Thing 35; part 2

Russian Folk Tale illustration from the Vintage Children's Book pool on Flickr, courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/lenivec/

Audio Book

How cool is it that you can volunteer for Librivox ? They provide free audio books from the public domain. They currently have 1325 works of fiction both for adults and youth, and that is the only category that I searched. To volunteer, "All you need is your voice, some free software, your computer, and maybe an inexpensive microphone". How nice would it be to help others out by reading?

Book Swaps


Swap Tree has me jittery with excitement! You can trade books, music and DVDs. You just make a list of things you want and things that you have. I would like to try it eventually, and I will report back on this blog.

BookCrossing

I don't have any books I want to send out at present, but I'll keep you posted.

Book Reviews

Book Browse : When I saw Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls as one of the week's featured hardcovers, it immediately made me trust this site. You can browse and search through teen and children's books alone. You can search by setting, time period, and themes. That much alone made me want to join. but there is a fee (29.95 for a year) and I am cheap and fairly well informed due to all these other options. The only site I pay for is LibraryThing. Apparently, libraries can subscribe and then patrons can use it, but our system doesn't subscribe.

The One Minute Critic! looks like a fun blog to browse. In fact, I added it to my Blog list (see and visit it below). Quickie videos review books and audio books. Spoiler alerts are given. A variety of books are reviewed. It's free! What's not to like?

Children's Books

Clearly a favorite topic of mine.

Vintage Children's Books on Flickr is something I've played with before this Thing. Gorgeous old book illustrations (Folktales, classics) and nostalgia (Little Golden Books, Dick and Jane). Love it! Any Flickr member can join the group and add to the pool.

Lookybook, which was a recommended resource, has closed due to lack of funds. When I tried Storyline, I received a message that the page can't be found :(

Just One More Book has podcast reviews of books and author interviews. I like this one too, and I've added it to my bloglist below. A selling point for me was a new interview with Leslea' Newman, author of Heather Has Two Mommies and numerous other books for children and adults. I'm a fan of her adult story collections like A Letter to Harvey Milk, Out of the Closet and Nothing to Wear and The Femme Mystique, a number of true stories that were very personally important for me. Go Leslea'!

Tonight's Bedtime Story is of great interest to me, because they have 79 classic fairy tales on PDF. I was skeptical about the illustrations, but they are by such masters as Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane and Gustav Dore. Also, they offer computer wallpaper of some of their tales!


Book Rental

Book Swim rents paperbacks, hardcovers, and textbooks, apparently in a manner similar to Netflix. I doubt I'll need that service (as I work in a library, for crying out loud), but I can definitely see how patrons might be interested in textbook rental.

Facebook

I added the book application Great Children's Books, which allows you to send covers of classic children's books to your friends. I sent Anne of Green Gables to my great friend Carol Has Her Nose in a Book.

Thing 35: Books 2.0

Alice in Wonderland Book Sculpture, photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/rominaespinosa/

What a wonderful topic! I think that this Thing will take a long, long time. So much to explore.

Organize Your Personal Library

I already have a lifetime membership to Library Thing as cleery, with 508 books from my personal library cataloged to date. I love it because you can tag the books as you wish, and you can view them by title or cover picture. I used to use Library Thing as a place to keep new titles I'm interested in, and tagged them under Unread, but now I've started to keep those in Facebook. Also, I'm married now, and I'll be adding my husband's book collection. So, my books are in transition.

I was excited to find iTrack Mine , because you can also keep track of your media. I'm leaving my books on Library Thing, but I'm starting to put my movies and music on iTrack Mine. The first site I tried was Lib.rario.us , which i find an annoying name because of the punctuation. I started this at the end of March, before I had my surgery, but if memory serves I didn't like Lib.rario.us because the tags you use are their predefined categories, and I want to be able to create my own. For one thing, I want to be able to enter my VHS tapes as well as my DVDs, and I want to know which is which. Lib.rario.us didn't seem to allow me that function. On iTrack Mine, you can make custom lists, so that's how I keep my tapes separate. There is also a social component to this, where you can make "friends" and see their collections and reviews, but I haven't even scratched the surface with this.

Readers' Advisory


I've signed up for ReadingTrails, because it looks intriguing. I will explore it shortly. I tried What Should I Read Next?" , but the first book and author that I put in, Coventry by Helen Humphreys, generated an error message. I then tried Affinity by Sarah Waters, and got ten results. So, I think that it will be hit or miss, but I may still join.

What's Next promises to find the next book in a series, but I had middling results. It brought up the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace, but gave me no results when I tried to put in Erin Hunter's Warriors series.

BookStumpers is a nifty site, part of Loganberry books, where you can post a description of a book and let others help you find the title. It seems like most of these are children's books. You can also help answer the stumpers. Some months ago I answered a stumper that was Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer, and it seems many agree that this was the answer. It's fun to look through the stumper lists, especially since the inquires go back to books from the early 1900s!

I joined Booklamp because it promises to make book suggestions based on books you already enjoy, "to find books with a similar level of tone, tense, perspective, action, description, and dialog - while at the same time allowing you to specify details..." Sadly though, at this point it's just a technology demonstration and search access is yet to come. It looks promising though.

