The Librarydude!

I came across this book in my library today. Dealing With Difficult People In The Library by Mark Willis. Works like this are essential for those lucky ones who work in a library, especially a public library. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, I enjoy providing the service I do, and I get incredible amounts of satisfaction seeing a customer walk away happy that they have what they came for. What I do not like at all, however are the “difficult” people, (or as one of my previous collegues called them, “The Lunar affected” because the number of incidents increased around full moons. (Maybe there’s a study in that)), who are obnoxious, greedy, impolite, demanding and self-centred among other traits.
Willis’ work will help me with this…

Our library service is trying to bring back the Reader’s Advisor aspect of public librarianship. Not a bad thing is it? So as an aid to me, here’s a couple of RA related links that may come in useful. I want to credit Rebecca Blood of What’s In Rebecca’s Pocket? for leading me to these links.
For locating books set in specific locations, try out Bibliotravel. Here you can enter the name of a city, and you’ll retrieve a list of books set in that particular location. I tried it with my home city of Canberra (Australia) but only got one result
Debbie’s Idea (and a fine one it is), can assist with finding the first book of an author for a person to read. It also lists the ones that are not recommended for the first time reader to the author.
What Should I Read Next is useful for finding, uh, what you should read next.
Some of these may end up on my sidebar, some may not. I suppose it all depends on how useful I eventually find them, and whenever I get around to customising this blog some more.
Our library service is trying to bring back the Reader’s Advisor aspect of public librarianship. Not a bad thing is it? So as an aid to me, here’s a couple of RA related links that may come in useful. I want to credit Rebecca Blood of What’s In Rebecca’s Pocket? for leading me to these links.

For locating books set in specific locations, try out Bibliotravel. Here you can enter the name of a city, and you’ll retrieve a list of books set in that particular location. I tried it with my home city of Canberra (Australia) but only got one result

Debbie’s Idea (and a fine one it is), can assist with finding the first book of an author for a person to read. It also lists the ones that are not recommended for the first time reader to the author.

What Should I Read Next is useful for finding, uh, what you should read next.

Some of these may end up on my sidebar, some may not. I suppose it all depends on how useful I eventually find them, and whenever I get around to customising this blog some more.

Google, I have just seen, (although I’m way behind, as this has been available since September) have progressed with their provision of out of copyright texts and have enabled the access of some of these titles via their Google Book Search service. The idea of this is a good one, and assuming Google do not break their self-set boundary of not breaking copyright, it will be a very useful service.
I will say here, that I have not yet performed many searches on Google Books, and so I cannot vouch for its ease of use or effectiveness, although I will when I have a free moment.
The original announcement of this service can be found on Googleblog, at this entry. While Googleblog can seem like one long advertisment (and it is) it does have occasional interesting news. Though trawling through it every day can be a chore…

Farewell Blogger!

I (at least for the time being) have grown weary of Blogger and the amount of time it takes to do anything pretty, or more sophisticated than basic italics and bolding in text. I just do not have the patience for learning HTML, looking up BloggerHacks to find out how to add anything sophisticated and hoping that any change to my template doesn't screw everything up. While this might make be an unsophisticated non-programmer type, I only wanted somewhere I can write my stuff and have my own little web presence.

But do not despair, noble citizens! The LibraryDude has not disappeared, but has moved over to Wordpress at:

http://librarydude.wordpress.com

See you there...

I'm thinking of leaving Blogger. I'm not very happy with the limited amount of stuff I can do here, so I'm thinking of heading on over to Wordpress.com. There I can have pretty pictures and a more logical setup, and not have to worry about HTML as much.

I'll investigate this.

Following on from the previous entry, heres a few more links in relation to the “Taser incident” in which UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad was “tasered” by Officers after not providing ID. Those who clicked on the YouTube link in my previous post (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3CdNgoC0cE) will have seen Mostafa being tasered while handcuffed and being “asked” to stand up. Like it is possible to stand up while being shocked with electricity.

So the crime of not producing ID results in being electrocuted. But only if you have a foreign sounding name? And don’t look “American” enough? If his name was Bob Smith, white male from New York, would this have happened?

Now that I think of it, it probably would. The “officers” there seemed like they were too drunk on their own power at the time. And security and police are never racist or prejudiced are they?

But to the links:

The Official Police Report (.pdf format) - http://www.ucpd.ucla.edu/ucpd/zippdf/2006/Taser%2011-15-06.pdf

NBC article - http://www.nbc11.com/news/10328455/detail.html

The UCLA Response - http://newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=7513

Apologies for this not being so much a library based post, but this burns me that this sort of thing could happen.

