I read an article from the Associated Press about how the Harry Potter series is now finally going to become available in e-book format. However these ebooks will only be available through J.K. Rowling's website: Pottermore. They will not be sold by Amazon or any other ebookseller. She has completely cut the booksellers out of the loop. And this situation got me thinking, does this spell the beginning of the end of booksellers? Could all ebooks be put out on individual websites by authors or publishers? It seems that by cutting the booksellers out then the authors/publishers could have a larger margin of profit on each book sold. In this sense, these ebooks could be a huge profit for J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter is one of the most popular book series ever having sold over 450 million copies and having been translated into 67 different languages. However I wonder if this elimination of the bookseller would only work for types of books like Harry Potter, that already have huge followings. For new authors and lesser known works I still feel like booksellers will play and essential role because consumers won't buy those books because they are looking for a specific book. They will more likely find those lesser known books and authors through searches by topic, genre, browsing, or through marketing efforts of the bookseller.
I have a color nook from Barnes and Noble, and as a nook owner I am signed up for a weekly email advertising ebooks that Barnes and Noble offers. These emails include popular titles (ones that probably don't need marketing), and lesser known works that are advertised as "great deals" because they are usually much cheaper than the popular titles. But because of this advertising I would surmise that these books achieve much better sales then they otherwise would. And in this sense these authors and publishers "need" booksellers. But J.K. Rowling decided that she did not "need" them to sell her books so she is creating her own alternative book selling website.
In my personal opinion I hope that not many other authors decide to go down this route because that would eliminate the browse-ability factor of booksellers. I know that "browse-ability" is a concept that librarians love to talk about, the serendipitous effect of finding great reads by randomly browsing shelves or in an online marketplace by scrolling through different topics or genres. I think it would be a large pain to have to search multiple different websites to find different books that I would like to buy and read. Therefore I hope more authors do not follow in J.K. Rowling's footsteps. Even though booksellers do make books more expensive because they must add in their cut to make a profit, the convenience they provide in searching for a book to buy improves my overall experience and therefore I find them to be a worthwhile part of the process.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Review of Ready Play One
Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, was honestly one of the most enjoyable books that I have read in a long time. I hope that statement conveys my strong positive recommendation of this book because I am an avid reader and read many books each week. But Ready Player One grabbed my attention early, made me care about Wade Watts, the protagonist, and kept my brain stimulated with trivia and puzzles. Ready Player One is set in 2044, where our current environmental and economic problems have caused severe problems for the earth leaving humans seeking a way to get out of their reality. They do this by playing a virtual reality game called OASIS, which it seems that every single person on earth plays for significant portions of their day. The creator of OASIS, James Halliday, is obviously then a billionaire many times over. And when he dies with no heirs he creates a contest to find a secret “Easter egg” hidden in the OASIS video game. To find this prize there are three keys and gates which you must find and open first and all of the trials in this contest center around his favorite subjects: 80’s trivia and videogames. Five years pass with no one being able to even find the first key, then Wade stumbles upon the first key and suddenly the game kicks into high gear. With memorable characters, an exciting story line, random bits of videogame and 80’s trivia, we follow Wade and his fellow gunters (those who spend all their time searching for the Easter egg) as they try to win the contest before the enemy “Sixers” (who only want the Easter egg so that they can control OASIS and institutionalize it) can.
I am not a huge videogame fan, but I was born in the 80s and therefore I enjoyed a lot of the 80’s pop culture references. This book is not overly geeky so that only videogame fans would enjoy it. Cline’s storyline and characters were so gripping and realistic that they were able to take center stage of the story while the videogame lore filled in as just part of the plot. Overall I recommend Ready Player One to all adults and young adults who enjoy adventure, mystery, or science fiction stories. I think it should be one of the top books of 2011.
Awesome Awesome Awesome Book Five Huge Stars (out of Five)
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Why Libraries?
With so many budget cuts in communities and public schools, often funding for libraries is being cut. In the Charlotte area principals were told that they had to choose between a counselor, a academic facilitator or a librarian position for the 2011-2012 school year, they could not have all three. Consequently many librarians are losing their positions for next year. As I keep reading articles (online and otherwise) about this topic of cuts to library and library staff funding, it seems like every time someone makes a comment along the lines of: "I don't use the public library, so why should my tax dollars pay for it?" Which relates back to the question of why are public libraries important?
