yesterday, Artur Domoslawski says Kapuscinski often strayed from the strict rules of "Anglo-Saxon journalism". He was often inaccurate with details, claiming to have witnessed events he was not present at. On other occasions, Kapuscinski invented images to suit his story, departing from reality in the interests of a superior aesthetic truth, Domoslawski claims.Domoslawski told the Guardian: "Sometimes the literary idea conquered him. In one passage, for example, he writes that the fish in Lake Victoria in Uganda had grown big from feasting on people killed by Idi Amin. It's a colourful and terrifying metaphor. In fact, the fish got larger after eating smaller fish from the Nile."He added: "Kapuscinski was experimenting in journalism. He wasn't aware he had crossed the line between journalism and literature. I still think his books are wonderful and precious. But ultimately, they belong to fiction."On another occasion, the writer reported vividly on a massacre in Mexico in 1968. Although he was travelling in Latin America at the time, Kapuscinski did not witness it, despite asserting "I was there", Domoslawski alleges.The biographer, a correspondent with Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's largest paper, said he did not want to debunk Kapuscinski, whom he described as "my mentor". ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:05:09 +0100 822542 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/fTMB-byHJJY/reality-hunger-book-review Sean O'Hagan is intrigued by a bold book that rails against the confines of traditional fictionDavid Shields is bored by the novel. As a form, he argues, it tends to be too hidebound by plot, too traditional and old-fashioned to reflect the speed of 21st-century culture. He is particularly bored by the well-wrought, beautifully written literary novel, as exemplified by Ian McEwan's Atonement and Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections."I read these books and my overwhelming feeling is, you've got to be kidding," he told the Observer recently. "They strike me as antediluvian texts that are essentially still working in the Flaubertian novel mode. In no way do they convey what if feels like to live in the 21st century. Like most novels, they are essentially works of nostalgic entertainment."What Shields wants essentially is less plot – less fictionalising, in fact – and more reality in all its messy "truthiness". He sees himself at the vanguard of a still unfocused literary movement that celebrates the "raw", the "seemingly unprocessed, unfiltered, uncensored and unprofessional". One wonders, at times, if he has heard of the blogosphere.Reality Hunger, though, is not just a manifesto for a new kind of genre-blurring 21st-century prose, it is also a series of short, sharp provocations: 617 in all, arranged under alphabetical, rather than numerical, chapters. Chapter a is entitled "overture"; chapter b, "mimesis"; chapter c, "books for people who find television too slow". You get the picture. Or maybe not. For all its supposed 21st-century cut and thrust, Reality Hunger reeks of a certain kind of endlessly referential, post-modernist lit-crit theory from the 1980s that briefly made Barthes and Baudrillard fashionable names to drop whether or not one had read their books.Which is a shame, because there is much here that is thought-provoking. ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:07:56 +0100 821972 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/6VCAVbvvjMU/ An interesting Reuters article yesterday about an author, Yves Smith, who wrote a non-fiction book that was published by an imprint of Macmillan. Since his book price has been increased he has been getting more one star reviews on the basis of pricing alone. He says: You know my base skews heavily toward the type that buys on Amazon, and to top that off, as you would imagine, my book promotion is going to be more than usually web oriented, so that will maintain that skew. I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of the time, if I see a book with an Amazon rating of fewer than four stars, I won’t buy it. And it does not take many one stars to drag an average down. Felix Salmon, author of the article, sympathizes with the author and Amazon here, but doesn’t think that the reviews matter a great deal. Read here for more. Thanks to Aaron Pressman for the heads up. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:00:00 +0100 821568 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FlaJobline/~3/MrIa7s_OyEg/collection-management-project-assistant.html The Spruce Grove Public Library is seeking an enthusiastic, organized, and highly motivated candidate for the exciting summer position of Collection Management Project Assistant in Children & Youth Services. The goal of this project is to transform our juvenile and easy non-fiction areas into easily accessible, current, high quality information sources for young people. The measurable outcome of this project will be demonstrated by increased circulation of non-fiction collections.This is a 16 week full-time (35hr/wk) position reporting to the Manager of Children & Youth Services.Hourly Rate: $13.00/hr paid bi-weekly.DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: Participate in training sessions to learn skills required for generating reports and using the integrated library system (Polaris).Organize juvenile and easy non-fiction collections into subject-based neighborhoods. Complete shelf-reading and weeding, verify call numbers, identify gaps in collections and make purchase recommendations.Create pathfinders and a labeling system to facilitate quick and easy retrieval of materials.Evaluate the success of implemented changes by administering surveys to patrons and staff. QUALIFICATIONSEnrollment in a post secondary Library Technician or MLIS program.Experience in collection management is desirable.Knowledge and understanding of the Dewey Decimal System.Competency with library software and technology, including all Microsoft Office programs.Excellent communication and interpersonal skills are crucial.Demonstrated project and time management skills are required.The terms of this position are conditional upon funding from the Summer Temporary Employment Program (STEP). Eligible applicants must have been in school full-time during the previous 12 months. For a full description of the STEP program see www.employment.alberta. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:15:21 +0100 822051 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/odLfbpsqFX0/losing-my-appetite-for-reality-hunger I was initially beguiled by David Shields's buzzy manifesto, but the more I read, the less I believed him"I find it very nearly impossible to read a contemporary novel that presents itself unselfconsciously as a novel, since it's not clear to me how such a book could convey what it feels like to be alive right now. Instead it must constantly be shifting shape, redefining itself, staying open for business way past closing time." David Shields, Reality Hunger I had just completed the first draft of my novel. The dismal weather had, at least, been useful for something. For weeks I had tapped out 1,000 words a day, staring at leaden skies beyond the window. I had considered character, structure, and what the agent, in our meeting, had termed "freight". I'd done my best to murder my most darling phrases, as Diana Athill advised in Saturday's Review section. The completed draft had been placed under the bed, to bake, with a plan to return after a couple of weeks with a fresh eye. And it was during that in-between time that I picked up David Shields's Reality Hunger.  If you've somehow missed the hype, this cauldron of quotes, appropriation, intentional plagiarism, and soundbites asserts in 617 points that the "standard" novel (what's that?) is dead, and that the best stories are true. It's a youthful manifesto (written by a middle-aged academic) that fastens on "the generic edge, the boundary between what [is] roughly called non-fiction and fiction". It says things like: "What I want is the real world, with all its hard edges, but the real world fully imagined and fully written, not merely reported." Or: "The novel is dead. Long live the anti-novel. Build it from scraps!" In my vulnerable state I was hooked, succumbing to its arguments with unusual ease. ... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:53:24 +0100 821059 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TameTheWeb/~3/7XWk2AJDUfQ/ There’s lots of talk about where we are headed these days.  What is our future?  Will we go the way of the dinosaur and suburban mall?  Seth Godin seems to think that we’re doomed while Toby Greenwalt and an army of librarians seem to think otherwise.  I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that the future of the public library is right in front of us.  And boy, does it look wonderful. Teens at the Graphic Novel and Manga Club, Cape May County Library We need to look no further than to the teens that are using the public library to see the future.   The library of the 21st Century has been characterized as being less of a library and more of a community center.  This practice is already in full effect when it comes to teen librarianship.  A great deal of a teen librarian’s focus is programming and getting teens into the library to create lifelong users. Programming brings teens into the library and gives them community.  Teens get a chance to interact with each other and share an experience.  One element that cannot be taken away no matter how much technology grows is human interaction.  Think of the modern supermarket.  Sure, the self checkout is great in a pinch, but don’t you just always find yourself going to a regular checkout for the interaction?  People working and collaborating with other people will drive the public library into the future.  Creating a third space where people share ideas and media will keep the public library relevant in the 21st century.  The development of the teen space in the public library can be seen as a microcosm of this idea.  Teen spaces are designed for use by a specific age range (usually 12-18 years old) and include many forms of media and technology all packaged together nicely into one area. The next step is to expand.  In order to accomplish this, we must embrace our sense of  adventure and open our minds. ... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:00:17 +0100 820792 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/gk7J83RD3qs/james-cameron-hiroshima-film-doubts • Avatar director Cameron has film rights to book• Veteran's account of flight dismissed as inaccurateThere can be few more exciting prospects for a non-fiction author than to have James Cameron take out an option on a book. The director recently broke his own record by amassing $2bn in world box-office takings for Avatar, making the film the highest grossing in history.Cameron has now bought the film rights to a book of survivors' stories from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, prompting speculation that his next blockbuster will focus on one of the seminal tales of 20th-century destruction.The Last Train from Hiroshima, by science writer Charles Pellegrino, takes place over two days and weaves together the stories of Japanese survivors with the memories of US air force personnel who accompanied the bomb, dubbed Little Boy, on its journey to kill 70,000 people.The potential transition from book to Cameron movie has hit a glitch, however, with the revelation that important parts of the book are based on the testimony of an American veteran that appears to have been fabricated. According to the New York Times, the passages of the book that rely on the account of the veteran, Joseph Fuoco, have been denounced by a wide range of Hiroshima survivors, historians and scientists, who claim Fuoco is an imposter.In the book, Pellegrino relates how Fuoco flew with the bomb in one of two accompanying planes that travelled alongside the Enola Gay on 6 August 1945. Fuoco was added to the crew at the last minute to replace a flight engineer said to have fallen ill.Fuoco's memories, recounted to Pellegrino, led the author to assert in his book an important revision to the official history of Hiroshima.While the bomb was being loaded at an airbase on the Pacific island of Tinian, the book claims, there was an accident in which an American scientist died and which seriously depleted the destructive potential of the bomb. ... Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:28:52 +0100 820182 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/7HGEglNkuF8/reality-hunger-david-shields-review Blake Morrison stands up for the continuing relevance of the novelMost readers will know the feeling. You've been through an experience so consuming that you've no room in your head for made-up stories – or the recent choices at your book club have been dire. Either way, novels seem pointless. Why devote precious time to contrived plots and imagined scenarios? Why waste energy on invented characters? Only the real excites you: life writing, memoir, confessional poetry, witness statements from the front line.There's a name for this condition: fiction fatigue. Readers who've experienced it will also know that it usually passes: time heals, the world opens up again and your faith in the novel is restored. David Shields hasn't been cured. He doesn't want to be cured. He thinks of "reality hunger" not as a sickness but as the defining spirit of our age, with its yearning for the music of what happens. His book is a spirited polemic on behalf of non-fiction – a manifesto in 618 soundbites.The book comes laden with praise. Jonathan Lethem, Geoff Dyer, Fred­erick Barthelme, Rick Moody and Jonathan Raban are among the 20-plus authors whose endorsements dominate the cover and end-pages (though intriguingly JM Coetzee's name, prominent on the proof copy, has disappeared). Some of the acclaim comes from writers whose work Shields cites to support his argument. Still, they're right to call Reality Hunger an important book. The fiction vs non-fiction debate has become intense in recent years, and Shields cranks it up a notch.Every artistic movement is a bid to get closer to reality, he argues, and it's in lyric essays, prose poems and collage novels (as well as performance art, stand-up comedy, documentary film, hip-hop, rap and graffiti) that such impetus is to be found today. Key components include randomness, spontaneity, emotional urgency, literalism, rawness and self-reflexivity. A loosely defined genre, then: in fact, a genre committed to genre-busting. ... Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:10:13 +0100 819783 http://www.cla-net.org/weblog/2010/02/writertowriter_2.php What is the Writer-to-Writer Challenge? Adult literacy learners of the California Library Literacy Services are invited to read a book, any book. It can be fiction or non-fiction, written at any level, and can be a book-on-tape. They then write a letter to the author describing how the book changed their lives. This year 188 adult learners entered the Challenge from 43 library literacy programs all over California. Their letters, based on their writing skill levels, were divided into four categories: Emerging, Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced. There are two rounds of judging: In the first round a panel of librarians and literacy specialists carefully selected the finalists in each category. In the second round, groups of learners reviewed the finalists' letters and picked the winner and runners-up in each category. The letters of the winners will appear as a Four-part Series, concluding with part four with a letter from the "Emerging" winner, who wished to remain anonymous: Anonymous Alhambra Civic Center Library Dear Anne Frank, Your story touched my heart! Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was sad and painful to hear (on tapes). Tears came to my eyes as I listened and realized my past life was sad and painful too! You were a young girl hiding in Amsterdam to escape the Nazis in World War II. But for me - living in North Korea - I was a child running away from Communism during the Korean War. My mother passed away when I was five. About two years later, I was escaping to South Korea with my father and a bunch of people - refugees. We were hiding in caves, behind bushes, crossing mountains and rivers, sometimes with shots passing close to our heads and sides. My father carried me on his back across water and when my feet were sore and tired. I had no shoes! In some villages, there were camps. We stayed in tents, and they gave us a ball of rice and a "pill" of salt to eat. ... Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:52:00 +0100 819517 http://www.cla-net.org/weblog/2010/02/triplet_watch_p.php I am the mother of triplets plus one. I am also an attorney who works for the Los Angeles Public Library as a part-time messenger clerk. I have always loved books, music, and other media. The library has always been a favorite place to frequent, and now I get to go there every day, for work. I started with this job so that I could still be available to help my children with homework and pick them up from school. I enjoy working there so much that I decided to apply to library school. I am now in my second semester and wondering "why, oh why, did I think I could so much." What is most interesting is to observe the effect this is having on my children. My four daughters "play" library at home. They even play library when they have their friends over. I have a bookcase filled with books just for them. It is interesting to watch them tell their patron friends how many books they are allowed to check out, or advise which books they might enjoy better, or to tell their friends to use their "library voice" when talking. They even use the dining room as a "community room" and lead art projects. I've also noticed an increase in the amount of books they read, the level of books that they read, and the variety of subjects between them. My oldest triplet enjoys fiction as well as non-fiction books about the weather. My youngest triplet enjoys fiction books about animals as well as non-fiction books about drawing, art, and animals. They are eight years old. My youngest daughter, age six, enjoys reading anything and constantly reads above her grade level, "borrowing" her older sisters' books. My oldest triplet will also grab my graduate books and articles from school and attempt to read those. I must admit, she can pronounce all the words properly, although then we have to grab a dictionary and clear the meanings so she will not go past any misunderstood words. ... Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:37:00 +0100 819525 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/booksquare/~3/uJmDOF13eKY/ As a book buyer, I have a keen interest in thriving bookstores. As a book reader, I have a keen interest in independent publishing and access to my books. And while I wait for traditional independent bookstores to transition to robust physical and online presences, I have enjoyed the emergence of digital booksellers, particularly All Romance Ebooks and its sister store, OmniLit. Traditional PDF is the gateway drug to ebooks. All Romance Ebooks was founded in 2006 by Barb Perfetti and Lori James. The original site, All Romance, focuses on romance novels while OmniLit sells general fiction and non-fiction. Both sites focus on what makes independent bookselling so valuable (with some modern twists, as you’ll see), and Lori James graciously succumbed to a few questions from me about her company, her customers, and her digital publishing wishlist. Q: So, first, describe it. All Romance eBooks, OmniLit. What they are, how they fit together. AllRomance.com is our specialty store and it primarily caters to the romance and erotica markets. OmniLit.com is a full service bookstore. Readers will find all types of fiction and non-fiction there, including all of the romance and erotica that we have at All Romance. Although they are branded differently, the two sites are integrated. Customers can access their account at either site using the same login and password and they share libraries. Q: I’ve heard people say Amazon has cornered the ebook market, but, obviously, that’s not true. You are not only competing, but growing. Without revealing the secret sauce, what are some key ingredients? I think in order to be successful in any industry you need to know your market, the community, and how to grow and maintain relationships. This is more than a business to us, it’s something we’re very passionate about. Q: As a longtime ebook consumer, all I want is the ability to read the book I’ve just purchased. ... Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:31:43 +0100 819285 http://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/advice-to-pandora.html Yet another intelligently fun non-fiction piece from Lisa K. Buchanan - excerpted here from Meridian 24:Pandora Seeks Advice OnlineDear Pandora,My vote: Have your husband open it.~EvePanny Love,Why didn't I think of that?~EpimetheusSweet Pandora,It's like I told Eve. You will not die. Do you have that straight? Hear me loud and clear. You will not die.Open it.~The SerpentPick up a copy to read (Source: NewPages Blog) Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 820033 http://drakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/02/rediscover-classics.html Librarian Debra Ames has been running a fun display in the library entitled "Rediscover the Classics." The books are on a stand at the entrance to the library cafe. It features a rotating display of classics that you are most welcome to check out. Your blogger imagines she would be glad to entertain suggestions for the collection, you may email her at dames@brockport.edu. The collection includes everything from mysteries like those of Raymond Chandler (sorry, our copy doesn't have quite as lurid a cover as the original pictured here, lol) to non-fiction like Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. (Source: Drake Memorial Library) Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 820009 http://wanderingeyre.com/2010/02/17/writing-in-a-canyon/ It seems like often when I am talking to my friend, Jason Griffey, we end up talking about the print format and how it is going to die. Notice I did not say if. I think we always circle back to this because usually one or both of us are in the middle of some kind of writing project or other and we are frustrated with the process or the medium. Both, usually. I am in the middle, the literal middle, of writing a book and the process has been interesting. Most days I hate it, though I do love to write in general, but writing a book has been not exactly what I thought it would be. It took a conversation with Jason for me to put my frustrations into words. I should clarify that by book, I mean a print book, made of paper and sitting on your shelf. I do think print books will be with us for a long time to come but I believe their purpose will be collection and vanity printing, not for reading and certainly not for most research. Here are some reasons from a writer’s perspective that cropped up in our chat: Writing a print book is like writing in a vacuum. I am used to immediate feedback. I have mostly written for online venues where people are not shy about telling you to your virtual (or real) face that what you are writing is amazing or absolute trash. Sometimes they tell you both in the same sentence. This helps ideas become refined and evolve in amazing ways. I am used to the wisdom of the crowd being a sounding board. Writing a print non-fiction book means you write to yourself. Your sounding board is you. It is boring! I do not like it. I do not like it with green eggs and ham! Some days I feel like I am typing into a canyon and the only thing coming back to me is the clicking of my keyboard after it has distorted itself by time and distance. It sounds different but it is the same stuff I just sent forth. It is not a satisfying process nor do I think it is a conducive one to brilliant new ideas. ... Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:05:27 +0100 819815 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/8ejYVhuXMbg/ I have just ended a two-year experiment. Readers were invited to download six of my novels and send me a fee if they enjoyed any of them. You can see the original proposition here. The experience bears out much of what I have read about online content. Of more interest, it also got me thinking about the practice of authorship in the Information Age. Downloads and payments At least 36,568 ebooks were downloaded from external, authorized sites, and well over 100,000 from my own. Some titles were posted on torrents. Originally the requested payment varied with the title (85p and up), but PayPal took too big a slice of that so in 2009 I increased the rate to a flat £1.50 per book. The gross income (after PayPal) was £522.28, net £258.38 pre-tax, or about 0.19 pence per download. 144 payments were made. The smallest was 85p; the largest a remarkable £50, which followed £10 from the same donor. Some other people paid more than the requested amount, a few less. A British reader sent me a £10 Amazon gift certificate on finishing The Tide Mill, while some members of the MobileRead Book Club (which made one of the titles its monthly choice) paid even though I gave them a waiver. By far the greatest number of payments came from the U.S. and Canada, followed by Britain and then the rest of Europe. There was a handful from Australia, and a very generous one from a reader in Singapore. Despite the fact that Chinese visitors were almost as numerous as Americans, no other payment was received from Asia. I am most grateful to all those who paid, many of whom wrote supportive or even flattering emails, blog comments, or messages in the PayPal dialog; and all of whom gave me great heart and confirmed my belief that there are plenty of thoroughly nice people out there. Non-payment Failure to pay can be ascribed to six motives: 1. Didn’t read 2. Didn’t like (at all or enough) 3. Liked but decided not to pay 4. Liked but forgot to pay 5. ... Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:10:33 +0100 819084 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/yy6V7l9363A/ The New York City chapter will hold this event on Thursday, February 18, at 6:30 PM. Speakers will be Ginger Clark, an Agent at Curtis Brown Ltd; Christina Baker Kline, an author of four novels published by Harper Collins and numerous non-fiction works; John Oakes, co-founder of OR books; Cebbier Stier, Senior VP and Assoicate Publisher of HarperStudio and Diretor of Digital Marketing for HarperCollins. It will be moderated by book industry consultant Louise Quayle. Further information at the Association’s website here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:06:03 +0100 818729 http://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/blurring-fiction-and-non-fiction.html Great resource: OnFiction: An Online Magazine on the Psychology of Fiction.Raymond A. Mar, Assistant Professor of Psychology at York University and contributor to OnFiction to comments on "the blurring boundaries between fiction and nonfiction." The post includes a YouTube animation video from This American Life. Read his post here: Lights, Camera, Fiction. (Source: NewPages Blog) Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 820040 http://blogaboutmurphy.blogspot.com/2010/02/top-five-non-fiction-and-fiction-from.html Please peruse the following New Times Bestsellers available in the CLC Library. Some of them are available in multiple formats. FICTION1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Book) or (Audio)2. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (Book) or (Audio) or (e-book)3. Kisser by Stuart Woods (Book) 5. The First Rule by Robert Crais (Book)6. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova (Book)NON-FICTION1. Game Change by John Helleman and Mark Halperin (Book)4. Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert (Book)5. Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Book) or (Audio)6. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Book) or (Audio) or (Audio) or (e-book)7. Stones and Schools by Greg Mortenson (Book) (Source: BlogAbout Murphy Library) Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 820001 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/SvDMPD5wZMg/arthur-kostler-biography-scammell-extract From the right to life, to the right to die: an extract from Michael Scammell's biography of one of the most influential figures of the 20th century'I don't believe in humanity, I believe in the individual'During his long life Arthur Koestler investigated a multitude of political movements, religions and scientific disciplines, from Zionism to Catholicism and even Buddhism, from anti-fascism to communism and anti-communism, from astronomy and evolution to neurobiology and parapsychology. His literary and political odyssey spawned more than 30 books, among them six novels, four autobiographies, four scientific treatises, four volumes of essays, three non-fiction investigations, and innumerable newspaper articles. Among all the different causes he espoused, the one for which he is perhaps best remembered is his campaign against the death penalty in Britain. His opposition to capital punishment was of long standing, stemming from the time when he was imprisoned in Seville after being captured while reporting undercover on the Spanish civil war. Koestler spent months under threat of death and witnessed the executions of many fellow prisoners, which deeply affected him. By the mid-50s Koestler's opposition to the death penalty was beginning to be shared by many others in Britain after some notorious miscarriages of justice.In 1953 a mentally retarded youth called Derek Bentley was executed for a murder in which he had been a barely witting accomplice. In 1955 Timothy Evans was wrongfully hanged on the evidence of a neighbour who turned out to be the multiple murderer being sought. Most controversial of all was the death sentence imposed on Ruth Ellis, a young mother who had shot her abusive and unfaithful lover in a fit of jealousy.After an article on the Ellis case by Raymond Chandler and a follow-up letter by the publisher Victor Gollancz appeared in London's Evening Standard in July 1955, Koestler impulsively rang Gollancz to propose a national campaign. ... Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:06:01 +0100 818048 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/KbCJZdnlH0U/valentines-love-poetry-hot-blood In a unique collaboration, poets and scientists used thermal imaging cameras to investigate whether love poems can really ignite 'instant fires' in every poreSteamy love poems are always popular around Valentine's Day, but can a few lines of tender verse really make people hot under the collar? Researchers at Aberystwyth University attempted to find out earlier this week, using thermal imaging cameras to take the temperature of volunteers reading the work of Romantic poets.The experiment is a collaboration between the arts and the sciences, led by poet Richard Marggraf Turley from the Department of English and Creative Writing and Reyer Zwiggelaar from Computer Science. They asked six volunteers from each department to silently read 12 love poems, while a slightly less amorous text about thermal imaging served as a control. As the participants pored over poems, including Bright Star by John Keats and To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell (both are reproduced in full below), thermal cameras monitored their faces for any change in temperature that could reveal their true feelings.Initial results suggest that love poetry can indeed set the heart a-flutter. The team's early analysis of four subjects revealed a noticeable difference in skin temperature around the cheek and eye regions during their recital, with the location varying according to the volunteers' academic background. The computer science students showed a higher temperature reading from their cheeks, while English students were warmer around the eyes.The small sample size means it's too early to draw any definitive conclusions, but the researchers are confident these preliminary findings will be reflected when the full results are published later this year. "I think it's fair to say that people who study English have a certain relationship with writing that isn't necessarily as important in the sciences," said Marggraf Turley. ... Sat, 13 Feb 2010 08:00:01 +0100 817816 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/pR63HSyFBoU/library-chart-most-borrowed-2009 John Dugdale checks out the nation's favouritesAt first glance, the list of the books most borrowed from libraries in 2008-09, released by Public Lending Right (PLR) yes­terday, is hard to tell apart from a recent annual best­sellers chart. There's the same mix of romance, crime and thrillers; the presence of authors who were given a turbo-boost by being selected by ­Richard and Judy; and such top-half fixtures as Maeve Binchy, Patricia ­Cornwell, Josephine Cox, John Grisham, Ian Rankin and Danielle Steel.If you put Nielsen's 2009 bestsellers chart and the PLR library rankings side by side, however, you'd notice a spectacular stripping away in the latter, which features no non-fiction at all. Delia Smith's How to Cheat at Cooking was the most borrowed non-fiction ­title overall, and though books by ­Richard Dawkins, Max Hastings, Carol Klein, Paul O'Grady and Marcus Trescothick were No 1s in their respective genres, none of them was taken out enough to make the top 100.Why is fiction borrowed so much more than non-fiction? Turnover could be a key factor: a thriller can be read in a day or less whereas history or science books and non-celeb biographies can't generally be finished so fast, and other genres are liable to be retained for ­extended periods while the borrower tries out recipes, swots for an exam or copes with a new baby. This need to spend more time with non-fiction also makes it more likely that such titles will be bought than borrowed.Almost as remarkable is the invisibility of all three of the novelists who dominated bestseller charts in 2009, with only the absence of Dan Brown (whose The Lost Symbol was published in September) explained by the PLR chart's time-frame, from July 2008 to June 2009. Stieg Larsson and Stephenie Meyer both had top-selling titles available before July, yet they too failed to make the cut. ... Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:08:12 +0100 817817 http://lisnews.org/age_shorter_books In this blog post Ezra Klein suggests that in the digital age, much shorter (or smaller as he calls them) books will become more acceptable - and a better option for long drawn out works of non-fiction that contain too much filler or are hardly better than the shorter essays on which they are based. Klein writes "The length of the average book reflects the economics of the print trade and educated guesses as to what book-buyers will actually pay for, much more than it does the actual intellectual content of the book itself...All this may be changing as we move towards an electronic book publishing system. The economics of electronic text production are not the same as the economics of book production (as best as I understand either), and there aren’t the same pressures towards standardization of length. I suspect that people who would feel cheated if they paid ‘book’ price for a long essay (say around 20,000 words or so) will feel less so if they buy an electronic version." Read more at: http://crookedtimber.org/2010/02/09/towards-a-world-of-smaller-books/ (Source: LISNews.org) Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:56:40 +0100 817691 http://www.lisnews.org/age_shorter_books In this blog post Ezra Klein suggests that in the digital age, much shorter (or smaller as he calls them) books will become more acceptable - and a better option for long drawn out works of non-fiction that contain too much filler or are hardly better than the shorter essays on which they are based. Klein writes "The length of the average book reflects the economics of the print trade and educated guesses as to what book-buyers will actually pay for, much more than it does the actual intellectual content of the book itself...All this may be changing as we move towards an electronic book publishing system. The economics of electronic text production are not the same as the economics of book production (as best as I understand either), and there aren’t the same pressures towards standardization of length. I suspect that people who would feel cheated if they paid ‘book’ price for a long essay (say around 20,000 words or so) will feel less so if they buy an electronic version." Read more at: http://crookedtimber.org/2010/02/09/towards-a-world-of-smaller-books/ (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:56:40 +0100 817596 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/tknHeZtTpJ0/ British author Val McDermid received a letter from Poisoned Pen which publishes here non-fiction book A Suitable Job for a Woman. According to the article the publisher wrote: Our contracts basically provided that ebook royalties would be the same as hardcover books – generally around 9% of retail price. Consequently I am unilaterally changing all contracts where we have ebook rights to pay 25% of the suggested retail price. Since there have been, for all practical purposes no ebook sales prior to late last year you’ll not see ebook royalties until the first quarterly statement in July. But lest any of you have plans on buying a new Mercedes with your ebook royalties, I’d suggest a Big Mac with fries and a medium coke will be more in line with the economic reality. Lest our readers object to the low 9% rate, the article says: You may think that the hardcover royalty seems ungenerous. But, in the UK, royalties in that region are common, because so few books are sold at a discount that would trigger the full 10% or more. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:48:35 +0100 817723 http://www.frbr.org/2010/02/12/last-week-in-frbr-15 Fairly slow this week in FRBRland. Here are some links. Bilder, Does a CrossRef DOI Identify a Work? Geoffrey Bilder asked the question Does a CrossRef DOI Identify a Work? (A DOI is a digital object identifier, often something rather cryptic-looking such as 10.1038/nature02999, that identifies an article in Nature). An article in a journal is a work (to be exact: what you hold in your hand, if it’s in print, is an item exemplifying a manifestation of an expression of that work) and if a DOI identified a work then that would be extremely useful. But: Tony’s recent thread on making DOIs play nicely in a linked data world has raised an issue I’ve meant to discuss here for some time- a lot of the thread is predicated on the idea that CrossRef DOIs are applied at the abstract “work” level. Indeed, that it what it currently says in our guidelines. Unfortunately, this is a case where theory, practice and documentation all diverge. … CrossRef DOIs should be probably assigned at the expression level and different expressions should be assigned different CrossRef DOIs. This is because assigning a CrossRef DOI at the higher “work” level is generally not granular enough to guarantee that a reader following the citation will see what the author saw when creating the citation. For example, one translation of a work might be substantially different from another translation of the same work. Ronald Murray lecture at British Library Ann Chapman’s FRBR Lecture at BL describes the talk that the Library of Congress’s Ronald Murrary gave at the British Library. So how might this work in practice? Typing in ‘cats’ as a search term in my public library catalogue today brings up 500 results. There is no order to the list, it includes both fiction and non-fiction titles and it doesn’t separate out different forms of resource. ... Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 817657 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/11/free-amazon-com-is-releasing-two-newrecent-government-documents-for-the-kindle/ We think this one of the first releases (if not the very first) key government document releasae from Amazon for the Kindle (all versions). Beginning tomorrow, Amazon will make the FY 2011 U.S. Budget and the new Economic Report of the President available for free download. We’re interested in seeing how users will be able to navigate these large documents. Will movement to a specific section(s) continue to be an issue as it is with many non-fiction Kindle books where the back-of-the-book-index, usually not hyperlinked, has little value. Of course, the documents are available (as PDFs) and searchable online via GPO FDsys (they’re also certified as authentic here) or in print also from the GPO. (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:39:49 +0100 817369 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/xOYJx7x5M1o/catherine-cookson-library-charts Rise of the US crime thriller leaves tales of northern, plucky women on the shelf, figures for most borrowed books revealCatherine Cookson, for years the most ­borrowed writer from the UK's lending libraries, has been comprehensively overshadowed by the giants of American popular fiction, latest figures reveal.She dominated the library charts for years – but there is no trace of her among the 100 most borrowed books of 2008-9. She is still, however, the 10th most borrowed author of the decade – largely due to the "astronomical" ­numbers in which her books were borrowed in the first half of the noughties, according to Jim Parker, the registrar of the Public Lending Right (PLR).Instead, the top three adult authors for July 2008-June 2009 were all Americans: the thriller writer James ­Patterson, followed by the romantic novelists Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele. "She has fallen away completely," said Parker of Cookson. "It's partly down to the fact that when you stop producing books, you tend to fade away." Cookson died in 1998.But Parker said her downfall also represents a sharp change of taste. Out are Cookson's survival tales of plucky women, rooted in the industrial north of England; in are bloodthirsty thrillers."Cookson's books are dark in a way, but not graphic," he said. "People now want to go into details, and the more bold the better, like Patricia Cornwell [number 12 on the list of most borrowed adult authors for 2008-9]. Cookson's books are tragic but safe – you can turn the page without risking a sex scene or a graphically described murder."Thrillers, romance and crime novels were the most popular genres in ­libraries, according to the PLR's research. But surprisingly, although many of the top names are familiar – such as John Grisham, Joanna Trollope and Ian Rankin – the league table of books borrowed from libraries differs significantly from bestsellers. ... Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:43:33 +0100 817441 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2010/02/11/bookshelves-of-librarians Librarians are social creatures, right? Despite dowdy stereotypes, many of us are out there Web 2.0′ing it up - among other things, we like sharing our photos on flickr and our books on LibraryThing. So, I thought a fun meme would be to combine the two - show photos of our personal books and bookshelves. I spied one of Jessamyn’s, and uploaded photos of all my bookshelves.* I’m curious to see how other people organize books in their own space. My Bookshelves (click for descriptions) Non-fiction Reference Fiction And since timing is everything, this is doubly fun considering LibraryThing’s announcement this week about expanding LT’s photo capabilities. So upload photos of your own shelves (librarians and non-librarians) to flickr or LibraryThing or somewhere and share your personal organizational system.   *I didn’t photograph all the books in places other than shelves: coffee table, bedside table, bathroom bench, car, piled on the floor, etc. I tell myself those are all “temporary shelving locations.” Also: I can’t decide if “bookshelves” should be one word or two - so I use both. (Source: herzogbr.net blog) Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:36:50 +0100 817392 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/RIClI_Z7lS4/ For many of us ebook readers, we are surrounded by physical libraries, yet very often they don’t even register on our radar screen. Too many of us still equate them storytimes, tax forms and the latest paperback thriller. I would argue however, that this perception is wrong and that libraries are changing to meet the ebook and other technological changes that are transforming how we read. They may not operate as fast as we would like, but they are changing. Let’s look at three ways this is happening—and provide you with some links to these resources! Commercial Partnerships As outlined in our previous post on The Librarian’s Dilemma many libraries today are partnering with OverDrive to provide digital content for their patrons. DRM issues aside, this a great way to get the most popular fiction and non-fiction out to meet demand. OverDrive offers both PDF and ePub formatted reading that can be loaded on many readers successfully. Examples of libraries that have implemented this include my hometown library, Columbus Metropolitan Library, and others. For a complete list, try this link: http://search.overdrive.com/. Library Sharing While it seems Google Books steals most of the news about ebooks these days, there is a consortium of libraries slowly approaching the same idea, but from a different direction. Hathi Trust, has brought together many academic libraries and universities to digitize and make available their collections online. With over 5,000,000 books digitized and more on the way, this resource is a natural for ebook fans. One note that might stop you short, however, is that many of the resources are only available online and cannot be downloaded (yet). If your reader has Wifi access, then this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Original Content Many libraries are going it alone, introducing ebooks and other technologies as their budgets and time permit. ... Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:30:37 +0100 817337 http://mcpldteens.blogspot.com/2010/02/book-reviews.html Wicked History: Grigory Rasputin, Holy Man or Mad Monk?by Enid A. Goldberg and Norman ItzkowitzThe teen section at the library has recently acquired a set of biographies called Wicked History. They are really short and fun to read. I chose to read about Grigory Rasputin, who was a holy man in Russia during the late 1800's and early 1900's. He was known for being friends and advising the royal family, but not always in a positive manner. His reputation in history is that of a power hungry con artist. This book is great because it gives you a timeline, pictures, maps, and a chart of his relationships. I think this series is really great for teens who just need a basic understanding of these historic characters. Check out this biography and the others in the Wicked History Collection.Other Bigraphies include:-Napoleon I: Emperor and Conquerer-Alexander the Great: Master of the Ancient World-Vlad the Impaler: the Real Count Dracula-Attila the Hun: Leader of Barbarian Hordes -Francisco Pizarro: Destroyer of the Inca Empire-Ivan the Terrible: Tsar of Death-Henry VIII: Royal Beheader-Hannibal: Rome's Worst Nightmare-Cixi: Evil Empress of China?-Leopold II: Butcher of the Congo-Ghengis Khan: 13th Century Mongolian TyrantThe Dust of 100 Dogsby A. S. KingI loved this book! I am not even sure I can adequately describe its greatness, but I will try. It is about a teen girl, Emer, who leads a life of piracy during the 1700s. Just when she is reunited with the love of her life, Emer is killed and cursed by an old enemy. The curse is that she will live the lives of a hundred dogs - a.k.a. the dust of a 100 dogs. After living years and years as a dog, she is reborn (present day) as a girl named Saffron, but with the memory of all her past lives. Basically, Saffron's parents think she is a genius because of her world knowledge. ... Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 819412 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/Qsw2H5Ia_ls/ian-brown-wins-2010-charles-taylor.html The winner of the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction is Ian Brown for The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search For His Disabled Son, published by Random House Canada. Noreen Taylor, founder of the prize, announced the winner during a gala luncheon held at Downtown Toronto's Le Meridien King Edward Hotel (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:06:07 +0100 816573 http://marincountyfreelibrary.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_marincountyfreelibrary_archive.html#1812350261509784097 Search, discover, refine-- with the library's new Discovery Catalog.What's so different about it:Convenient--simple and powerful, you can search from a single box (just like Google!)Fast--limit your search by library branch or format (e.g. DVD) without leaving the results screenPowerful--use new limiters for fiction/non-fiction and see reviews, summaries and more on the item detail screenInteractive--create and share lists, and add tags to entriesThere are quick and easy links from the Discovery Catalog home page to find new items in the library. Browse these lists with one click:New in FictionNew in NonfictionNew on DVDNew Books on CDNew for ChildrenAnd more! (Source: Marin County Free Library Blog) Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 817923 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Q-uUWWLVFH4/history-publishing There seems to be an unquenchable appetite for stories of British derring-do in the face of the Nazi menaceI have often been tempted to write about the British bestseller lists as a symptom of a declining literary culture. Most of the time, unlike their counterparts in the US, these lists are dominated by TV – celebrity memoirs, tie-ins, books-of-the-series and so on. In one week just before last Christmas, every single top 10 slot could be attributed to the power of the small screen. In that sense, these lists accurately mirror a society in whose popular culture television plays a pivotal role.Currently, however, there's a new – or newish – phenomenon showing up in these lists. It's specific to the UK, and it reflects an enduring feature of British society. In brief, the hottest sellers of 2010, more than half a century after the events in question, are books about the second world war, and books about British military prowess. Let's look at the evidence.This week, the No 1 bestseller in the highly competitive general non-fiction category is Ben MacIntyre's exceedingly entertaining account of a celebrated second world war British intelligence coup Operation Mincemeat (Bloomsbury). It's hardly a new story – the first version, The Man Who Never Was became a 1950s bestseller , and then a film – but Macintyre has breathed new life (and research) into a gripping, at times surreal, Boy's Own adventure, and found a mass audience for a true-life spy story that has captured the popular imagination.Operation Mincemeat is not alone. At number two is Empire of the Seas ("how the Royal Navy shaped Britain"). Number five is Real Heroes (Harper Press) "true stories of heroism from the British armed forces". Hovering just below the radar is I Sank The Bismarck by John Moffat (Bantam).Part of this vogue must be attributable to the two wars Britain has been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that's not the whole story. ... Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:05:00 +0100 816207 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/yIcyOs3yo1k/steven-poole-non-fiction-choice The enlightenment, ethics and 'the flying crapper'In Defence of the Enlightenment, by Tzvetan Todorov, translated by Gila Walker (Atlantic, £16.99)The Enlightenment is a more nuanced set of (unachieved) ideas than is often supposed; as Todorov emphasises here, "the thinking was multiple, not one". Hume and Rousseau did not share Turgot and Lessing's "faith in a mechanical march to perfection"; indeed, the notion that this idea was central is one of many "distortions" of the period. Nor did the Enlightenment engender the industrialised killing of the 20th century; and "scientism" (the idea that the world is completely knowable, and that such knowledge transparently reveals ideal political arrangements) is an "enemy" not an "avatar" of the Enlightenment. Throughout, Todorov employs the very effective device of calling in 18th-century thinkers as critics, implicitly, of our own time; and he offers provocative diagnoses, such as that human-rights discourse is "the excessive domination of the good over truth". The book's villain is De Sade (damned rather weedily for running against "common sense", although of course Hume did so too); its heroes include Kant, Montaigne and Beccaria, and in particular the mathematician and political philosopher Condorcet, who asked readers to imagine "a troop of audacious hypocrites" gaining power and ruling through misinformation, exercising tyranny "under the mask of liberty". Obviously, that would never happen.Conversations on Ethics, by Alex Voorhoeve (Oxford, £18.99)The Enlightenment crops up again here, as the origin of some philosophical confusions Bernard Williams assumes we have about the concept of an individual, as he explains to the author in an Oxonian semi-darkness. ... Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:07:09 +0100 815676 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/mH9CgsIeU20/american-literature-great-novelists With the death of JD Salinger last week, a remarkable era in US literature came to its end. Mark Lawson reflects on the passing of an unrivalled generationJanuary 27 is becoming a black-letter day in American literature. On that day in 2009, John Updike died and, this year, the first ­anniversary of that loss was marked by the news that JD Salinger was dead. It's an artificial coincidence – of a sort that authors as good as Updike and Salinger would have scorned in their stories – but the deaths in close succession of members of the literary generations born in the 1910s, 20s and 30s do have a symbolic significance. If we add the deaths within four months of 2007 of Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut – members with Salinger of the set of major American writers formed by service in the second world war – it's clear that an era in American literature is coming to a close.There is an obvious temptation to believe that the authors who have recently died form – with others who fought in the war (such as Saul Bellow and Gore Vidal) or were teenagers in America during it (Philip Roth) – the greatest literary generation the country has ever seen or ever will see. This triumphalist but nostalgic position holds that these writers took advantage of their nation's geopolitical power – and a media culture and bookstore customer-base which regarded serious writers ­seriously – to create a superpower of the pen to match the financial and military clout of the US during what became known as the American century.The counter-argument is that this army of old soldiers was very male and masculine and white in its concerns – tempered only by a grudging, late admission to the halls of fame of writers such as Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates – and that the standard narrative of 20th-century American literature is partial and distorted. ... Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:06:11 +0100 815665 http://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/norman-mailer-writers-colony.html The Norman Mailer Writers Colony is accepting applications for the Second Annual Norman Mailer Writers Colony Fellowships at Provincetown, MA.Fiction and non-fiction writers can apply for a 28-day residency in Provincetown, Massachusetts, near Mailer’s home beginning July 5, 2010. Seven Fellows will be selected. In addition, as many as 66 applicants will be offered scholarships to one week (Source: NewPages Blog) Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 815917 http://www.sla.org.uk/blg-hotbook--what-is-it.php The Great Wipe hath irrayzed much of world culcha, butta few bits of licheracha haveth bn found - pleez help mi choose most bestest 2 exxibit - the curator of a history of the book 2/2/3010This message will be beamed from the future to secondary students in the UK via the HOTBOOK, a ground breaking and free digital resource created by if:book, the think and do tank.  This was launched yesterday at the Free Word Centre, Farringdon Road, London, with the aim to ignite a passion for literature (past, present and future) by introducing and exploring fragments of great works and presenting them in a way that will excite an audience that is more at ease with an electronic game or gadget than a book and with people who spend time social networking rather than reading.   In the HOTBOOK poems and extracts from plays, novels, non-fiction texts and broadcasts are presented as short films, Flash animations, podcasts and HTML web pages. They include Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow" speech as stop frame animation, Christina Rossetti's poem "Spring" performed by cartoon rabbits, a rap version of Chaucer's Prologue, an animated version of Benjamin Zephaniah's "Talking Turkeys" and a story of computer gamers by cult sci-fi author Cory Doctorow.  The HOTBOOK includes rebooted classics and new commissions from award-winning contemporary writers such as Daljit Nagra, Kate Pullinger and Naomi Alderman, who were asked to write examples of the literature of the future. Funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, The HOTBOOK is aimed at year eight and nine students, and was conceived as a way to help less confident readers stay interested in literature at an age when many young people start to switch off from books.The HOTBOOK has been piloted in four schools and evaluated by the Research Team at Booktrust. ... Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:57:38 +0100 816012 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/IEFuIGDDyuI/grisham-updike-texas-jail-ban Bestselling and classic books have been banned from prisons in Texas over security, race or sex concernsWhat does Annie Proulx's tale of the romance between two cowboys Brokeback Mountain have in common with Jenna Bush's non-fiction book about a teenage single mother with HIV ? They've both been banned in Texas jails, along with books by John Grisham, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike and Alice Walker.An exhaustive analysis by the Austin American-Statesman of five years'-worth of publications whose rejection as unsuitable was appealed by inmates found a host of bestselling and classic titles had been banned from the state's prisons. Books by Nobel laureates Pablo Neruda and Andre Gide, collections of paintings by Picasso and Michelangelo, and bestsellers by James Patterson, Carl Hiaasen and Hunter S Thompson have all failed to pass the prisons' censors.Titles have been rejected over security concerns, for containing descriptions of criminal schemes, drugs or weapons manufacturing, for being racially insensitive, for potentially aiding escape, and for conceivably giving inmates an advantage over officers (How to Be An Ass-Whipping Boxer, and - perhaps less obviously - Draw Fight Scenes Like a Pro). The Elements of Persuasion: Use Storytelling to Pitch Better, Sell Faster and Win More Business was rejected in December, the American Statesman reported, because censors feared it "could be used to persuade others".The most common reason for banning titles was sex, whether in images or words, with a total ban on pictures of naked children. Tammy Shelby, who works at the prison agency's Mail System Coordinators Panel, which receives books for review if inmates choose to appeal over a ban, told the magazine that in order to separate art from child porn, reviewers check for wings. If a naked child has clearly visible wings, it is a legitimate cherub and the book can stay. No wings? It must go. ... Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:02:37 +0100 814513 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Library&diff=341455583&oldid=prev Disambiguate Catalogue to Library catalog using popups ← Previous revision Revision as of 11:23, 2 February 2010 Line 56: Line 56: Upon the rise of [[Islam]], libraries in [[Islamic Golden Age|newly Islamic lands]] knew a brief period of expansion in the Middle East, [[North Africa]], [[Sicily]] and [[Spain]]. Like the Christian libraries, they mostly contained books which were made of [[paper]], and took a [[codex]] or modern form instead of scrolls; they could be found in mosques, private homes, and universities. In Aleppo, for example, the largest and probably the oldest mosque library, the Sufiya, located at the city's Grand Umayyad Mosque, contained a large book collection of which 10,000 volumes were reportedly bequeathed by the city's most famous ruler, Prince Sayf al-Dawla.<ref>{{cite book|title=Mosque libraries: An Historical Study|author=Sibai M. |year=1987|publisher=Mansell Publishing Limited,p.71}}</ref> Some mosques sponsored [[public library|public libraries]]. [[Ibn al-Nadim]]'s bibliography ''Fihrist'' demonstrates the devotion of medieval Muslim scholars to books and reliable sources; it contains a description of thousands of books circulating in the Islamic world circa 1000, including an entire section for books about the doctrines of other religions. Unfortunately, modern Islamic libraries for the most part do not hold these antique books; many were lost, [[Battle of Baghdad (1258)|destroyed by Mongols]], or removed to European libraries and museums during the colonial period.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World|author=John L. Esposito (ed.)|year=1995|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0-19-506613-8}}</ref> Upon the rise of [[Islam]], libraries in [[Islamic Golden Age|newly Islamic lands]] knew a brief period of expansion in the Middle East, [[North Africa]], [[Sicily]] and [[Spain]]. ... Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:23:00 +0100 814501 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/01/the-ipad-and-libraries/ In a post on Library 1.5, “iPad and libraries – some thoughts,” Scandinavian librarian, Thomas Brevik, writes about what he thinks the the new device will mean for libraries when they first hit the streets and then later on. Here are just a couple of blurbs from the complete post. For libraries the iPad will have little immediate impact. What it probably will do, if it is a hit in the marketplace, is that it will fuel reader demand for e-books. I predict that it will be a slow development, but maybe too fast for many librarians. When the demand for e-books is for Nora Roberts latest romance novel, rather than some science fiction blockbuster or main stream popular science non-fiction, and the person wanting the e-book is the harassed mother with three kids running around her at the library desk, then e-books will have arrived in the library. For libraries there are two main challenges: 1. How do we get content from the library to the iPad and similar devices, and can libraries use iBook or the AppStore as a delivery method? 2. Will the iPad and iPad like devices change the media habits of readers? Brevik answers these questions and has several more interesting comments in the complete post. Source: Library 1.5 Hat Tip: TeleRead (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:38:36 +0100 814216 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TameTheWeb/~3/6d71EeJMl3Y/ Thomas and I have worked together at Internet Librarian International 2008 and back in the day doing a podcast or two about Library 2.0. He’s one of the good thinkers in LIS who I wish I had more of a chance to sit with and talk. Glad to see his take on the iPad this morning. http://lib1point5.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/ipad-and-libraries-some-thoughts/ For libraries the iPad will have little immediate impact. What it probably will do, if it is a hit in the marketplace, is that it will fuel reader demand for e-books. I predict that it will be a slow development, but maybe too fast for many librarians. When the demand for e-books is for Nora Roberts latest romance novel, rather than some science fiction blockbuster or main stream popular science non-fiction, and the person wanting the e-book is the harassed mother with three kids running around her at the library desk, then e-books will have arrived in the library. This could happen if the iPad really hits it off with the public. For libraries there are two main challenges: 1. How do we get content from the library to the iPad and similar devices, and can libraries use iBook or the AppStore as a delivery method? I think there will be several opportunities, and that binding libraries to a cooperation with Apple to get in through the iBook store probably will be difficult and even counterproductive. There are at least two avenues to go, either create an international LibraryBook app (open source of course), that will work on any operating system, or cooperate with the creators of any of the open source apps that are out there to deliver books through them. Both avenues has their pros- and cons, but I believe that to secure a future for the library brand it would be a good idea to develop a special library app. 2. Will the iPad and iPad like devices  change the media habits of readers? Very likely. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:18:32 +0100 814005 http://lib1point5.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/ipad-and-libraries-some-thoughts/ OK, congratulations to all fellow Apple fanboys and girls The iPad looks good and I would love to get my hands on one. In fact on thursday I  got word from the ICT-department at work that they pre-ordered one for me. (I might have mentioned the upcoming device once or twice in the previous months and had a fairly long discussion with the head of ICT services that morning) Have I told you how great these guys are? Even if I look forward to getting my hands on the iPad, or “padda” (toad) as it is rapidly becoming known in Norway and Sweden, one of my first reactions to Steve Jobs presentation of the iPad was  that this is Apple´s gift to Google. It will take very little effort to top this. Just add a camera and flash support to a touch screen with the Android operating system and you have a iPad killer. On the purely technical/OS side of the device that is. What probably will sell the iPad is the ease of use for non-techies.  A lot of blogposts and twitter comments have called this the first true “everybody computer.”  They might have a point. My iPod touch is equally popular with my three-year-old, my ten-year-old and myself,  who all use it in many different ways. A larger device appeals to all of us. But like so many people I am more fascinated with the services embedded in the iPad than the hardware. iBooks and the iTunes-like book buying opportunities are what makes the iPad a  must have for me, more that the weight, screen, OS or other apps. It will certainly be interesting to see what new iPad apps that will come in the coming months. One thing I am sure of is that we will all be surprised by the diversity of apps and the uses to which the iPad will be put to. And another thing to watch out for is the plethora of iPad-like devices that will hit us like a tsunami in the coming year. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:26:19 +0100 815856 http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/01/hkla-50th-anniversary-conference-part-5.html Hmm, I saved this as a Draft and forgot to publish it. Here's a belated part-5 from attending the Hong Kong Library Association 50th Anniversary Conference, Nov 2008.[Continued from Part 4]"Analysis of social tagging and book cataloging: a case study". Yi-Chen CHEN. Department of Library & Information Science, National Taiwan University.Her premise for the study: little research has been done to examine how social tagging has been applied to books.So she looked at items tagged in librarything.comResearch questions:How can tags be organised to different function types?What kind of tags are used?How can it help the library?Study involved a random sample of "most often tagged" Fiction & Non-fiction records in librarything.comSome findingsFor Fiction titles, users tend to tag with "Bibliographic Information" (i.e. author, title, publisher)For Non-Fiction titles, the tags tend to be "subjects"When she did a comparison of the user-created tags and the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), she found:90% of tags were not reflected in LCSH (i.e. 90% of the tags were unique)The overlap (between the user-tags and LCSH) was less than 12% overallTags tend to give more "genre" information, especially for Fiction worksIn tagging, users tend to describe more character names from the booksTags often had simpler and informal usage on person names, geographical namesMy rambling thinking-aloudI think when "social tagging" or "folksonomy" is mentioned, there will be some librarians who will inevitably pooh-pooh the former and start extolling the virtues of Authority Control exercised by librarians (i.e. LCSH).That sort of argument -- of which is "better" -- is is irrelevant. It's like asking, "Is it better to search by author or by subject"?The answer depends on what you prefer, and what you hope to find. ... Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 813755 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/ZazsLL40SK0/patti-smith-robert-mapplethorpe Punk poet Patti Smith first met Robert Mapplethorpe when she moved to New York in the late 60s, and the pair became inseparable. Now she has written a memoir of their time together, from hanging out with Ginsberg and Warhol to her rise as a hit singer and his career as a photographer. She talks to Gaby Wood, and we publish an extract from her book, Just KidsAt the Robert Miller Gallery in New York, a place that has long provided a home for her association with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith – poet, punk rocker, painter and urban hero of long standing – has erected a museum of memory. A poster from 1978 advertises a joint show here of their work: Mapplethorpe's photographs of Smith, and Smith's drawings of Mapplethorpe. She gazes out, a dark-haired wizard caught mid-motion, blurred, against a wall of gauzy white fabric. He is a lightly sketched satyr with forking beard, a Greek demigod by way of Henri Michaux. "Bob Miller Gallery presents Patti Smith," Smith's scrawl reads around the edges of her own drawing, "requesting the presence of Robert Mapplethorpe."Mapplethorpe died of complications related to Aids in 1989, and Smith has, in a sense, been requesting his presence ever since. Elsewhere in the gallery, her old Corona typewriter spews a sheet of paper headed "Reflecting Robert"; a letter she wrote to him in March 2008 lies under glass, near a marble crucifix and his monogrammed velvet slippers, size 8½ M. She has reprinted as platinum prints beautiful photographs she took of his hands when they were both 21 (Smith is now 63); when he was satisfied with his work, she explained when she first exhibited these, Mapplethorpe would stand back from it and put his hands in his pockets with his thumbs sticking out. These are portraits of a moment in an artist's mind, details of a person known with great love and specificity. ... Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:08:59 +0100 813648 http://hedgehoglibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/01/day-in-life-of-hedgehog-librarian-last.html I'm coming to this party a little late but I'm going to try and keep track today. Times are approximateThursday9 a.m. Desk time for four hours. Log into Horizon, Intranet, Meebo, Email, Google Reader. First patron is in just after doors open, dad looking for Clifford videos.9:30  C brings down holds from Tech Services.  