Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

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.

Our main library used to have four reference desks: science/business/social science/documents; art and music; history and literature; and periodicals. As the budget cuts came, the number diminished and we now have only one. There is still a separate desk for periodicals and the local history room still exists. A single desk means that all of us (and there are fewer of us!) must handle reference questions in all subject areas. Our collections have been merged into a single reference collection. The merger of the desks was not something that we wanted, but we had no choice. Now that we have been working in the new environment for awhile, most of us enjoy it. It is nice to stretch the mind with a wide variety of questions. I enjoy doing a bit of reader’s advisory and sharing my favorite mystery writers with fellow afficionados. I also enjoy answering music questions. It was fun when a woman called on the phone, ran to her piano and played a few bars of Mendelsohn’s “War March of the Priests” from Atalaia and asked me to tell her what it was. She had forgotten. She also wanted the sheet music, which we had. Having played it at graduation for many years in my high-school orchestra, I remembered it well. We still maintain our subject specialties and help each other as needed. We have kept our collection development and training duties although we have much less time for the latter due to staff reduction. Staffing a single desk has also brought us together as a team. We have always been collegial, but separate desks created some distance. Now we have one desk and one schedule, so we spend more time with each other. This is for the most part a good thing. We learn from each other and back each other up when faced with problem patrons. The weak links are more obvious, but they are few.

Gale announced the release of two new 4 volume encyclopedias - Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature and Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of American Literature.  According to a Gale Press Release, the encyclopedias discuss an authors work/s in context including:

• Circumstances in the authors’  lives that are reflected in their work
• Historical Events affecting their work
• Other authors and artists active at the same time
• Common human themes -  relevant globally - that appear in their work and what other works address those themes
• How the author’s works were critically received over time

Both titles will be available in print and as eBooks in GVRL.

In a world in which a single issue of The New York Times (October 20, 2009) can report that artificial memories have been created in the brain of a fruitfly; wild fish have learned to “discriminate among  colors, patterns, and shapes, including new ones”; and radioactive isotopes in the whiskers of Antarctic fur seals contain a record of the seals’ migration patterns, some of the Polish philosophical and science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem’s wilder imaginings may not seem so wild after all.

In the introduction to Eruntics by one Reginald Gulliver (published by George Allen & Unwin Limited at some indeterminate future date), Lem introduces the apocryphal Gulliver, in the latter’s own words, as “a philosopher-dilettante and amateur bacteriologist who one day eighteen years ago decided to teach bacteria English.”  Eruntics is one of five remarkable works collected in Imaginary Magnitude, translated from Polish by Marc Heine and published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1984.  Lem’s Wikipedia entry credits the writer with coming up with the concept of “electronic paper” but also notes his aversion to the Internet.  On the title page to Golem XIV, in the same volume, Lem has Indiana University Press still existing in 2047.  Let’s hope so!  Also in Imaginary Magnitude are Lem’s prospectus and sample pages for Vestrand’s Extelopedia (in 44 Magnetomes), a parody of the “and if you act now…” school of television commercial, but in this case in print and extolling the virtues of the solution to the nagging problem of your encyclopedia being out of date even before it is published.  Vestrand’s Extelopedia, you see, predicts the future (entries printed in black exceeding 99.9% probability, those in red having less than 86.5% probability).   Editors are in continuous remote-control contact with each Extelopedia, to ensure that probability changes are registered as color changes in the text.  Lem foresees for 2011 publication this 44-volume set to which, at the sound of one’s voice “the desired volume slips off the shelf, TURNS its own pages, and STOPS at the desired entry.”  Hilarious.

Not so hilarious is the title piece in One Human Minute, a collection (translated by Catherine S. Leach and published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1986) which also contains “The Upside-Down Evolution” and “The World as Cataclysm.”  All three are reviews of nonexistent books.  The 36-page title review imagines a reference work which “presents what all the people in the world are doing, at the same time, in the course of one minute.”  It is a dystopian vision wonderfully written and translated.  At several points Lem compares and contrasts the apocryphal work he is reviewing to the Guinness Book of World Records.

I highly recommend these and other books by Stanislaw Lem.