I wanted to spend a little while trying to answer this question, but I felt that it was too important for me to wait and potentially forget about. Because no matter whether or not I ever actually get to work in a public library (which I would love to do), I still believe that they are vital and important to strong and healthy communities.
Reason 1 Why Libraries are Vital: They provide learning and self-help opportunities.
Libraries provide access to vast amount of information that can provide individuals with learning and self-help opportunities that they may not be able to get else where. You may say that the Internet can do the same thing, which is partially true that the Internet can provide vast amounts of information however there are three things that the Internet can't do.
One, is provide you with only verified information. Part of a librarian's job to selectively choose the resources that are made available in the library. Librarians are called to provide diverse view points of resources on issues, but also to make sure that those resources are of high quality for their purpose. Google can't guarantee that its results are good results, only that its results seem to have the key words that you entered into the search bar.
Two, there are still many people who cannot afford to have the Internet at home, therefore they must go somewhere with computers to access all of that information on the Internet. Where do people go to find free access to computers? The library.
Finally, there is still a lot of information not on the "free" Internet. If you use a Google search there is still a lot of very good and useful information that you will not be able to find. Some of that information is still only found in books. Not all books have been digitalized and even if they have been digitalized not all of those ebooks are available in a simple Google search. Often they are proprietary (not free) information that is located behind a pay wall. Furthermore there are many databases which libraries subscribe to, which are also proprietary in nature. Databases often contain articles or reports which are very useful and often some of the most recent and highest quality resources available on a certain topic. Databases usually can only be accessed through someone who has already paid for access, such as the library. Furthermore, don't even get me started on the deep web, the vast amount of information that is stored on the Internet, but will never come up on a Google search because it is not indexed by Google. Part of what librarians are trained to do is to find information of all types and sizes on all sorts of different topics. Some great information on some topics can be found in the deep web and some librarians (such as myself) are trained to help you find it there.
Now that my lengthy explanation that not all information can be found on the Internet is over, hopefully I have shown that libraries are essential to providing those learning and self-help environments and resources that people need. Libraries are free, try within reason to have reasonable hours, provide useful resources on many many different topics and also provide helpful staff, trained to assist patrons in how to find the information they need. With out these free places for people to learn, how could they improve their lot in life? How much more would their quality of life suffer without having access to this information that could help them: find a job, start a business, research a medical condition, or whatever other issues they needed to investigate?
I hope to provide more reasons in the future as to why libraries are important, but it feels good to at least get one out in public.
I wanted to spend a little while trying to answer this question, but I felt that it was too important for me to wait and potentially forget about. Because no matter whether or not I ever actually get to work in a public library (which I would love to do), I still believe that they are vital and important to strong and healthy communities.
Reason 1 Why Libraries are Vital: They provide learning and self-help opportunities.
Libraries provide access to vast amount of information that can provide individuals with learning and self-help opportunities that they may not be able to get else where. You may say that the Internet can do the same thing, which is partially true that the Internet can provide vast amounts of information however there are three things that the Internet can't do.
One, is provide you with only verified information. Part of a librarian's job to selectively choose the resources that are made available in the library. Librarians are called to provide diverse view points of resources on issues, but also to make sure that those resources are of high quality for their purpose. Google can't guarantee that its results are good results, only that its results seem to have the key words that you entered into the search bar.
Two, there are still many people who cannot afford to have the Internet at home, therefore they must go somewhere with computers to access all of that information on the Internet. Where do people go to find free access to computers? The library.
Finally, there is still a lot of information not on the "free" Internet. If you use a Google search there is still a lot of very good and useful information that you will not be able to find. Some of that information is still only found in books. Not all books have been digitalized and even if they have been digitalized not all of those ebooks are available in a simple Google search. Often they are proprietary (not free) information that is located behind a pay wall. Furthermore there are many databases which libraries subscribe to, which are also proprietary in nature. Databases often contain articles or reports which are very useful and often some of the most recent and highest quality resources available on a certain topic. Databases usually can only be accessed through someone who has already paid for access, such as the library. Furthermore, don't even get me started on the deep web, the vast amount of information that is stored on the Internet, but will never come up on a Google search because it is not indexed by Google. Part of what librarians are trained to do is to find information of all types and sizes on all sorts of different topics. Some great information on some topics can be found in the deep web and some librarians (such as myself) are trained to help you find it there.