All of them are "mine" (chapter books): a new Tiara Club book (too insipid for words), Powerless by Matthew Cody (great cover, superhero kids losing their powers), and one of the Mother Daughter Book Club Books (sigh). 9:45 : Questions about books on shadows and electricity. Patron decides Margaret Brown's book Shadow is too scary for the three year olds she'll be reading to.10:05 Chinese New Year books.  Chinese New Year is Valentines Day this year.  We have a few picture books and a couple of non fiction books but not enough for a display.  Current displays are Hugs and Kisses and Dental Health. 10:08 Deaf patron looking for coloring books. We don't have those in our collection.10:23 Plot to become next Ron Roy/Vivian French.  Same story over and over and over....and the kids can't get enough of them.10:30 Phonics books with short vowel sounds...wade through shelf of phonics.  Lots of different varieties, but only one set that really has separate vowel sounds that will work.  Checking my own holds--I'd set everything to suspended while I was in Egypt.  Now things are back on and coming in droves. With teen books that I'm getting from other places and other things I'm just interested in seeing at "some point" I'm setting suspension dates on for a week or two out so that I'm not totally overwhelmed. So far five things in for me to pick up and four more on their way between work and personal cards. The pile of children's books on my desk that I want to skim and decide if to order or recommend is getting high. ... Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:59:00 +0100 813575 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/lEm7MqECDFc/steven-poole-nonfiction-robert-darnton Communications technology, books and 'convergence and bizarre associations'A Better Pencil, by Dennis Baron (Oxford, £13.99)Computers are destroying the written word and generating a cultural tsunami of incivility and illiteracy, moan today's bookish technophobes; yet, as linguist Baron's highly enjoyable book shows, such alarm has greeted every new ­communications technology in history. Writing was going to destroy people's memories; printed books were more superficial than inscribed parchment; pencils with rubbers on the end were going to rot schoolchildren's minds because they would no longer need to think before scribbling; typewriters were going to leach all the humanity from letters. Thoreau was sceptical of the newfangled telegraph, though he was himself a communications-technology entrepreneur, being in the pencil-manufacturing business.Baron's argument ranges from the Unabomber ("It would be difficult to argue that one goal of the do-it-­yourself bomber is to restore craft, artistry, and human dignity to the manufacture of explosives") to the surprisingly difficult task of writing on clay tablets, and the difficulties of early typewriters or the first computer word-processing programs. He writes with infectious ­curiosity and wit, and a ­confidence that writing is in no danger from modern gadgets: most of what we do on them, after all, is still "word-processing".The Case for Books, by Robert Darnton (PublicAffairs, £13.99)Computers may not be threatening writing, but are they threatening reading? In a series of incisive articles for the New York Review of Books, reproduced here, book historian Robert Darnton has limned the potential dangers to scholarship of the Google Book Search project. It has sloppy quality control ("Google employs thousands of engineers but, as far as I know, not a single bibliographer"), and will be an unchallengeable monopoly that could, if it wanted, raise prices sharply. ... Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:07:14 +0100 813371 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/zuNRzoRoe0c/ With all the new ‘convergence’ devices coming out these days—cell phone/media/gaming all in one—is there still going to be a demand for dedicated ebook readers? Would anyone buy a Kindle or a Sony or a Whatever when they could just read a book on their cell phone or magical tablet? Yes. There IS still a demand and will continue to be, but in a different fashion. The days of jumping on the bandwagon with a generic ‘reader’ device just to get in the game may be gone, but I think what we will see in the ‘dedicated device’ market will be an increasing specialization. Companies won’t make ‘general’ readers for casual customers, who may not read enough to justify a dedicated device and won’t care about fancier features. Rather, they will make specific devices optimized for certain markets. For example: 1) DEVICES FOR A SERIOUS READER These devices will improve on the more all-purpose experience of a convergence device by offering much better battery life for people who just want to read, and by offering feature sets designed to make this reading as seamless and meaningful as possible. Convergence devices will likely support the eventual winner or winners in the format war with ease, but the ’serious reader’ device will likely support numerous and plentiful past formats as these customers tend to be the ones who early-adopted and have sizable libraries already in numerous legacy formats. They will also be less dependent on cell phone plans or internet connectivity—on-board ‘whispernet’ type service like the Kindle, or limited free wi-fi like the Nook will be standard so that voracious readers will never be without the means to buy a book. ... Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:09:38 +0100 812952 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/4fkfk164YAs/  –Janet Evanovich can get a CD of all of her books on eBay for $11. –Sherrilyn Kenyon shows 29 hits on VUZE. –All five of top fiction and non-fiction books available as pirated editions. Some of the hits have all of her books. –28% of e-reader owners have used file sharing sites to download free e-books, according to a Verso study. Piracy is the most important issue facing digital publishers, says Brian Napack, Macmillan president, and he cited the above examples at Digital Book World. Agree or disagree? Speak up in our comments area. Napack said—remember these are his opinions—that piracy took a big chunk out of music business, where he spent a lot of time. A college textbook called "Leinger, Principles of Biochemistry" was adopted all over, Napack said, but sales never took off because of piracy. What can we do? Here’s Napack speaking: Piracy happens when motivation meets opportunity. Motivation: love of authors, genres; perceived high prices; lack of availability; restrictive formats; distain for media companies. Opportunity: more digital content; more file sharing sites, broad availability of titles, more pirate ready devices. His plan: target facilitators – takedowns and lawsuits; target pirates – target individuals and companies; pursue legislation and enforcement; create viable consumer marketplace – implement consumer-friendly DRM; protect content in-house – most common stuff found is pre-publication manuscripts, found very few legitimate e-books have been hacked; protect content in the marketplace – DRM limit free and open e-book programs; engage in public education. Napack’s key points: most common stuff found on line is pre-publication manuscripts; have found very few legitimately protected e-books have been hacked. Amazon Kindle has shown that people will pay for content. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. ... Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:00:49 +0100 812244 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/474QfAnvGs8/booker-adam-roberts-sf-honour Yellow Blue Tibia joins a distinguished shortlist for the British Science Fiction Association's best novel awardTipped as the science fiction novel that would finally win a Booker prize for the genre, Adam Roberts's Yellow Blue Tibia failed to even make the longlist for the UK's most prestigious literary award last year, but has just been shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association's best novel prize alongside some of the biggest names in the genre.Set in Russia in 1946, Roberts's novel sees a group of Soviet SF authors concocting a story about aliens poised to invade the earth which, post-Chernobyl, starts to come true. Last summer, acclaimed science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson said it ought to have won the Booker. A professor of 19th-century literature at the Royal Holloway as well as an author, Roberts is shortlisted alongside Ursula K LeGuin for her historical fantasy Lavinia, China Miéville's surreal venture into crime fiction, The City and the City, and previous winner Stephen Baxter's tale of the survivors of a drowned earth, Ark."I am really delighted to be shortlisted ... The list of winners of the novel prize, going back to John Brunner's marvellous Stand on Zanzibar in 1970, doesn't contain a single second-rate book – not one in all that time," said Roberts on learning of his shortlisting. He pronounced himself "surprised" to be among the finalists, "provoked in part by the fact that I've never been shortlisted for this award before". "That only makes me more chuffed to be on the list this year, of course," he said. "It's particularly nice to be in such extraordinary company: any of the other three could win and deserve it."The contenders for the prize are nominated by BSFA members who then vote for their favourite, with the winners to be announced on 4 April at the Eastercon convention. ... Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:52:34 +0100 812191 http://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/jobs-fellowships.html The Brown International Writers Project is currently seeking nominations and applications for its one-year fellowship with residency. Deadline: Feb 15The English Department at Quinnipiac University accepting applications for Assistant Professor beginning in Fall 2010. Feb 28St. Lawrence University invites Fiction or creative non-fiction writers with significant publications and teaching (Source: NewPages Blog) Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 813619 http://bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com/2010/01/author-visit-robert-daniher.html BHPL: Today author Robert Daniher visits the BHPL Book Blog to talk with us about what it's like to launch a writing career. Bob, tell us about your writing. Do you have a specialty at this point?Bob:I write primarily short stories in the mystery genre, although I've also written some poetry and a bit of non-fiction. In 2007, my short story "Deadline" was published in "The 2007 Deadly Ink Short Story Collection" published by Parsippany, N.J. mystery publisher Deadly Ink Press.I had my second story "Ball-Point" published the following year in the 2008 Collection.BHPL: Why mysteries and tell us some of your favorite mystery authors.Bob: I began writing through my love to create and tell stories, and mysteries were always my favorite books to read. There are so many I could mention, but Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming were the first two authors I began reading regularly. That’s when my love of the mystery/thriller novel began. They were also wonderful short story authors as well. I also love Chandler and Hammett. Some contemporary authors I enjoy are Laura Lippmann, Joyce Carol Oats, Christa Faust, Megan Abbott and the late great Edward D. Hoch. As well as being great novelists, they have amazing talent with the short story, especially Ed Hoch who passed away in 2008. He was incredibly prolific and a true master of the short form.BHPL: I'm assuming that as a writer starting out in your career that you have had to work at various jobs to pay the bills. Can you tell us about those experiences?Bob: Since finishing college I've worked as a janitor, radio producer, school cafeteria worker, television broadcast technician, freelance video editor, filmmaker and a crime fiction writer.My main career (day job) over the past 12 years has been as Master Control Operator for a cable network.BHPL: Have any of these jobs provided ideas for stories?Bob: All of them have provided ideas for stories. In fact, ideas come from everywhere. ... Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 812715 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/piD8yCXQQMU/2010-edgar-allan-poe-awards.html Mystery Writers of America has announced, on the 201st anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, its Nominees for the 2010 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2009. The Edgar® Awards will be presented to the winners at the 64th Gala Banquet, April 29, 2010 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City:* The Missing by Tim Gautreaux (Random House - Alfred A. Knopf)* The Odds by Kathleen George (Minotaur Books)* The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur Books)* Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston (Random House - Ballantine Books)* Nemesis by Jo Nesbø, translated by Don Bartlett (HarperCollins)* A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn (Simon & Schuster - Atria Books) (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:30:14 +0100 811120 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/A50Bs00Zrx4/grant-mitchell-novel-ross-kemp Hot on the heels of Martine McCutcheon, Ross Kemp is to publish a novel, reports a delighted Marina HydeSensational news. Not four months after his erstwhile screen wife Martine McCutcheon published her debut novel, The Mistress, Ross Kemp is to follow suit. It is announced that he has signed a deal with Random House's Century imprint to produce one novel this July, a "major non-fiction project" in October, and another novel next year."His foray into fiction promises to be very exciting," declares Century publishing director Ben Dunn, and how right he is. There is simply nothing to which Grant cannot turn his meaty hand. Soap hardman, Afghan hardman, gangland hardman, pirate hardman - and now novelist hardman. Truly he is a Renaissance hardman. The debut novel will be called Devil to Pay, and its protagonist is former serviceman Nick Kane, which I expect means it's about a soldier hardman. As for the strange instance of synchronicity that has seen both the former Mr and Mrs Mitchell struck by the muse, ours is not to reason why. It is a merely a matter of delight for those of us still mourning the last time they were seen together, before a car driven at three miles an hour by professional cockney Mike Read robbed us of Tiffany's light. Grant is currently living in Portugal with little Courtney, though he still telephones the Square sometimes.In real life, of course, Grant and Tiff appear to have embarked on a plan to set literary London ablaze, and Lost in Showbiz is already fantasing about the Algonquin round table de nos jours they shall doubtless create. Martine in the Dorothy Parker role, obviously, whilst Ross's ability to straddle the worlds of acting and writing make him very much the circle's Robert Benchley. As for who else will be pulling up a chair to make smart talk, one can only speculate, but on this evidence, none of our finest Walford brains can be ruled out.CelebrityMarina Hydeguardian.co. ... Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:22:11 +0100 810766 http://www.cla-net.org/weblog/2010/01/writertowriter_1.php What is the Writer-to-Writer Challenge? Adult literacy learners of the California Library Literacy Services are invited to read a book, any book. It can be fiction or non-fiction, written at any level, and can be a book-on-tape. They then write a letter to the author describing how the book changed their lives. This year 188 adult learners entered the Challenge from 43 library literacy programs all over California. Their letters, based on their writing skill levels, were divided into four categories: Emerging, Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced. There are two rounds of judging: In the first round a panel of librarians and literacy specialists carefully selected the finalists in each category. In the second round, groups of learners reviewed the finalists' letters and picked the winner and runners-up in each category. The letters of the winners will appear as a Four-part Series, continuing part three with this E-newsletter with a letter from Beginner winner Evonne Macias: Evonne Macias Hemet Public Library Dear Dave Pelzer, My name is Evonne Macias and I attend the Hemet Adult Literacy Program. At this time, I am trying to earn my GED. I am 54 years old and have now read your book, A Child Called It. I really did not think there was another mom as bad as mine, but after I read your book I realized that there was. I found that I was anxious and angry as I read. I was looking for any kind of joy, a joy that neither you, nor I have ever had. In the beginning, I saw a mother with much love for her children. Unfortunately, your childhood happened during a time when people did not want to get involved in other people's business, and no one would say anything. These kinds of abuses were ignored. I felt all your pain and cried with you as I read. I know that deep down it really hurts because you were just a little boy. I also grew up with an alcoholic mother and she was also very abusive. ... Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:50:00 +0100 812151 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/FeEEPRFXzCg/ The Library Research Service from Colorado (a government agency that is charged with doing research on library usage, etc. ) is out today with the results of a survey they did (about 1700 respondents) about the future of the book. The survey asked in what format (audio, electronic, or paper) respondents currently read fiction, non-fiction, and textbooks, as well as how they predict how they will read those materials 10 years from now. Those that use audio did not expect much change in 10 years (less than 1% change in each category). The largest expected transformation among respondents was for textbooks. 