That LibraryThing

Greetings!

You may have noticed something new on this blog. Attached to the left hand side of the page is a randomly generated list of coverart of books in My Library at the LibraryThing website. This is a pretty cool way of putting together a collection of your favorite titles in one place. I could also see where if you wanted to spend the money -- which isn't much, actually-- you could put your entire personal library collection on-line and then be able to know what you own rather than rely on one's memory. The suggeter component makes better suggestions than Amazon (which drives me nuts because I don't want their stupid suggestions ( and I can't seem to figure out how to turn off that feature)) because it looks at a much larger database of titles and can predict what books others who own that title also own ( and therefore probably like). The Unsuggestor isn't quite as useful. The site has been glitchy when I was using it to start entering books into "My Library". And was glitchy again this afternoon. The Library Congress interface seems to be out to lunch today as well. Books I had entered included some, but not all of the Terry Pratchett canon -- this was due to the fact that the link from Amazon.com didn't include all the titles. So the Suggester gave me more Terry Prachett novels that I already knew about. I did come across a couple of authors I have missed in my wanderings, but Randkin, Bill Fitzhugh, and Tom Holt, I already knew about as funny, satiric writers. The Unsuggester didn't seem to work for me. I put in a title I owned or like and it found more titles by the same author. It's a great idea, but it didn't work for me.

Until next time, ciao!

What I'm Reading Now

Good Morning!

If you can call a day that starts with a little rain and a mass of cloud cover and very little light "good". I'm of the age that thinks any morning you wake up and get out of bed can be called "good". And indeed today is good for something. It's perfect weather for reading. I just finished a new book Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell. This book tells the story of an exciting chase for a the lost Shakespearan play, "Cardenio". It's an action story with lots of historical detail, much in the same vein as "The DaVinci Code" only with a female protagonist (a scholar turned director of Shakespeare plays) and with an Elizabethean theme. As you may have surmised from previous posts, I'm a crane nut. I love Sandhill Cranes and birding generally. Another one of my passions is Shakespeare. I make a pilgrimage every year to Stratford, Ontario for a week of theatre (they spell theater with an "re" in Canada). We go to a matinee performance and an evening performance for 5 days, see a matinee on Sunday and start back to Wisconsin. Most of the plays we see are Shakespeare although the Stratford Festival started doing Broadway musicals a few years ago ( they used to do Gilbert and Sullivan productions which were just marvelous and were somewhat historic and very British so that sort of worked)and don't get me going on that ! I mean musicals are great and they are very well done with high production values but it's not really Shakespeare, is it? Anyway. The book by Carrell is very well done and a bit of a page turner. It's a great read for a dreary October morn.
Have a great one!

Take a Tour with Nancy

Nancy points to,
originally uploaded by deforestbookrat.

Greetings!

This is the first photo in a set of 8 that will take you on a tour of the library and show you some of the ideas I have for using Flickr on my blog and on the library website. In some of the photos Nancy shows off a new program ( our Random Acts of Popcorn) and some new technology (the Wii unit that just arrived). Her photos also use the library as background and could be used to show off some of the architectural features of the building. Using the Nancy Perl doll allows me to avoid the problems of permission to use images of real people and also lets my sense of humor loose (Okay, I think some of the photos are funny. Maybe you don't and that's fine too!) and this way I can state categorically that no humans (or any other animals -- although I did find a dead asian beetle adhering to my knee after I took a low angle shot, but I think it was already dead because the insides weren't squishy (they were all dried up) were harmed in the production of this photo sequence. Flickr has been easy to use and if I've had difficulties, the help areas have been very good. One drawback -- besides having proper manners and asking people if you intend to publish their picture ( or getting a more legal release signed) is that you can't just link to a slide show (or at least I haven't figured out how to do it). But now, for your entertainment and amusement follow this link to my photo page and view the slide show.

Enjoy!

World's Biggest Sandhill Crane

North Dakota_38,
originally uploaded by Laurel714.

