Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Whenever I see cool products for children and young adults, I’m always envious of the librarians and teachers who get to work with these tools.  What’s gotten my envy this time is World Book’s new product, Dramatic Learning.  It is a classroom tool to help with reading fluency and comprehension, based on play scripts, skits, and monologues.  With the materials in Dramatic Learning, students act out the dialogue with the assistance of their teachers.  Lesson plans, included for teachers, assist with setting objects and selecting materials as well as connecting the instruction to state and provincial curriculum standards.  It allows students the opportunity to move, pretend, and be creative while learning about the content of a story.  Over 40 scripts covering a broad range of reading levels are included.  For more information, check out the sample video of a 4th grade classroom in action with Dramatic Learning. I’m impressed they are reading Hamlet in 4th grade!

I discovered Epicurious.com in the late 90’s when I was preparing for a class and looking for examples of reference books on the web.  Much to my surprise, Sharon Herbst’s then new edition of  The Food Lover’s Companion  (1995) was part of the site.  Well, it is still there but there is much more.  If you are cooking for Thanksgiving and haven’t thought about it, this site will help.  The home page leads to recipes for recipes for turkey, stuffing, potatoes and pies.  Also there are suggestions for a meal for a buffet dinner for 16, an international dinner and a dinner for eight for $80.  Epicurious is also a good place to find recipes and when you join the site (it’s free) you can have your own recipe box.  If you enjoy cooking or want to learn, Epicurious will help.

As more people turn to the Web to find health and medical information, a new ailment has emerged: Cyberchondria. An article in the Washington Post on November 10th defined this condition as “baseless fueling of fears and anxiety about common health symptoms due to Internet research, or …Googling oneself into a state of absolute clinical hysteria over every last pain, itch, and strange freckle on your body.” It used to be called First year Medical Student’s Disease, thinking that one has every disease in the internal medicine textbook. In fact, it points out a very real problem that librarians can remedy. Using Google to find health information, especially if one does not know how to search and evaluate the information retrieved, is a very bad idea. People put in common terms such as “chest pain” , get lots of material about heart disease, and assume that they are having a heart attack. The fact that they are 25 years old, in good shape, and have no cardiac risk factors makes that unlikely, but Google does not reason, take a medical history, or do a physical examination. It ranks sites by what it considers relevant and by the number of hits that they get, so Dr. X’s miracle cure may be the first site that an anxious person finds. If that person were to come to the library and seek out a reference librarian, he or she could learn about MedlinePlus and other reliable sites to use. The librarian would also tell him/her that the Web is not a substitute for a physician. So, take two clicks and call your local reference desk in the morning!

The New Oxford American Dictionary has announced its Word of the Year: unfriend.  Also announced were 2009’s Notable Word Clusters, the majority of which have to do with President Obama: Obamanimics, Obamanation, etc. 

Although there were Word of the Year contenders from the economy (freemium, for example), politics (death panel) and other categories, Oxford seems to draw most of its winners from technology. There’s a recent blog post on CrunchGear on Oxford’s 2009 pick as well as picks from past years and how accurately they’ve reflected the infiltration of tech into mainstream language.

Over Merriam-Webster way, the Webster’s New World College Dictionary 2009 Word of the Year is distracted driving. 

 

 

Meanwhile, The American Dialect Society is accepting nominations for both 2009 Word of the Year and 2000-2009 Word of the Decade.  Recent Word of the Year winners have included bailout (2008) and subprime (2007).

For those of you who, like me, didn’t make it to the Charleston Conference this year, here’s a video of R. David Lankes’ presentation on the future of librarianship. Links to other videos from the 2009 conference are here.

This winter I’ll be starting up the first ever book club at my local public library. As a veteran book club member I’m excited about starting a new group and getting to meet some fellow readers. But the librarians here have never done a book group and have lots of questions and I’d like to be able to suggest some reference sources. Since the initial group is going to be a crime focused group, we’ve requested a copy of Gary Neibuhr’s Read ‘Em Their Writes: a Handbook for Mystery and Crime Book Discussions.

Any suggestions for other book group related resources I can share with the library staff?

With some of the busiest travel days coming in less than two weeks, flightarrivals.com is another way to find out if a flight is on time.  (See also HelloFlight.com.)  Flightarrivals does not track flights on a map but does supply other useful information.  The main page gives a number of options - search for arrivals, departures, delays, airport status and schedule changes.  For arrivals and departures you may find a flight by airline and flight number but if you don’t know this you can search by city/airport,  airline and airport or airline and airport pair.  Once you find a flight you will see when and if it left, how long it has been in the air, its speed, altitude and when it is expected to arrive.  The weather for the departure and arrival city is also listed.  The airport status is a new feature which lists the average number of minutes flights may be delayed.  On  Friday afternoon, Nov. 13th, with wind and rain in NYC, arriving flights at LaGuardia may be delayed by 2 hours and 26 minutes.  Best of luck for air travel at Thanksgiving!