10 percent currently read them in an electronic format, but 59% expect to be reading them electronically in 10 years. Survey respondents also predicted a change in how they will read fiction and non-fiction. Currently, 86 percent of our respondents read non-fiction in a paper format, but only 59 percent expect they will still be reading non-fiction that way in 10 years. Plenty more details at the site. Thanks to Resource Shelf for the link. Technorati Tags: e-book, e-books, ebook, ebooks, libraries, library, Paul Biba Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:45:58 +0100 810080 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/19/survey-results-from-the-colorado-library-research-service-the-future-of-the-book/ In December, the team at the Colorado Library Research Service asked for feedback for a survey they were conducting about the future of the book. After some 1700 responses, the results are now available in this post. Here are the questions. Just visit the blog post to see the results both textually and graphically. 1) Do you think paper books will eventually disappear? 2) What do you predict libraries will circulate in 10 years? 3) In what format (audio, electronic, or paper) respondents currently read fiction, non-fiction, and textbooks, as well as how they predict how they will read those materials 10 years from now. Some Responses: The largest expected transformation among respondents was for textbooks. 10 percent currently read them in an electronic format, but 59% expect to be reading them electronically in 10 years. Survey respondents also predicted a change in how they will read fiction and non-fiction. Currently, 86 percent of our respondents read non-fiction in a paper format, but only 59 percent expect they will still be reading non-fiction that way in 10 years. As for fiction, 88 percent of our respondents read fiction from paper books, but only 70% predict they will still read fiction that way in 10 years. Finally, the LRS said that many people who answered the survey included text responses. Those will be coming soon. Source: Colorado Library Research Service (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:46:35 +0100 809933 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2010/01/19/notes-from-ala-midwinter-2010 Here are a few random notes from the weekend - the best part of the conference is talking with other librarians, and of course the free stuff. Apps: Past or Future? Despite not having a cell phone, I still ended up talking a lot about apps at the show. Gale has a great approach for AccessMyLibrary. Check out the Librarian in Black’s writeup, but what I liked about it is the geolocation authentication: it shows you all libraries within 10 miles, and lets you into their (Gale) database - no typing in library card numbers. At the LibraryThing party, there was lots of talk about LT’s new Local Books app. Some people loved it, and some people didn’t (especially the Android user I talked to, who couldn’t find one for his phone). This also led to an interesting discussion on whether or not apps are even needed - one theory was that if the mobile version of your website is good enough, then you shouldn’t need a separate app. Therefore, a good app does some kind of mashup not possible on the website. Then again, I also heard that apps are on their way out in 2010. eBooks: Present and Future This is an area I’ve been paying attention to, and I still learned a lot. The eBooks that Overdrive offers are in epub and pdf formats, and circulate just like their audio books. But the best part is that they work on the Sony Reader and Nook - I did not know that. Apparently they have lots of both fiction and non-fiction titles, so I’m going to explore this avenue for my library. Gale also offers eBooks, but I forgot to ask about the format. What I did like was that they aren’t limited to one user at a time - they were more like a database, where anyone can log in, search and use them. I also saw a demo of B&T’s new eBook software, Blio (pronounced blee-O). ... Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:43:46 +0100 809794 http://www.sla.org.uk/blg-new-name-for-2010.php Heinnemann Library have worked with the SLA in the past providing sponsorship and contributing to Weekend Courses etc - watch out for them in 2010 under their new name - Raintree.   Raintree's aim is to ‘capture the interest and unlock the potential' of children and young people by introducing them to the joy of reading through an expanded range of titles in fiction, non fiction, graphics and hi-lo. (Source: SLA Weblog) Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:13:49 +0100 811371 http://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/tmr-creative-non-fiction-winner.html Judy Copeland was the winner of The Malahat Review's 2009 Creative Non-Fiction Prize. Final Judge John Threlfall chose her entry "Where Sea Meets Sky" from among 105 submissions. Copeland's childhood memory of postwar Japan can be read in the most current issue, 169/Winter 2009. (Source: NewPages Blog) Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 811238 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/r0KDWcWnS7o/salati-case-tobias-jones A fast-talking, pocket-sized box-ticker of a private-dick novel, The Salati Case sees Tobias Jones revisit the modern Italian underworld he combed through in his 2003 non-fiction book The Dark Heart of Italy. Indeed, the main obstacle facing his narrator and protagonist, Castagnetti, hired to confirm whether an heir to a Parma family's fortune is missing or dead, is the paranoia, corruption and complicity of the upper echelons of Italian society, which the detective slips past with little concern for personal safety. Angry, violent and uncompromising, with a shaved head, dead parents and a sideline in beekeeping, Castagnetti will be back, no danger: he is too good a creation to be restricted to a single case.Fictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:05:43 +0100 809137 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/WbXOWW0-Aj8/jordan-celebrity-memoir One of Jordan's biographers defends the public's right to know all in this celebrity-obsessed ageGlum faces all round at Waterstone's. The celebrity biography, they say, is on the way out, hitting sales and forcing the departure of its managing director. There was similar gloom a week earlier from the Bookseller on the death of the celebrity memoir.Except that some of us are seeing a very different picture. I have been writing celebrity biographies for the best part of 10 years under the name of Emily Herbert and on the same day that Waterstone's management was weeping into its beer, I discovered that my latest book, on the travails of Katie Price and her estranged spouse, had just reached the number one slot in the paperback non-fiction bestseller list. Celebrity biography dead? I don't think so.Nor do the figures bear this out. Yes, book sales in December overall were down by 1.2%, partly because of less interest in celebrity names; Ant and Dec, who wrote the biggest celebrity memoir of the year, sold "only" 309,083 copies, as opposed to Paul O'Grady's 2008 total of 664,000. But last year, seven of the top 10 hardback non-fiction bestsellers were celebrity-linked and, on the paperback front, eight out of the top 10 came from the people who dominate television screens.Claims that the cult of celebrity remains strong is not going to be greeted with unalloyed joy by everyone. The celebrity biography gets a bad press from some quarters, with complaints that no one is interested, or shouldn't be, in the thoughts of some jumped-up, two-bit contestant on a reality television show.But that is what a substantial portion of the population wants to read. We all know it's everyone's aim to be famous these days and it is inevitable that popular reading matter will reflect that. ... Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:05:15 +0100 809124 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/js3RPaGVqL8/amanda-ross-tv-bookclub-interview As Amanda Ross launches her new TV Book Club, the woman who made Richard & Judy the most powerful couple in publishing talks to Alex ClarkWhen I meet Amanda Ross, joint managing director of Cactus TV and former producer of Richard & Judy, I feel I have to get something out of the way. I tell her that I was part of a panel that, four years ago, placed her at the head of the Observer newspaper's list of the 50 most influential people in publishing, above such industry power players as Gail Rebuck and Tim Hely Hutchinson, and above writers Jacqueline Wilson and Kazuo Ishiguro and cultural commentators such as Jenni Murray. As the creator of Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan's book club, then entering its third year and a familiar part of their Channel 4 chat show, Ross not only had a huge success on her hands, she had also had a profound impact on the British publishing landscape; by then, writers, publishers and booksellers not only wanted books to garner reviews and prizes; they wanted them to "do a Richard & Judy". Have your work chewed over by the golden couple and their celebrity guests on the studio sofa and, perhaps even more importantly, earn the right to have their sticker plastered on your book and, everyone knew, you had hit the big time.But for Ross, the seemingly unstoppable rise of the book clubs – there was also an annual "Summer Reads" campaign – was not without its downside. Over the past few years, she has attracted a fair amount of criticism, ranging from concern that the programme's enormous sales uplift applies to a limited number of titles and reduces the market for other books, to more ad feminam accusations – that she exercises undue influence on publishers' choices of book jackets and publication schedules, or that she is defiantly un­literary. ... Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:05:09 +0100 808774 http://blog.njla.org/archives/2010/01/#000656 By Cranford Chronicle January 14, 2010, 12:55PM KENILWORTH — Is your family budget tight and getting tighter? Are you looking for ways to cut back on spending but hate to give up some of the things that you enjoy? Do you want to take full advantage of what the Borough of Kenilworth has to offer? If so, then there is no better way to start the New Year than with a visit to the Kenilworth Public Library. Getting a card is quick and easy – just bring your driver’s license or other form of identification with proof of address and you can start checking out items from our collection the very day you sign up. And you can put that old stereotype of cranky librarians to rest – our staff members are both knowledgeable and friendly and they’ll have you feeling like library regulars in no time at all. Best of all, the library really does have something for everyone. The book collection features the latest best sellers along with a comprehensive collection of fiction, mysteries, romance, biographies and non-fiction covering a wide range of subjects and authors, with many titles also available in large print. Not interested in books? The library also subscribes to more than 60 magazines plus six daily or weekly newspapers. For the younger set, the library has an extensive collection of books arranged in separate collections for teens, elementary school students and the picture book set. Reading’s not your thing? Not to worry, because the library is proud of its DVD collection of nearly 2,000 titles, all of which can be checked out at no cost for a three day loan period. For music lovers, there is a collection of approximately 1,000 CDs covering a wide range of musical tastes, from kiddy to classical, and with everything in between. For those who do love books but prefer to multitask, the library also has an ever growing collection of audio books that can either be checked out on compact disk or downloaded directly through access on the library’s webpage. ... Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 810287 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/S_BIpM-4CU4/coming-next-books-highlights-teenies Ready your crystal balls, it's time to predict the literary highlights of the coming decadeThe one prediction I made about books and publishing at the start of the noughties turned out to be spectacularly off. I was absolutely certain that the debut novel on which I was then working – an elegiac, meditative piece about a lethargic, unexceptional man in which nothing really happened and nobody really did anything – would charm the bestseller lists, seduce the awards judges and lay waste to the metaphorical virtue of a planetary readership.Then again, I was wrong about a lot of things. I would never have dreamed, for instance, that "misery lit" memoirs would find such a rapacious, enormous audience of ghouls and dupes prepared to pay for the doubtful pleasure of wallowing in another person's (often invented) pain. I couldn't have foreseen that a cheap, derivative thriller from a nondescript hack called Dan Brown, which read like it had been dictated by a hyperactive child recounting a Scooby Doo plot, would sell 80m copies and spawn an entire industry.I certainly didn't predict the plague of celebrity fiction deals, TV spin-offs, collections of miscellany with initially amusing but quickly annoying names, Mormon vampire novels for kids, non-Mormon vampire novels for kids, bad crime fiction, worse crime fiction, John Banville's crime fiction, electronic readers, self-referential networks of literary blogs, the publishing industry going into meltdown, and books with very long titles in which the hero is a child with uncommon perspicacity and emotional sensitivity.Buy hey, when you fall off the horse, what do you do? That's right, you get back on. ... Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:49:46 +0100 808392 http://blogaboutmurphy.blogspot.com/2010/01/popular-fiction-and-non-fiction-titles.html The CLC Library offers a collection of best selling popular fiction and non-fiction titles for your reading pleasure. The "Best Sellers" are located on the second floor of the library in the Mainstacks area. Think about saving yourself an extra trip and/or some gas by utilizing this collection while you are already on campus.The following titles were recently located on the January 1, 2010 New York Times Best Selling Hard Cover Fiction list and also available in the Best Selling collection at the CLC Library:* The Lost Symbol; Dan Brown; PS3552.R685434 L67 2009 * I, Alex Cross; James Patterson; PS3566.A822 I3 2009* Under the Dome; Stephen King; PS3561.I483 U53 2009 * The Help; Kathryn Stockett; PS3619.T636 H45 2009 * Ford County; John Grisham; PS3557.R5355 F67 2009 * U is for Undertow; Sue Grafton; PS3557.R13 U3 2009 * The Last Song; Nicholas Sparks; PS3569.P363 L37 2009 * Breathless; Dean Koontz; PS3561.O55 B74 2009* The Lacuna; Barbara Kingsolver; PS3561.I496 L33 2009* True Blue; David Baldacci; PS3552.A446 T78 2009 * Wolf Hall; Hilary Mantel; PR6063.A438 W65 2009 * The Gathering Storm; Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson; PS3560.O7617 G38 2009 * Half Broke Horses; Jeannette Walls; PS3623.A3644 H35 2009You may search for additional Best Selling titles at the CLC Library website. Go to http://library.clcillinois.edu/, choose the Books, Movies, Music & More icon, under New Materials click on Best Sellers.Happy Reading! (Source: BlogAbout Murphy Library) Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 809010 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/eqHNdx1lFeM/matt-rees-novels-arab-world The Jerusalem-based crime writer picks novels that offer 'a much more profound contact' with this region than the newsMatt Rees was born in Newport, Wales in 1967, and has lived in Jerusalem since 1996. As a journalist, Rees covered the Middle East for over a decade for the Scotsman, then Newsweek and from 2000 until 2006 as Time magazine's Jerusalem bureau chief.  His first book was a non-fiction account of Israeli and Palestinian society, Cain's Field. He published the first novel featuring Palestinian detective Omar Yussef, The Bethlehem Murders, in 2007, which won the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger award. The Saladin Murders and The Samaritan's Secret followed in 2008 and 2009. The Bethlehem Murders won the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 2008. The Fourth Assassin, published next month, follows Omar to visit his son in New York's "Little Palestine" in Brooklyn.Buy Matt Rees books from the Guardian bookshop "The Arab literary world and Western publishing don't cross over much. The literature of the Arab world is largely unknown in the west, and even westerners who write about Arabs are sometimes seen as fringe, cult writers. That comes at a cost to the west, because literature could be such an important bridge between two cultures so much at odds. What we see of the Arab world comes from news reports of war and other madness. Literature would be a much more profound contact. "I live in Jerusalem and write fiction about the Palestinians because it's a better way to understand the reality of life in Palestine than journalism and non-fiction. The books in this list, in their different ways, unveil elements of life across the Arab world that you won't see in the newspaper or on TV." 1. Wolf Dreams by Yasmina KhadraA young Algerian on the make becomes disillusioned with westernised morality and joins a violent Islamist group. In turn he sees through the corruption and bloodthirstiness of the group's actions. ... Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:25:29 +0100 808055 http://snailx.