Mark Moran the CEO of  findingDulcinea.com says it is a “small company with an ambitious agenda.”   Called “The Librarian of the Internet,” it was suggested as a “Site That will Matter in 2009″ by readers of  PC World.  There is something here for everyone.  The daily home page gives an idea of what Dulcinea does.  Today (10/24) continues a series of features on haunted cities with Boston in the spotlight.  ”Beyond the Headlines” discusses the new movie Amelia, summarizes reviews and links to the full text. It also provides biographical information on Earhart and offers theories about her disappearnce.  Web Guides abound from “Web Search in the Classroom” and  ”Web Site Credibility” to “Horse Racing:  The Sport of Kings” and “Opera Basics.”  Each guide has sub-topics with numerous links to other sources.  Dulcinea also offers SweetsSearch.com, a Google custom search engine with 20,000 sites approved by the Dulcinea staff.  Since it excludes many extraneous sites,  it will be most useful for students.  We all know that Don Quixote’s quest in life was Dulcinea.  May findingDulcinea help us be successful in teaching others about the magnitude and advantages of using the Web.

Dan Kraus, Booklist Associate Editor, Books for Youth, made this video for National Library Week last year. 

There’s a very active discussion going on right now on LIBREF-L regarding proper etiquette for a reference librarian. To find it, go to the archives and search for etiquette as a subject. The discussion started with a question from a LIS student about whether a librarian should get out from behind the desk and take a patron to an item. From what she observed, most librarians just stay in their seats and point in the general direction. The answer might seem to be obvious but, according to most of the  librarians who have responded, the etiquette is situational and depends on a variety of factors–the age and skills of the patron,  the physical arrangement of the library, what transpires during the reference transaction, how busy the librarian is, etc. etc.

In one of the posts I learned about Ohio Reference Excellence on the Web, which, even if you’re not from Ohio, is a good training tool for new reference librarians and a good refresher for veterans. There are six self-paced modules covering  the basics of reference service, with resource links, exercises, and quizzes.

People come into the library in search of information about anything that one can imagine. Often what they really want is advice. Of course as librarians, we cannot always provide it. This can be especially tricky when a patron wants medical, legal, or financial information. They want to know whether they should take a medication prescribed by a physician, if the herb in the infomercial will make those 50 extra pounds disappear, if the investment offer that came in the mail is the answer to their financial woes. We have to walk a fine line and provide information with no recommendations. We can get them information about the drug and tell them to discuss it with their physician, explaining that we are M.L.S., not M.D. We can empower them by telling them that they are their physician’s employer and that they are entitled to explanations that they understand and to a second opinion. We can tell patrons to read those direct mail offers carefully, contact the Better Business Bureau, and to remember that if it sounds too go to be true, it probably is. Most of them understand  and are grateful for the help. It’s all part of the day’s work and it makes our desk shifts more interesting.

Featured as this month’s Reader’s Corner, the review for the 2nd edition of the Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction appears in the October 15 Booklist.

As previously mentioned, this is a classic readers’ advisory and staff development tool and the 2nd edition has been eagerly awaited by librarians and educators.

The P (print) vs. E (electronic) debate started with reference publishing, and for the past decade or so anyone  involved in publishing, writing about, and using reference sources has had to navigate a whole new territory. It’s been exciting to get immersed in this alternate universe, but at the same time I confess I’ve envied my colleagues here at Booklist who were still secure in the world of the physical book. Thanks in part to the Kindle, however, the P vs. E. debate has expanded beyond the reference world.  And today,  according to an article in The New York Times, Barnes and Noble is introducing its own e-reader, called the Nook.

Last week The New York Times’ Room for Debate featured several pundits weighing in on the topic “Does the Brain Like E-Books?“  The questions they explore: is there a difference in the way the brain takes in information when it’s presented in traditional print form and electronically? And does the reading experience change depending on the medium?

Like print encyclopedias and their online counterparts, museums run the gamut from extremely specialized to (at least as an ideal) comprehensive or encyclopedic in scope.   (I will limit my examples to art museums, although many museums straddle the boundaries of art, history, nature, and science.)  Examples of the specialized museum include New York’s Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art (limited to a particular culture or geographic area) and Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or Philadelphia’s (or rather Merion’s) Barnes Collection (limited to the acquisitions and display stipulations of a single collector).  There are museums devoted to the works of a single artist, genre, or time period.  There are museums of great depth in their chosen area, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).  Some of these museums, such as MoMA, are encyclopedic in their chosen specialty. 

