Blogging Librarian

The Art of Manliness recently posted an article listing down 100 must-read books for men.

Unfortunately, most of the books are pretty alien to me even though I’m a librarian. I tend to read more nerdy stuff like techie books on HTML, CSS, and web design as well as business and current affairs magazines.

The ones that I’ve read before are:

• Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (Call No.: English 158.1 CAR or here)
• Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Call No.: J English TWA)
• Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (Call No.: J English MEL or English MEL)
• Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (Call No.: English DEF)
• The Bible
• Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (Call No.: English LEE)

Although the book is not on the list, my personal favorite book of all time is Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (Call No.:English ACH). Read this book for my literature class when I was 14 and the story remains quite deeply in my mind.

So, what do you think about the listing? If you are a guy, would you have read the books listed? Maybe someone should come up with a list for women.

(via LISNews)

Yesterday, I had a post more towards to children books. So, for today, I found two resources (via LibrarianInBlack) for teens.

The first one that you should check out is Turning The Paige. It’s a teens’ book review blog and is run by Paige Turner, who reads and reviews the books. You can search for books by genre, age level, series or grade through the categories in the sidebar. Turner has a rating system for the books reviewed which would not be foreign to students … A+ to F-. As the site was started only at the beginning of the year, there are not many reviews at the moment. But you might be interested in the “Top 10 Lists” category to find interesting reads.

As for the second resource, the name of the site is Ergo and is created and run by the State Library of Victoria, Australia. Information literacy for students and teachers at the high school / secondary school level is the focus of the site. It has great resources on research skills, essay writing skills and study skills. It has also many great resources for teachers as well. Although the site is quite Victoria- and Australia-centric in terms of the content, there are still many useful tips that anyone can use.

The shortlist of Best of the Bookers award has been announced and it pits six past winners of the Booker Prize to determine which novel is the best winning one since the prize began in 1969. It is a one-off celebratory award to mark the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize.

The books in the shortlist were chosen by a team that comprises biographer Victoria Glendinning, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, and John Mullan, professor of English at the University of London. However, the best book will be decided by a public vote that started yesterday on The Man Booker Prize website with the winner to be announced on 10 July 2008.

The shortlist of books are as follows:

• Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road (1995) (Call No.: English BAR)
• Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1988) (Call No.: English CAR)
• JM Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) (Call No.: English COE)
• JG Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) (Call No.: English FAR or here)
• Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist (1974) (Call No.: English GOR)
• Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children (1981) (Call No.: English RUS or here)

Remember to go read the books and vote at the website!

(via BBC News | Entertainment and The Guardian)

- “Libraries Aren’t Just Buildings Where Books Are Kept”

(via The Shifted Librarian)

- Just One More Book
Just One More Book is a podcast about children’s books. It is run by a husband and wife team and the podcasts are recorded in their favorite coffee shop somewhere in Ottawa, Canada. The podcasts are posted about 3 times per week and they range from 5 and 25 minutes in length. The topics for the podcasts cover favorite books and interviews with authors as well as literacy issues. To date, there are more than 300 podcasts that have been archived. Do go check it!
(via LibrarianInBlack)

- Lexicographical Longing
The Oxford English Dictionary (O.E.D.) seems to be going the way of the dodo bird. The publishers, Oxford University Press, has decided not to publish a new print edition. So, the last printed edition of O.E.D. was done in 1989 and was in 20 volumes. At the moment, the editors at O.E.D. are slowly transferring all the content onto the Web. You can register for an account at OED.com though it costs money (US$300 a year or US$30 a month).

- Ginger Spice renounces singing to become author
Geri Halliwell, or better known as Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls, seems to have given up her singing career to concentrate fully on her writing career as a children’s author. Her first of six books is officially published today by Macmillian. The series of books revolve around a small, vivacious, ginger-haired girl called Ugenia Lavender. Do check it out when it arrives in either your local public library or bookstore.

- Anti-terror threat to librarian role
Apparently, police in the UK and US have requested for librarians to release information of persons under surveillance of their borrowing records as well as records of internet sites visited. Do you face such issues in your libraries?
(via LISNews)

- 21st Century Library Design: A Thought Provoking Program
A summary of the presentations done at the recent panel discussion at the Public Library Association 2008 conference in Minneapolis. Useful for those who are planning new libraries.
(via LISNews)

- Book-Beer Pairings:Part I and Part II
Authors share what beers would go best with their books. I’ve heard of wine pairings with food, but definitely the first time I’m hearing beer pairings with books. Unfortunately, most of the beers mentioned are not easily available in Singapore. And I’m sure I know a couple of my colleagues who would be really interested in these pairings! Guess it’s time for a beer now.
(via LISNews)

- Life-changing books: Recommendations from 17 leading scientists
Some of the world’s leading scientists share which books have inspired them. Do check out the comments as well as others have contributed their own life-changing books.
(via Boing Boing)

- WebTools4u2use
A wiki was created by 2 school library media specialists from the University of Central Florida to provide information on some of the Web 2.0 tools and how they can be used by librarians, students and teachers. What’s really interesting is that anyone with a Wikispaces account, or register for one, can add to the wiki to expand the resource. Interesting use of social networking tools!
(via LibrarianInBlack)

- Libraries Unleashed
The Guardian, in association with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), has published a special supplement that features 18 articles on libraries and technology. Do have a look to find out what libraries in the UK are doing with new technologies.
(via iLibrarian)

- Quotations Book
An online resource on quotations. Currently, there are more than 40,000 quotations available on the site.

The shortlists for James Tait Black Memorial prizes for non-fiction and biography have been announced yesterday.

The James Tait Black Memorial prizes were founded in 1919 by the widow of Edinburgh publisher James Tait Black. The book award is also quite unique as it is the only one that is judged by scholars and graduate students of literature. The literature graduate students assist in compiling the shortlists by writing reports on the books submitted. The prize advisory committees will then decide on the awards. The awards are hosted by the literature department of the Edinburgh University.

The shortlists are as follows:

Fiction shortlist
Our Horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben
The Devil’s Footprints by John Burnside
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
A Far Country by Daniel Mason
Salvage by Gee Williams

Biography shortlist
Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray
God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain by Rosemary Hill
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand by Richard Reeves

The prizes will be awarded in August at a ceremony at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Last year’s winners were Cormac McCarthy for The Road and Byron Rogers for The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of RS Thomas. Some other past winners include DH Lawrence, LM Forster, Graham Greene, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Zadie Smith.

StoryTubes 2008 is a US-wide competition where children, aged 6 to 12 years old, can submit a video review of 2 minutes or less of their favorite books through YouTube.

StoryTubes is organized by a number of libraries spread across the US and this is the second year that they are holding the competition. The competition is also divided into different genres such as “Hair-Raising Tales”, “From or For the Heart”, “Of Heroes and Heroines” and “Facts, Fads and Phenoms”. You can view some of the already reviewed videos here.

What I found interesting is that the use of social media tools such as YouTube to engage the community in submitting the videos. In addition, they also a simple guide to the children on how they can video themselves.

A positive note from last year’s competition was that the videos generated online book discussions between the children. And this made other children interested in reading the books that were reviewed.

Maybe we can do something similar at MPOW. Think I’ll highlight the StoryTubes site to my children services colleagues.

(via Tame The Web)