Now that my lengthy explanation that not all information can be found on the Internet is over, hopefully I have shown that libraries are essential to providing those learning and self-help environments and resources that people need. Libraries are free, try within reason to have reasonable hours, provide useful resources on many many different topics and also provide helpful staff, trained to assist patrons in how to find the information they need. With out these free places for people to learn, how could they improve their lot in life? How much more would their quality of life suffer without having access to this information that could help them: find a job, start a business, research a medical condition, or whatever other issues they needed to investigate?
I hope to provide more reasons in the future as to why libraries are important, but it feels good to at least get one out in public.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
My future in Librarianship
I graduated with my MLIS degree about 1 month ago. So I can officially call myself a librarian, I guess. However, how do I spend my days? I work as a veterinary assistant at an animal hospital, so am I truly a librarian? If you asked me a year ago where I would be today I felt sure that I would be job hunting or hopefully in a librarian role, but here in Charlotte both the public schools and the public libraries are not fairing well and are either laying off librarians or not hiring any more. Since moving is not an option right now, where does that leave me?
I just started this job as a veterinary assistant slightly over 1 month ago. I took the job because it was full time (I was only part time before) and it meant no working on Sundays and after 90 days I will have health benefits. Are these good reasons for taking a job? In this economy (which in Charlotte is still not great) I personally thought that it was a good decision. But what does that do for my career as a librarian?
I have been thinking about this a lot recently, I still feel called be serve others through providing them with information and I still feel that literacy, books, and reading are extremely important. Right now I am fixated on the career of being a researcher, of being assigned a certain topic to research and then righting a report about it for a client. Part of me would like to be a consultant of some kind, helping companies organized their materials. (Part of the desire to be a consultant stems from a cataloging internship that I did and blogged about in my last semester as a graduate student).
On days like today I feel lost as to where I am supposed to be going in my career. Questions whether to stay at my job or keep looking for a new one. I feel an obligation to my current job because they just hired me and I feel it would be kind of crappy for them to invest all this time training me and then I go and quit on them.
I just read a post by Ken Haycock, a summary of a speech he gave as a commencement address to graduating MLIS students. And this paragraph stuck with me:
"7. Your job title is irrelevant. The discipline is Library and Information Science, the profession is Librarianship (in my opinion, there is no such profession called Information) and the job title is irrelevant. Don’t look for a job title in the ads, look for a reflection of your knowledge, skills and abilities. There are jobs, good jobs, if you don’t limit yourself by geographic location, by type of preferred work environment or type of library or by lack of imagination. Remember that employers do not care about your grades or the courses you took but do care deeply about what you can do and how well you can play with others. The largest employers of librarians today are not libraries but vendors, and they are challenged in finding qualified and capable librarians to work for them. In my forty years I have never had the job title “librarian”; indeed, my professional skill set was probably most useful when I was a school principal where we planned action research, made decisions based on evidence and collaborated through partnerships. "
I want to look outside the traditions, but I feel caught between wanting to continue to search for new opportunities and the desire to be lazy and stay where I am at. I have been job searching for almost 2-3 years straight (long story, but I basically kept changing jobs). I am tried of job searching, but I afraid that some great opportunity is going to be passing me by if I don't. I want to use the skills I gained through my MLIS, I feel I could be great at a job where I could use them... but it seems like there is little out there for me right now and it is difficult to keep up with trends in librarianship when you aren't in a library...
Or maybe I am just a big whiner. :)
I just started this job as a veterinary assistant slightly over 1 month ago. I took the job because it was full time (I was only part time before) and it meant no working on Sundays and after 90 days I will have health benefits. Are these good reasons for taking a job? In this economy (which in Charlotte is still not great) I personally thought that it was a good decision. But what does that do for my career as a librarian?