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/15-things-about-me-and-books/ Having read the post on Ruminations regarding the 15 things meme, I thought it was worth doing myself. It was fun to write and mostly came out in a single stream of consciousness last night. It puts in print, some of the things that are in my head regarding my relationship with my books over time: some historical, some current. I loved Dr Suess as a child, not just the rhymes but the pictures of odd things and escher like stairways and arches and such. My sister also loved Dr Suess and there are already arguments over who will get which. Though it seems our mother, showing foresight, has put my name in some and my sister’s name in others. As a child I had bad teeth, and required many fillings. The dentist was on the first floor in Burwood, overlooking Burwood Rd; across the road was a bookshop, The Bookworm I think. After each filling, mum would buy me one or two of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series; a painful filling garnering two books as reward or perhaps compensation. I think I eventually acquired all 21 in this manner. As a child I wanted to own a children’s bookshop, then shut it down so that I could work my way through all the books, selfish bugger was I. I got a merit certificate in 6th class for library participation – simply because I’d borrowed the most books. One of my favourite books as a young lad, was “Palio: The Wildest Horse Race in the World“, about a horse race in Italy with various competing contradas, each named after an animal. When flicking through it a few years ago with my then partner, it opened to a page with the emblem of the Contrada of the Snail. I’d never considered that as a possible inspiration for the nickname I chose. She managed to procure, with much difficulty, a pennant from said contrada (as the book was based on real events), and it now hangs on my wall in the main room – a family crest of sorts. ... Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:01:05 +0100 808844 http://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-lit-on-block-southern-womens-review.html Edited by Alicia K. Clavell, the Southern Women’s Review is a newly established on-line literary journal that allows others access to artistic excellence through Southern Literature and Photography. The second issue features over 100 pages of creative works from poets, fiction and creative non-fiction writers, photographers, and more. The next reading period for the publication begins March 1, (Source: NewPages Blog) Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 809074 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/T8i-qDaj1hw/ It’s been about a year since I got my Sony 505, and although it’s a great device, I have been itching for an upgrade. The Kindle has finally hit Canada, and it has features the Sony lacks—on-board dictionary (which I would not use when I read in English but would use often when I read in French), on-board Wikipedia and free book samples, a search feature and other goodies. I have been taking advantage of the facilities at a local community centre, and not being a huge music person, was getting bored with the same 100 or so songs that have been on my iPod for the last decade, so the text to speech feature particularly intrigued me. But what did not intrigue me was the price! When I learned that the Astak Pocket Pro—$100 cheaper—shared this feature, and furthermore that a local friend had one and was willing to loan it to me—I jumped at the chance to check out the Astak Pocket Pro. First impressions The Pocket Pro is an adorable little device. The one I borrowed was blue, and although it suffered from the now apparently fixed peeling paint issue, it was comfortable to hold and considerably lighter than my 505. It had a removeable cover which made it look like a book. There were numbered buttons at the bottom, a round button to conjure up the menu, side buttons on the left to turn pages, and a jogwheel on the right for the same purpose. I was used to having buttons on the right from my Sony, and my hand kept straying to that area, but after awhile I got used to flipping pages with the jog wheel. Loading content The Pocket Pro loads onto the computer as an external drive and you can drag and drop files onto it. You can also use folders to sort the content. The one I was testing had come with a memory card full of free books, some badly formatted, in text and PRC. Astak’s reader can additionally handle mobipocket, epub, HTML, PDF and other formats. ... Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:37:29 +0100 807577 http://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/women-writers-of-haitian-descent.html Women Writers of Haitian Descent (WWHOD) promotes and explores the fiction, non-fiction, and journalistic works of Haitian women writers internationally. WWOHD serves as a literary forum for new and established writers, be they closeted essayists, budding novelists, gifted storytellers, or inspiring poets. The organization gives them validation alongside a platform for their work. WWOHD also (Source: NewPages Blog) Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 809081 http://vivabibliotecaviva.blogspot.com/2010/01/eblida-position-statement-for-european.html EBLIDA is the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations. We are an independent umbrella association of national library, information, documentation and archive associations and institutions in Europe. We promote unhindered access to information in the digital age and the role of archives and libraries in achieving this goal.The Google Book Search programme has the potential to provide public access to a digital library of millions of books. It will, fully developed, be an unprecedented source for the advancement of learning and human development.Google and representatives of rights owners and publishers have come to an agreement on how to settle the copyright and other legal issues in relation to the Book Search Project. This settlement is now under review by the United States District Court, Southern District of New York.The settlement allows Google to offer four primary services:Previews- All users in the United States may search Google’s entire search database for digitized books free, and see up to 20 % text from out-of-print books. (There are special rules for special categories e.g. fiction vs. non-fiction.).Consumer purchases- Consumers may buy perpetual online access to the full text of out-of -print books. In-print books require that the copyright owner "opt in".Institutional subscriptions- Users within an institution which has paid a subscription may view the full text of all the books in the Institutional Subscription Database (ISD), which will include all the books in the in-copyright but out-of-print category.Free Public Access Service - Google may provide Free Public Access Service to not-for-profit Higher Education Institutions and Public libraries on specified conditions. In the case of each Public Library, no more than one terminal per library building.EBLIDA hopes that this settlement will be the beginning of a fruitful cooperation between Google and the rights owners. ... Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 808759 http://www.teleread.org/2010/01/09/browsing-in-barnes-noble-for-nook-books/ Editor’s Note: This is reprinted, with permission, from The Lewis Four, the blog of Scott G. Lewis. P.B. One frustration tonight. I was in a Barnes and Noble (still no coupons for free cookies or coffee, it’s been explained to me that not all stores are “turned on yet”) looking for a new book. I still have a huge backlog of Kindle books, but it was time to go ahead and buy something (no more samples). I’d bought a newspaper and a couple of magazines to try, but it’s hard to resist trying something new, and it behooves me as an eReader gadget blogger to go through the process. I was in the store with my father, also a gadget guru (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree), he had his Kindle DX tonight. At home was his Kindle 2 and his nook, as well as an old Sony eReader. Hmm, maybe he should be blogging about eReader technology instead of me. Anyway, while browsing the new non-fiction releases, we decided to compare and contrast the two devices. For starters, the nook is tremendously faster to get on the Internet and complete searches, no doubt thanks to the WiFi connection versus the Kindle’s 3G connection.There were four books we ran across that seemed interesting: Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank – A fascinating look through history about people perceptions about pregnancy and childbirth, including being encouraged to drink red wine, or taking morphine. Sadly, neither Kindle nor nook carried this book. Sony and Kobo do not carry this book either. Barnes and Noble lists the publication date as 1/11/2010 for this book which is to say perhaps it will be available next week when that date actually occurs! Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea – Barbara Demick writes this comprehensive look into life in North Korea. Demick, a LA Times foreign staffer spent time as their Seoul, South Korea bureau chief. ... Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:59:26 +0100 806768 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/a1WP0FBV364/ Editor’s Note: This is reprinted, with permission, from The Lewis Four, the blog of Scott G. Lewis. P.B. One frustration tonight. I was in a Barnes and Noble (still no coupons for free cookies or coffee, it’s been explained to me that not all stores are “turned on yet”) looking for a new book. I still have a huge backlog of Kindle books, but it was time to go ahead and buy something (no more samples). I’d bought a newspaper and a couple of magazines to try, but it’s hard to resist trying something new, and it behooves me as an eReader gadget blogger to go through the process. I was in the store with my father, also a gadget guru (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree), he had his Kindle DX tonight. At home was his Kindle 2 and his nook, as well as an old Sony eReader. Hmm, maybe he should be blogging about eReader technology instead of me. Anyway, while browsing the new non-fiction releases, we decided to compare and contrast the two devices. For starters, the nook is tremendously faster to get on the Internet and complete searches, no doubt thanks to the WiFi connection versus the Kindle’s 3G connection.There were four books we ran across that seemed interesting: Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank – A fascinating look through history about people perceptions about pregnancy and childbirth, including being encouraged to drink red wine, or taking morphine. Sadly, neither Kindle nor nook carried this book. Sony and Kobo do not carry this book either. Barnes and Noble lists the publication date as 1/11/2010 for this book which is to say perhaps it will be available next week when that date actually occurs! Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea – Barbara Demick writes this comprehensive look into life in North Korea. Demick, a LA Times foreign staffer spent time as their Seoul, South Korea bureau chief. ... Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:59:26 +0100 806685 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/Wdt1YcGuEJY/2010-charles-taylor-prize-for-literary.html The finalists for the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction have been announced:* Ian Brown for The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search For His Disabled Son, published by Random House Canada* John English for Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968 – 2000, published by Knopf Canada* Daniel Poliquin for René Lévesque, published by Penguin Canada* Kenneth Whyte for The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst, published by Random House CanadaThe winner will be announced on February 8, 2010 (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Sat, 09 Jan 2010 13:09:16 +0100 806665 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/F-l4FVNbpPA/james-ellroy-david-peace-conversation David Peace interviews James EllroyDavid Peace Pete Bondurant appears as a minor character in White Jazz and then becomes one of the principal characters in American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand – is that where the spark for the whole Underworld USA trilogy came from? With you wanting to run with this character, to see where Pete took you?James Ellroy There was an overlap that began with my reading of Don Delillo's novel Libra. I saw that it was so superbly done that I couldn't write another book specifically about the assassination of John F Kennedy. But that's when I began to see that the harbingers of the assassination started to percolate in '58. And I saw that I could do a book where the assassination could be a concluding event, but appear off-stage. And then turn it into a trilogy. So I was originally going to use the real-life private eye Fred Otash, who's been a supporting character in three or four other books, but I was going to pay him because I didn't trust him.DP Is he dead now?JE Yes, he's dead now. So I could've used him for free. But I had already created Big Pete, so I decided to use him.DP Did you write American Tabloid knowing it would be the first book of a trilogy?JE As I began the finishing of Tabloid, I saw that it was a trilogy, and I saw that the second book would be the big book about the 60s.DP Had you also envisaged the third book?JE Not in any kind of detail, no. Because the politics and the social upheaval of America during the 60s are so obvious – you got the anti-war protests, the civil rights movement, the racism of the South, Howard Hughes buying up Las Vegas – I had a lot of it right at the gate. But when you go into 1972, as this book [Blood's a Rover] does, it's less charted territory. ... Sat, 09 Jan 2010 09:00:01 +0100 806652 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/brjTPEB6RCo/tls-awards-translation Anthea Bell and Margaret Jull Costa are among the winners at the Times Literary Supplement's honoursAfter landing an OBE in the New Year honours for "services to literature and to literary translations" Anthea Bell has notched up another award just eight days into 2010, winning the Times Literary Supplement's prize for translation from the German for her work on Stefan Zweig's novella Burning Secret.Set in an off-season Austrian resort, Burning Secret tells the story of the tensions between a 12-year-old boy and "the Baron", who is trying to seduce his mother. "The boy is used as a go-between but then wakes up and tries to thwart him at every turn," said Bell, who has won a succession of awards and honours over the years for her translations from French and German. "It's full of human interest, and you feel something for all three protagonists. It's moving, with a certain wryness – I'm very fond of it."Winning the TLS's Schlegel-Tieck prize for German translation was "a great pleasure, particularly for something by Stefan Zweig who's a very favourite author of mine", she said. She and publisher Pushkin Press have been trying to revive interest in Zweig, an Austrian Jew who committed suicide in 1942, recently releasing a new translation of his memoir The World of Yesterday. Adrian Tahourdin at the TLS called Burning Secret "a small masterpiece, beautifully rendered in Anthea Bell's translation".Fiction dominates the TLS's translation prizes this year, with Tove Jansson's translator Thomas Teal taking the Bernard Shaw prize for Swedish translation for Jansson's Fair Play, a portrait of two women praised by Tahourdin for its "Nordic lyricism". ... Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:40:37 +0100 806493 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FlaJobline/~3/QO31G1FBZeE/reference-librarian-information.html Airdrie Public LibraryPosition Title: Reference Librarian (Information Services) – Part-TimeReports to: Head of Adult ServicesAirdrie Public Library is a member of the Marigold Library System and is one of the fastest growing libraries in one of the fastest growing cities in Alberta. The Library has an immediate opening for a Part-Time Reference (Information Services) position. We offer a flexible and supportive work environment, and value initiative and lifelong learning.Position Summary:The successful candidate will be responsible for the following duties:Providing information services to the public using print and electronic resources;Providing Reader’s advisory to staff and the public;Promoting the Library’s services and collections;Assisting with Collection Development: reference materials, Fiction, and Non-Fiction;Providing Technology Training and Tutoring to the public;Qualifications:The successful candidate will have a professional and positive approach and a genuine interest in serving the various customers that frequent the public library. MLIS, Library Technician diploma, or other relevant post secondary education trainingExperience in providing information services to customers;Experience in providing technology training (computer, e-resources, and Internet);Excellent interpersonal, communication, organizational skills, and customer service skills.Assets:Adult Education experience or an Education degree;Public Library experience;A great sense of humor, flexibility, creativity and a commitment to organizational excellence and team building.Future Possibilities:In a mid-sized library there is an opportunity to increase hours and serve in other areas, based on strengths and interests:Preschool Literacy / Teen / Adult ProgrammingTechnology Training/Teaching OpportunitiesTechnical Services Duties: Interlibrary Loan, Acquisitions Employment Terms:Part-time position offering 10 -20 hours weekly. Some evening and weekend shifts required. ... Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:05:17 +0100 807413 http://kidslit.menashalibrary.org/2010/01/06/judging-the-cybils-ya-fantasy-science-fiction/ Yippee!  My part of the Cybils process has arrived.  And wonderfully, they created two judging panels for the Fantasy and Science Fiction category.  One set for middle grade and one set for YA.  I’ve read over half of the finalists.  I have one that I’m not crazy about, three yet to read, and three favorites!   It is always exciting to see what comes out the winner!  