Great Books

I certainly enjoyed my first Great Books Celebration last week in Baltimore County. It was a well-organized, well-run event that in my mind went off without a hitch. The event was my first Great Books, but from what one of the introductory speakers said, it may be the last Great Books Celebration, at least of this magnitude. I hope not. That would be a real shame. I told another librarian from my system that even if we only have half a dozen people sitting at a picnic table next year, we should still try to have some type of Great Books discussion. We shall see.

Anyway, if you're unfamiliar with it (as I was), Great Books is a two-day event (You only attend one day. The second day is the same as the first, only with different participants.) that allows librarians to discuss the best children's books published during the past year. Three committees read at least 100 books in each of the following categories: Picture Books, J-Books (fiction and NF) and Teen Books (fiction and NF). From that list, they narrow it down to several categories of four books each (five books each in the Picture Book category). You sign up for three groups/categories, which you can mix or match.

I chose all Teen Books, which meant I had to read twelve YA books. So you have two sessions, followed by lunch and a guest speaker (in this case children's author Jacqueline Woodson, who was excellent), followed by the third and final session.

The sessions I signed up for consisted of anywhere from six to eight people with two facilitators who served on the committee for that category. The first group was full of lively discussions of the "Survival" books: The Hunger Games, No Choirboy, Living Dead Girl and The Adoration of Jenna Fox. Some great discussions here, especially with Living Dead Girl, the most controversial book of the lot. The conversations were so interesting, I could easily have stayed in that group for another hour.

The second group - the Dead group (Generation Dead, Newes from the Dead, Me, the Missing and the Dead and Deadville) - was not nearly as lively (maybe because they were dead books? :), but there were still some good discussions. I sat next to a guy from one of the Enoch Pratt branches that had some really great comments, but I think the lady next to me was comatose.

The final group - the Freedom group (Sunrise over Fallujah, Snow Falling in Spring, Little Brother and Bog Child) - must've felt like pulling teeth for the facilitators. I definitely did most of the talking to start things off. Nobody else would say anything! I wonder if many of them either didn't read the books or didn't get much out of them. So I talked. A lot. Hey, I got my money's worth. If you're going to have a book discussion and want people to talk, I'm your man. Otherwise why would you come? (Don't get me started....)

The verdict? A very enjoyable day, well worth the money. Will they have Great Books again in some format? I sure hope so. If not, you're all invited to my house for a discussion of the best books from 2009 next March.

Exploration 9: What's Next and Looking Ahead

Well, the explorations are at an end, but when you think about it, they really aren't. Don' t think of that as a bad thing. It's not.

I went back and watched "The Machine is Us/ing Us" video and experienced several "Hey, I can do that now!" moments. The concepts and ideas expressed there and in our explorations really aren't as intimidating as they once seemed when we started this project several months ago.

The Web 2.0 Award Winners from 2007 is a great site, one I could spend hours exploring (and probably will). I wonder, though, how many of these sites will be supplanted by other more up-to-date pages that are faster, more user-friendly and more comprehensive. If our Web 2.0 explorations have taught us anything, it's that technology changes in the blink of an eye. I wouldn't be surprised to see future Web 2.0 Award Winners lists posted quarterly instead of annually.

So are the lessons we've learned going to benefit patrons? Without a doubt. But the knowledge we've gained here will also carry plenty of potential frustration. It's difficult evaluating each patron's computer/Internet skills levels in order to bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to be without a lengthy tutorial. I think it is essential that we become able to quickly determine where patrons are in their levels of tech and identify the steps needed to take them where they want to go. Classroom teachers have been doing this for decades (if not generations). As a former teacher, I can attest that this isn't an easy skill to develop. It takes time and won't happen in a ten-minute interview at the info desk, especially when other patrons are waiting.

So what do we do about that? I think you'll see more libraries offering expanded and more frequent learning environments (either in classroom/lab situations or one-on-one tutorials) that will help bring patrons into the world of Web 2.0 and beyond. They already look to us for so many answers and I suspect they always will, but that doesn't lessen the need for giving them as much instruction as possible. Again, I see this as a positive. Our job is, after all, the dissemination of information. We need to be flexible and willing to go beyond our comfort zones.

