Dinosaur Dystopia

The Shadow Door by Bannister

2009-06-30T21:49:00.002-07:00

The Shadow Door is book one of a series of graphic Novels called The Elsewhere Chronicles. It follows the exploits if four kids who find a portal to another world full of danger.

This graphic novel ventures into some pretty well trod territory, but the story is still interesting and engaging. The artwork is done in full color on glossy pages. At it's best it is stunning, but at times it's hard to tell what's going on as the artist loves using lots of dark colors and depicting shadowy sequences without the benefit of speech bubbles or narration. Overall good, but not overwhelming. Recommend this one to adventure fans grades 4 to 7.

Cameron and his Dinosaurs by Scott Sawa

2009-06-30T21:49:00.001-07:00

Mad scientist Professor Pointdexter P Poppycock has created four hyper intelligent dinosaurs to do his evil bidding. Unfortunately, because of their superior intellects they tell Professor Poppycock they are unwilling to hurt people and as result they must part ways. The dinosaurs meet a young boy named Cameron with whom they become fast friends. Soon Professor Poppycock is at it again, but this time with robotic dinosaurs programmed to follow his every command. Of course, Cameron and his dinosaurs are the only ones capable of standing in his way.

This was actually a surprisingly enjoyable graphic novel. The humor is slapstick and clearly designed for younger readers, but I still caught myself chuckling for time to time. The story was well-paced and although it was predicable still pulled me in. The artwork was enjoyable, lots of pastels and soft colors, and with distinct memorable characters. And the story had dinosaurs, how awesome is that? Recommend this one to fans of dinosaurs, robots and comic hijinx grades 3 to 6.

Discordia by Dena K. Salmon

2009-06-30T13:11:00.000-07:00

Lance spends all day playing Discordia a hot new MMORPG (fancy acronym for online computer game). He has a level 18 zombie sorcerer and he's finally starting to make some good progress in the game now that TheGreatOne has invited him to join his guild. So when a snow day is declared Lance plans on spending some quality time with Discordia. However, he ends up getting more sucked into the game then he ever expected when he finds in himself actually in Discordia.

This book had a good premise and writing that was genuinely exciting and humorous. However, this book also has glaring plot holes that left me questioning what exactly was going on. Several times I turned back a page to see if I had accidentally skipped one, but alas it was the author that skipped a page not me. The ending had similar problems, in some reviews I saw it called a cliffhanger. I would would simply call it incomplete or perhaps unsatisfying. This book had a lot of potential and with a few rewrites may have achieved it, but as is this book fails to satisfy.

Recommend this to children who love video games or glaring plot holes grades 5th thru 9th.

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

2009-06-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

The Last Olympian wraps up the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series with same fast-paced action Riordan has delivered time and time again. In this, the final book in the series, Percy Jackson's 16th birthday and the prophecy tied to it is just a week away, Kronos and his army of titans and monsters are planning an attack on Olympus and the entire fate of Western civilization hangs in the balance. No big deal right?

I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Olympian. I have a hard time picking out a favorite book in this series, because they are all so consistently great. This book is no exception. The pacing is intense, the plot is packed w/ action, but tempered an interesting story and a healthy dose of Greek Mythology. My one complaint was after the central conflict in the plot was resolved, the book dragged on for awhile trying to tie up loose ends, including a sequence regarding the fate of Percy's girlfriend Rachel that despite a half hearted attempt at being surprising ends so predictably it's almost painful. Overall a great book, though, recommend this one to fans of action, adventure and Greek mythology grades 4 to 10.

Feed by M.T. Anderson

2009-05-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

Feed is cautionary tale about the excesses of consumerism. It is set in a world where Americans live in idle luxury, w/ their every want easily satisfied by their "feed," an internet connection in their head that suggests to them what they want before they even know it themselves. As a result of American's lavish lifestyles the world, particularly the environment, suffers.

Feed's protagonist is Titus, an American teenager who, while on a trip to go partying on the moon, meets a girl name Violet, who helps him change the way he thinks about his world.

I really liked this book. The message was great, the story well told and the character's were realistic. Titus, Violet, their friends, they are all wonderfully flawed characters. Each one has his or her own short comings, which makes them so real, so easy to relate too. I was always pulling for Titus to make the right choices, but he's limited by his world-view, his upbringing, the culture he was raised in and his decisions through out the book reflect that. You can't expect a person to change over night and you can't expect a society change over night either. Overall an excellent book. Give this one to fans of dystopian science fiction at its finest.

Lay Ups and Long Shots

2009-05-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

Lay Ups and Long Shots is a collection of eight sports short stories by a variety of children's and young adult authors. The stories are generally enjoyable and usually funny.

My one gripe with this book was that it seemed like these sports stories were written for people who don't necessarily like sports. This probably isn't the best bet for the star athlete reluctant reader, but it would be great for an avid reader who loves humorous realistic fiction grades 4 to 7.

Tim, Defender of the Earth by Sam Enthoven

2009-05-02T13:54:00.000-07:00

The concept behind this book is freaking rad! A gigantic genetically engineered dinosaur battles an army of nanobots on the streets of London! Awesome right? Unfortunately not. While I understand that a certain willful suspension of disbelief is necessary for a book of this nature, this book is just ridiculous. A scientist in a secret government funded laboratory deep below the streets of London raises a genetically engineered hundred foot tall dinosaur named T.I.M.. When the new Prime Minister finds out about Tim he orders the project shut down and Tim exterminated. Of course, TIM escapes. causes havoc on the streets of London and then swims out to sea.

In the meantime the government decides to start funding another scientist, Professor Mallahide, who is working on nanotechnology. Apparently all he needed was for the government to say they were willing to fund him, because that night he turns himself into a nanobot swarm.

But wait, there is yet another plotline to follow. Chris, a middle school student from London, goes on a field trip with his class and while searching for a place to avoid doing any school work, finds himself in an unused corner of the musuem. While there, he is discovered by a security guard who forces an ancient bracelet on him from the museum's collection. Chris discovers that the bracelet cannot be removed. Later in the book Chris discovers that the bracelet also allows him to talk to Tim. Finally as a lucky coincidence Chris's classmate Anna is professor Mallahide's daughter.

Anyway long story short, Professor Mallahide turns out to be a bit crazy and starts turning everyone into nanobots. So Tim the giant T-Rex comes back to fight him, but to do that he needs Chris to use his bracelet to focus the willpower of humanity into strength for Tim. In response the Nanobots form into a gigantic cockroach / centaur creature and fight Tim.

I don't know what happens after that, because I stopped reading. Honestly the only reason I made it that far was because I was on an exercise bike and dedicated to riding it for two hours. I was a captive audience.

I have to admit this book did have some really rad parts, especially when Tim and the cockroach / centaur / nanobots were battling. But the nanobots, as they were portrayed, were really overpowered and have no excuse for not rapidly assimilating the whole world and everything on it into the nanobot swarm. A+ for the idea, D+ for the implementation.

Give this book to children whose concepts of reality and reasonability have been completely destroyed by hours and hours of video game play, grades 5 to 8.

The Hotel Cat by Esther Averill

2009-04-04T13:07:00.001-07:00

This is a book nostalgic for a time gone by, written in time that's since gone by. It's the story of Tom, the Hotel Cat, who works at the once regal, but now old Royal Hotel as a mouser. Tom spends his nights walking the upper floors and making new friends. The story culminates with all the cats staying at the hotel throwing a stardust ball in the hotel's grand ballroom.

The story is simple and uncomplicated and that's what makes it so charming. The characters, both the felines and the humans, are sweet and lovable. The story is perfect for a young child. There is nothing even remotely frightening or even mean-spirited in these books. Overall a good read.

Recommend this one as a bedtime story for a sweet little preschooler or kindergartener or as a beginning reader for a child in lower elementary.

Dear Dracula by Joshua Williamson

2009-03-25T10:26:00.001-07:00

This Graphic Novel is so funny! It is the story of Sam who writes a letter to Dracula asking him for what he most wants in the world, because Christmas is too far away. Much to Sam's surprise Dracula shows up on Halloween for a night of fun and trick or treating.

I really enjoyed the artwork as well, glossy full color drawings that are super funny too.

Give this one to reluctant readers and kids who like to laugh grades 3 thru 6.

Kingdom of Twilight by Tui Sutherland

2009-03-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

Kingdom Twilight is the final installment in the Avatars trilogy and honestly it was a bit of a disappointment. The first book, So This Is How It Ends, immediately pulled me into the fantastic world it created kept me guessing what would happen until the very end. In the subsequent books, both the plot and the world seem to stagnate. More and more of the same is piled and on and the once exciting world Sutherland created begins to feel more and more two dimensional. The story often gets bogged down in pointless banter and one liners exchanged by the main characters and the story seems to drag on twice as long as necessary.

On the positive side this book explores the mythologies of cultures readers are likely to unfamiliar with, for example Sumeria, China, and various African and Polynesian cultures as well. The book also provided resolution and had a surprising twist at the end.

All in all Kingdom of Twilight was an okay book, but it really doesn't pass the first book test for me. And honestly, I recommend reading So This Is How It Ends, skipping the second book altogether and reading only bits and pieces of this book. Feel free to skim over the boring parts.
Recommend this book to children who have read the other two books in the Avatars series grades 5 to 8.

Something Wickedly Weird by Chris Mould

2009-03-25T10:21:00.002-07:00

It was this book's great cover illustration that first caught my eye and begged me to page through it. Inside I was greeted by more pen and ink drawings all just as grim and sepulchral, but drawn with a hint of irony, which make the drawings simultaneously ghastly and endearing in an altogether delightful way. The story is, as one would guess from the drawings, wonderfully macabre and when at it's best reminded me of The Graveyard Book; unfortunately, the book was not always at its best and frequently felt formulaic and predictable. It is the story of Stanley, a young boy who inherits a manor on a small island off the coast of England from a long lost great uncle. Upon arriving things are clearly amiss. Over the course of the story Stanley encounters werewolves, pirates and even a talking fish. The story is in fact "wickedly weird," and overall enjoyable. Don't expect this one to win the Newbery Award, but do expect it to delight children between the ages of 7 and 11 who have a taste for adventure and the bizarre.

Heartbeat by Sharon Creech

2009-03-25T10:21:00.001-07:00

Heartbeat is the type of book I would have never picked up on my own. I only ended up "reading" it because my mom needed help adding it to her mp3 player, so I decided to add it to mine as well.
Heartbeat is the story of a girl who loves to run barefoot and draw. The book chronicles her life as well as her relationship with her best friend (he runs to win), her grampa (he has Alzheimer's) and her mother (she's having a baby). I enjoyed this book without loving it. It reminded me a bit of Way Down Deep by Ruth White, (it has that same kind of sweetness and whimsy to it), but not really of the same caliber.

Give this book to girls who loves spending the summer outdoors in the sun. For grades 4-7.

My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath

2008-12-26T13:25:00.000-08:00

Barf alert, this book is not good! I feel sad that this book was published, I feel sad that is a potential nominee for the state book award next year and most of all I feel sad that I was willing to let this book take 120 pages of my time last night. Now granted 120 pages is a little under half of the book, so it could get better, but I doubt it. First and foremost the writing style bugged me, it was written in what I assume was supposed to be the "voice" of the character (a twelve-year-old girl), what that means is a lot of simple sentences Subject, Verb, Object, Subject, Verb, Object, over and over again. It was like reading an easy-reader that's 260 pages long. Secondly, the plot was driven forward by the main character making poor choices, I can't stand that. For example, the main character Jane gets duped into babysitting for the horrible Mrs. Gourd (she's afraid of being sued) when clearly Jane just needs to have a conversation with her mother. And then there's Nellie, the preacher whose hopelessly poor decision making makes one question how it was that she survived to adulthood in the first place. Of course, Jane ends up spending a lot of time with her. And finally, this book was all about a series of adventures, many of which should have been exciting. Instead Horvath has a way of glossy over the exciting parts and deemphasizing potentially thrilling situations (who knew a hot air balloon ride- on a stolen hot air balloon no less- could be so boring?).

This book did actually remind me a little bit of a book I really like, Way Down Deep, a story about a sweet little girl with a big heart and small town charm who you fell in love with instantly. My One Hundred Adventures is like Way Down Deep if it had been written by a dung beetle or any other similarly unliterary insect. Jane is a pretty nice girl whose heart seems to be in the right place (most of the time), who while she does possess a certain charm of her own is ultimately more of a character you want to like (but never quite can), than one you'll fall in love with. And those sentences Subject, Verb, Object, Subject, Verb, Object, Arrgh!

Give this book two children who enjoy experiences commonly held to be unenjoyable, such as stubbing your toe, coming down with food poisoning or sitting next overweight mustached men with BO on the bus grades 4 to 7

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

2008-12-26T12:17:00.000-08:00

"It takes a graveyard to raise a child."

The Graveyard Book is the story of Nobody Owens, an orphan raised by the denizens of an ancient graveyard in England. When he was little more than a baby Nobody, or "Bod" for short, had the good fortune of wandering out the front door of his home, then down the street and into a graveyard. While conventional wisdom would hold that this would be bad luck indeed, it is important to take into account Bod's circumstances. His family had just been murdered by a man named Jack, who was just one small child away from completing his task. Young Bod had no way of knowing the graveyard would provide sanctuary, but that's just what happens. When Jack comes for Bod, Silas, a mysterious inhabitant of the graveyard who is neither alive nor dead, leads Jack quietly off into the night. Mr. and Mrs. Owens, a long-dead couple who have waited centuries for a child, adopt Bod. And soon the graveyard accepts him of one of its own, that Bod might come of age living among the unliving.
Jack, however, still searches....

Neil Gaiman's latest book is grim reinterpretation of Rudyard Kipling's the Jungle Book set in a graveyard and I loved every second of it. The story is always engaging and frequently exciting. Gaiman masterfully paints a picture of a fantastic and imaginative world, while mixing in just the right amount of action and adventure. With this book Gaiman has done a wonderful job of opening up a genre usually reserved for older audiences to children. Longtime fans of Neil Gaiman won't be disappointed, the dark subject matter and macabre pen and ink illustrations are reminiscent of other Gaiman favorites, such as Coraline and the Sandman.