Here are the YA Fantasy & Science Fiction Finalists Candor by Pam Bachorz The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan The Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King Fire by Kristin Cashore Lips Touch by Laini Taylor Sacred Scars by Kathleen Duey Tiger Moon by Antonia Michaelis   And make sure you check out the finalists in the other Cybils categories too! Easy Readers & Short Chapter Books Fantasy & Science Fiction (Middle Grade) Fiction Picture Books Graphic Novels Middle Grade Fiction Non-Fiction Middle Grade/YA Non-Fiction Picture Books Poetry Young Adult Fiction (Source: Kids Lit) Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 805940 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/5zsUS71xJ3w/leo-tolstoy-greatest-writer What do today's novelists think of the great Russian author Leo Tolstoy?Philip HensherI do think he is the greatest novelist who ever lived. I didn't used to, but I have grown into him with age. When I was a boy I used to groan at the farming bits in Anna Karenina – now I could read about farming all day. Thee is so much in his work that you don't understand, but you feel that one day you might.What is great about him is that he lets his characters grow up – they change, act totally out of character, and yet they are recognisably the same people. In War and Peace, Natasha starts out as a girl bouncing around quite happily, and at the end she is this grumpy matron who doesn't want to see anyone – yet somehow you believe it's the same person. I don't know how he does that. He does such rounded people.War and Peace is the book that stays with you, but I also love his very late fables. There are two unforgettable ones: How Much Land Does a Man Need?, about the greed for land, and What Men Live By, a fable or fairy story where an angel comes down to earth. He attained this perfect simplicity of expression towards the end, and he grew out of the novel. I don't think anyone else has ever done that. You can learn more from Tolstoy than any other writer – but as a technician, not as a moralist.Tom KeneallyTolstoy is one of those annoying people of genius who performed in the 19th century the ultimate tricks that the rest of us are now stuck with trying to perform imperfectly and on humbler scale. In War and Peace, he successfully depicted the public and national soul as incarnated in a vast array of individuals, and the novel tries, in a compelling way, to define the same unity amongst his characters. In Anna Karenina, by contrast, he deals with one doomed soul on an intimate, psychological level. Thus he is a super-Balzac and a Flaubert at the same time.Is he the greatest novelist of all time? I think Dostoevsky is a fellow giant. ... Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:17:00 +0100 805589 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/leQ8iK8rZbQ/los-angeles-tour-gangsters Author Richard Rayner takes us on a historic tour of 1920s LA, home to the real-life mobsters, racketeers and corrupt officials that inspired a host of hardboiled writersThe streets of old Los Angeles come alive in A Bright and Guilty Place, Richard Rayner's non-fiction account of the city at its most corrupt, during the late 1920s and early 30s. The book, which is published tomorrow, borrows a wise-crack description of LA by Orson Welles for its title. It details a group of interconnected characters, some forgotten, others familiar, including attorney-turned-murderer "Debonair Dave" Clark, underworld fixer Charlie Crawford (one of Clark's victims), mobster Albert Marco, crime-scene photographer Leslie White, tycoon Edward L Doheny, and oil industry executive Raymond Chandler, who was observing LA's dark side from the sidelines, collecting material for his future career as perhaps the greatest ever writer of Angeleno crime novels.Many of the book's key locations can still be found, some in a better state of repair than others, all of them glowing in the refracted light of deeds and misdeeds past. Bradford-born Rayner, who currently lives in Santa Monica, agreed to play tour guide for us, and mapped out a fascinating route from the time-warped boulevards of downtown — LA's once bustling hub — west through Hollywood and Beverly Hills, to the ocean piers of Santa Monica and Venice. Thanks to Rayner's directions and on-site commentary, a forgotten city starts to emerge from the shadow of Tinseltown: a world where actors like Charlie Chaplin have cameos, and the real stars belong to the "LA System": City Hall, the LA Police Department, and Prohibition-era gangland.For each location, we've recommended a suitable period song.1. ... Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:05:00 +0100 805592 http://hedgehoglibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/01/theres-got-to-be-more-to-youth-services.html Madame Storyteller and I were recently in a discussion about continuing education, particularly as it related to youth services. This was part of a larger discussion with coworkers and someone from our system about what is needed and can be provided in terms of local continuing ed. It allowed/caused me to raise a point that I see as a major issue in youth services.Essentially the professional literature, classes, continuing education, and conference presentations we're seeing can be boiled down to three categories:1) Preschool Storytime and Early Literacy2) Summer Reading Program (See link for Madame Storyteller's wisdom on this)3) Teens and GamingI'm not trying to devalue any of these. They are all important aspects of what we're doing, service we're providing, youth we're reaching.But it also means there are huge gaping holes that are going by the wayside. Broad sweeping statement, no? Let me point out some issues I'm seeing--keeping in mind that these are not one-size-fits-all at your public library.What I'd like to see addressed by continuing ed, conference sessions, etc.: 1) Our public library "children's" websites are primarily for adults.Adult librarians are writing for adult parents with the assumption that that's who will be visiting the website. They will but parents can navigate through something intended for kids. If we used that logic, we wouldn't decorate our children's spaces in bright colors, with low shelves and seats, child friendly signage, and puzzles.Kids are incredibly perceptive and recognize something intended for them isn't really written for them or is written in that condescending cutesy "look at me writing for kids" tone. They'll see, they'll leave, and won't come back.2) We aren't programming for emerging readers.I know, they're all in daycare, preschool, K4--but I have had multiple parents ask me for something to keep those early readers going. ... Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:30:00 +0100 805219 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/y_o-XwTn0NU/australia-pm-children-book-pets Kevin Rudd is set to publish Jasper and Abby and the Great Australia Day KerfuffleGordon Brown expounded on his heroes in print, Barack Obama penned politically charged memoirs and reflections, and now Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has revealed what his contribution to the literary canon will be: a children's book about his family pets.To be published on 26 January – Australia Day – Jasper and Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle will follow the adventures of Rudd's dog Abby and cat Jasper as they cause havoc in the grounds of his family's official residence. The book was the brainchild of children's television presenter Rhys Muldoon, who has worked on the title with the prime minister along with illustrator Carla Zapel."It has not been the most demanding text I have worked on," Rudd told local Australian press. "I've worked on the text with Rhys and we've both interviewed the cat and the dog. They have been very co-operative in their responses but, for most of the time, have gone off the record."He later tweeted: "Jasper and Abby end up saving the day on what could have been an Oz day disaster at the Lodge. All a bit of fun."Rudd revealed his literary leanings in 2008 when he established Australia's richest literary prize. Worth A$100,000 (£56,000), the prime minister's awards for fiction and non-fiction are intended to "celebrate the contribution of Australian literature to the nation's cultural and intellectual life", and Rudd himself makes the final decision on the winners.Proceeds from the sale of Jasper and Abby and the Great Australia Day will go to a children's charity, Rudd said.Children and teenagersPublishingAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:04:29 +0100 805135 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/eclecticlibrarian/~3/WqvyuOiq6u8/ Once again I attempted to read 50 books in a year, and once again I failed. Well, actually, I pretty much gave up on it early on, so it’s no surprise to me that I didn’t get there. Anyway, here are the books I read last year (I read a lot more than just books, but these are all that I’m counting): Don’t Stop Believin’: How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life by Brian Raftery Vulcan’s Forge by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz Vulcan’s Heart by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz Vulcan’s Soul Trilogy Book One: Exodus by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz Vulcan’s Soul Trilogy Book Two: Exiles by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz Vulcan’s Soul Trilogy Book Three: Epiphany by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz Slurp: Drinks and Light Fare, All Day, All Night by Jim Hensley, Nina Dreyer Hensley, and Paul Lowe Of Mule and Man by Mike Farrell The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education by Maya Frost Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely I’m Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago by Hape Kerkeling Libyrinth by Pearl North Kilimanjaro: A Photographic Journey to the Roof of Africa by Michel Moushabeck & Hiltrud Schulz Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi Old Man’s War by John Scalzi My pleasure reading was mostly Spock, and all of the non-fiction was either for review or for a book group discussion. This weekend I went through my bookshelves and pulled about 80 books that I’m either selling or trading away because I haven’t read them yet and will probably get them from the library if/when I ever get around to reading them. ... Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:57:08 +0100 805928 http://www.librarian.net/stax/3118/2009-reading-list-a-year-end-summary/ I skipped doing this last year because I was sort of embarrassed at the shortness of my list. I vowed to read more this year and I guess I did. Here are previous year end lists: 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004. As you probably know, my booklist lives in a separate blog and it has its own RSS feed. I’m not a voracious reader and I’ve been heavy into genre fiction this year, but here’s the wrap-up of what I read in 2009. number of books read in 2009: 39 number of books read in 2008: 31 number of books read in 2007: 53 number of books read in 2005: 86 number of books read in 2004: 103 number of books read in 2003: 75 number of books read in 2002: 91 number of books read in 2001: 78 average read per month: 3.25 average read per week: .75 number read in worst month: 0 (November) number read in best month: 7 (February) percentage by male authors: 82 percentage by female authors: 18 fiction as percentage of total: 51 non-fiction as percentage of total: 49 percentage of total liked: 81 percentage of total ambivalent: 6 percentage of total disliked: 3 So… I’m still doing pretty poorly reading books by female authors though I’ve been balancing fiction and non-fiction pretty well. I loved a few books I read this year, specifically the book about the WPA writer’s project by Kurlansky and the fiction book by Howard Frank Mosher that was set in Vermont. Now that the bus to MA has wifi and I have an EVDO card for my laptop, I read less when I’m in transit. Now that I play scrabble most evenings with my boyfriend 9and also, that I have a boyfriend at all) I red less at night. I haven’t gone over to ebooks in any way though I bet I’m reading the same amount of words, but less of them are in book format. I have a few books that I got mostly through in 2009 that I’m sure I’ll finish off in 2010. ... Sun, 03 Jan 2010 03:57:24 +0100 805696 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/MbJf-hiES1o/noughties-writers-obituaries-review A celebration of the great writers who died in the past decadeJG Ballard (1930-2009) by Michael MoorcockMy friendship with JG Ballard lasted about 50 years and was not always the easiest to maintain. In the early days at least we were naturally confrontational. Happily, we were united in what we wished to confront, if not always agreed on how best to go about it. We were both in those days "family men" and we shared a love for our children. Jimmy's love was almost mystical. When fathers were discouraged from attending births, he had insisted at being present at his children's. We had some fine times – Jimmy and Mary, Hilary and me – arguing into the night until it was time to go home. They'd climb into his battered but romantic Armstrong-Siddeley and head for Shepperton, or Jimmy would drive us back to Notting Hill.Mary died in Spain. His eyes filling with tears, Jimmy had to make frequent stops as he drove his children home to England. Afterwards, he focused almost obsessively on them. His relationships with women became horrible. There were fights, bad acid trips, wild drives through the London night, arguments between us which stemmed, Hilary and I believed, from his largely unadmitted grief, his wish to protect his children at all costs. His stoicism blocked almost all attempts to reach out to him. Finally, I introduced him to Claire Walsh, who seemed better able to help him emotionally, though he treated her pretty badly on occasions.He complained, in turn, that I bullied him, "making my eyes bleed", forcing him to write the first of a group of stories which had their origins in dummy pages he hung all around his living room wall for years. Bits of them had appeared as titles or subtitles for stories and eventually began to see print in New Worlds with "The Atrocity Exhibition" in April 1966, and with later stories appearing in Science Fantasy and Ambit. ... Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:08:38 +0100 804722 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Lj7ryXxMsOU/look-ahead-books-new-year From cosmology to children's picture-books, our reviewers give a guide to the best of the publishers' lists for the first six months of the new yearJANUARYFictionThe first big novel of the year is Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence (Faber), both a tale of obsessional love and a stunning panorama of Istanbul society rich and poor, traditional and westernised, over the past three decades. It comes with a real museum attached: Pamuk plans a house of ephemera in which to display the memorabilia of his hero's affair and of Istanbul life, from ferry tickets to quince grinders.EL Doctorow creates another museum of the moment in Homer and Langley (Little, Brown), based on the lives of the Collyer brothers, eccentric hoarders who rarely left their New York townhouse and were eventually killed by their own clutter. Doctorow finds in their decaying mansion a weird and wonderful platform from which to view a century of American life.The trend for posthumous publication continues with John Wyndham's Plan for Chaos (Penguin). In this companion piece to Day of the Triffids, the suspicious deaths of a series of identical women reveal a plot to clone a master race. Meanwhile, Blacklands (Bantam) heralds a fresh new voice in crime: Belinda Bauer inhabits the mind of her 12-year-old hero, struggling to tease the whereabouts of his uncle's body from an imprisoned child-killer, with uncanny conviction.Justine Jordan Science historySeeing Further: The Story of Science & the Royal Society, edited by Bill Bryson (HarperPress). On a dismal night in London 350 years ago, a group of intellectuals sat down and created a society for the accumulation of knowledge. Since then, the Royal Society has been at the heart of scientific endeavour. ... Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:08:17 +0100 804725 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Z5WguL0TL-4/new-year-reading-resolutions 2010 is finally upon us. The moment is ripe for new leaves – and the best sort, of course, come between the covers of books. So state your intentions now: what are you planning to read this year?Of all the half-hearted resolutions I cobble together on a yearly basis for the benefit of my mental, physical and financial wellbeing, the only ones I manage to adhere to with any degree of success are those concerning my reading habits. My Reading Resolutions are important to me for the simple reason that if I'm not reading something in which my full interest is engaged, the feeling of disaffection tends to encroach upon all other areas of my life, rendering me a shadow of my former self, left to wander listlessly from room to room, sighing heavily and gazing wanly out of windows. Well, metaphorically, at least.Of course, first and foremost, reading should be a pleasurable activity. Therefore, the whole point of my Reading Resolutions is to make me a better reader (thereby increasing my reading pleasure and the pleasure I get out of life, and so on). To this end, if it turns out I have misjudged a resolution and it is in fact having a detrimental effect on my reading life (and all that follows), I don't hesitate in breaking it. For example, one of my RRs for 2009 was to finish every book I started. This was a resolution I was forced to stick to at the time due to a project I was working on, and meant long and painful slogs through The Tin Drum, East of Eden and The Glass Bead Game (apologies in advance if these are your favourite books: they just weren't for me). Now, at the end of 2009, I'm happily breaking this resolution and reverting back to my old reading habit of giving up on books I'm not enjoying, on the grounds that life's too short to spend reading something you don't like.But enough of 2009, for it is over and past. Here, for the record, are my Reading Resolutions for 2010. The future's bright ...1. ... Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:13:23 +0100 804653