- The 25 Modern Libraries in the World A listing of libraries that shows libraries are no longer like the libraries of old. Libraries are now at the cutting edge of information management as well as design and web technology. Unfortunately, MPOW is not listed as one of them. (via kottke.org)
- Future-Proof Your Library Some wonderful ideas from Library Journal’s Movers & Shakers on how to ensure a library’s relevance in future.
- John Prescott and Kama Sutra abandoned in hotel rooms No, they were not intimately related. They were related in that they were books that were abandoned in budget hotels in the United Kingdom this past summer. The list was compiled by Travelodge, a chain of budget hotels in the UK and Ireland, and is done annually. In all, 7,000 books were left behind in Travelodge hotels throughout the year. (via LISNews)
- 2008 Booker Prize announced The shortlist for this year’s Booker Prize was announced this past Monday. The following novels are on the list: Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture, Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, Linda Grant’s The Clothes on Their Backs, Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency, and Steve Toltz’s A Fraction of the Whole. Surprisingly, some of the hot favourites from the longlist such as Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence, Michelle de Kretser’s The Lost Dog, and Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland did not make it. I was quite surprised that Salman Rushdie did not even make the shortlist considering that he is a double Booker of Booker winner as well as Best of the Booker winner. The winner of this year’s Booker Prize would be announced on 14 October 2008.
MOE has just launched a dedication website for everyone to pen their thanks to their teachers at Teachersday.sg.
The only catch is that you have to only use six words in your dedication So, start cracking your literary brain and come up with the best six words of thanks to your teachers!
For the Harry Potter fans, the trailer (of higher video quality) for the upcoming movie Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released a couple of days back. I haven’t watched any of the movies except for the first one. And my wife is not a big fan of the movie interpretation of the Harry Potter series although she has finished reading all the seven books.
And in other Harry Potter news, JK Rowling has decided to publish a collection of fairytales to help raise money for a UK children’s charity, the Children’s High Level Group (CHLG).
The Tales of Beedle the Bard was mentioned in the final book of the Harry Potter series, The Deathly Hallows. Rowling had no intentions to publish the book initially and had personally written and illustrated only seven copies of the book. Six of those were given to friends and one was sold to Amazon at an auction last year for £1.95m.
There will be three editions of the book. Two are by regular publishers, Scholastic and Bloomsbury. And the third edition will be produced by Amazon, which aims to replicate the look and feel of the original tales. There will only be 100,000 copies of the Collector’s Edition.
- Found in Books I’ve found money, bank passbook, a cash cheque, wedding photo, and other sentimental stuff in the books that are returned to us. The people most likely used those items as a bookmark, but forgot about removing it before returning the books. But I guess the one that beat all that in the article was the strip of bacon that was used as a bookmark. Quite an interesting read to see what some people keep in their books or use as bookmarks. (via LISNews)
- Reading Circle Books I sorta of stumbled onto this site. Reading Circle Books is “a place for people who like to read & learn together with fellow-readers of all ages. Readers may often read in solitude, but ideas and expressions, like books and people, are formed in relationship and live by interaction.” Definitely a blog to take note of.
- Gaming for a book Interesting article on the use of games to draw teens to the library. Although most of the teens were more interested in playing the games, the aim is to bring the teens INTO the library and then introduce them to the different books in the library. (via LISNews)
- Students not as Web-savvy after all If you always thought the younger generation is more web-savvy, think again! Here’s another report to show that students are the exact opposite of what most people have assumed. Personally, having interacted with students, while providing advisory services and during library workshops, I have found that a large number of students do not know how to evaluate information that they have found on the Internet or online databases. In addition, they may not know about the many uses of social media applicable to their studies other than the fun they have on MySpace, Facebook and Friendster. (via Tame The Web)
- From Scuba Diver to Jet Ski Rider The article doesn’t deal with water sports. But it is a metaphor of how the art of reading has evolved for the author of the article. I feel the same way when I previously was able to read through a book, but I now find myself more interested in reading short articles in magazines, newspapers and online. (via LISNews)
- Once upon a bonzer time Seems like an Australian publisher have adapted many of the popular fairy tales to add on a more Australian flavor. Cinderella has been re-named Cindy Ella whose evil stepsisters force her to bake meat pies for tea, clean the dunny (Australian slang for toilet) and feed the budgies. Other titles in the series include Three Little Bush Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Koalas and Three Kangaroo Gruffs. I wonder what my son would think of these fairy tales.
The above photo is a tool called the Bookeye Book Scanner and the one pictured here is installed in the library of the University of Alaska at Anchorage for the students to scan documents and books as PDF, JPG, TIFF or PNG and then choose whether to save it to a USB drive, burn into a CD, ftp them, save them on a network drive or email it to themselves. And of course, you can just print it out. It’s interesting to note that the library at the University of Alaska only provided usage stats on how the scanner is been used. Hmmm … maybe this is the next step in the provision of reprographic services to the public. The only worry, I guess, would be how are we going to enforce the Copyright Act.
