Thing #12

Rollyo is an interesting tool. I do a lot of research on publication markets and agents for writers' group as well as for my writing hobby. I added sites like ralan.com and Miss Snark's blog, the AAR, Predators and Editors, and Paperback Writer's blog, all who regularly post market news. I did some searching for cover letters and the majority of the results listed were from Miss Snark's "Is it Crap?" cover letter contest, but there were some really helpful ones as well. Instead of putting the search bar in this post, I stuck it on the blog as a page element so I can find it easier later.

I think Rollyo is perfect for individual use. As far as its library applications, I'll have to think about that. Our website, as it stands now, is pretty user friendly. If you're looking for computer classes, you click on "computer classes," etc. Although we could customize a search bar to include non-database websites that we know are reputable for our patrons. That way they don't have to slog through google results and they know they're getting good information.

Thing #11

I LOVE LibraryThing. Since I already have LT accounts, I figured I'd go ahead and use one of them for this post. Hope that's all right. :-)

I don't use Library Thing to catalog my home library. I'm always weeding and adding and am too lazy to keep up with it. I use LT to keep track of what I read. When I finish a book, I enter it into my LT with tags that include genre, year finished, whether it was good or not, part of a series or a single title, and sometimes some motif and theme information. I usually recommend LT to patrons who are upset or puzzled as to why we can't tell them what they checked out three years ago.

LT's book suggester is also a really good readers' advisory tool. It works similarly to What Do I Read Next's Help Me Find a Book tool, only the results come from titles that have been cataloged and tagged by LT users. It addresses WDIRN's limitations as the criteria used to tag and catalog the books include the subjective like tone and voice as well as the objective like genre and setting.

LT's strength is in its users. But that is its limitation as well. WDIRN has the power of library professionals behind it, where LT's power comes from housewives and plumbers, physicists and writers, factory workers and psychology professors. We can use the two tools in concert for the best results.

My 05/06 Library Thing has the most books and tags on it.

Thing #10

ned-flanders-simpsons_www-txt2pic-com
Originally uploaded by Melsie42

There are so many generators out there, it's overwhelming! I found myself wanting to play with things like random name generators instead of the image generators.

I attempted to Warholize the cat, but it didn't come out very well. So, for future reference, it's difficult to Warholize someone who has black and white fur.

Thing #9

I have to admit, I wasn't 100% comfortable using the non-bloglines RSS searching sites. Especially with Feedster. I did several "blogs" searches with that tool, and couldn't really tell what the results consisted of. I like to find out more information about a feed before I subscribe, but the links provided in the search were Feedster widgets and didn't actually lead anywhere when I clicked on it. Although the feeds themselves worked when I attempted to subscribe to one. I wouldn't recommend Feedster to an RSS beginner.

I liked Topix a lot, though. It weasels out information on a subject or location that you search for and sends everything it finds to the feed you subscribe to. After a few searches, I settled on a feed on my home town. Most of the articles on that subject come from local newspapers.

I found Technorati the easiest to use. You search for what you're looking for and the links go right to the text of the blog or news source so you can actually read more than a line or two before you subscribe. The advanced search link is right there on the front page so you don't have to go spelunking for it.

I found a few interesting library blogs:
Librarian in Black (I searched for this one by name as it was mentioned by Maria at the Wiki presentation)
http://www.librarybytes.com/
http://super_librarian.blogspot.com/
http://www.popgoesthelibrary.com/

The vast majority of the library blogs I found were written by professional librarians for professional librarians. I have to admit that when someone starts talking OCLC and ALA and MARC and statistics, my eyes glaze over and I lose interest. I did some searches for paraprofessionals and circulation, but most of those were interdepartmental blogs that really wouldn't mean anything to anyone but them unless one was searching for a something specific: checking to see what a particular circ staff does in response to claims returns, for example.

I was surprised at how few library blogs actually reached out to patrons. If my results are typical (And I hope they're not! Please tell me I screwed up! :-), blogging is a really underutilized outreach tool.

After searching for library tools and feeds, I did a search for book reviews and found some pretty nifty things.

Tennessee Text Wrestling
"an East Tennessee gal's thoughts on being a novelist, a reader, a cat wrangler, a biker chick, a pianist, and a nerd"

SciFiChick
News and Reviews

Geeks of Doom
(Really well designed blog on geekery!)

Reading Dirt
"Reading our way down the garden path: a site for the literary gardener."
(I thought this one was very unique! A review site dedicated to gardening books.)

Bookninja

2.0: It's a virus!