Give this one to young fans of horror and the supernatural grades 5-9.

The Rising Star of Rusty Nail by Lesley Blume

2008-12-17T14:54:00.000-08:00

Rusty Nail, Minnesota is a town "famous" for being the former American Coot (a bird that looks sort of like a duck) capital of the world. Unfortunately one day they decided to just up and leave and "Rusty Nail was left with only the fond memory of the Era of the Coot." All and all Rusty Nail is a small town with few opportunities. That's why 10-year-old Franny is determined to make the most of her big chance. Franny isn't the best at math or reading or science and she and her friend Sandy have a real penchant for mischief, but if there's one thing Franny excels at it's piano. Her father even calls her his little Mozart. So when the school principal asks Franny to play piano at an assembly for a special visitor to the town Franny practices like she's never practiced before.

The book is set in the 1950s and follows many of the predictable themes of the decade: small town America, the birth of television and most of all McCarthyism. Much of the story focuses on Franny's relationship with Madame Malenko, an aloof Russian concert pianist who moves to town as well as the town's reaction to her arrival.

I've noticed that 50's themes have been popular ever since 9/11 because of the easy comparisons that can be made between McCarthyism and the war on terror. That element is definitely present in this book, but it makes it's point in more of a "don't judge a book by it's cover" fashion. This was a solid book through and through. Give this one to fans of historical fiction, music or Russian composers with unpronounceable names grades 5 thru 8.

Baseball Crazy edited by Nancy E. Mercado.

2008-12-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

Baseball Crazy is a collection of short stories from the same editor as Every Man for Himself, but this time the theme is the national pastime, baseball. The stories follow a variety of characters from baseball stars, to bench-warmers, from statisticians, to fans and does so in a variety of formats too, mostly short stories, but also a play and poetry. Once again their are some big names like Jerry Spinelli (Maniac Magee) and Joseph Bruchac (Code Talker) backing up this collection and they deliver some great stories

I enjoyed this collection just as much as Every Man for Himself. Give this one to baseball lovers grades 4-8.

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen

2008-12-10T08:59:00.000-08:00

The policeman nodded grimly. "Alligators," he declared.
"You're kiddin' me."
"I wish I was," said Officer Delinko. "They put alligators in your potties sir. Real live alligators."
"More than one?"
"Yes, sir."
Curly was flabbergasted. "Are they... big gators?"
Officer Delinko shrugged, "I imagine all of 'em look big," he said, "when they're swimming under your butt."

Hoot is the story of Roy Eberhardt and his quest to: avoid the dim-witted school bully, track down an odd shoeless school-skipping kid (nicknamed, of all things, Mullet Fingers) and protect some burrowing owls whose homes are about to be bulldozed (to make way for a pancake house). Not bad for a 7th grader, eh? Along the way he crosses paths with: a Police Officer desperate for a promotion, a bag full of poisonous snakes painted silver and a marketing vice president named Chuck Muckle.

Once I started reading Hoot I couldn't put it down. The story moves along at a good pace and the characters, especially Roy, are intriguing and likeable. This book made me laugh again and again, especially the pranks pulled at the construction site (the alligators in the port-a-potties is just one of many).

Not only is Hoot hilarious, it has a great message too. It stresses how thru community involvement kids can make a difference and help the environment. Give this one to kids who love: owls, the environment, and to laugh grades 5 thru 8.

The Dragon's Child by Jenny Nimmo

2008-12-04T09:48:00.000-08:00

Dando the Dragon can't fly. And he's lost- lost in the land where dreadful Doggins lurk, and where dangerous humans have arrived. He has to find his family, but can he make the journey alone? He's not so sure.

Yesterday I decided to look up "forgettable fantasy story" in the dictionary, much to my chagrin The Dragon's Child was not listed, but it should have been. I read this story only a few days ago, but already it has begun to fade from my memory. The book is like a connect-the-dots where the dots are clichés and the lines are mediocre prose. Probably my favorite part about the book was the gimmicky dragon-shaped cover (the dotted lines in the picture denote the edge of the cover).

Give this book to children who love things that are dragon-shaped grades 2 to 4

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

2008-12-02T10:03:00.000-08:00

Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. the Hunger Games have begun....

When trying to imagine the Hunger Games think reality TV meets Roman Gladiator fights, in the future. Our protaganist Katniss is a 16 year-old coal miners daughter who poaches to help her family make ends meet. Her father died years ago and her district, is a poor one anyway, so Katniss has to apply for food aid from the government. Applying for food aid means putting your name in the lottery an extra time, but winning the lottery is hardly desirable. Every year each district (there are 12) must send two lottery winners (one male, one female) to the Capitol (a city in the Rocky Mountains where all the citizens live lives of luxury at the expense of the districts) to compete in the Hunger Games. The Hunger games are plain and simple a televised fight to the death. Twenty-four teenagers are placed in a vast wilderness arena with weapons and minimal supplies and left to fight it out over the course of a couple weeks. The winner goes on to live in luxury; the losers, well- they're already dead. And guess what? Katniss just won the lottery.

This book was an instant favorite. Katniss is a compelling female protaganist and the action and survival sequences, which dominate this book, were well written and exciting. The book can be gut-wrenchingly violent at times, but it's no worse than what you'll find on television or the news for that matter. The world is well-crafted and Collins gives just enough information to keep the story engaging, but never so much as to bog down the plot. My one (and only) complaint about this book was that while it could have been an excellent stand alone work, Collins has decided to make it into a trilogy. I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt the second book will be able to live up to the first.

Give this book to fans of Reality-TV, survial stories and action addicts grades 5+

Snake and Lizard by Joy Cowley

2008-11-26T14:15:00.000-08:00

There is something the matter with your voice.
"Ga-runch! Ga-runch!" said Snake. "I've got a frog in my throat!" she whispered.
Lizard said, "Oh, I know how to fix that," and he gave Snake a mighty slap on her back.
The frog shot out of Snake s mouth. It landed in the grass and, quick as a blink, it hopped away. "My supper!" cried Snake. "That was my supper!"

This book is a collection of short stories, which chronicle the adventures of two unlikely friends, Snake and Lizard, who become inseparable after a chance meeting. Snake tends to be level-headed and urbane, while lizard is boisterous and more than a little impetuous, the combination is golden. Simple, but vivacious full-color drawings interspersed throughout the book embellish these charming little vignettes of desert life.

I loved these stories thru and thru. Snake and Lizard's friendship often has hilarious consequences and on several occasions I found myself laughing out loud. In one story Snake and Lizard decide to become "helpers," unfortunately as lizard points out "Helpers give help, they don't take it." So of course, the pair become horribly lost, decline help and fall in a stream, afterward they agree they can accept help, "but only when we really need it."

Give this book to animal lovers who have just graduated from the frog and toad books grades 2 thru 4.

The Mouse Family Robinson by Dick King-Smith

2008-11-24T16:18:00.000-08:00

John Robinson, a small gray mouse, is about to become a father for the first time and he hasn't a clue what to do. Fortunately his neighbor Mr Brown does, he's been a father, so many times he's forgotten many of their names. "I used to rely on the alphabet. Start with A- let's say Adam or Alice and keep going until you get to Z." John takes his neighbors advice to heart and when he returns home names his 6 new children: Ambrose, Beaumont, Camilla, Desdemona, Eustace and Felicity. The remainder of the book is spent following John's ever growing family and their struggle to avoid the cat.

Honestly the book lacks much of a conflict and after I finished I had to ask myself "what was this book even about?" Despite it's lack of conflict, I still found this book generally enjoyable. The mice are quite likable and thanks to Nick Bruel's (author/ illustrator of Bad Kitty) illustrations they are adorable as well.

A cute, but ultimately forgettable read. Give this one to mouse lovers who are nipping at their first pages, grades 1-3.

The Sorcerer of the North by John Flanagan

2008-11-24T16:08:00.000-08:00

Will's a full Ranger now and just arriving in his new fief! At first it seems like things might be too quiet in the backwater he's landed in, but things start heating up quick. First, there's a Skandian raid and then not long after Will is off on a secret mission to the far North, where there have been rumors of an ancient sorcerer back for revenge.

This book packs in the action cover to cover: a ghostly warrior, a sorcerer, poison, a betrayal and- of course- lots of sneaking around in the woods. I loved this book from start to finish, my only gripe with it was its ending. Very little is resolved and it feels like there's a least a chapter (maybe 3 or 4) missing. I'm sure Flanagan will resolve everything from this book in the next one, but I still feel a little cheated. Even with the problem with the ending, this one definitely passes the first book test. In fact, this is one of my favorite books of the series. Give this one to adventure/ medieval enthusiasts grades 5-9.

The First Book Test

2008-11-17T15:26:00.000-08:00

If dodecahedron were the first shape I attempted to learn, I would have learned no further shapes

The First Book Test is a term I've created to describe a sequel's worthiness to stand on it's own as a quality book. Quite simply, the First Book Test raises the question, if this were the first book in a series would you read any subsequent books in the series? Here's an example: The Burning Bridge, Ranger's Apprentice Book 2, passes the the First Book Test, it was just as good as the first book (maybe even better) and made me want to read more Ranger's Aprentice Books. In contrast, Eldest, Inheritance Cycle Book 2, does not pass the test. Eldest made me want to read Eragon again and made me hope the series returned to form or failing that end quickly. If Eldest had been the first book in the series, for me, the series would have ended right there.

Having a book fail the first book test doesn't necessarily doom the series, just the book. The Order of the Phoenix is a prime example, if this had been the first Harry Potter book I certainly wouldn't have read the other six books, however, all the other books do pass the test and as a result I absolutely love the series.

So remember, never let an author get away with slipping a mediocre book in the middle of the series. Because even if you like the other books, a bad book is still a bad book.

Brisingr

2008-11-15T15:09:00.000-08:00

Christopher De Paolini's third book in the Inheritance Cycle is a marked improvement from his last book Eldest, but ultimately suffers from the same flaws.

First let me start by saying Eragon was wonderful, the book pulled me in and left me wanting more. Eldest on the other hand was only satisfying because I was desperate to hear more about Eragon, the plot in Eldest was forgettable at best and groan worthy at worst (the whole Luke- I am your father rip-off, c'mon really?) Brisingr, also has some groan worthy surprises (don't worry I won't tell you what they are I'll let you suffer thru them on your own terms) and like Eldest the story seems to drag on without any clear direction at time (I cite the lenghty foray into dwarven politics as a shining example- and if you're wondering no nothing surprising happens feel free to skip those 100 pages if you like), however, the story had it's strong points as well. For example Eragon's character is pretty freakin' rad. I enjoyed all the battle sequences with him punching thru shields, leaping over walls and cleaving things in half. And he's got a dragon and she's always blowing fire and eating things, that's pretty sweet too. *Mild spoiler alert, skip to end of paragraph to avoid* His new sword, also freakin' rad. It lights on fire whenever he says it's name (disappointingly it's name is fire) and it plays an integral role in the forementioned cleaving things / enemies in half.

If Eldest had been the first book in the series, I wouldn't have read the next book, Brisingr however, is good enough it to pass the First Book Test and I would continue reading the series based on it's merits alone. Give Brisingr to fantasy buffs, dragon aficionados and people who like saying words like "oathbound," "shadeslayer," or "aye" grades 6+

Kenny and the Dragon

2008-11-07T10:10:00.000-08:00

Kenny Rabbit loves books, especially fairy tales, so when his father comes in hollering about a dragon up the hill Kenny has to go investigate. After arming and armoring himself as best he can with a variety of cookware and household cleaning utensils he goes to meet the dragon. The dragon proves to be shockingly urbane and introduces himself as Grahame, like the cracker, but with an 'e' on the end. Kenny finds that he has a surprising amount in common with this gentle dragon and the two soon become fast friends. The trouble starts when the townspeople discover a dragon is living nearby and call in the king's men to slay "the vicious beast."

Kenny and the Dragon is a charming story about unexpected friendship. It features Tony DiTerlizzi beautiful drawings and witty prose. Give this one to Fantasy Buffs grades 2-5.

Little Brother

2008-11-04T12:22:00.000-08:00

Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Little Brother owes a very obvious debt to George Orwell's 1984, just like in 1984 someone is always watching... or trying to anyway. Little Brother does an excellent job of providing a realistic update to 1984. It offers a plausible worst case scenario for the a possible United States of the near future in which the Department of Homeland Security is allowed to run rampant while a do nothing president plays golf rather than defend the civil liberties of his citizens.

This book made me so paranoid! At one point I even considered making the hidden camera detector which the book described (most of the cool gadgets and hacks described in the book are real) and I thought the book made some excellent points about security (does taking off our shoes at the airport really make us safer from a determined terrorist?) Do I think this will really happen to America? No, but I do think it's a good cautionary tale and any book that reminds Americans of the importance of our liberties gets an A+ from me

Give this one to older teens, especially the tech-savvy. Grades 9+

Rapunzel's Revenge

2008-11-03T12:04:00.000-08:00

It's Rapunzel, but set in the wild west and as a graphic novel.

Rapunzel spends her young life blissfully unaware of the world beyond the walls surrounding Mother Gothel's estate, one day she decides to find out what's over the walls. Beyond is a rocky wasteland of dusty stone, smoky chimneys and sad times. Rapunzel also just happens to run into an worn down old miner who turns out to be her birth mother, (what are the chances?) who had been forced to give up Rapunzel at birth by Mother Gothel. Rapunzel, of course flips out and then Mother Gothels counter flips out and sends Rapunzel off to live in a tower made out of a tree (Mother Gothels has growth magic, which lets her wilt or grow vegetation at will). So Rapunzel lives in the tower for 4 years with nothing to do except grow her hair and play with it. Anyway, eventually she grows it long enough to turn into a giant lasso and she rescues herself. The rest of the Graphic Novel she goes around as some kind of cowgirl superhero fighting for good and trying to stop Mother Gothel's tyranny. Oh and she also meets Jack (the guy who climbed the beanstock) and he follows her around helping her out.