The truly encyclopedic museum is a rarer breed.  In the United States, I would estimate that there are two to three dozen art museums that merit the encyclopedic label.  In my home state of Texas I count only three: one each in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.  Boston, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Saint Louis, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles are among the other American cities that have great encyclopedic museums.  Each of these has its strengths and weaknesses in terms of depth and scope.   Even the Louvre, for all its depth, is not encyclopedic in the way these museums are.  They all have French and Italian art; but where is the Louvre’s American, Asian, or African art?  (I know the answer to that question, by the way.)  Only the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in my opinion, has the scope of a Wikipedia (the Met has some two million objects, and Wikipedia has a similar number of articles in English).  The Met’s authoritativeness might be measured in terms of the authenticity of its works (spectacular fakes have been discovered and less spectacular ones surely abound among the two million); provenances; the accuracy of its wall labels, online records, catalogs, and other publications; and generations of expert curators.  In terms of depth and authority of coverage (not to mention its limitation to art), a more apt comparison would be The Dictionary of Art.  In terms of arrangement, encyclopedias are usually alphabetically arranged, while museums are almost never so arranged (although their indexes probably are).

Print and online encyclopedias have the advantages of easy access through one’s library or computer.  They are on the whole far less expensive to access than any museum not located within easy driving distance.  What even the best-illustrated encyclopedias lack, however, is a real-time encounter with the painting, drawing, print, sculpture, or installation itself.  No online or print encyclopedia can elicit the same feeling as, say, any three-dimensional work or a massive or highly textured painting seen live.  I will go out on a limb, though, and say that some prints, drawings, and photographs look awfully good in high-quality reproduction.  Finally, one thing that no museum has (except in the case of certain types of art produced in multiples) is any of the art that any other museum, gallery, private collector, or starving artist has; in that sense, each collection is unique.  It is nice to see these items on loan, though I really cherish seeing my old friends in a museum’s permanent collection.  The truly encyclopedic art museum is the growing, slowly changing set of all art museums.

With Nora, a new baby in the family, I wondered about the name.  babynamewizard.com is one of Time magazine’s  50 Best Websites 2009.  The site is an off-shoot of The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wettenberg. In addition to the origin of names it is possible to discover related names and famous people with the name.  A graph depicts the popularity from 1880 to the present and a US map shows  popularity by state beginning in 1960.  A ranking of current popularity by country is also included.  There is a link to Wattenberg’s blog where she discusses the science of names and of course,  there is a link to purchase the book.

Today I was browsing through Janet Clarkson’s Menus from History, a fun two-volume reference set from Greenwood that offers, among other interesting bits of culinary lore (menus for a Medici wedding feast in 1368 and lunch on the inaugural flight of the Concorde in 1976; Pat Nixon’s meatloaf recipe) the bill of fare for an American Library Association Annual Conference dinner held in Lake Placid in 1894. Those librarians ate well–a couple of appetizers, then not just salmon but beef and squab,  not to mention the accompanying potatoes, peas and salad, all finished off with ice cream, cake, coffee, and fruit. The menu itself was written in the form of two new-at-the-time classification systems, Dewey and Cutter; fruit is 634 in Dewey or RH in Cutter, for example. The Dewey numbers 598.6 plus 614.132 plus 536.46  stand for roast squab. If you can figure out why, congratulations, you’re a Dewey expert.

Knowing your Dewey might not count for much, however, if the Dewey-free movement gains traction. Most commonly, Dewey-free means adopting a classification system based on words, often the very broad BISAC headings found in bookstores. Several public libraries have gone Dewey-free over the past few years, starting with the Perry Branch of the Maricopa Public Library District in Arizona. The Albany Public Library is in the process of making the move. The  Franklin Public Library District in Illinois has a Web site that describes how they broke their Dewey habit and offers examples of labels, signage, alternate taxonomies, and more. Is Dewey on the road to obsolescence, like date due stamps and catalog cards?

Does correct English usage matter anymore? There’s plenty of evidence that no one cares, but for those of us who do, there’s the third edition of Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern American Usage.  When Garner’s was first published in 1998 it quickly became a standard guide, and the new edition continues to man the barricades against assaults on good grammar, word choice, and punctuation. If you’re not sure when comprise is correct, or you cringe when you hear impact used as a verb, or you’re bemused by the use of momentarily for in a moment (as in “ Thank you for your patience; the train will be moving momentarily,” which I often hear during my commute), Garner will provide both answers and support. New to this edition is a “Language Change Index” which measures five stages of change, from the emergence of a new form to general acceptance. The use of momentarily for in a moment is now at stage four, meaning “the form becomes virtually universal but is opposed on cogent grounds by a few linguistic stalwarts.” The use of impact as a verb is now at stage 3 (”the form becomes commonplace even among many well-educated people but is still avoided in careful usage”), despite Garner’s admonition to “reserve impact for noun uses and impacted for wisdom teeth.” Also at stage 3 is the misuse of comprise, although Garner provides a simple rule: “The parts compose the whole, the whole comprises the parts.”