So, I e-mail my Aunt Marlene several times a week, and I told her about our 2.0 project. She wants to learn along with us! She's smart, funny, and very cool. Check her out at www.den-marstack.blogspot.com. :-)

Thing #8 and TLA workshops

As geeky as I profess to be, I have to admit that RSS is a new idea for me. The more I looked at the discovery resources, the more excited I became. If I don't count the friends list on my personal blog, I keep track of 38 feedable sites on my off hours. So, in addition to the blogroll I created for our course, I did one for my personal 'net reading as well. I've been using it for a couple of days now, and it's saved me a lot of time since I don't have to go to each website to check for updates.

I still have to add the rest of our staff blogs to my work blogroll, and add it to my sidebar, but I'll get that done this week. :-)

I had the opportunity to go to Brentwood with our Stephanie F for a few TLA workshops. We learned a lot! Like how not constructive it is to tell a patron to "get a grip" and how, according to the Myers-Briggs personality types, our differences don't have to cause conflict and can actually be compatible. The workshop that I was most excited about was "Should You Wiki?" taught by our former intern Maria Sochor who is now the assistant circulation supervisor at Brentwood. I know I'm thinking ahead here, but it was definitely food for thought!

Taken simply, wikis are collaborative websites, built and modified by the users. Maria showed us portions of Brentwood's private circulation wiki and how they use it to work more effectively. Being the book geek I am, I thought about its applications with readers' advisory and book talk as well as the potential for training for new and current employees.

Maria e-mailed the powerpoint presentation and the worksheets to me if anyone wants to look at it when we do Wikis later this fall. She also asked me to give her best to everyone.

Thing #7

Since Al and I shared a brain the other day, I decided to refrain from posting the same picture of Tom Tichenor that he did.

TeVa has a fantastic collection of old Tennessee-related postcards. This one is features one my favorite Nashville buildings (next to the Ryman, of course!) The Parthenon is a scale replica of the one in Athens, complete with a 12 ton, 41-foot-tall guilded statue of Athena. And I thought I was a big chick! Seriously, the whole structure is amazing. In addition to Athena, they have reproductions of the friezes (I think that's what they're called) lining the walls inside that room. And intangible detective Harvey Drago defeated a werewolf there. But you have to read Smyrna Writer member Mark Orr's book, Howling in the Park to see how that went down. :-)

Thing #6 or Bad Grammer for Cuteness

I could have played with those Flickr tools all day! But in the spirit of actually getting some work done today, I just used a pic of my cat that I had on my cell phone already to create one of those "lol cats."

Jane was about six months old when we learned that she was a huge cover stealer. I'd woken up on a Sunday morning just freezing to death. The comforter was balled up at the foot of the bed, and when I moved the top layer, Jane's sleepy face popped out. It was so funny at the time I had to take a picture.

And, for the record, it was physically painful to type that. I have a firm belief that all spelling errors should be accidental.

Thing #5 or, My Literal View From the Desk

This is what I get to look at all day.



Neat, huh? The picture doesn't give it justice at all because I was trying for an angle with the least amount of display case glare. Even so, it's difficult to believe that the entire thing is made of cardboard and felt with the exception of the greenery and animal figurines.



It was created in 1969 by Tom Tichenor who was a master puppet maker and performer at Nashville Public Library. When we moved from our Walnut Street location to Enon Springs in 1999, John Moore restored it. It's truly the centerpiece of our building. As I understand it, the architects took measurements of it before they began work and integrated it into their design. If you look closely, you can see the reflection of the authors' names that line the high walls all the way down our main hallway, which is another thing that, I believe, makes us unique.



I've worked in this building for six years now, and every time I look in the case, I see something new. The detail is amazing!

And this is Fred. One of our three remaining fish. Our storytime kids spend a lot of time at that tank, looking at the fish and talking to them. We never hear the fish talk back, but who knows!

This was a most interesting Thing! I have some pictures over at Photobucket, but I found Flickr easier to use. I decided to go with the "discover more" option instead of the regular discovery exercise. I have a few photos uploaded at http://www.flickr.com/photos/15261886@N08/.

I'm always excited by the concept of LPLS reaching out to patrons online as well as in person, and using Flickr could go a long way towards building an Internet presence for us. As we become a more visual world, we can show patrons our most recent book displays, how much fun we have at our special events, and integrate them in departmental or individual LPLS blogs. It all goes toward reminding our patrons to come back and reaching out to new patrons and enticing them to visit us.

Intro to Writers Group

Smyrna Writers met on Saturday, and as I was preparing for the session, it occurred to me that a lot of staff and folks in the community might not be aware of who we are and what we do.