The Graphic Novel was an interesting idea and the art was great (although i didn't care for the way Rapunzel red braid looked like hot dog links), but it was somehow lacking. About half-way thru I started looking for excuses to stop reading "Gee, I really should vacuum right now" and "Hmm, I think I've got some dishes in the sink that I ought to wash." When washing the dishes starts sounding more appealing than reading, I know something is off with the book. However, I finished reading it and all in one sitting too. I wouldn't say this book was bad, on the contrary I enjoyed it, but I would say this book was a disappointment, great potential with only fair execution.

For wild west enthusiasts grades 5-9.

Peak

2008-11-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

"My right ear and cheek were frozen to the terra cotta wall.
"To reach the top you must have resolve, muscles, skill, and...
"A FACE!"

Peak is the oddly named son of the world's most famous climber ("It could have been worse. My parents could have named me Glacier, or Abyss, or Crampon,") and a great climber in his own right. So great, in fact, that he starts climbing New York City skyscrapers and tagging them. When he gets busted tagging his sixth building, the judge threatens to throw the book at him (3 years jail time) to prevent copycats from endangering themselves. However, his lawyer and father come up w/ a plea bargain, Peak has to leave the country immediately to live w/ his father, Josh, (who he hasn't seen in 7 years) until all the media attention surrounding "spider-boy" (Peak) blows over.
Peak ends up in Tibet with his father on the slopes of Everest, but it turns out Peak's father has an ulterior motive, he wants to get Peak up the mountain making him the youngest climber up Everest and (hopefully) making his fathers climbing company rich.

This book was fast paced and exciting cover to cover. Life and death climbs, multiple visits from the Chinese military and yaks. Lots and lots of yaks. What more do you need? Give this one to adrenaline junkies Grades 6+

Bad Kitty Gets a Bath

2008-10-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

Bad Kitty Gets a Bath is Nick Bruel's chapter book sequel to his picture book Bad Kitty, which is one of the funniest picture picture books ever; the sequel, however, fails to meet expectations. The illustrations are still hillarious and reluctant readers will love the way the pictures they break up all the text (It's 120 pages long, but reads like it's 30). But the prose lacks the punch and off the wall humor of the original, if this had been the first book I would have never Bad Kitty and that would have been a shame.

Give this book to cat lovers and children who like to comedy and mayhem combined, for grades 1 to 4.

The lump of coal

2008-10-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

"Perhaps miracles only happen to human beings... perhaps I should just bury myself and become a diamond after thousands of years of intense pressure."

This is the story of lump of coal hoping for a Christmas miracle told in Lemony Snicket's usual hilarious and slightly dark manner. The coal is brooding, grumpy and ultimately lovable, never have I felt such a connection with a lump of coal before. This book is short, but it packs a lot of punch per page. Offer this one to youngster who love to laugh. For grades K thru 3.

Found

2008-10-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

An unscheduled airplane arrives at an airport terminal on board are 36 babies and no one else! Who are they? Where did they come from? No one no knows. Now skip forward 13 years to suburban Ohio, Jonah had never thought much of being adopted, but when he starts getting creepy letters that say things like "you are one of the missing," he starts wondering about his past. His adoption records have always been sealed, but maybe its time to investigate a little bit of his own. You see where this is going? Down a one way to street to freakin' awesome that's where!

I loved this book start to finish whenever I wasn't reading it I was thinking about reading it and now that I'm done reading it, I'm dreaming about reading the next book in the series (Sent to be released August 2009). Some authors just flat out know how to write and Magaret Haddix is one of those authors, she could write a book about making and toast and it would turn out awesome- with this kind of subject matter of course the book is great.
Give this book to Sci-Fi lovers grades 5 thru 9.

Nation

2008-10-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

"When much is taken, something is returned." Nation is the latest book by Terry Pratchett (best known for his adult sci-fi series Discworld). The book is set in an alternate universe South Pacific and follows 13 year old Mau as he copes with the aftereffects of a tsunami, which kills everyone else on his island. As weeks pass, refuges begin to arrive from the surrounding area, because Mau's island (though tiny) is one of the largest in the area and holds religious significance for the people of the area.

This book is part survival story and part coming of age story, it's about rebuilding a society and young love, it explores issues such as belief and the responsibilities of leadership and it also explores the possibilities of tree climbing of octopuses and irreverent parrots "AWK - show us your drawers!", that is to say this book does it all. The only part i didn't enjoy was the last chapter (no worries no spoiler here) which suddenly jumps hundreds of years in the future and acts like this whole thing had been a story told to children by an old man by the sea. That would have been okay with me if the book had begun with the storyteller, or even if he had been referenced somewhere in the middle of the story. An unfortunate end to an otherwise great story. Offer this book to fans of survival and adventure stories grades 6+

Junie B Jones and A Little Monkey Business

2008-10-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

After doing my best to ignore Junie B Jones for years, I finally read one (the second book, the first was checked out) and I'm so glad I did! It was super funny! I loved the part where Junie B. made her friends keep giving her things for the right to see her "new monkey brother," because it's exactly the type of things little kids do (I know I did). I could also totally relate to Junie B's hatred of "stewie pewie tomatoes."

Give this book to young readers who love to laugh, for grades 1 thru 3.

Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little

2008-10-15T10:50:00.001-07:00

Moxy Maxwell and Stuart Little had practically been best friends all summer, the two of them had been inseparable. When Moxy Maxwell was in the car on her way to swim practice, Stuart was there, when she was on the porch drinking lemonade, Stuart was there and last Monday at swim practice Stuart Little fell in the pool with her, that's how close the two of them are. No, the reason that Moxy hasn't read Stuart Little all summer long has nothing to do with a lack of time spent together, the problem simply was that Moxy's in-betweens kept getting interupted. You see the perfect time to read a book is when one thing ends and the next thing hasn't begun yet, an in-between. However Moxy's in-between keep getting interrupted by more pressing matters, for example lemonade spills. Unfortunately tomorrow is the first day of fourth grade and if Moxy doesn't read Stuart Little this afternoon, her mom won't let her participate in the water ballet she's been practicing all summer.

This book was a HILLARIOUS examination of summer procrastination. A must read for any child who has ever put off doing anything. For grades 3-5

Keeping Score

2008-10-13T14:30:00.001-07:00

Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, the entire New York Yankees team, the 50s were a great time to be a baseball fan in New York, whether you were a Dodgers, Giants or Yankees fan. Of course, Maggie Fortini doesn't see it that way, because her team, the Dodgers, always fall just short of winning the world series. Maggie, already the Dodgers biggest fan, becomes an even more ardent supporter when she learns to keep score from one of the guys down at her dad's fire station- Jim (a Giants fan yuck!). Maggie and Jim quickly become close friends because of their shared interest in baseball. So much so, that even after Jim is drafted and sent to Korea Maggie writes him letter after letter. But when the letters abruptly stop coming Maggie wonders were they ever really friends at all?

A great book, Maggie's character is instantly lovable and I really got into the whole baseball thing when I was reading the book (I still kinda want to learn how to keep score). A great book for sports fans (especially female sports fans) for ages 10-14.

Jennifer Government

2008-10-13T14:29:00.002-07:00

OkayI feel like I've been on a real dystopia bender lately, but hey it's my favorite genre and this blog is even called dinosaur dystopia (BTW I'm still searching for a great piece of dystopian dinosaur fiction so if you know of one lemme know), so y'all are gonna have to bear with me.

Jennifer government was awesomely dystopian, but not in the standard dystopian model. Usually dystopias are set in a post-apocalyptic world or they deal with a big brother type government. Jennifer Government does the opposite. The government has next to no power, taxes have been abolished and the police are a private organization. Large corporations hold sway over the world and more or less do as they see fit. In this story Hack Nike (Employees last names are dictated by the company they work for) signs a contract to work with the Nike corporation's guerrilla marketing department, unfortunately he doesn't read the small print and finds out he's just agreed to assassinate 10 people in order to hype the new Nike shoe line.

The book is wild ride thru a future which examines the consequences of consumerism and self-regulation. An exciting read and a great conversation starter. For grades 9+

Saga

2008-10-13T14:29:00.001-07:00

Saga is the sequel to Epic and even though it not quite on the same level, it's still freakin' rad! Saga, like Epic, is set in a video game, but this time the setting is cyberpunk instead of fantasy. Erik's character Cinderella is back, but this time she's not the central focus of the book, instead we meet 15 year old Ghost, an anarchist airboarder who lives "off the the grid." Like Epic Saga has a strong dystopian theme, but Saga takes it in a more anarchist direction. Teens who are into anarachy signs and punk rock will relate.

Saga is much grittier than Epic, which some will like, as for me its a great book, but my heart is heart still pines for Epic ;)
For grades

Every Man for Himself

2008-10-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

This is a collection of short stories about being a guy and mostly coming of age stories. Honestly I only picked it up because Mo Willems wrote one of the stories and I've been on a Mo Willems kick for the last few months (I even bought an elephant and piggy toy recently). The story by Mo Willems was good, it was about super heroes, but honestly it wasn't the best one in the book- I think my favorite one was about a boy had a raffle to see who his prom date would be- so funny. I didn't recognized most of the authors, but when i was reading the bios at the back I found out one of them wrote the graphic novel Blankets, which I love. Overall I really enjoyed this collection, although I worry it might not be as appealing to teens as nostalgic adults, nevertheless give this one to teen boys, I suspect they'll get something out of it and possibly even *gasp* enjoy it. Ages 14+

The Maze of Bones

2008-10-06T12:26:00.001-07:00

What would happen if you discovered that your family was one of the most powerful in human history? What if you were told that the source of the family's power was hidden around the world, in the form of 39 clues. What if you were given the choice - take a million dollars and walk away... or get the first clue? If you're Dan and Amy Cahill, you take the clue - and begin a very dangerous race.

Wow money, mystery and danger, awesome isn't? The answer is yes, although with admittedly a few reservations. I really liked the adventure and all the traveling in the book. I'm trying not to spoil anything, but the "maze of bones" is a real place and it's awesome. I've been there and it made me want to go again so bad.

One thing that did bug me about the books were the really obscure clues that the kids instantly knew how to solve. Maybe it's just because I'm bad at that time of thing, but "Seek out Richard S" would never make me think of Richard Sanders of Poor Richard's Almanac.
This book will be a hit the adventure junkies out there though. Great book for grades 4 to 7, maybe even 8.

Bulbasaur's Bad Day

2008-10-06T12:15:00.000-07:00

I'm really tempted to just say this book has no redeeming qualities and be done with it, but you know what? I like pokemon. I really and truely do. I think they're awesome little creatures and I wish i had a real live pokemon myself, in particular, I would like a bulbasaur. So while it may be true that the story in this book is mediocre, that the dialogue is mediocre and even the characters are pretty mediocre, it still does exactly what it's supposed to do. And that's serve up a hearty helping of pokemon. Give this one to young poke-fanatics, I'll bet they'll even thank you for it. For ages 6-9.

Exodus

2008-09-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

2099- Earth's ice caps are melting. Can refuge be found?

For one hundred years earth's ice caps have been melting. Powerful storms that last for months scour the North Atlantic and the oceans are rising. The residents of the Island of Wing had thought they were safe. How much more could the oceans rise? Only the oldest residents still remember the tall sheer cliffs that held the island high above the ocean, now even at low tide the cliffs have disappeared beneath the waves. All of the surrounding islands have gone under and last summer the school house washed away. Now the residents of Wing have a terrible choice leave their homes or risk the wrath of the ocean.

I loved this book, it was like waterworld, but without Kevin Cosner and not nearly as ridiculous. Fans of the post-apocalyptic fiction genre will love this book as will eco-conscious teens, because the book ask the question what happens if we don't change our ways and the polar ice caps keep melting? For grades 8 and up.

Epic

2008-09-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

Wow what a book! Epic combines my two of my favorite genres futuristic dystopia and fantasy adventure. On New Earth everyone's lives revolve around Epic, a fantasy adventure computer game. Success in Epic, results in benefits for yourself, your family, possibly even your whole town. When Erik's mother loses a dispute against Central Authority things start looking grim for his family, they could be relocated to a new area and maybe even be split up. Erik's only hope is Epic, if he plays well enough he could save the whole family.

I started this book at 11 o'clock at night with the intention of reading one chapter and then going to sleep. I read the first chapter, it was good so I read another. The second chapter was even better, I kept going. Three hundred pages later I finally made myself put it down and go to sleep. The next morning I read a little more before. I had intended to bring it to work with me so I could finish it during much lunch break, but alas I forgot it and spent all day thinking speculating about what the last 14 pages contained. I highly recommend this book! It has it all vampires, knights, magic, swashbuckling! For grades 7 and up.

The Walls of Cartegena

2008-09-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

I liked this book more than I thought I would. It's historical fiction, which I like, but it's also about slaves, lepers and the excesses of the Inquisition in the Spanish colony of Cartagena in Columbia. This book had sad times written all over it. But despite that, I liked the characters and the main character, Calepino, had a certain naivety and optimism that lightened up all the dark subject matter and made the whole thing palatable. For grades 4 to 7.

Step Fourth Mallory

2008-09-16T15:01:00.000-07:00

Mallory was looking forward to 4th grade, in fact, she thought it was going to be the best year ever. But now that 4th grade has started it shaping up to be the worst year ever. Mallory keeps breaking the rules, even though she doesn't mean to and everything she does to try to get on her teacher's good side seems to backfire..

Step Fourth Mallory was an alright, I suspect I would have liked it more if I were a girl in 4th grade. Mallory spends a lot time worrying about boys and fashion in a typically gushy 4th grade girl fashion. However, the book is tenderhearted and Mallory's character is ultimately endearing. Recommended for girls who enjoy realistic fiction in 3rd, 4th or 5th grade.

Julian Rodriguez Episode One Trash Crisis on Earth

2008-09-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

Julian Rodriguez is on a mission for the Mothership: to collect data on the "mini-brains" of planet Earth. To accomplish this he's gone undercover as a 12 year old child. However things have not gone as planned. For example even though he has repeatedly told his maternal unit that he requires "significant quantities of salts, fats and sugars," his mother provided him instead with "some woodlike sticks of something called carrot; a flavorless transparent liquid called water, which tastes like nothing at all; something called a veggie-dog, which is too disgusting for me even to put into words." A crisis is reached when Julian is asked to take out the trash while he is in the midst of performing invaluable research on the "fascinating earthly form of programming known as cartoons."