I have been thinking about this a lot recently, I still feel called be serve others through providing them with information and I still feel that literacy, books, and reading are extremely important. Right now I am fixated on the career of being a researcher, of being assigned a certain topic to research and then righting a report about it for a client. Part of me would like to be a consultant of some kind, helping companies organized their materials. (Part of the desire to be a consultant stems from a cataloging internship that I did and blogged about in my last semester as a graduate student).
On days like today I feel lost as to where I am supposed to be going in my career. Questions whether to stay at my job or keep looking for a new one. I feel an obligation to my current job because they just hired me and I feel it would be kind of crappy for them to invest all this time training me and then I go and quit on them.
I just read a post by Ken Haycock, a summary of a speech he gave as a commencement address to graduating MLIS students. And this paragraph stuck with me:
"7. Your job title is irrelevant. The discipline is Library and Information Science, the profession is Librarianship (in my opinion, there is no such profession called Information) and the job title is irrelevant. Don’t look for a job title in the ads, look for a reflection of your knowledge, skills and abilities. There are jobs, good jobs, if you don’t limit yourself by geographic location, by type of preferred work environment or type of library or by lack of imagination. Remember that employers do not care about your grades or the courses you took but do care deeply about what you can do and how well you can play with others. The largest employers of librarians today are not libraries but vendors, and they are challenged in finding qualified and capable librarians to work for them. In my forty years I have never had the job title “librarian”; indeed, my professional skill set was probably most useful when I was a school principal where we planned action research, made decisions based on evidence and collaborated through partnerships. "
I want to look outside the traditions, but I feel caught between wanting to continue to search for new opportunities and the desire to be lazy and stay where I am at. I have been job searching for almost 2-3 years straight (long story, but I basically kept changing jobs). I am tried of job searching, but I afraid that some great opportunity is going to be passing me by if I don't. I want to use the skills I gained through my MLIS, I feel I could be great at a job where I could use them... but it seems like there is little out there for me right now and it is difficult to keep up with trends in librarianship when you aren't in a library...
Or maybe I am just a big whiner. :)
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Book Review: Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon
Back on my trusty blog again...
So it seems my posts have been thematic in nature, as I go through different phases, by posts go through different phases. Most of the posts (who am I kidding) ALL of my posts this spring were about my internship with Family Support Network. Now that has officially ended. I greatly enjoyed that consulting experience and would love to do something similar again at some point if the opportunity arises.
However today I wanted to post a brief review of a book galley I read this week. It is of the book Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon. I saw it on my weekly Netgalley email and I love Cinderella stories so I had to read it. And overall it was pretty good, for a YA novel.
Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon is an interesting new take for YA readers on the classic Cinderella story, although it strays the farthest from the original Cinderella of any version I have ever read. In this version Cinder and Ella are two sisters, Cinder the obedient one and Ella the beautiful one and closest to her father. They have two sisters, Katrina who is the bossy and demanding one and Beatrice who is immature and greedy. The girl’s father is bewitched by the evil Prince and leaves/disappears, while their mother becomes completely absorbed in her spinning. From this set up we can see the similarities with the traditional Cinderella story; however the plot drifts far from the original. The novel includes all of the elements of a good fairy tale: knights, adventures, and love, while not treating the story too simplistically. The characters in the story especially Ella, are thoroughly developed and while they have stereotypical moments most characters are highly humanized and very personable. Additionally the dialogue between the characters is often witty and fast pasted. However, the plot itself I felt was not fully as developed and flushed out as it could have been. For example, in the background of the story is the legend that each person’s life is connected with a tree that grew on the same day they were born. This legend, while mentioned, seems to change throughout the novel as further magic is introduced into the story. Sometimes that magic seems highly contrived and used just to get the author out of a tight spot. I wish the author had gone back and written in the magical elements of the legend when it is first introduced rather than having them appear later.
So it seems my posts have been thematic in nature, as I go through different phases, by posts go through different phases. Most of the posts (who am I kidding) ALL of my posts this spring were about my internship with Family Support Network. Now that has officially ended. I greatly enjoyed that consulting experience and would love to do something similar again at some point if the opportunity arises.
However today I wanted to post a brief review of a book galley I read this week. It is of the book Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon. I saw it on my weekly Netgalley email and I love Cinderella stories so I had to read it. And overall it was pretty good, for a YA novel.
Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon is an interesting new take for YA readers on the classic Cinderella story, although it strays the farthest from the original Cinderella of any version I have ever read. In this version Cinder and Ella are two sisters, Cinder the obedient one and Ella the beautiful one and closest to her father. They have two sisters, Katrina who is the bossy and demanding one and Beatrice who is immature and greedy. The girl’s father is bewitched by the evil Prince and leaves/disappears, while their mother becomes completely absorbed in her spinning. From this set up we can see the similarities with the traditional Cinderella story; however the plot drifts far from the original. The novel includes all of the elements of a good fairy tale: knights, adventures, and love, while not treating the story too simplistically. The characters in the story especially Ella, are thoroughly developed and while they have stereotypical moments most characters are highly humanized and very personable. Additionally the dialogue between the characters is often witty and fast pasted. However, the plot itself I felt was not fully as developed and flushed out as it could have been. For example, in the background of the story is the legend that each person’s life is connected with a tree that grew on the same day they were born. This legend, while mentioned, seems to change throughout the novel as further magic is introduced into the story. Sometimes that magic seems highly contrived and used just to get the author out of a tight spot. I wish the author had gone back and written in the magical elements of the legend when it is first introduced rather than having them appear later.
Overall Cinder and Ella is a good light read for YA (especially female) readers. I would recommend this story to readers who enjoy fairy tale adaptations or adventure stories with female protagonists who love to focus on great characters. Lemon‘s questions at the end of the novel are also good conversation starters and could transform this light read into a good discussion book.
Just a thought for those of you who like these types of novels :)
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Seeing the Finish Line
I apologize for not posting last week. I completely forgot and then didn't realize I forgot until today! I think this speaks for how busy I am this semester. I titled this entry seeing the finish line because I am finally seeing the end of the cataloging portion of this practicum project and I am seeing my graduation date just around the corner as well!
D. The past two weeks have again been spent mostly cataloging. I have officially finished all of the books and videos at the Child Developmental Services office and now only have the brochures at the CDSA and the remaining resources at the Family Support Network office in Huntersville. Also I was informed this week that there are two more filing drawers full of brochures to sort through as well. As I look at the resources I am not weeding out books or videos that are too old, because I feel that that would not be a good judgement call for me to make, however I am making decisions about the brochures, which is often harder because many lack publication dates so it is hard to tell if they are current or now. Many of the older brochures (especially the ones with newer versions) I have permission to toss. By the end of next week hopefully I will have all the cataloging done and a very large pile to take to be recycled.
This week I also had a meeting with my site supervisors about the physical space of the resource room. Although my supervisors want to create a larger resource area by appropriating part of the lobby space the county has nixed that idea and the library will be housed in its current location which is a room about 10ft by 10ft. I told my supervisors that I would need at least an additional bookshelf (bringing the total to 4) some bookends and shelf labels to complete a bared-bones library set up. They already moved in the extra bookshelf and bought the bookends, however I still need to look up a company to buy shelf labels from.
E. Overall these past two weeks have been very much "business as usual." I spend much of my actual hours cataloging materials, which I will admit can get boring after doing it for 3 hours straight. I am looking forward to being done with the cataloging and moving on to the organizing and creating the instruction manual. I am a little worried about being done by the end of April. I know Dr. Bird said just to do my best, and that giving FSN a list of their materials was better than nothing, but I am not good at leaving projects half finished so I hope to work my butt off to get this all done in the next month.
AL. It is hard to say what I learned these past couple of weeks. I am still learning just how long it takes to catalog things. And I am learning that a lot of good information is missing a lot of metadata about it. For example I found a video today called "Today's Child" And that was it. No other information on the label. I don't have a VHS player to even play it to see what it is, and I don't think I have time to watch it either. So I just cataloged it with the title. But this experience is making me want to label all of my resources at home a lot better. It is making me thankful that my husband created a great labeling system for our pictures and files that we have stored on our computers so I have a lot of metadata about each picture, just by its location and file name.