Greetings!
As part of the ProjectPlay assignment I went browsing through the pictures available on Flickr. Since one of my other passions is Sandhill cranes (it ranks right up there with the Green Bay Packers, Terry Pratchett books, Shakespeare, and dark chocolate) I thought I would explore the images available. There were over 4,300 images of sandhill cranes! What bliss to be able to look at all the pictures of cranes and to learn of other spots around the country where I can go looking for them. My goal every year is to see Sandhill cranes every month. This works out pretty well in Wisconsin from March through November. Lately with the warmer winters, I can sometimes still find cranes in Wisconsin in December and they often return in February. This leaves me to go traveling in December, January, and February, looking for them. Every February I make the pilgrimage to Kearney, Nebraska to see the annual migration of about half a million cranes that are coming up the flyway to Canada, Alaska, and beyond. In December and sometimes January I go to Jasper-Pulaski Wildlife area in Indiana (about three hours from here) where the midwest flock stages on their journey further south. You can usually see 10 to 20 thousand cranes there. I've been to Bosque del Apache in New Mexico, Georgia, Florida, and a little place in the mountains in Tennessee (by the Georgia border) to get my January cranes. It's a cool reason to travel and it gets me away from the library. Imagine my surprise when I saw this huge statue of a Sandhill Crane in Steele, North Dakota. I never would have imagined such a thing existed, and now I will have to plan a trip out to see it. That way the next time I post a picture of the giant crane, that will be the Bookrat standing in front of the legs! And now for another part of the Projectplay assignment. Let's see if I can actually post this to my blog from Flickr! Ciao!

Farewell From Green Bay

This has been an exciting conference. The keynote speaker, David Maraniss, was interesting and inspiring as usual. The session offered covered a wide range of topics and there was a great opportunity to meet with my fellow Project Play Classmates. And yes that was the Bookrat with the sampler of beer at the Titletown Brewery. It was so cute that all the little glasses of beer arrived on a little flatbed railroad car (the wheels actually rolled, too!). Due to scheduling conflicts the Bookrat found herself with some time on her hands and decided to have lunch at Lambeau Field. It was an incredible experience for a Packer fan such as the B-rat. This has been a liftetime goal and to finally visit the home of the Packers and to run out of the players" tunnel on to the field with the crowd cheering (Yeah, they play some canned crowd noise and so what if it was cheesy, it was also wonderful!) was awesome. And due to excellent timing some young men who were delivering leftover desserts from some corporate event to staff, gave our little group cookies (football player sized) and sodas. Just for being there! The whole tour and lunch only took a few hours out of the day and the Bookrat was back on time for the next meeting on the schedule. It was a most excellent day and a most excellent conference!
The B-rat will be heading back to DeForest this morning and will see later today, just how high the pile of stuff is on her desk! (In case you hadn't noticed, the color scheme the Bookrat uses includes green and gold, so this Packer mania should come as no surprise to the observant.) Until the next time, adieu!

Greetings from Green Bay

The Bookrat has made it to the annual pilgrimage of librarians in the state of Wisconsin. This year the meeting place is Green Bay at the Regency Suites. The B-rat ( pronouced Bee-rat, not brat --like a spoiled child. Or brat -- like a sausage often consumed with beer at a tail gate party outside of Lambeau Field home of the mighty Green Bay Packers ) was late to bed and is now getting up at the normal time of before 5 a.m. The B-rat often blames the cats for awakening her so early, but obviously its not there fault. After consuming caffeine in large quantities, the book rat plans on becoming another kind of rat for a while and hit the gym. Once a rat, always a rat I guess. And after that, hours and hours of inspiring words from fellow librarians! The B-rat will keep you informed.

Ciao!

The Power of One or Maybe a Few & I get sidetracked

Greetings!