This book was hillarious, even the authour's bio made me laugh. "Like Julian Rodriguez he does his best to avoid taking out the garbage. 'I like trashy books and trashy people,' he explains. 'I just don't like trash." I can relate. The story is told in a mixture of prose and pen and ink drawings reminiscent of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. This is a great choice for reluctant readers and any child who enjoys a good laugh. Recommended for 4th, 5th and 6th.

The Genre Challenge

2008-09-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

This challenge will run from November 1 2008 – November 1 2009 and is hosted by Bookworms and tea lovers.

The goal:
To read one book in the following genres: crime fiction, detective fiction, mystery fiction, horror fiction, thriller fiction, romance fiction, science fiction, action/adventure fiction, fantasy fiction, realistic fiction, historical fiction, and western fiction. Specific definitions of these genres can be found in this post.

There are three options if you want to join:
A: Read 10 books, drop the genre you read the most and one of your own choosing
B: Read 11 books, drop the genre you read the most
C: Read 12 books

The rules
You may not read more than 1 book per genre
All books must be read within the challenge period
No crossovers within the challenge, each genre should have a separate book
Crossovers with other challenges are allowed
Audio books are allowed, graphic novels are not
You may make a list of books, but that’s not mandatory and you can change your picks at any time before or during the challenge

I choose option C, should be fun

Knights of the Lunch Table

2008-08-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

If Knights of the Lunch Table were a cured meat, it would be a Honey Baked Ham lovingly made by Spanish bears wearing golden pantaloons. Why? Because it's hilarious that's why! The Knights of the Lunch Table is a graphic novel retelling of the King Arthur story, set in an American elementary school, Camelot Elementary to be precise. Our hero, Artie King, has just moved to town and he will have to start school midyear. His older sister Morgan (La Faye) his of course wicked and works to make his day as hard as possible by making him miss the bus. Fortunately the school science teacher Mr Merlyn (Merlin) bikes by and tells him about a short cut. On his way to school he meets Percy (Perceval) and they become fast friends. Of course school isn't easy either, the principal takes an immediate disliking to him and assigns him the locker no one is able to open (the sword in the stone), but luckily he's able to open it. The list of Camelot references just keeps going on and on and so do the laughs. The meat of the story focuses on Artie and his friend's conflict with the school bullies who are known as "the Horde" and culminates in a truly epic dodgeball battle royale!

This book couples solid artwork with a hilarious story and the result is well worth your time if you like King Arthur, dodgeball or laughing. Great for grades 4, 5, and 6.

Gods Of Manhattan

2008-08-25T16:40:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought that maybe everyone famous to have ever lived in your city might live on a as a god and protector of your city in on an invisible ethereal spirit realm? No? Well neither had I, but that's exactly what this book assumes. It turns out to make for an interesting story, because it allows for such disparate elements as Dutch colonials, civil war soldiers and baseball players to all be brought together in one rollicking story. Of course there has to an outsider protagonist to introduce us to the world of Mannahatta (the invisible overlay on Manhattan where the gods live) and thirteen-year-old Rory fulfills that role in this book. Rory is just your average teenager with one exception, he's extremely observant. He always notices all the little details and he's always been able to see thru any magic trick. So when a magician at his little sisters birthday party performs a magic trick that must be real, Rory's whole world is thrown into disarray and that's when he starts seeing the magical world of Mannahatta.

This book's pacing can be slow at times and non-New Yorkers may have a hard time keeping up w/ all the history, but the interesting concept more than makes up for that. Recommend this book to fans of adventure books and historical fiction. For grades 6+

Whispers in the Graveyard

2008-08-25T16:37:00.000-07:00

I didn't like this book. Maybe I'm just giving it a hard time because I was feeling a little seasick while a read it, but I suspect that if I hadn't been trapped on a boat w/ nothing else to do I wouldn't have finished it at all. First off it was a ghost story, but it lacked any sort of tension, because instead of focusing on creepy supernatural occurrences the book focused on Solomon's (the main character) problems at home and at school. And Solomon has plenty of problems. He deals with a frequently unemployed alcoholic father, a mother who left them, severe dyslexia and an abusive teacher at school. It was a real downer of a book, but it would have been okay if it hadn't tried to throw in the horror story as well. Right up until the very end I doubted there would actually be a ghost involved in anyway, but then at the end there she was ready to disrupt previously established realism. The book also threw in annoying little snippets of song lyrics every so often, at least I think that's what they were. I could only identify the song they were from half the time and I doubt your typical 11 year old would do better than that.
In summary avoid this book, but if it's one of only six books on your shelf and all five others are rejected recommend this book to 5th, 6th and 7th graders or mediocre literature affectionados of all ages.

The Battle for Skandia

2008-08-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

The most recent installment in the Ranger Apprentices Series (book 5 The Sorcerer of the North will be released this November) did not disappoint. I was totally hooked by this series, I read the first 3 in one week, took a little break and then came back for the fourth a month later. The Battle for Skandia resolves the story arc introduced in the third book. Early in the book Will and Halt are finally reunited in distant Skandia, but they are immediately faced w/ a new dilemma. An enemy from the East who threatens both Skandia and Araluen necessitating that Halt and Will form an unlikely alliance w/ the Skandians. As with all the Rangers apprentice books this one is full of arrow shooting, axe-swinging and sword fighting, as well as plenty of battle tactics to satisfy all the budding young strategists out there.

For grades 5-9.

Seattle

2008-08-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

Howdy everyone,

I'm sitting in the Seattle Public Library right now updating my blog for y'all to enjoy. Before I talk about the what I've done so far I wanna talk about the Seattle Public Library for a bit. I like it quite a bit. The first time I came here, last year, I was pretty freakin' disappointed, but visiting it again with lowered expectations has really increased my appreciation of it. The library here is very different from our beloved SLCPL, but that doesn't make it worse, just -as I said- different. This is a very quite library, a reflective introverted place, really traditional in that sense. The architechure on the other hand is modern, postmodern in fact. This library is all angles a sharp contrast to SLCPL's curves and though it is made entirely of glass, it is very dim. I'm enjoying it quite a bit this time round, very restful. I am in a much more fitting mood for the building this time, I just finished touring the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and the this library has a similar atmosphere. The SAM has a great impressionist exhibit in right now which serves as perfect companion to the UMFA Monet to Picasso exhibit I saw up at the U a couple weeks ago. The SAM exhibit focused on the the influence of Classical Paintings on the Impressionist, sometimes even showing side by the side the original painting and the the impressionist revision. Even Monet who often claimed he was wholely unifluenced by previous artistic movements is included and you can see striking similarities between his paintings and seventeenth century Dutch landscapes.
The SAM also has a wonderful Northwest First Peoples art gallery and an Aboringal art gallery. I've can't think of any other galleries I've visited which so Australian art, so I was very impressed with that. They also had a small Japanese section (made me think of you Liesl!) with a little Japanese tea ceremony hut, which was absolutely beautiful.
Yesterday was super awesome. After landing at the airport my budding Matt and I went to take care of some important details such as: Checking into our hotel, securing a ferry ticketup to victoria and a train ticket back from Vancouver (we were just going to take a train up to Vancouver too, but it was sold out. I didn't realize AMtrak trains every sold out, in fact I always assumed they were mostly empty, whho knew?) and eating lots and lots of sushi. We had four delicious rolls and I loved every bite. With those details out of the way we roamed the city for awhile, first visiting Pike place Market (they through a fish at someone it was awesome/ hillarious) the Olympic Sculpture Garden (the sculpture was so-so, but we ran into Matt's aunt 100% by chance and she's going to take us out to dinner tonight) and finally (the best for last) the Science Fiction Museum. The SF museum was awesome, the had Kirk's command chair from the TV series (do I even need to say anymore to make you envy this place) as well as TONS of other stuff from everything SF you can imagine Star Wars, Terminator, Red Dwarf, Blade Runner all kinds of pulp SF stuff from the 30s, 4os and 50s and a great collection of H.G. Wells stuff too. Awesome, awesome, awesome! By that time we ready for dinner so we found ourselves a grocery store and some hummus sprouts and pita bread for an awesome mediterreanean dinner. Then we headed out to check out the bars over in Belltown.

I feel like I should say more, but I gotta hurry and wrap this up so we can make it to happy hour. So long for now everyone.

Martin Bridge Out of Orbit! and Goof-Off Goalie

2008-07-28T15:31:00.000-07:00

Martin Bridge Out of Orbit! and Goof-Off Goalie are two solid pieces of realistic fiction for younger readers.

Martin Bridge Out of Orbit! is a part of the Martin Bridge series. The series is kinda like a Junie B. Jones for boys, an easy to read chapter book with a male character boys can identify with. The book contained two plot lines one about organizing a parade and the other about a visit from a comic book artist. Each of the stories ends with Martin learning valuable lesson of some sort. The message was always relevant without being overly preachy or heavy-handed, I liked it. For grades 1-4.

Goof-Off Goalie is a sports story for young readers. The main character Goose wants to play goalie more than anything else, but the coach says he needs to pay attention to the game if he's going to play goalie. "Focus Goose," his coach tells him over again. Over the course of the story Goose learns the value of hard work and persistence. Like Martin Bridge there was a moral, but not a heavy handed one, so I was okay w/ it. Recommend this one to young sports enthusiasts.
For grades 1-4.

Ranger's Apprentice The Burning Bridge and the Icebound Land

2008-07-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

These are two great books, the second and third installment of the Ranger's Apprentice series. The books feature Will, a ranger's apprentice, as he learns the ranger's craft from Halt a legendary ranger during tumultuous times in his home kingdom of Araulen. In The Burning Bridge Morgarath is threatening the kingdom once more. So Will travels to Celtica with Horace and Gilan a Ranger and former apprentice of Halt. Along the way our heroes manage to encounter a healthy helping of adventure not to mention the bandits, mysterious empty villages and of course, the burning bridge.

In the Icebound Land Will is taken prisoner and held captive in distant Skandia. Meanwhile, Halt and Horace travel over land in search of Will. This book was slower paced than the first two; mostly because it features the ever popular (and highly cliché) captured and held prisoner plot line (actually two separate captured plot lines if you can believe it). Another thing that bothered me about this book was a somewhat heavy-handed anti-drug message. However, the characters are still very engaging and the book still manages to pack in the action (I particularly enjoyed the jousting).

Both books are full of adventure and should surely hold the attention of fans of the fantasy genre. If you like the middle ages, high action books or even cloak and dagger type spy books this series is a must read. For grades 5-9.

2008-05-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

This is how you publish.

Library 2.0 summary

2008-05-09T15:58:00.000-07:00

When I try to summarize library 2.0 two thoughts immediately come to mind: #1 Wow! What a great program. And #2 Wow! I'm going to have a lot more time to get my work done now.

I'll address #2 first. Thirty minutes an exercise was pretty unrealistic. Thirty minutes was reasonable for most of the exercises by themselves (most not all), but the blog portion pushed the time requirement well above 30 minutes. If I had a lot to say about a topic 30 minutes wasn't even enough for the blog portion.

However, time requirements aside, library 2.0 was great. I learned about all kinds of stuff. Podcasts, RSS feeds, blogging, you name it I did it. Highlights included LibraryThing and the Web 2.0 awards site (I ended up finding a great deal on a plane ticket from a travel site featured on there); lowlights included Technorati and Netlibrary.

I wish that the program would have included a firefox lesson. I feel like a lot of people could have benefited from that, especially a firefox add-ons lesson. As far as things the library could implement, I feel like pretty much everything. If you go thru library 2.0 point by point, pretty much everything should have a place on our website. For example we should have featured librarian blogs, which recommend books (those blogs should be supplemented w/ LibraryThing accounts) and advertise some of our programs here at the library. We already have implemented the wiki for staff (great work by the way), but we should make one for patrons as well, where they can include their insights about the library. We have a myspace page, that's a start, now we need to do something with it. We should allow user tagging on our catalog (I know Teenagers -- California -- Los Angeles -- Conduct of life -- Drama is what i think to search for when I want the karate kid collection, but I'm not sure that's what your average joe would guess). I could go on and on... but then I'd have to go over the thirty minute limit. ;)

Thanks library 2.0 I've learned a lot.

Net Library

2008-05-07T16:41:00.000-07:00

Net Library is not good. Many moons ago I decided I would take advantage of a net library audiobook. I dutifully downloaded the file and then went on to figuring out how to stick it on my ipod. I soon discovered that I could not put it on my ipod because it was in wma format which ipods do not support. So I just went back to check out audiobooks on cd ripping them onto my computer and putting them on my ipod that way, not convenient, but do-able. So time later (but still several moons ago) I came into possession of a netlibrary compatible mp3 player. At last I can fully take advantage of netlibrary. So I dutifully downloaded and uploaded and finally sat down to listen and I listened and I listened and then when I'd heard enough. I turned off my mp3 player and went to bed. The next morning I decided to listen to my audiobook on my way into the library. Alas my cheap-o mp3 player had lost my place, oh well I'll just skip to the right chapter and resume from there. Wait, what's this? The whole audiofile is all one track? Oh lamentable day. That was the story of how I learned to hate Net Library. Today I browsed net library once more to refresh my memory about net library and I recalled one further problem w/ netlibrary. The selection is terrible. They actually have a descent number of titles (several hundred) but they have lots and lots of mediocre titles. I remember last time I downloaded an audiobook it took me much browsing before i found an acceptable title (Cod: A biography of the fish that changed the world) and even that was a bit of a stretch- I doubt I would have picked that book up if I'd seen it in a bookstore amongst other quality books. Another problem I encounter was that sometimes they'll have the second or third book in a series, but not the first. Honestly what gives net-library?