So will I keep this blog going? Absolutely. Why not? Nothing's going to stand still. So why should we?

Hi, Folks! Exploration 8 - Social Bookmarking Sites and Folksonomies

I'll have to admit, I didn't know much about bookmarking sites and folksonomies before reading the explorations material. The first time I heard co-workers talk about del.icio.us, I thought it was a site for recipes. (I know: clueless.)

After spending waaaaaaaay too much time floating around del.icio.us, I first did a search for "Horror Fiction" and came up with what will undoubtably become one of my favorite sites, Monster Librarian. There were tons of other sites as well, eating up even more of my precious time.

A search for "Writing YA Fiction" wasn't as satisfying. Only a couple of really useful sites came up, plus Stephenie Meyer's website. (Oh joy.) Another search for "Weird Fiction" was wonderful. Had to stop; didn't want to.

I honestly don't know that many patrons would be interested in bookmarking, but I'll certainly mention it to those I think might be. I'm certainly going to use it, forcing my wife to change the sign over my office door from "Geek" to "King Geek."

Exploration 7: Wikis

I recently graduated from LATI (Whoot!), where pretty much everything was communicated via wiki. (We used pbwiki.) I found it relatively painless to use and pretty hard to screw up, unless you got knocked off by forces beyond your control. (Not a good thing when you're uploading assignments.)

My extended family of eight has always had a tough time with our Christmas lists, so last year I suggested we use a wiki. I researched several and found WetPaint to be more to my liking than any other, so that's what we used.

The first thing I did was email a link to Wikis in Plain English to everyone in the family. (It explains wikis a lot better than I ever could.) Everybody was really pleased to find that they could create their own Christmas list and even link to the item on a store's website. After that, other family members could edit the lists, marking the items that had already been purchased, eliminating the chances of purchasing duplicates. (Always a problem for us on Christmas morning!) Everyone agreed that this was a much better method than firing emails back and forth, hoping that everyone that needed to see them actually did see them.

Our family's hooked. Wikis are the way to go, man. Don't fear the wiki.

Exploration 6: Online Office Tools

When I first saw the word Zoho, the first thing I thought of was Led Zeppelin's fourth album, which is sometimes called Zoso. Anyway, I digress....


Zoho is actually a pretty user-friendly way to create documents. It's much easier to use than Microsoft Word (Hey, what isn't?), especially in manipulating pictures and tables. I'm not sure how much I would use Zoho, but it's nice to know it's there. Would it be something patrons might be interested in? Possibly. It's certainly something I'd be willing to tell them about if they're thinking of posting/sharing documents.

Or maybe they'd be interested in doing the "Misty Mountain Hop."

Exploration 5: Library Thing

Okay, so it's been, what, five months since I've been on Web 2.0? I was busy with LATI and I was told "Do LATI first!!! Do it!!! ARRRRRRGGGGGH!!!" So now I'm back.

LibraryThing is a great way to keep track of your books. Here's my LibraryThing page if you'd like to check it out. As much as I like LibraryThing, I like Good Reads even better. It's more social than LibraryThing, although you can leave comments on both sites. Good Reads is a little more flexible and easier to control. It's also completely free no matter how many books you post, whereas LibraryThing will allow you to post up to 200 books for free. Still, I check LibraryThing just about every day. I know = Nerd Alert....

Feed Me: Exploration 4 - RSS Feeds and Feed Readers

I have to admit, I was a little resistant to feed readers. I only have about half a dozen blogs that I check each day, so it doesn't take all that much time to visit each individual site to see if there's anything new.

At least that's what I thought before I tried a feed reader.

I actually tried two: Bloglines and GoogleReader. They're both fairly easy to navigate and I would recommend both to patrons, but if I had to choose, I'd pick GoogleReader. It looks more professional than Bloglines, which looks a little too cartoon-ish for me.

So okay, I admit I like having a list of only the blogs where new information has been posted. I've also found that I've subscribed to more blogs and news sources as a result, knowing that the time I save by not checking out each individual blog/site allows me to read other blogs/sites that might interest me.

If you find that you want to comment, however, you'll have to click to the blog itself (which you can do easily from your reader). No problem. Unsubscribing is also easy. All in all, a painless exercise, which in this world can be a beautiful thing.