D. The past two weeks have again been spent mostly cataloging. I have officially finished all of the books and videos at the Child Developmental Services office and now only have the brochures at the CDSA and the remaining resources at the Family Support Network office in Huntersville. Also I was informed this week that there are two more filing drawers full of brochures to sort through as well. As I look at the resources I am not weeding out books or videos that are too old, because I feel that that would not be a good judgement call for me to make, however I am making decisions about the brochures, which is often harder because many lack publication dates so it is hard to tell if they are current or now. Many of the older brochures (especially the ones with newer versions) I have permission to toss. By the end of next week hopefully I will have all the cataloging done and a very large pile to take to be recycled.
This week I also had a meeting with my site supervisors about the physical space of the resource room. Although my supervisors want to create a larger resource area by appropriating part of the lobby space the county has nixed that idea and the library will be housed in its current location which is a room about 10ft by 10ft. I told my supervisors that I would need at least an additional bookshelf (bringing the total to 4) some bookends and shelf labels to complete a bared-bones library set up. They already moved in the extra bookshelf and bought the bookends, however I still need to look up a company to buy shelf labels from.
E. Overall these past two weeks have been very much "business as usual." I spend much of my actual hours cataloging materials, which I will admit can get boring after doing it for 3 hours straight. I am looking forward to being done with the cataloging and moving on to the organizing and creating the instruction manual. I am a little worried about being done by the end of April. I know Dr. Bird said just to do my best, and that giving FSN a list of their materials was better than nothing, but I am not good at leaving projects half finished so I hope to work my butt off to get this all done in the next month.
AL. It is hard to say what I learned these past couple of weeks. I am still learning just how long it takes to catalog things. And I am learning that a lot of good information is missing a lot of metadata about it. For example I found a video today called "Today's Child" And that was it. No other information on the label. I don't have a VHS player to even play it to see what it is, and I don't think I have time to watch it either. So I just cataloged it with the title. But this experience is making me want to label all of my resources at home a lot better. It is making me thankful that my husband created a great labeling system for our pictures and files that we have stored on our computers so I have a lot of metadata about each picture, just by its location and file name.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
More Cataloging :)
D. This week I went on Monday up to the Huntersville Family Support Network office, where they keep a lot of their resources. I spent Monday morning cataloging those resources. Most of the resources were fairly straight forward books, however I cataloged my first CD-ROMS and training packets. I also had to email my supervisors to ask for some clarification on some items. For example, there were some magazines called Exceptional Parent, and I looked at these and noticed that they were thematic issues, so I was wondering if I should catalog each issue individually or catalog the magazine as one item. (My supervisor and I talked over this issue today and decided that I would catalog each issue individually, although I haven't actually gotten to that part yet). There were some other issues about out-dated catalogs and other things as well.
Then today I went to the normal FSN office and continued my cataloging work. I finished the first set of resources from the CDSA, and started on the second (smaller set). I again took more resources home to catalog from home. Sandra and I also talked about a time line of where we are going from here. My goal is to finish cataloging all the resources by early April so I can have a few weeks to do the physical organization and also to create the manual on how to use their catalog in LibraryThing.
E. Overall I felt accomplished this week to finally have completed at least one milestone in terms of cataloging. There is just an overwhelming amount of resources to catalog and I am beginning to realize how much stuff their is.
AL. I am learning a lot about this subject area of early childhood, and childhood disorders. For example today I learned that there is a distinct difference between speech skills and language skills. Speech is actually being able to say words while language is choosing the correct words and knowing what they mean. I am also learning just how time consuming cataloging is.
I hope to keep cataloging a lot more and put in a lot of hours over the next couple of weeks
Then today I went to the normal FSN office and continued my cataloging work. I finished the first set of resources from the CDSA, and started on the second (smaller set). I again took more resources home to catalog from home. Sandra and I also talked about a time line of where we are going from here. My goal is to finish cataloging all the resources by early April so I can have a few weeks to do the physical organization and also to create the manual on how to use their catalog in LibraryThing.
E. Overall I felt accomplished this week to finally have completed at least one milestone in terms of cataloging. There is just an overwhelming amount of resources to catalog and I am beginning to realize how much stuff their is.
AL. I am learning a lot about this subject area of early childhood, and childhood disorders. For example today I learned that there is a distinct difference between speech skills and language skills. Speech is actually being able to say words while language is choosing the correct words and knowing what they mean. I am also learning just how time consuming cataloging is.
I hope to keep cataloging a lot more and put in a lot of hours over the next couple of weeks
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