Alexander Street Press has been producing outstanding research databases for years. Most of them are best suited for academic libraries (or large public libraries with research collections), but some of Alexander Street’s newer databases would be great resources for high-school students and a more general library clientele. One example is American History in Video, a collection of archival films ranging from U.S. government newsreels to documentaries from the History Channel and PBS.

I got immersed in American History in Video’s archive of World War II-era newsreels that were shown in movie theaters before the feature began. This was how most people experienced the war. It’s fascinating to view these newsreels and think about how they were produced and edited, and how they shaped public perceptions. It’s also interesting to think about how they differ from what we are presented with regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan–not least in terms of attention span. Would anyone sit through a 10-minute newsreel today?

Meg Keller, Alexander Street’s Director of Marketing, tells me that American History in Video has grown since Booklist’s reviewer last accessed it in September. There are 1,623 new titles including  the rest of Ken Burns’ Jazz Series, films by Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker, and more newsreels from Universal Newsreel. The entire collection now includes 3,149 videos totaling 766 hours.

A free trial through December is available especially for Booklist and Points of Reference readers. Click here to register.

Those of you who subscribe to Credo Reference can now purchase nearly 70  SAGE Reference titles in your subscription.  The titles look great and include the very popular Ency. of Global Warming, Ency. of Disability, and the Ency. of Counseling.

In the Credo Reference press release, John Dove, Credo President said “Librarians have long called for the option of having reference content available on the platform of their choice. Adding almost 70 subject encyclopedias from SAGE Reference to Credo Reference means that we’re moving closer to that vision. Our librarians and end users will continue to experience Credo as one grand encyclopedia, now with even more subjects for inquiry.”

That’s music to my ears, John.  In fact, I’m sure I’ve made that statement many times - all my reference content on the platform (one platform) of my choice.  I’m glad to see that some publishers are moving in that direction.

Ths week, EBSCO Publishing and Alexander Street Press both announced that they are going mobile for patrons of subscribing libraries

EBSCO has released EBSCOhost Mobile, allowing people to search EBSCOhost databases using smartphones and other handheld devices. Features include search modes, full text limiting, and date ranges,  plus limiting by peer-reviewed content or publication. Scrollable results lists have citations, Image Quick View, and access to full text articles. Users will be able to e-mail results and also search images.

Early in 2010, Alexander Street will release an iPhone application that will make their complete line of online streaming music collections accessible on an iPhone or iPod Touch. Eventually, everything on Music Online, including scores and full-text content, will be mobile.  Mobile access to all Alexander Street video collections, including American History in Video and Theatre in Video, is also on tap for 2010.

We have all had patrons who are reluctant to tell us what they really want to know. They begin with a vague question such as, “Do you have anything about diseases?” When you begin a reference interview, they get impatient or even hostile, so you explain that you are asking because you want to find them the best information about their topic. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. People may be embarrassed to ask for information about some subjects. Sometimes they want to protect thefabulous new invention that is the key to fame and fortune. Working with these people can be a challenge. The person who wants to find the DVD based on the book by his favorite author, whose name he has forgotten, provides a detailed plot summary, but it is not familiar. The he tells you that he thinks the author’s name begins with D. You ask if the book is fiction, explain the difference between fiction and non-fiction when he looks puzzled, and learn that it is fiction. Then you lead him to the fiction stacks and let him browse. A few minutes later he comes back waving the book and smiling. You were lucky this time. The patron who wants information about diseases won’t answer any questions, so you show him a medical encyclopedia. He comes back, throws it at you and says, “Aw hell, just give me a book about Scientology.” It’s all in a day’s work. A former colleague, now happily retired often resorted to asking, “What’s your real question?” when nothing else worked. That sometimes led to success. What is your strategy for dealing with difficult questions?

Oxford Handbooks Online launched in November, bringing over 65 handbooks to the platform.  The handbook series provides scholarly articles and chapters on a wide range of topics.  At site launch, business/management, philosophy, religion, and political science handbooks were online, with plans to add over 8 new topic areas between 2011 and 2013.

The platform provides cross searching of over 2000 chapters, links to the chapter level for online course packs, cross searching words or phrases through Oxford Scholarship Online, and editorially selected links to other handbooks and Oxford online products.

When someone like Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, makes predictions about what the Web will look in five years, it’s worth our attention. Schmidt delivered his prognostications at last month’s Gartner Symposium/ITxpo (”the world’s most important gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives”). Among them: in five years most of the content on the Web will be in Chinese. And because of the shift towards user generated information, people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. This is already occurring, of course. Learning how to rank that “is the great challenge of the age,” according to Schmidt.

 

Now that the government is assuring us that the recession in ending,  more people may be interested in getting back in the stock market.  My financial advisor recommends YahooFinance.com as a great site to get concise information on a stock and check quotes.  Yahoo!Finance is also available as a free app for the IPhone.  The front page gives the latest market summary and top stories of the day.   There are also links to information on investing and personal finance.  You may also create your own portfolio. Using the search for a stock quote you find a page full of information - current quote, a graph for the stock volume of the day, the previous and opening quote, the volume, day and year’s range, etc.  Current news about the stock is prominent and there are numerous links to additional information.  With all this knowledge you may make good financial decisions and  will be doing your part to improve the economy.