This has been one of those weeks where first the air conditioning didn't work. It got fixed just in time to beat the arrival of the cold front that dropped temperatures down to where they belong this time of year -- which means hovering around overnight lows that might put one in mind of turning on the heat! Then, last night, as the library's Dewey Stitchers were leaving the building, the elevator decided not to run. As previously stated, it's been one of those weeks. Last weekend however, was the culmination of lot of frenzied activity to convert the room formerly-known-as "The Ellison Room" ( a clever name referencing the fact that our Ellison machine was made available there to the public) into "The Rosenberry Room" to honor the former head librarian and her husband. The Rosenberrys (Howard and Peg) were one of the driving forces behind this community actually having a library. In 1964 or perhaps the year before, there was legislation (either at the state or county level) that basically said if a community wanted a library, then it needed to be in place by a date certain or the process for getting recognized as a public library would involve a number of hoops to jump through. The Rosenberrys and their friends, who included organized groups that socialized around topics such as these : Opera, Charles Dickens, and Sherlock Holmes, decided that there should be a public library in the DeForest area and set about making it happen. And they did. They put the squeeze on local businesses, individuals, and governments and on May 21st, 1964 the library board of the DeForest Area Public Library met for the very first time. By December of that year they opened a library. For a while there was some turn over at the helm. In 1968, when the library board was looking for a library director, Howard Rosenberry volunteered his wife Peg. She agreed to do it. The fact that Howard volunteered his wife without consultation might be interpreted as typical of the times. But it wasn't. The Rosenberry daughters (there are five of them, plus an AFS student from Norway who became a daughter during her year's stay with the family) affirm that the reason their dad volunteered their mother was because she was too self-effacing, too shy, to have put her self forward or in any way appear to be assuming she could do such a job. Howard had every confidence she could and supported her going back to school to get her degree in library science. Peg was the library for the next 20 years and her resignation brought the Bookrat to DeForest. The library board and staff finally honored the contribution this family made to the community with a ceremony and room naming on Saturday, October 6th. Unfortunately, both of the honorees had passed away by that time. The daughters pointed out that actually, that was great. Their parents would have like the idea that after they were gone that there was this wonderful occasion to bring their daughters together and to remind the community that individuals can make a difference.

Now, wasn't that an extremely long wind up, to get us to the title of this posting? I think we all know individuals who have made a difference. I firmly believe that public librarians are positioned well in most communities (It may be easier in slightly smaller libraries.) to be agents of change and to improve the community's quality of life as well. That often involves the extremely strong will of the library director. But what difference can one person make in the crush of the digital age and the screaming for attention that each new technology demands of the responsive public library? I think it all comes down to values.


There is much debate about the future viability of public libraries : Will it be replaced by the Internet? Will the printed book disappear? But public opinion polls and surveys generally agree that the public likes the idea of a public library, even if they personally don't use it. Now why is that? Subliminal programming leaps to mind. But that would involve having the means and opportunity to get at the general public and actually mess with their minds which can certainly be done (cf. mass media) but which most libraries don't have the time or the means to do. Maybe public libraries are a little like going to church. You attend when you're a little kid because your parents make you, which is where you learn to value it. When you get to the age of adulthood -- whatever that might be in your own particular family-- you may fall away from going to church. Then, when you have children of your own, a remarkable thing happens. You start going to church so your kids will go. And the circle of acquiring the values of one's particular clan, comes full circle. We see this pattern happen in library land as well. Pre-schoolers and primary-aged kids are great users of libraries are brought to the library by their young parents or the elders of their family. As the child ages he/she has less and less to do with the library. While at university, public libraries don't exist for most students. They get a job, have that first child and suddenly they're back using the library. It seems to me that this behavior in both cases, church and public libraries, is because these institutions epitomize the values of large groups of society. Parents want their children to share their values so they take their children back to that place where they themselves received "instruction". Perhaps, that's why public libraries have such staying power in the face of the digital age-- return customers and a values-transfer mechanism. I've always thought that to expand or even maintain our customer base we had to get the youngest members of the community and their caregivers "hooked on books". Listening to language and stories, and looking at books is still the major language acquisition modality for babies. Libraries have touted the language acquisition piece as new early-brain-development research trickles its way down to story hours. Public libraries have pushed the socialization piece as well for toddlers. You know, the bit about preschool story hours helping children learn to sit still, take turns, and share. Public librarians have generally not dared to look at the values piece. But I think it's there and we better start paying attention to it if we want public libraries to continue to exist in whatever shape they morph into next. I'll quit these musings for now since I've run on so long. But I think the power of public libraries is that one little kid in story hour(and a few of his /her friends who are having a grand time playing, laughing, making noise, surrounded on all sides by books) who is laying the groundwork for public libraries to exist twenty years from now.
Let me hear from you! ( You know who you are. I'm looking right at you!)

Survey Monkey, et.al

Good Morning!