Originally found out about this over at Library Mofo. Check the site out, but be warned that there is a bit of foul language at times.

Libraries are seen to be safe places right? That may be the perception, but its not always right. Have a look at this article, and (if you can) the video below.

Article: http://dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=38958

Video (via YouTube): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3CdNgoC0cE

That's scary that something like this can happen...

Every few days at our library there appears a small consignment of new items for the collection. I will state now that I work in an actual public library branch, and not in collection development, so my experience with new material is limited to what is sent to my branch, which currently is one on nine (soon to be one of only eight- but that's another topic).

Anyway, the box of new items arrives today, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a little gem in with all the new novels and non fiction. A copy of the 2006 WWE Judgement Day wrestling Pay Per View.

Now we are a public library, and like many other public libraries we hold a lot, (some would say too much) of entertainment DVDs - movies, TV series and the like. And yet it was a complete (and really pleasant) surprise to see wrestling in the new arrivals.

I remember a few years ago, I had to fight to get copies of Mick Foley's Biography Have A Nice Day: A Tale Of Blood And Sweatsocks into the collection, having been told it was "too frivolous" for a non-fiction work. I successfully argued for that one, and copies of his second work of biography and his two novels. But even I was surprised to see actual wrestling dvds arrive. The biographies have some academic value, I argued, and are worthy of a place in the collection. The DVDs I wouldn't have been able to make such a claim for, and if it were solely my decision, I wouldn't have bought too many either. (For the library that is, I have about a hundred of WWF, WCW and ECW videos and DVDs in my personal collection at home).

It's a good feeling, knowing that the collection development of my library service is finally starting to get with the times.

The LibraryDude!

* after typing this post, The LibraryDude went and watched said DVD with his fiancee*

I was shown this site in training yestreday. (The training was to improve our Reader's Advisor part of our service)

Literature Map

The whole idea is that you type in an author and you get a visual "map" of related authors in a nice pattern around it. (Try it and you'll see what I mean). However, I'm not sure of how reliable it is. According to this site, the closest related authors to Monty Python are Robert Burns, and Karl Marx...

Monty Python is listed as a related author to James Herbert too. Is this just a couple of isolated incidents? Is Literature map reliable? I was going to add it to my list of links on the side but I'm not so sure now.

Anyway, see you again next time.

Edit: 5 minutes later. : The map has settled a bit and Monty python and Robert Burns have a sizable gap between them now. That's a lot better than before, though its a bit troubling that for accurate results you need to wait a few minutes. That's not an option when doing RA at the branches.

"Where's My Library?"


One month to go until the unveiling of our new library.

Still no pictures however, my camera has been low on power ever since I put my rechargable batteries somewhere "safe". (ie I haven't been able to find them) However, for those who are interested, an architect's view drawing can be seen above. It's not the best way to show the new library as the library is not really visible at all in this picture. See the round white building on the right? That's not it... thats a theatre. The grey bricky building to the extreme right? That's not it either... that's an art gallery. But see those two drawn figures on the right under the flags/banners? Just behind them is a building with huge glass windows.

See it?

That's it.

Hope to see some of you there when we open on the 8th December.

Another link to an article (actually a show) about the Living Library Project, which is rapidly becoming an obsession of mine on this blog.

But I do think its a great idea.

infospeak.com

mp3 format of Living Library episode

A couple of notes regarding my last post about the Living Library program. According to the Enough Rope website, the Lismore Public Library in NSW launched its own Living Library Project yesterday. More details when they come to hand.

Also, the project was mentioned to one of our managers who thought it was a great idea, and one that would be successful in our own library service. The practicalities of getting it up and running, considering the current state of the service (which I will not go into at this time), are another matter.

On another topic. I spent an hour yesterday filling beanbags with beanbag beans. I love setting up the new library. And this one has heaps of space for our Young Adults (YA) section, which I see as a god thing. Too many times the YA sections in libraries are stuck in corners or wherever they fit, and often do not have the space they deserve. This one for our new city library (which opens December 8th) is much better! If I can sneak a camera there, I'll get some photos...

Just over a month to go.

Remember when libraries were just books and serials? And then we moved into holding larger collections of recorded music, films and digital information and other "non-traditional library" items.

But what about libraries lending people? The library at Malmo in Sweden lends out people for 45 minute sessions. The person "lent" out is a volunteer and can be asked any question from the borrower. The person (otherwise known as the Living Book) does not have to answer all questions and can decide what they wish to say and how far they want to go.

At the moment the Living Books include an Imam, Muslim Women, a Lesbian and Gypsy women. All of these can be "borrowed".

A full transcript and downloadable mp3 copy of the interview from the Enough Rope program from which I learned about this can be found here.