Podcasts

2008-05-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

I checked out podcast alley to see what i could see. First I tried searching by genre (travel), but nothing jumped out at me (I really wish descriptions were included), so I prepped myself up to be all kinds of disappointed by podcasts. But then I did a search for "library" and third on the list I saw Salt Lake County Library, of course I had to watch it. So I went thru the steps of subscribing, then I watched a couple of podcasts of booktalks which aired on Local Matters (I guess that's a TV show). I also watched a podcast in which children were interviewed about what they thought of the storytime they had just attended. Genius! Why don't we do this? How expensive could it be to make this happen? As far as I can tell all we really need is a video camera and a little bit of know-how. Let's make it happen.

2008-05-05T19:33:00.000-07:00

I present to you the greatest video ever posted to YouTube... ever. It's called "crab bite." Wow I could watch that 50 times and laugh just as hard every single time.

YouTube is genius. All it provides is a website and then it leaves everything else up to users. Users create the content, users rate the videos, users tag the videos, genius. It's like NBC providing a station and then making the viewers do all the work to create programming.

YouTube has all kinds of library applications too. A few I suggested earlier, post a video of you reading a book and video tours of the library, but that's not all. We could start posting storytimes or other programs we do to youtube, or even "commercials" for the library. All we would need is a video camera, beyond that it's free!

Web 2.0 Award Winners

2008-04-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

Wow what a collection of great websites! The one I spent the most time on, Farecast, was awesome. It's a travel website and it works on the same basic premise as websites like expedia or orbitz, which allow you to search multiple airline websites to find the lost airfare prices to a destination. Farecast does all that and it has one feature which really sets it above the rest, it can predict w/ reasonable accuracy if the price of a plane ticket will rise or fall in the near future. Farecast keeps track of increases and drops in price over the last month and somehow uses that information to project the price in the near future. The website claimed it had been third-party certified as being accurate in its predictions 76% of the time. I decided to do little test of my own. I've been looking for a cheap plane ticket to somewhere for memorial day weekend. After a couple of searches I latched on to San Diego, $225 round trip that's a great price for a ticket somewhere over memorial day weekend. If I had found that price on expedia I would have booked right away, because in my mind that price could only go up from there, but fareast predicted that there was 68% chance the price would drop further, a 20% chance it would stay the same and only a 12% chance that it would increase. So against my better judgment I waited. And guess what today that same $225 ticket costs $203 and farecast is predicting the price will rise (48%) or stay the same (33%), so I'll be buying my ticket today. Thanks (Farecast and web 2.0) for making my life $22 (one seafood dinner) better!

Google Labs

2008-04-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

For my Google labs assignment I checked out igoogle, google trends and google mars.

I had seen igoogle before and sort of poo-pooed it, but I decided to give it another shot. I'm glad I did, because igoogle is totally my favorite now. It really makes a difference when you get to add your own widgets! I loved adding all kinds of news feeds and such to my site, this one is definitely a keeper.

I enjoyed google trends as well, my compulsive statistical side really enjoyed being able to track how often a search is performed and how often it is performed relative to other searches, the way it tracks searches by geographic area is also pretty darn cool. I'm not sure this site has any useful application, but it's cool to look at.

Google mars was my least favorite tool. Partially because it was hyped to me by other people, but mostly because of a major glitch i encountered. When you scroll back all the way mars repeats over and over again. I guess this isn't really a glitch, it allows you to work your way all the way around mars and then back to the beginning again, but I wish it could be accomplished in another way. I was about to say google maps doesn't repeat, but then I checked and it does and now that bugs me too. It's sad that google mars has managed to tarnish google maps- one of my favorite sites- but it has and it makes me wish google mars had never been created. Shame on you google mars!

Online Web Applications

2008-04-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

Online Application tools, boo-yah! That's an expression meant to convey happiness or excitement for those of you unfamiliar w/ boo-yahing. Google Docs is great. If this had been around when I was in college I would have been all over it. Way back in the early to mid-2000s when I went to college, I faced a significant dilemma. What's the easiest way of transporting a paper in electronic format? In the end I just settled on emailing the paper to myself so that it would available to me on whichever computer I found myself in front of. Google Docs would have cut out the middlemen, my yahoo and hotmail email accounts. Google Docs has all the basic word features I need and works great. I'm using it to make some suggested revisions to the LEO handbook and it has been 100% equal to the task (see below). I looked at some of the other stuff, such as zoho, it seemed pretty similar to Google Docs to be honest, so kudos to zoho. Google calendar was great, if you're into that kind of thing, but to be honest the only thing I use calendars for is to have a new picture to look forward to each time I turn the page.

(italic= suggested revision)
LEO Handbook

This is the second revised edition of the LIBRARY EMPLOYEES HANDBOOK. Each section of this edition has been reviewed and revised. This is the Handbook of the Library Employees= Organization of the Salt Lake City Public Library.

Members should make all recommendations or observations on the effectiveness of this Handbook, in writing, to the Executive Council member of their choice.

This Library Employees= Organization handbook is submitted by committee members:

Matt McLain

Randi Carter

Jered Hundley

Approved by the LEO Membership, and confirmed by the Executive Council and Representative Council at the August 2004 Monthly Representative Meeting.

August 2004 LIBRARY EMPLOYEES= ORGANIZATION

The Library Employee�s Organization exists as an instrument for the improvement of the library staff as a whole. LEO acts as an intermediary between the administration and the staff to increase communication and improve morale. LEO also works with the library leadership to protect the interests of the staff.

LEO plans staff social functions, including the Summer Picnic and Holiday Party. (Add in something about Halloween?) LEO also aims to participate in charitable and service projects. Ongoing contributions include volunteering at the Cathedral of the Madeline and monthly food donations benefiting the Crossroads Urban Center.

LEO participates in the implementation of the Grievance Procedure. Each staff member who has passed the initial six-month probationary period is given the benefit of the Procedure. Once a grievance is filed, LEO begins the process as described in the Employee Handbook.

LEO is comprised of all library staff members. LEO Representatives are selected by each agency to support LEO. The Representatives report ongoing LEO activities to their agencies. They also seek input about issues and challenges that are happening throughout the Library and report back at the LEO Representative Council meetings

CONSTITUTION

OF THE

LIBRARY EMPLOYEES =ORGANIZATION OF THE SALT LAKE CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY

Approved August 1980

Revised March 1989

Revised August 2004

ARTICLE I�Name

Section 1: The name of this organization shall be the Library Employees Organization of the Salt Lake City Public Library (LEO).

ARTICLE II�Purpose

Section 1: The purpose of the Organization shall be to promote the professional, economic, social interests of staff, and to encourage and support service opportunities.

ARTICLE III�Membership

Section 1: Membership is open to every person who is employed by the Salt Lake City Public Library. Membership is for the duration of the employee=s tenure at the library.

Section 2: LEO encourages active participation of its members. Active participation can include paying membership dues, participating on and assisting LEO committees, and participating in LEO events and parties.

ARTICLE IV�Structure of the Organization

Section 1: All elected officers and departmental representatives must be active members of the Organization. This organization shall consist of a three member Executive Council and a Representative Council.

Section 2: The Executive Council shall be elected by the active membership according to the procedures set forth by the Bylaws. Each agency will select a staff representative for the Representative Council. Candidates for the Representative Council may be nominated by any library staff member.

Section 3: Members of the Executive Council shall serve a term of twelve months. Elections will occur the first week of January for the term beginning January 15. .

Section 4: Members of the Representative Council shall consist of a selected representative from each agency and branch in the system serving a term of one year. The selection for the Representative Council will occur prior to June 30 for the term beginning July 1, in conjunction with the Library�s committee selection process.

Section 5: The Executive Council shall appoint a Treasurer to serve at least annually.

Section 6: The Executive Council, with the approval of the Representative Council, shall appoint committees as needed.

ARTICLE V�Meetings

Section 1: Meetings shall be held as provided for in the Bylaws.

ARTICLE VI�Amendments

Section 1: All proposals for amending the Constitution or Bylaws shall originate in the Executive Council and/or Representative Council.

Section 2: All members shall be notified of such a proposal in writing and given sufficient time for consideration.

Section 3: A proposed amendment shall be adopted by a ballot vote of a simple majority of the members voting.

BYLAWS

THE LIBRARY EMPLOYEES= ORGANIZATION OF THE SALT LAKE CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY

Amended November 1980

Amended June 1982

Amended March 1982

Amended October 1989

Amended August 2004

ARTICLE I�Dues

Section 1: Membership dues are payable on LEO Membership Drive Day. The membership drive day shall be in March, as determined by the LEO Executive Council. LEO will accept payment of dues at any point in the year.

Section 2: The Executive Council shall determine dues as an article of business prior to the LEO Membership Drive, which shall be approved by the Representative Council. Employees working less than 20 hours per week will pay one-half the amount.

Section 3: Persons employed by the Library throughout the year shall pay pro-rated dues as follows:

March-May 100 %

June-August 75 %

September-November 50 %

December-February 25 % (Let's cut pro-rated dues)

ARTICLE II�Rights and Privileges

Section 1: All members shall have the right to vote on matters of Organizational business.

Section 2: All members may serve as members of the Executive Council, Representative Council, Committee Chairs, and/or Committee members.

ARTICLE III�Meetings

Section 1: General meetings of the Organization and its committees shall be open to the entire membership.

Section 2: The Executive Council shall meet as needed.

Section 3: The Representative Council shall meet monthly, currently on the fourth Thursday of the month. (second Monday)

Section 4: Committees shall meet at their own discretion or at the request of the Executive Council

ARTICLE IV�Committees

Section 1: Any member of the Library Employee�s Organization may voluntarily serve on a LEO committee, or at the request of an Executive Council member. Other committees shall be appointed as needed by the Executive Council.

ARTICLE V�Executive Council Elections

Section 1: The Elections Committee (Events Committee) shall request candidates to run for the Executive Council, including at least one candidate for President. The highest vote recipients will be selected for the Executive Council. If there is no candidate for President, the highest vote recipient will be selected as President. If no candidates run for LEO Executive Council, the current Executive Council and the current Representative Council will select new Executive Council members from combined councils.

Section 2: Executive Council members shall serve for a calendar year, beginning January 15. LEO members who wish to run for election shall announce their candidacy on or about December 1. After the campaign, LEO members shall elect one candidate for each seat on the Executive Council. Current members of the Executive Council may run for re-election. Candidates for the Executive Council should seek their agency manager�s approval before running.

Section 3: The election of the Executive Council members shall be by ballot vote. The Election Committee will send ballots to all LEO members on or around the first business day of January. Completed ballots must be returned within seven days of issuance.

Section 4: A vacancy occurring in the Executive Council before the end of a term shall be filled for the balance of the term through appointment by the executive Council as approved by the Representative Council.

Section 5: Candidates for the Executive Council must be current members of the LEO Representative or Executive Council to run. (Or from a location which is currently unrepresented in the representative council?)

ARTICLE VI�Representative Council Selection

Section 1: Each agency or coalition of agencies shall be responsible for having an active LEO representative that serves for one year. Each agency will select a representative no later than the fourth Thursday in August. Any LEO member may make a nomination for the Representative Council.

ARTICLE VI�Responsibilities under the Employee Handbook

Section 1: The Executive Council will be responsible for the Grievance Procedure as outlined in the Employee Handbook (Section 27).

Section 2: The Staff Rooms at Main and the branches are under the jurisdiction of the Library Employees= Organization. Their maintenance is the responsibility of all staff members of the Organization.

Duties of the Executive Council

� Members of the Executive Council are elected by the membership of LEO. The Council consists of three members elected to serve for one year. The elected President will be the Council Chair for the entire year.

� Basic duties of the Council as outlined in the Constitution and Bylaws include appointing a treasurer, a secretary as needed, and LEO committees and committee chairs.

� If a member of the Executive Council is unable to complete his/her term, the Council will appoint someone to serve the balance of the term. The Representative Council will confirm the selection.

Additional duties of the Executive Council include:

� Meeting as needed with Library Director and staff.

� Acting as mentors to successive Executive Council members; providing and organizing information to make transitions between Executive Councils smooth and seamless.

� Posting relevant information on staff room bulletin boards.

� Coordinating attendance at monthly Library Board, Management, and other significant meetings.

� Arranging for staff Brown Bag lunches with the Director. Also arranges LEO Town Hall meetings at least annually. (Do we do this? Do we want to do this?)

� Selecting staff for the Distinguished Service Award at least once a year (Staff Development Day) to honor staff members who have provided outstanding service or contributions in the library system, the library field as a whole, or the community at large. (Do we still do this?)

� coordinating monthly LEO e-newsletter. This should include:

� minutes of LEO meetings

� calendar of upcoming events

� announcement of Employee of the Month and E-Interviews and call for nominations

� other relevant information to be distributed to LEO members

Duties of the President of the Executive Council

� Conducts Executive Council and Representative Council meetings and prepares an agenda.

� Participates in the Grievance Procedure as outlined in the Employee Handbook and LEO Bylaws.

� Keeps a record of LEO activities.

� Assigns a LEO member to take minutes for the Representative Council meetings.

� Purchases supplies for LEO events.

� Serves as a President Emeritus for three months following the election of a new President to provide counsel and guidance to the new President.

Duties of the Treasurer

� Responsible for collection of all funds and debts owing the Organization.

� Responsible for disbursement of LEO monies for all expenses paid by check.

� Keep Organization books, entering income and expenditures on weekly basis.

� Deposit money in bank as needed.

� Reports monthly income and expenditures.

� Record membership dues.

Duties of the LEO Representative Council Member

Each agency will select a representative to serve on a fiscal year basis.

� Attends the monthly LEO Representative Council Meeting. If the representative cannot be in attendance, the rep should appoint someone else to attend.

� The LEO Representative should report the matters discussed at the meeting to staff in the agency they represent.

� The LEO Representative should notify the Recognition Committee of illness, death, births, etc. of staff members they represent so that cards and/or a flower can be sent.

� LEO Representatives shall actively participate on LEO Committees as listed under Standing Committees of LEO.

� Report on any changes in the agency; e.g., staff leaving or new staff members entering the system. (Do we really need a report each meeting of this?)