I know that there is a general fear of asking for comments and input. And the fear's the same whether you put out a cardboard box (nicely covered in wrapping paper to make it look attractive, with a slot cut in the top and color-coordinated slips of paper cut to a uniform size that when folded in half will slip easily into the aforementioned slot laid neatly next to the box with a supply of writing utensils nearby and the motto "Comment Box"emblazoned on the side) or a paper survey with carefully crafted questions and not too many open-ended ones at that, or something as wonderful as an online link to something like Survey Monkey. The fear is that there will be negative comments and of course there will be. But I have been through enough customer service workshops and trainings, and I have enough years on me to have observed, that negative comments can be gold. You can't fix a problem if you don't know the problem exists. Allowing anonymous comments lets loose some people's demons which they then visit, full-force, upon you. But this negative energy is exactly that, energy. Which if left undealt with can run like a virus through your customer base. But if met and mediated head on, it can strengthen your institution. I believe the metaphor I've just created is the "Vaccine Model of Customer Service". Dealing with the negative comments and customers strengthens the resilience, the immune system, the ability of the institution to be nimble and responsive, in a way that all the aren't-we-just-wonderful cheer leading comments we all love to get does not. And that negative energy with the right handling can be turned to positive energy -- it's sort of a Zen thing. Do I like negative comments? Of course not, but they are necessary. Do I want to solicit them so that customers have an easy way to vent their spleen at the library rather than tell all their friends about what an awful thing just happened to them and have those friends each tell all their friends? You betcha! I really believe in the power of the group. Ive been involved in many process during my career that proved to me beyond a doubt that the group is smarter than I am -- well, most of the time. Anytime I can get help from others, I'm more than willing to take it. Anyway, an institution like a public library needs to serve the public and the best way to know if you are (serving the public) and how good a job that public thinks you are doing, is to ask them!
All that being said, I would now like to invite you, Gentle Reader, to follow this link to my first Survey Monkey survey and tell me "Whad da ya want?" so that I can attempt to do something about it. Thanks for reading!

A New Feature

Greetings Readers!

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you will notice a new feature. The Bookrat has added a Blogroll! I don't know why it is so strangely satisfying to succeed whcn dealing with a new bit of technology. Since this blog is entitled "Bookrats Musings", I shall take a moment to muse on that topic. A long pause occurred here while the Bookrat went and got some popcorn, then got a soda, then went to see if the bookrat could turn on the hall lights in the basement for the Alternative Education Program of the High School that resides in the basement of the library (which the Rat failed miserably at, but did manage to turn on all the lights in the library (which opens at 1 p.m. on Fridays) which attracted a mother with child hopeing we were open and a single male returning dvds like moths to a flame, and having written this incredibly long run-on sentence, the Bookrat has reached the conclusion that overcoming technology is strangely satisfying just because it is. So there. Creating a blogroll was part of the on-line Project Play's assignment for week 3. I can see where this is a timesaver and also another way of sharing one's interests with blog readers and /or website visitors. Until later, Ciao!

Why Do You Read?

A couple of posts ago, I asked the questions "What are you reading?" Now, I'd like to know why you read. There are a few glib, surface answers that pop immediately to mind like : 1) for entertainment 2) to pass the time 3) to get pulled out of this time and into a different time or space. I guess those reasons just enumerated would fall into the category of "for a mind-altering experience". Which is all fine and dandy, but it's not getting at the heart of the question I'm trying to ask. If you're reading a classic, a great work of literary art -- 1) why are you reading it? and 2) what makes it a great work of art? The answer to question #1 might be that you want to be able to more or less name drop that title into conversations to impress your friends and astonish your enemies. The answer to question #2 we've all learned in English class, i.e. it has stood the test of time (that means it has stayed in print for oh, at least,say,50 years) and that its themes have universal appeal (that they transcend space and time which actually nicely circles us back up to answer number 3 to my very first question above) [Sister Jeremy would be so proud that I could still remember this]. So, I would be really interested to know why you read or attend theater (or theatre) or interact with the arts. I'll tell you why I think I do. I'm looking for insights into the human condition, or "illumination" as Sister Cyrille would call it. I hope that by understanding the commonalities of what it means to be human regardless of the historical era or the geographic place that I might actually get a grip about what it means to be me, interacting with you and all the others that make up my life. A good novelist can do that even while entertaining us with an breath-takingly exciting plot. John Grisham can give us insights into why money and power are so corrupting and how easily they seduce good people. Terry Pratchett through his satires holds up a mirror to all the foibles and follies of people from all walks of life so that you may bemoan the human condition, but you can have a good hard laugh at it at the same time. I think most of what is published actually does have some redeeming features especially if you're an English major in search of a thesis. Best-sellers are an expression of popular culture. Popular culture is what it is. It is "culture" because it is widespread and generally understandable to everyone, which is also why it's called "popular". It is accessible to the populace. I'm noticing here that I've begun to veer off into my popular culture rant. So, I'll end this now, where I began, asking you to tell me "Why do you read?"