Both Linebaugh and Smyrna have writers' groups. Rutherford Writers Ink meets the 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month at 10:00 in the board room. Smyrna Writers meets the second and last (not 4th, but last) Saturday of the month at 1:00 p.m. in the library conference room. I'm not as familiar with RWInk's members as I am Smyrna's, so I'll probably focus more on our group and our procedures and members. It'd be great if a Linebaugh staff person blogged about their group so we can learn! :-)


It's important for staff to know that our writers' group isn't a class. Although I am the facilitator, I don't teach or instruct or otherwise hold myself up as the grand poobah of all writerly knowledge. We meet, we share work, we critique each other, we help each other with everything from choosing character names to defeating the block. Because we're in the library, we can do research during the meeting. And we encourage each other. This is, perhaps, our most important function. The only thing that makes me different from the rest of the group is that I have the responsibility of keeping track of our activities and making sure that meetings go smoothly.

It took a couple of years to develop an active group! But we now have a core of regular members and lots of people who come a few times a year and communicate with us via our Yahoo! group when they can't be at the meetings. I have permission from some group members to profile them here so that our library staff can get to know them and, through them, discover the value of what we do.

Shameless Self Promotion

You probably haven't heard, because I've kept it a huge secret (and I would absolutely NEVER harp on it!) *wink* but I'm one of the ten finalists the American Title contest. It's an American Idol type of contest sponsored by Dorchester Publishing and Romantic Times magazine. Dorchester publishes the winner's manuscript!

Voting starts today! And I'm asking everyone who knows me to vote and spread the word. :-) The direct link to the contest voting site is http://www.romantictimes.com/news_amtitle.php.

Hope everyone had a fantastic Monday!

Thing #4 (This is kind of like a Seuss book, isn't it?:-)

What Do I Read Next? is a fantastic readers' advisory tool available through TEL or Gale Group Databases. You can search for good reads by author, title, genre, subject, location, time period, character descriptor, character name, or full text. You can even look at lists of award winners or use the "Help me find a book" tool for recommendations based on criteria you provide about a favorite title.


I decided to explore the "Help me find a book" process to see what I could come up with. I used One For the Money, Janet Evanovich's first Plum novel. After you search for the title, HMFAB will provide a list of subject headings that you can tick off. I used "mystery" as the genre, "amateur detective" as the story type and "New Jersey" as a setting and got 51 good-quality results that include books by Sarah Shankman, Shelley Freydont, and Valerie Wolzien.

What do I Read Next? has a limitation, though. It's a computer program, so it lacks an understanding of the human x factor. It understands a request for mysteries set in New Jersey, for example, but not for authors who write in the same wry, wacky tone as Evanovich. It can't find books with the same snappy dialogue or the quality of tension between the romantic interests. One of the results from my search was Harlan Coban. He's gritty, action oriented, and definitely not wacky. But he writes mysteries set in New Jersey.

So that's where we come in. We can take the recommendations that we get from What Do I Read Next? and narrow it down further to tailor the recommendations for a patron. Or for ourselves for that matter. Either way, What Do I Read Next is a very helpful tool to discover your next favorite book.

Local Blogs

The blog links on the Thing #3 post were pretty spiffy. Knitting Betty was especially unique! But did you know that some of our patrons blog? Big Orange Michael is a Smyrna patron as is one half of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (I can't take credit for finding that one, though. Sherry sent me the link a few weeks ago). Murfreesboro author (and former Smyrna staff member!) Alethea Kontis blogs at Magic and Misery as does Trish Milburn, the other Middle Tennessean who finaled in American Title. Although you guys are voting for me, right? *wink wink*

7 1/2 Habits

I'll start with the most difficult first: Habit #4 I'm on the low end of the spectrum educationally compared to a lot of our staff, and I'm a little bit ditzy. So it's difficult to maintain confidence in myself as a learner and to present myself as competent and knowledgeable.

And, I assume like most people, habit 7 1/2 is the easiest. Learning is play for me, and, since most of my education has been, and currently is, self-directed I can control the fun level. Boredom isn't a requirement for learning. For example, playing video games on a regular basis helps me learn technology on the job faster because each game has a different interface I have to learn before I can play. It makes me versatile. I recently read a novel co-written by Bill Bass, the man who started the Body Farm at U.T., and learned a lot about forensic anthropology. Same with the Faye Kellerman's Decker/Lazarus series and Orthodox Jewish life. I value the formal education I have had, but I seem to retain more information when I seek it out myself through leisure activities.