Last night I was visiting with the librarians at my public library discussing some ideas for a new bookgroup when a boy came up to the desk and said, “Can you suggest any good books?” I knew they did a lot of readers’ advisory at the library but I had never before heard a patron ask so clearly and specifically for RA help. Turned out he wanted a fantasy book, “a nice big fat one,” and since he had never read the Eragon books, he was happy to take the first one home.

A few minutes later the same boy came back and asked, “Can you suggest a short nonfiction book?” When the librarian asked if there were any particular subjects he was interested he said, “No, just something really short.”

It is questions like these that make me excited about providing reference services, and optimistic about the future of our public libraries.

My beloved canine companion died in August at the age of 16 and my house is too quiet. The quest for a new furry friend is in fact a search.  Visits to local shelters were depressing and unsatisfactory. Since they were full of Pitbulls and Chihuahuas, I knew that I needed a new strategy. The Web is full of dog sites. Using Petfinder and other dog rescue sites, I found local organizations involved in saving homeless dogs, looked at lots of adorable pictures, and became adept at deciphering the descriptive code. If a dog  “uses his voice”, it will probably bark all the time. If it is “acquiring manners”, it needs lots of training. These organizations do good work, but their application process rivals that of an Ivy League school. I am waiting to find out if I have been accepted to adopt a two-year-old Labradoodle. In the mean time, I am also searching for local breeders who would like to find a good home for one of their older dogs. With any luck, the right dog will find me soon.

I heard an interesting story about climate change on NPR a few weeks ago. A British team is looking through Royal Navy logbooks in order to track climate change over the past 200 or 300 years. The logbooks, along with the meteorological registers of British colonies, contain valuable weather data, but most of them have been lying untouched in archives for years. CORRAL (UK Colonial Registers and Royal Navy Logbooks) is cataloging and digitizing them to make them available to a wider audience. One of the objectives of the CORRAL project is the creation of a database of instrumental climatic data for researchers. Another is the creation of a  library of images of the most important logbooks from voyages of scientific discovery, including those of James Cook’s Endeavor and H.M.S. Beagle.

This is a perfect example of one of the best uses of the Internet. Images of nearly 300 logbooks dating back to the 1760s are now accessible not only to scholars, but to students and teachers looking for primary source material, history buffs and Age of Sail enthusiasts, and even fans of Patrick O’Brian. Material that might seem arcane and of  interest to just a handful of researchers now has the potential for a much wider application.

The National Archives (UK) will have a fully searchable version of the logbooks on its Web site in 2010.

According to a survey conducted by the Pew Internet Project in 2007,  “62% of adult Americans have either accessed the internet with a wireless connection away from home or work or used a non-voice data application using their cell phone or PDA.”  Non-voice data applications include not only texting, e-mailing, taking a picture, and recording a video, but also accessing digital information.

The first Handheld Librarian Online Conference was held in July and offered a snapshot of the current handheld landscape. All the sessions were recorded. Of particular interest for reference are the presentations on various text messaging reference services, including the Alliance Library System Infoquest Project,  the  Skokie (IL) Public Library’s mobile library platform, and Cornell’s Textalibrarian.  Another Handheld Librarian Online Conference is scheduled for February, 2010.  

In September, Gary Price of ResourceShelf presented a report, Mobile Access to Information, at Web Search University in Washington, D.C., that provides a good overview of  terms and trends.  As Gary points out, more publishers are going mobile, and reference publishers are among them. Just two examples: last month, Schlager Group released “DocNotes: Presidential Speeches,” its first applications for the  iPhone and the iPod Touch.  And subscribers to the online version of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of China can download an Exact Editions Exactly APP from iTunes in order to access the encyclopedia on an iPhone.

Librarians and publishers take note: athough a lot of our focus has been on going mobile to reach younger people, the Pew report documents a high rate of  wireless handheld use among African Americans and English-speaking Hispanics, groups that have traditionally lagged behind in desktop online access.

Libraries using the wholesaler Baker and Taylor may now purchase eBook titles from Gale through B & T’s Title Source 3 ordering system .  B & T and Gale/Cengage announced today the new partnership.  Nearly 3000 GVRL titles, the Lit Crit series, and titles in Gale’s Directory Library may all be ordered.  This is a real convenience for libraries wishing to expand their ebook collections, or renew titles already owned.   Here’s a clip from the press release: Read the rest of this entry »

If you are busy with the hype of Halloween you may forget that Sunday morning, November 1 is when Daylight Saving Time ends.  webexhibits.org/daylightsaving has a detailed history of this event.  It explains why we change our clocks twice a year, with the rationale, opposition, obstacles and some interesting anecdotes.  There is also a world map showing when and where in the world Daylight Saving Time is observed.  This exhibit is also displayed in a new techonology called “Spicy Nodes” in which clouds float around the screen with some of the information.  Webexhibits.org  is produced by IDEA (Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement) and uses examples to show  the connection between art and science.  Other current exhibits are Calendars through the Ages and van Gogh’s Letters.