� Provide New employees w/ a LEO welcome letter and overview of what LEO does

Standing Committees of LEO

ELECTION COMMITTEE (Now part of events)

The Election Committee is charged with holding regular elections for the LEO Executive Council. The Election Committee should seek candidates for yearly election to the Executive Council, including at least one candidate for President. The Election Committee shall encourage campaigning, print ballots including biographies and photos of all candidates, provide a method for submission of ballots, collect ballots and tabulate the results of the election, and announce the results of the election.

SERVICE COMMITTEE

LEO is committed to being involved in a variety of community service projects. The service committee will select several projects over the course of the year. The committee will plan and organize each project, including logistics and staff participation. Examples of service projects include sandwich making at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, food donations for Crossroads Urban Center, purchasing holiday blankets, TV/Radio pledge drives, lunches at the Sorensen Center, or other projects.

NEWSLETTER COMMITTEE

This committee is responsible for the collection of articles, typing and editing of material for the newsletter. Each newsletter should include minutes from the previous meeting, a calendar of upcoming events, Employee of the Month announcements, Staff Interviews (E-Interview), and any other information pertinent to library staff.

RECOGNITION/EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH COMMITTEE

This committee arranges for a card or flower to be sent to staff on return from birth or death leave. Other special occasions for staff members are also remembered with a card. This committee will request nominations for Employee of the Month from the staff-at-large and will selected a monthly winner. Additionally, the Recognition Committee should consider a Distinguished Service Award recipient to be given out at the library�s annual Staff Development Day. This committee is also charged by LEO to be responsible for the purchase of a book to be donated to the library in honor of each retiree. The committee may also determine other awards to be given to individuals or agencies.

EVENT AND PARTY COMMITTEE

This committee shall plan, develop, and host LEO parties. The committee shall be responsible for the entire event, including arranging for volunteers, bringing supplies, providing entertainment and activities, and cleanup. Examples of LEO parties include the Halloween Party, the Holiday Party, the LEO Summer Picnic, and LEO Baseball nights. (Baseball nights sound awesome) Other LEO Events include LEO Membership Day, Town Meetings, Movie Nights, Sport activities (e.g. bocce, softball). The Event and Party Committee will also arrange food for the Friends� Booksale.

Staff Rooms

A staff room, located on the fifth floor of the Main Library, is maintained by LEO for the use of library personnel, volunteers, official library guests and others having approval of the Library Employees� Organization. A lounge, kitchen facilities and vending machines are provided. Anyone using the staff lounge or kitchen is responsible for cleaning up after themselves. Each branch library has staff room facilities that are maintained by the staff members at that branch.

PLEASE KEEP THE STAFF ROOMS CLEAN!!

PLA's take on Library 2.0

2008-04-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

I went to PLA in Minneapolis this year and I promised I would blog about any "tech stuff" I learned. I believe the Library 2.0 session I attended qualifies as "tech stuff."

The speakers (hereafter referred to as robots, so as to engage readers w/ shorter attention spans) started the session by pointing out that Web 2.0 (and Library 2.0 by extension) isn't really a tech phenomenon, it's a social phenomenon, enabled by technology. What separates web 2.0 from web 1.0 is that Web 2.0 is able to engage users as individuals.

So how does the library (hereafter referred to as moon base) successfully integrate web 2.0 services to engage our users as individuals?
By experimentation. Several of the robots advocated abandoning the culture of perfection which permeates so many moon bases. Moon bases, they argued, tend to avoid implementing changes until the proposed changes have been thoroughly tested, reviewed and- most importantly of all- the changes must run a near endless gauntlet of meetings and committees. For the rapidly changing world of web 2.0, this equation doesn't work. Instead, moon base websites should be in state of constant beta-testing. New features should be added to the website as they become available. If the feature isn't successful, remove it and try something new. Even initially successful features can become unsuccessful over time. If that happens try something new. There is NO right and wrong, only experimentation.

8 Easy “neat-o burrito” things a moon base can do to get 2.0.

#1 Make a myspace page. A myspace page is easy to make and easy to maintain. Many moon bases use their myspace page as just another way to pass on information, kinda like an online bulletin board. Successful moon base myspace pages often allow multiple librarians to add content. For example all the teen librarians might be responsible for posting information about teen programs.

#2 RSS feeds. Add the ability for patrons to receive RSS feeds about new items or content. It was also noted that a little “what is this?” type information link is helpful. Many patrons won’t know what an rss feed is, but if they have a link that will tell them, they’re more likely to use the feature.

#3 Create a flickr account. Encourage patrons to contribute content. One moon base asked patrons to take a picture of themselves reading and add it to flickr.

#4 A presence on wikipedia. Millions of people use wikipedia each day, make sure your moon base’s website is listed. (Ours already is hurray!)

#5 YouTube- Moon bases can use youtube to make online video tours of the moon base.

#6 Meet your librarians. Some moon bases have added a little bio section for their staff members. It’s not necessary to post actual pictures, sometimes an “online avatar” (see example at right) can be even more hip. The bio can be very general, favorite books, movies, interests, etc. The ideas is that librarian bios make patrons feel more connected to their library.

#7 Allow user tagging of books. Moon base catalogs don’t always use the most intuitive subject headings, so allow users to create their own.

#8 A second fix for those notoriously user-unfriendly moon base catalogs. How often have you performed a search and had it come back w/ no results? Now imagine how often that happens to patrons. Now imagine how frustrating that must be for them (you probably don't have to imagine, I bet you've seen it already). Library 2.0 to the rescue! One of the robots described a catalog that addressed this problem. Whenever a search returns no results, the catalog asks the user would like to talk to a librarian? If the patron clicks yes the catalog opens up a chat window where the patron can ask a librarian for help. Wow! Now that is neat-o burrito.

Library 2.0

2008-04-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

So here's my summary of the “Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web it take libraries?” article.

Rick Anderson had a couple of good points about library services: "We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning" and "...if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons." Spot on! What patron is going to know that our library catalog's subject search is garbage unless you happen to be a master of library of congress subject headings? Or that the best way to limit a keyword search to children's materials is throw the word juvenile on? Who uses the word juvenile? "So yesterday I was hanging out with some juveniles when I realized...." Ridiculous!

Chip Nilges the Vice President for OCLC might have had some good ideas, but he couldn't go 2 sentences w/ out tooting his own organization's horn (and acting like I knew what the heck OCLC is- I googled it, it's a "not for profit computer service and research organization whose systems help libraries locate, acquire, catalog, and lend library materials"). Anyway sorry Chip the topic was Library 2.0 not “What’s great about your non-profit organization, OCLC”, I lost patience w/ your article and so I skipped it.

John J. Riemer's article was good as well I like his comments about relevance ranking. "Relevance ranking techniques should be driven by much more than the mere prevalence of keywords in the bibliographic record and be fed by a wider range of metadata, such as circulation activity, placement of materials on class reserve lists, sales data, and clicks to download, print, and capture citations." I wish that good books came up first when I did a search. If I do a keyword search for caterpillar fiction The Very Hungry Caterpillar should come up not Arabella Miller's tiny caterpillar, a book which I hvae never heard of and probably never will. Also props to John on his awesome beard. I think his beard alone doubled the relevance of the article.

Dr. Wendy Schultz the futurist sure does believe in sweeping change. Also a rather utopian future, I hope the future is so luxurious, I mean check out the library of the future: "Library 4.0 will add a new mode, knowledge spa: meditation, relaxation, immersion in a luxury of ideas and thought. In companies, this may take the form of retreat space for thought leaders, considered an investment in innovation; in public libraries, the luxurious details will require private partners as sponsors providing the sensory treats. Library 4.0 revives the old image of a country house library, and renovates it: from a retreat, asanctuary, a pampered experience with information—subtle thoughts, fine words, exquisite brandy, smooth coffee, aromatic cigar, smell of leather, rustle of pages—to the dream economy’s library, the LIBRARY: a WiFREE space, a retreat from technohustle, with comfortable chairs, quiet, good light, coffee and single malt. You know, the library."

Of course how we go from underfunded inner-city urban libraries to exquisite brandy, aromatic cigars and the smell of leather is beyond me, the librarians of the future must be better fundraisers than the librarians of today. As for me, I'm still waiting for the flying cars and the futuristic unitards that the not so distant past promised me.

Search Engines

2008-04-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

I tried out 4 new search engines today, Mooter, Exalead, Gravee and Clusty (in that order).

Mooter was an interesting idea. But I didn't much care for it myself. It initially organizes the information graphically, but not in a particularly useful way. It has a preset template that it just plugs the results into. I was hoping it would do something kinda like a tag cloud, where it made the result bigger if it had more results, but alas.

I did a search for "Mastodon Research" here are the top 2 results (and an image i found on google):

#1 Hyde Park Mastodon Research: Mastodon Teeth Isotopes "You are what you eat." This is true not only for humans, but extinct mastodons as well. .

#2 Research in Progress: TaphonomyHyde Park Mastodon Research: Taphonomy. Taphonomy basically means "studying what happens to animals ... This question often allows scientists to discover a .

Exalead I did like. It had an interface that was easy to read and it provided a preview of what the website looks like. I might use this website if google's website was down.

Results:

#1 same as mooter's #1

#2 Post-modern Research: Mastodon - Freemasonic Shriner Metal??

Post-modern Research You saw it here first! (most likely anyway) Tuesday, August 01, 2006 Mastodon - Freemasonic Shriner Metal??

Gravee was the worst one. I think the site might have been down, I hope so anyway, because when I tried doing a search all I got was a blank screen, not so useful.

Clusty was the last search engine I used. It seemed alright. It used a sidebar w/ the results divided by category and the number of results within each category. Bully for it. Here are the results of my mastadon search on clusty:

#1 Welcome to the Mastodon Page at PRI

Since August, 1999, PRI, in conjunction with Cornell University, has been involved with three mastodon excavations, one in Hyde Park, NY and another (Cornell's .

#2 Hyde Park Mastodon Unearthed!

Matrix Project - Get yourself, your highschool class, or even your Girl Scout troupe, involved in the research

Staff Technology Skills Survey

2008-04-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

Friends, Tech Reps, Complete Strangers,
Here's my proposed changes to the staff technology skills survey, go ahead and leave me and comments you might have on my proposed changes. There's also a friendlier-to-read-excel-spreadsheet version which can be downloaded off the wiki under tech reps. Were I choosing to read this I would do it that way and then leave me a comment here or by email, but to each his own.

SLCPL STAFF TECHNOLOGY SKILLS REVIEW
March 2008 version
Name:______________________________ Date:_________________________

Agency:_______________________

Key
After reading each statement in the following sections please mark one of the follwing:

1- I don't understand how to perform this task.
2- I understand the principle, but I have never actually perfomed this task.
3- I understand have perfomred this task in the past and I believe I am still able.
4- I could perform this task right now without difficulty.
NA- This task is not applicable to my job.

What you should now about… General Computer Operation

Opening and Closing Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

How do I turn on or off all catalog, patron internet, Gates computers, staff reference and circulation PC's? Push the power button located on the front of PC towers, upper right hand corner of the Cybernet (Keyboard) PCs or on the bottom front or right side of all monitors or catalog terminals.

How do I troubleshoot... X
*A computer with no power? Check to see if it is plugged in and the power is turned on (note: some PCs have a unit between the PC and the outlet, make sure it is plugged in tight as well.)
*The wrong login screen (on a public computer)? Check the network cable….is it plugged in tightly? Restart the PC, if it still doesn't work, call the CS on-call pager.
*A staff PC that won't logon? Re-enter your logon and password, Domain should be SLCPL. If this still doesn't work, call the CS on-call pager.

How do I turn computers off? Patron PCs automatically shut down. Staff PC's: click on start and select shut down. Finish the shut down. Public PCs: logoff, when monitor says No Signal, hold the power button down until PC turns off. Other procedures: ask your supervisor.

How do I restore a blank or sleeping screen? Touch a key on the keyboard.

Staff PC's Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

How do I log on using the department username and password? If the windows log in screen isn't showing press the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys. Enter the department username on the first line and department password on the second (if you don't know these ask your department supervisor or tech rep), on the third line make sure "log on to SLCPL" is selected.

How do I turn on/off PC? Click Start, click Shut Down, select Shut Down, click OK. This will shut off the power. To turn on, push the power button.

How do I check connections? All conncetions should be located on the back of the tower or keyboard PC. The following cables should be attached firmly: monitor cable, network cable, power cord, mouse and keyboard cables. On some PCs the following conncetions are color coded: Mouse is green, keyboard is purple, and Monitor is blue.

How do I open and close software applications appropriately (Word, Intranet, Millennium, Internet, III)? Double click on desktop icon, if available; otherwise, click Start, click on Programs or All Programs, select the software application you want to use. If you need to save a document before closing, click File and select Save or Save As and save the document in your HEDGEHOG folder. To close an Office Product (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Intranet ot Internet application, click on the in the upper right hand corner of the screen or click File and select Close. To close III, back out to the Main Menu and type X to disconnect or close. To close Millenium, click the in the upper right hand corner of the Millennium screen. When it asks if you want to exit Millennium, click Yes.

How do I use a USB Flash Drive? Look for the symbol. This indicates a USB port. It could be located on either the front or the back of the PC. Plug in the Flash Drive. To access the Flash Drive click on the My Computer icon on the desk top.
How do I manipulate and navigate multiple windows or applications (including minimizing and maximizing windows)? Minimize to tray Make window smaller Maximize (make window bigger) Close program.

Computer Vocabulary, If you understand place a check mark in the box. √

What is the start button? Located in the lower left hand corner of the screen, it allows you access to software on the PC, and is what you click on to log off or shut down the computer.

What is the tray/taskbar? Located at the bottom of the screen, it allows quick access to multiple programs or files which are currently open.

What is the Clock/Calendar? Located at the bottom right-hand corrner of the screen (in the blue bar) gives you quick access to time and date. Double -click ot access a calendar. If you look at another month, click Cancel to close without saving changes.

How do I use icons? Double click on an icon on the desktop to open a file or program.
What does the right mouse button do? Clicking on the right mouse button brings up a context sensitive menu (most frequently it gives you the options of copying, cutting, pasting and printing).

What is the difference between a PC and a dumb terminal? A dumb terminal is a display monitor that has no processing capabilities and is simply an output device that accepts data from the CPU. A PC or personal computer has processing capabilities and can run a variety of software.

Public Internet Access PC's Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

What are the startup and shutdown procedures for public internet pc's? Startup: turn on Envisionware Management consol, then the PC Reservation/ Print Release station. After these are up, turn on the patron PC's. Shutdown: the public PCs automatically shutdown 5 minutes before closing. If the PC does not automatically shut down: press Ctrl/Alt/Delete and select Shut Down.

How do patrons access public internet computers? Patrons can access public internet computers by finding an available computer and entering in their library card number.

How do I save files on removable media (USB flash drive, Floppy disc, etc) on a public machine? Open file to be saved, Insert floppy or attach memory stick, Click on File, select Save As. Save As window appears. In Save File: use drop down arrow to choose location to save file. Enter file name at bottom and click Save.

What are the limitations of a public internet computer? They are unable to download software or files.

How do I perform physical maintenance (clean screens, keyboards, mouse) on public internet pc's? Clean gently and with lots of common sense. For more specific instructions ask your tech rep or computer services.

Gates Computers

Printers- the easy stuff: If you understand, place a check mark in the box. √

What are the types of printers in my agency? hp4100's; hp4200's; hp4100mfp; hp 4; Okidata Turbo 320: receipt printer

Printers Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

How do I cancel a print job on each type of printer in my agency? Hp4100& hp4200-press pink cancel job button (you may need to do this multiple times, depending on how the web page is formatted); hp4100mfp- press pink Stop button; hp4-Press OnLine to take the printer offline. When the display reads 00 Offline, hold down Shift and press Reset to clear any remaining pages in the printer’s memory.

How do I add paper? Hp printers- Paper reams have a label "Print on this side first"--It does matter! Do not overfill paper bin. Hp 4100 and hp 4200 printer will hold a maximum of 1 ream. Hp4 holds about 200 sheets or just under 1/2 ream(package). Each of these printers have a paper tray which pulls out from bottom front. Okidata uses track-continuous feed paper. The printer sits on a rack with paper underneath. Paper comes up from behind and is placed on the tracks. Track covers are snapped down, press FORM FEED or LINE FEED to move paper into position for printing.

How do I install toner or ribbon cartridge? Make sure you have the correct toner (printer models are listed on the outside of the box). For hp printers: when display shows message "toner low", remove, shake, reinsert cartridge (usually 8-10% toner left in cartridge). If the message appears after above process or if the printouts continue to leave white streaks, replace the toner cartridge. Open top and remove empty toner, remove new cartridge from packaging, remove the tab and pull the plastic strip to release toner. Slide the new cartridge into the printer and close the top. Okidata: replace the ribbon when tangled or when it is no longer printing dark enough. Lift cover, pop out ribbon and put new one in it's place.

How do I correct a paper jam? Try one or all of the following: Remove the toner cartridge, open the paper tray, open the back…check for paper jam and remove any paper or small pieces of paper. Replace tray and cartridge and close everything back up. Check to see if the main paper tray is set for letter sized paper. If that doesn’t correct the problem, talk to your Tech Rep or call the Computer Services On-Call pager.

How do I print to a printer other than the default? Click on File, select printer. When printer box appears, click on the down arrow next to the Printer Name box, select the printer from the drop down menu or list.
How do I feed envelopes and single sheets and switch back after using custom features? Open tray 1 (the top tray, put in paper or envelopes, using the guides on the flipdown tray. Send the print job from PC. When finished printing, close tray 1 and print jobs will be printed from paper in tray 2.

How do I switch printer functionality (portrait, landscape)? Select File on the Menu bar, click on page setup. When the page setup box appears, click on your choice of portrait or landscape. Click OK. This will change the orientation of the individual document.

What do I do when the printer won't print? 1- Check to see if it is turned on. 2- Check the pc's default or selected printer. 3- Check to see if the network cable or printer cables are connected. 4- Check to see if there are instructions or error messages displayed on the printer (i.e. paper jam; toner low; offline; needs maintenance). 5- Check the printer manager on the pc (staff printers only). 6- Restart computer to restore connectivity (staff PCs only). 7- Call the CS on-call pager.

How do I troubleshoot receipt printers? Check power connections. If there's no paper: put a new roll in, roll feeds from the bottom.

Public and Staff Copiers

How do I make copies?

How do I send faxes?

How do I cancel a fax, copy or print job on the MFP? Push the salmon(pink) buton labeled Stop. You may need to press it more than once.

How do I replace a toner cartridge? Remove old toner, open new toner package, remove the toner seal and insert into the printer.

Who do I call to repair a printer? Computer Services for service on HP 4100 & 4200 copiers.

How do I load paper? Remove tray 2, fan the paper and load into tray, reinsert tray.

How do I clear paper jams?

Self Checkout at Main Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

Where are the Self Checkout stations located? At Main only in the AV area, North of the Circulation desk & the Level 5 Reception area.

How do I change paper in the receipt printer? Remove the cover; remove the leftover tube from the old paper roll; insert the new paper roller with paper rolling off the bottom; thread through the guides.

How do I fix a misfeed in the receipt printer? Remove the paper and reinsert.

How do I troubleshoot exceptions with self checkout? Check to see if card is valid or if item is reference. Some items have billed status and need to be dealt with at Circulation. If the station is not working properly, call the CS on-call pager.

What do I do when CheckPointed materials set off the alarm? Check the checkpoint log to determine which items set off the alarm, check the patrons items for associated barcode, look it up to see if the item was checked out using the scanner instead of the CheckPoint pad. Note: CheckPointed materials checked out using hand keying or laser scanner will set off the alarm (notify the patron that this may happen, and that we will correct the problem when the item is returned).

Help! If you understand place a check mark in the box. √

Who do I contact if additional software is needed (do NOT install or download software on library computers)? Computer Services.

Who do I contact if a PC freezes or has problems? Contact your Tech Rep or call the CS on-call pager.
If all else fails, who you gonna call? The Computer Services on-call pager. If that fails try the ghostbusters.

What you should know about… The Integrated Library System.

Network Vocabulary, If you understand place a check mark in the box. √

Why do we have logins and who should have my login or our agency logins? 1- Logins and passwords are set up to provide security for our network and your individual work. 2- Agency and individual logins and passwords allow you access to the parts of our network that allow you to do your job. 3- You should never give your agency or individual logins or passwords to volunteers, family members or friends (there is a volunteer login them).

What is the difference between the Library network, the intranet and WWW or the internet? X
*Library Network: The Library’s LAN/WAN which includes HEDGEHOG server, internal or staff e-mail, printer servers, library catalog server, as well as other servers to staff pc’s to make our jobs easier. Intranet: A network based on the same communication protocols as the World Wide Web but limited to a specific group of computers. Intranet sites look and function exactly like Internet sites, but access is restricted to those computers with special permission. In our case, a Library staff based network for staff based information.
*WWW (World Wide Web): A hypermedia-based system for browsing Internet sites. It is called the Web because it is made of many Web sites linked together. You can travel from one site to another by clicking hyperlinks. The World Wide Web is just one part of the Internet. Internet: A worldwide network made up of many smaller interconnected networks. Computers connected to the Internet can access documents, files, databases, and programs from around the world. Computers called Web servers store information and make it available to other computers on the Internet

What is HEDGEHOG and what should I save on it? HEDGEHOG is part of the Library LAN. It is a server dedicated to saving staff documents and work in progress. Files saved to hedgehog can be accesed from any computer connected to the library network.

What is the My Documents folder and what should I save there? The My Documents folder is associated with your log on. Files saved to this folder can only be accessed by you when you log on with your user name and password

Which dinosaur is best? Stegosaurus.

The Library Network Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

How do I open or close files/folders on HEDGEHOG? 1- To open a file, click on the icon labeled Hedgehog on your desktop. Click on your agency folder, your folder and/or double click on the file (document) you want to open. 2- To close a file, click on the white x in the red box in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

How do I create folders and manage files on HEDGEHOG? To create a folder, go to HEDGEHOG, open the folder you want to create a new folder in, right click and select New then Folder. A new folder will appear, type the name of the new folder in the blue highlighted box.

How do I delete unwanted files and folders? To remove a folder or file, right click on the folder or file and select Delete or single click the file/folder and and press Delete on the keyboard. You will be asked if you really want to delete, click Yes.

How do I copy and move files from one folder to another? 1- Find the files or folder you want to copy. Right click and select Copy. Open the folder you want to copy the files or folder to. Right click on white space (anywhere in the folder except on one the icons representing a file) and select Paste. A copy of the file or folder and contents will be placed in the destination folder. If the file or folder is large, this may take a minute or two. 2- To move a file or folder, follow the instructions for Copy, clicking on Cut instead of Copy.

III Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

How do I perform basic searches on our online catalog (also called the OPAC)? For a full explaination attend the Reference I training class.

How do I perform basic circulation functions? For a full explaination attend the Circulation I and II training classes. Also see the Circ Skills Training Checklist.

What you should I know about… the Internet and Online Resources Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

The Internet, If you understand place a check mark in the box. √

What is a web browser is and how do use I it? A web browser is a software application used to locate and display Web pages.

How do I open and navigate a web site? Attend Reference III or ask your tech rep for a full explaination.

What are my options for printing all or part of a web site? X
*All- Prints everything.
*Selection- Prints just the parts you have highlighted with the mouse.
*Pages- Prints a range of pages, or select pages. For example you could choose to print the first three pages by typing 1-3, or you could print pages 3, 4 and 6 by typing 3,4, 6.

How do I use search engines? Attend Reference III for a full review

How do I add, open, and delete Favorites from staff PC's? X
*To add favorites: 1- Go to the website you would like to add. 2- Click on favorites in the menu bar then add to favorites. 3- You can choose to save the link in the default folder (by selecting ok), in a different folder (by selecting create in) or in a new folder (by selecting create in and then new folder).
*To delete favorites: 1- In internet explorer click on favorites then click organize favorites. 2- Select the link or folder you would like to remove then click delete.
*To rename a link in favorites: 1- In Internet explorer click on favorites then click organize favorites. 2- Select the link or folder you'd like to rename then click rename.

Which databases are offered on the Library Webpage? For a list open the public page on the internet. Select Search Databases under Research Center.
"What is Pioneer and what is available on it? Pioneer is an Online Library of electronic resources used throughout the state of Utah. Pioneer provides access to a variety of online resources ranging from newspapers and magazines to government information.
"

Which databases are available only at Main? You tell me, I have no idea.

Library Webmail and the Internet Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

How do I login to library email? Open the web browser of your choice (Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox). If you are on a Library staff computer, click on "Webmail" on the Staff Intranet page. This will open the Webmail log in page. Use your username and password to log in.

How do I receive (open and read) messages? After logging in to your webmail click on the message you would like to read.

How do I delete messages? Click on the check box next to the message then click on delete on the webmail tool bar.

How do I open attachments? Open the message. Then click on the attachment you'd like to open. Attached files will be listed underneath the subject line. To open the attachment click on the download icon and select the program you would like to use to open the attachment.

How do I insert attachments? 1- Scroll down to the bottom of the message composition window. 2- Click on browse, then find the file you would like to attach. 3- Click attach. The attachment is now ready to send.

How do I organize folders in my webmail account? Log in to your webmail. From the menu along the top of the screen select folders. The next screen will display a drop down menu bar, which will allow you to create, delete and rename webmail folders.

How do I access the Library home page and databases from home? Open your web browser in the address bar, type: www.slcpl.lib.ut.us To access databaese from home click on research center and then search databases. Click on the database you would like to access, most databases will ask your for you library card number when logging in from home.

Webmail Vocab If you understand the term or phrase place a check mark in the box. √

What is the size restriction on webmail attachments? 2,097,152 bytes

What is spam? Most spam is commercial advertising sent via email. Some spam may contain computer viruses.

What should I do with spam? Delete it.

What do I do with attachments with an .exe extension? Delete them!

What do I do if I don't know who sent the message? Delete the message.

What do I do when webmail asks to perform maintenance operations? Click "Perform" or yes.

Public Webmail Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

Where on the internet should I direct patrons to set up personal email accounts? Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail or any other website offering free email services. (Parental consent is required for email accounts for children under the age of 13).

How do I insert or open an attachment on a public webmail account? Procedures vary depending on the account, but all of the major free webmail providers (Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo) use a format similar to library webmail.

What you should know about… Phones Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

How do I answer the phone? Answer politely, state your name and department or branch.

How do I make a phone call? To dial a library number dial the four digit extension (the last four digits of the phone number). To make a call outside the library dial nine and then the phone number.

How do I transfer calls on all phone sets? On the cordless phones press the flash button, dial the number, then press flash again to transfer. On the corded phones press the Trans/Conf button on the phone, dial the number, then press the Trans/Conf button again.

How do I pick-up a call from a different extension? Press *68.

Where do I make long distance phone calls (and who do I ask for authorization)? Ask your manager for permission. Managers' phones can make long distance calls.

What you should know about… Assitive Technology Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

What assistive technology is available and where is it? Oversize Keyboard and large ball mouse (Cha, Fth, Riv, Spr, Swe, Main:Technology Center); Magnifyer (Main Library: Level 2 and Technology Center); Conversa Web (Verbal input) Main Technology Center.

Is there a password? At Main, Sprague and Day Riverside only: username: assisttech, password: lib00terms Staff need to log the patron in, do not give the patron the login information. (Is this still true?)

How do I use assitive attachment devices? The giant mouse and keyboard plug into USB ports.

Which assistive options are available on the Technology Center computers and how do I set them up? Big print profile, log onto the big print profile, Click on options available on the right hand side of the screen to change settings. You can set up the magnifyer, mouse settings. If you don't want to log on to the Big Print profile, you can access the screens to make the same changes by clicking: Start>Programs>Accessories>Accessibility>Magnifyer or Accessibility Wizard.

What you should know about... Microsoft Word Please mark 1,2,3,4, or NA

How do I create documents using Word? Your TechRep can help you or you can attend one of the classes offered to the public or
staff.

How do I format margins or adjust page setup? In Word, click file and select Page Setup? The Page Setup dialog box will appear. Format to your heart's content!

How do I format text? Use the Font, Font Size or Font Color buttons or click on Format, select font and use the Font dialog box to make changes.

How do I preview a document before printing? Click on File, then select Print Preview.

How do I print all or part of a document? To print everything, click on the printer button (or click on File and select Print), click on OK to print. To print part of a document, select or highlight the part of the document you want to print. Click File and select Print. Click on Selection and then on OK.

How do I save a document to a disc or the network (HEDGEHOG)? Click File, select Save As. The save as dialog box will appear. Use the "Save in:" drop down arrow to locate where you want to save your file. Enter the File Name and click OK. You tech rep can show you how to save on HEDGEHOG.

How do I open a saved document? Find the file and click on it; or open the program the file was created in (i.e. Word, Excel, etc) and click on the open folder. The open dialog box will appear and you can use the drop down arrow to locate your file. If you have difficulty, talk to your TechRep. Double click on the file or single click on the file and click "Open."

How do I create and format tables? Click where you want to create a table. On the Table menu, point to Insert, and then click Table. Under Table size, select the number of columns and rows. Under AutoFit behavior, choose options to adjust table size. To use a built-in table format, click AutoFormat. Select the options you want. To add other formatting, click on Table, select Table Properties. To add shading, select the area, then select Borders and Shading button and select the color/shade you want.

How do I create and format graphs? In the Insert menu, click Object, and then click the "Create New" tab. In the Object type box, click Microsoft Graph Chart, and then click OK. Graph displays a chart and its associated sample data in a table called a datasheet. To replace the sample data, click a cell on the datasheet, and then type the text or numbers you want, import data from a text file, import a Microsoft Excel worksheet, or copy data from another program (Click Edit, select Import File, locate file, click Open).

How do I create and format columns? Click Format, select Columns or click the columns button on the Standard Toolbar.

How do I insert WordArt, clip art or graphics? Click on Insert, select Picture. In the next menu choose WordArt, clip art, from file, or one of the other choices. Select the picture you would like to insert. If you need more help, check with your TechRep or use the Help question box in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Excel

Powerpoint

Other Equipment

RSS part three

2008-04-07T13:21:00.001-07:00

Whoa RSS revolutuion! I just thought of a use for RSS feeds that might be useful to me. So I was checking out the website of an author I like to see when her next book was coming out and I saw a little RSS feed thingey. I could RSS feed my favorite authors and then I wouldn't have to check their websites all the time to find out when their next book was coming out. Sweet deal!

Online Image Generators

2008-04-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some motivational posters I made w/ online image generators. I like to give a big shout out to Paul over at Pollywog's Pad for turning me onto these.

RSS continued...

2008-04-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

RSS coming at ya a second time BAM. Google Reader is the champion of the day here, is there anything google can't do? Syndic8 is garbage. Did they do some sort of survey to find the least visually appealing website layout and then go w/ that? C'mon folks. Not that google reader was perfect either, I found a fair number of unusual ones hits during my search. For example there was this library comic strip that didn't make me laugh once, but I kept reading it for a good five minutes until finally a boredom induced brain hemorrhage robbed me of consciousness. When I came to, the comic was nowhere to be seen and I could continue leading a productive and satisfying life once again. I also found this gem Bruce Cowper's Canadian IT Pro Community Forum Microsoft Technet Canada while searching syndic8. I don't know what it is, but I'm pretty sure it's not what I'm looking for. I also found a bunch of library blogs by people I heard speak at PLA in Minnesota. I'm gonna make a blog about my PLA experiences some day soon. And that's all I have to say about RSS, ever again. Savor it while you can world. ;)

RSS

2008-03-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

When RSS feeds were first explained to me I didn't get it. Then I had someone else explain it to me, I still didn't get it. Finally I got it. Now I have an RSS feed reader, perhaps I only sort of get it. I added 9 feeds which I think will be useful, the blogs of the other nine people in my department. Now I can keep tabs on their blogs more easily. I also added some feeds from the times and some library websites like david lee king. I wish we hadn't been required to add so many feeds. How much time do you think I spend reading websites at work everyday? I don't have time to see every single update from that many sites, even when it's narrowed down to give me only information which I might find relevant. If I go back and delete some of the extra websites I was forced to add I bet I'll actually find RSS feeds borderline useful. If nothing else I won't have to check everyones blog anymore.

Flickr Mashups

2008-03-19T12:37:00.001-07:00

I enjoyed this activity. Look, look, I even found a practical application for the trading card generator. Liesl took over my book baby program for last week on short (very short, one might even say nonexistent) notice. So I made her this card. Next time she doesn't feel up to book baby I'll take care of it.

This whole trading card generator reminds me of an idea my friend and I had when we worked at the Marriott Library. We were going to make staff trading cards. We took pictures of everyone and I even kept stats on myself for two weeks (# of check-ins/outs, #of books shelved, dollar amount of fines collected, plus a bunch of other stats I don't remember). Eventually the project ran out of steam as a result of a combination of apathy and lack of ability to create an interesting template for the cards, if only this flickr trading card maker had existed back then.

I also made a second card w/ our department logo from the basketball tournament last summer. Super rad!

Flickr

2008-03-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

Flickr is nice I suppose.... I feel like I'm already down with this post.
Here's a dinosaur picture I found on flickr. I stole it from Scott Kinmartin, I don't know him and I probably never will. I don't really see a way that flickr is relevant to my work here at the library. I suppose I could use a flickr account to upload pictures of events that happened here at the library, but it seems to me that is what the library's website is for.
I doubt I would even come to flickr to search for an image of something, google's image search has always been good enough for me.

Library Thing

2008-02-26T16:12:00.000-08:00

I love library thing. I started entering in a few of my favorite books, then a bunch of picture books from my storytime books excel spreadsheet and now I want to enter in a billion more things. Every book I enter makes me think of 10 more books that I must have on my list.

Technorati

2008-02-25T17:26:00.000-08:00

So the first time I did this exercise, I took really precise notes. I wrote down number of hits, relevance, my favorites blog titles, really and truly the whole nine yards, super meticulous. Then i lost that paper. So rather than trying to replicate my first experience I'm just going to tell y'all how I feel about technorati (from the heart this time). Honestly when I look at technorati i just feel tired. There's information plastered all over the place 1,000,000 gems of knowledge just waiting to be unearthed and treasured, cherished even. I'm sure I could spend my entire life on technorati and find more interesting blogs than I could count. I would also find an even more unbelievably vast quantity of poorly written blogs, boring blogs, innane blogs, absolutely worthless blogs and even downright wrong blogs. The easiest way for me to envision technorati in the physical world is as a giant search-able bus station. That is to say, imagine if I could go to some vast public place and call out a string of keywords and by doing this summon forth all people who had anything at all they would like to say about my set of keywords. Useful? Perhaps. I might be lucky enough to summon forth a Nobel prize winning scientist who happened to be in my bus station that day, of course he might have been summoned by my desire to know what "the best movie of 2007" was, a question which he might not be any better suited to answer than I am. That is the biggest problem with blogs. There is no guarantee that the bloggers (the person writing the blog) have any real expertise in the subjects they are writing on. Technorati does try to alleviate this problem by showing a blog's "authority" and number of fans. Authority records the number of times a blog is referenced by other blogs and a blog's number of fans just shows how many people like the blog enough to self-describe themselves as fans of it. While blogs with high authority and larger numbers of fans do tend to be better written there is no guarantee that these blogs have more accurate information, only more popular information. I feel like Technorati (and to an extent wikipedia as well) represents a democratization of information, it represents a situation where popularity trumps legitimacy and where the sheer weight of public opinion can dictate truth. Imagine the 15th century's technorati or wikipedia the vast mass of the populous could assure you that the earth was flat, their voices drowning out the educated elite that knew the earth to be round.

I'm sorry technorati. I didn't intend for this to turn into a mean spirited tirade against you, I actually do like the premise of the site. I just get nervous that people will look at this as a research tool, just because the library wants us to learn about it. It's not a research tool, but it can be an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.

Del.icio.us

2008-02-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

I thi.nk that the most us.ef.ul thing I lea.rned from del.icio.us is that i.t is ac.cep.tab.le to in.ser.t mul.ti.ple per.iod..s in.to a w.ord. Not only is this beh.avio.r c..ool, i.t is als.o us.ef.ul. I've ev.en co.nsid.ered inc.luding i.t in an emer.gent l.iter.acy hand.out, or us.ing it in sto.ry.tim.e. Seriously though, I didn't find del.icio.us to be that useful of a site. I don't go home to my computer lab each night and wonder which of my 12 computers has the link I'm looking for, in fact I can't remember the last time I saved a link per.iod. Google does a fine job of searching out which ever site I happen to be looking for and I feel like typing something into the google search bar in firefox is quicker that searching thru a bookmarks folder and it is definitely quicker than logging into del.icio.us and then searching my links for whatever it is I'm looking for.

As far as using del.icio.us to provide reference help, I'm not sure I'm sold. I speculated that google would once again be more effective. So I decided to test this hypothesis, by searching some tags in del.icio.us and then searching those same terms in google. I decided to search nature, orangutans, trees (no I can't explain why I chose those terms, but I did, so now we all have to live w/ them) in del.icio.us and I immediately encountered a drawback to using del.icio.us, I can't spell, therefore, I certainly can't spell orangutans. My attempt ended up looking something like 'oragatang.' Del.icio.us was not impressed, it rewarded my search w/ 0 results and no suggestions on how i might find more. Google on the other hand actually found 31 results that other grievous mispellers of the web had posted and better still google, in it's infinite wisdom, asked me did you mean nature, orangutans, trees ? Yes. Yes I did google. Google then went on to show me some 36,000 sites that matched my criteria. I only looked at the first page, but most of the results looked relevant. I then took the correct spelling google had provided me and offered it to del.icio.us. Del.icio.us gave me one result, something about the origins of walking began in the trees. This was not what I had hoped to find. Google 1, Del.icio.us 0. I, being a kind a generous soul, decided to give deli.cio.us a second chance. Perhaps this one search was a fluke. I decided this time I would have a clearer objective when I searched (my triplet of only somewhat related terms may have been what caused del.icio.us fits). My objective became information on the movies of the 2006 sundance film festival. I phrased my search as: sundance, 2006, movies. Both google and del.icio.us provided me w/ many relevant links right on the first page, however del.cio.us actually provided me w/ the same link 6 times, 6 of the first seven links were to the sundance 2006 official website, which in a way is actually good, that's probably the most relevant site, but on the other hand suggesting it 6 times is a little over the top. Google provided a variety of sites w/ the information on the movies of sundance 2006 and since we're dealing w/ the reviews here I think at least a little bit of variety is important. Google 2, Del.icio.us 0. (Google also found the sundance 2006 official page).

Before I end I should clarify my opinions of del.icio.us. I'm not trying to say del.icio.us is a bad site, or a useless website, on the contrary, it seems to have plenty of great applications, but those applications are either not particularly relevant to my situation or those applications are redundant and my needs are better filled by another website (thanks google!). I should however give credit where credit is due and I must admit I did have one great success w/ del.icio.us. A few weeks ago, when the library 2.0 was still in its testing phase, I was previewing a few of the exercises at home and i decided to give del.icio.us a shot. I searched my favorite nba rumor site in delicious and then used the tags associated w/ it to try to find a similar site, I browsed long and hard and finally I stumbled across a website previously unknown to me http://heylarryhughespleasestoptakingsomanybadshots.com/ it was hillarious and it is updated frequently so I've visit it often since discovering it (thanks del.icio.us!) I can never remember the prohibitively long url though... so I always search larry hughes stop on google and it comes right up.

Maps

2008-01-22T13:37:00.000-08:00

Here are my maps of countries and states I've visited. This activity is from week 7 (it's waaay out of order).

In March I get to add state #29, Minnesota, when I go to PLA. Hopefully later this year I'll be able to add Tennessee, Virginia and maybe even Maryland for #30, #31 and #32.

Week 2

2008-01-10T10:13:00.000-08:00

I checked out a couple of the wikis listed on the learning 2.0 website. I was generally impressed with the SJCPL wiki, especially the format they used. To start I clicked on biography and memoir, the page then displays definitions of various types of biographies followed by a listing of new biographies at the library, staff recommend biographies and best selling biographies. Pictures of the book cover are shown just like one would expect to see on amazon or barnes and noble's website and clicking on those pictures links you to the library catalog. On the downside the page has been updated since feb of last year, so the new books aren't exactly new anymore.... I then tried browsing by categories, hobbies and then travel. Travel had a similar lay-out w/ the books, but it also included an "in the news" link to a travel to Torino in 2006 website, once again very out of date. The travel section also included lists of travel magazines, links to travel websites, dewy numbers and info on language learning help. The other wiki i visited was iread the Iowa reader's advisory wiki. One probably I noticed was they had lots of categories to browse (e.g. children's -> Historical Fiction) w/ nothing, or very options recommended. The adult and teen genres seemed to have more options, but I was never overly impressed by the quantity of books recommended. One thing I did like is the convenient links the site had to add a delicious bookmark or RSS. The problem i noticed is that for wikis to be success for they need frequent contribution and updates. Wikis generally useful proportionate to the number of contributors they have. Wikipedia is so successful because it has millions of contributors worldwide. The wikis I looked at today are limited in what they can do, because they have a much smaller group of contributors. While wikipedia is used by internet users around the world, I doubt that the SJCPL wiki attracts many contributors outside of St Jospeh's County library users who also use the internet.

Learning 2.0

2007-12-20T16:07:00.000-08:00

Step one complete! Personally I found week one's activities to be fairly easy. I already have a gmail account so I skipped that step. Blogger seems pretty straight forward, the only difficulty I encountered was when I, on a whim, went into settings and made the transliteration English to Hindi button active. Unless you can read Hindi I don't recommend it, it changed everything I typed directly into Hindi characters. I spent maybe a grand total of 45 minutes working this out and that includes numerous interruptions (i was on desk the whole time) and much agonizing over which template I would use.