Online Book Communities

Looking over the suggested sites, I realize that I already use Living Social through Facebook, as I mentioned above. I track books I've read, want to read and am reading now. I usually don't review my books, giving only the shortest blurb when I do. No time! But, I do like to see what my friends are reading, and this does show me.

Bookgroup Resources

Book Sprouts immediately interested me because there are about 641 book clubs that you can join. This leads to fun browsing. I searched with the key word "teen" and found that many libraries have their teen book groups list, mostly by invitation only. So, bravo! to these libraries. I'm interested in this function. Predictably, I also searched under Young Adult ( 5 results), Fairy Tales (0), Folktales (0), Mythology (0) and Helen Humphreys (0). The only local bookclubs I found were invitation only. I know this site is beta, but it needs a way to search for clubs that are open. It's tiring to have to browse with all those invitation only clubs included.

When God was a child...Oloyou

Returning to the library after a month off, I found a lovely new book waiting for me: Oloyou by Teresa Cardenas. With text in both Spanish and English, it is a retelling of a Yoruba myth, where God-child creates the first creature, Oloyou the cat, from a passing cloud. The two are beloved friends, but when Oloyou accidently falls from the sky and falls in love with the daughter of the sea, his fate is uncertain. Cardenas is a famous Cuban storyteller, dancer and priestess of Santeria, and she gives us a touching story of love, friendship and creation.

I became aware of the tale when I was skimming a book review and fell in love with a picture of a happy God-child hugging the dreamy-faced, smiling cat, much larger than his maker. I immediately ordered the book from my library system. That same appealing art that drew me in fills the book, illustrated by Mexican artist Margarita Sada. Her bright oil paintings carry and enhance the charm of the story.

I'm taking this one home to read to my husband. I'd also love to hear it read in Spanish.

Meeting Chris Crutcher!

Yesterday, I was privileged to hear and meet the award winning teen author Chris Crutcher, author of Whale Talk, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, The Sledding Hill and many more. He spoke at the the Central Saint Paul Library for about an hour and a half. I've seen a fair amount of teen and children's authors, and, Crutcher is an exciting, relaxed presenter. He read to us from The King of the Mild Frontier, telling us childhood stories of the "neat times" he had with his persuasive (cough) older brother. I laughed so hard that I cried. Guess what book I checked out as soon as I returned to my own library?

He graciously signed my proof of Whale Talk and I floated away a giddy, thrilled fangirl.

Crutcher also spoke eloquently of the censorship of his books and told us about the children who he met when he worked as a therapist and how they made their ways into his stories. He can speak about himself much better than I can, so read up on him at:

http://www.chriscrutcher.com/ and if you haven't already, pick up his books!

This Is Our Birthday Song, It Isn't Very Long...

Birthday Storytime

• Who Made This Cake? by Chihiro Nakagawa, illus. by Junji Koyose


• Birthday Zoo by Deborah Lee Rose, illus. by Lynn Munsinger


• The Fairytale Cake by Mark Sperring, illus. by Jonathan Langley


• A Birthday for Cow! by Jan Thomas


• Mouse's Birthday by Jane Yolen, illus. by Bruce Degen


• Bunny Cakes by Rosemary Wells

This storytime was a hit, with Cow and her birthday turnip, Max and his Red-Hot Marshmallow Squirters, and Mouse's "remodeled" house. We had a perfect number of kids to sing personalized versions of the super short birthday song of this post's title. The kids at this evening family storytime were charming in their pajamas, toting their favorite stuffed friends.

Thing 34: Online Answer Sites

I have little experience with Online Answer sites before this Thing. I have run across Yahoo!Answers when doing general surfing, but that is about it. So first I read
The Future of the Reference Desk, That Thing You Do, and a bit of Librarian 2.0: Interviews of the Future of Librarians.

Next, here are the sites I looked at:

AskMetafilter
ChaCha
AllExperts
WikiAnswers
Yahoo!Answers
Askville
Answerbag
Mahalo
SnappyFingers

I didn't look at Folkstown, which is down for maintenance. All of these seemed browseable except for Snappy Fingers, which requires a query in the search box. I have to say that these are appealing. I was interested to see the questions and answers.


So, why would someone prefer to ask a stranger, possibly unqualified, to answer a question for them rather than to contact a librarian who can answer them with authority and reliable material? Based on what I've read and seen, here's what I think:

• Want opinions, not facts: they have questions regarding behavior, like: What do you do when your neighbors have a barking dog that they cannot control?, How often do you makeout?
• Want anonymity: want to ask their question privately
• These sites are social, you can ask questions you would ask friends and get feedback, but you probably wouldn't ask a librarian: Why doesn't --- love me as much as he used to , How long must I wait before getting tested for Aids if I just had sex?
• Don't want bother for themselves or others, a quickie answer will do
• Question is answered "enough,", person has fleeting curiosity, it's just enough to know a short answer, general validation is fine
• Want to talk with people who've shared an experience: parenting, wedding, fandom, etc., speak to a "regular" person who's experienced something: When is the appropriate time to seat a step mother of the bride? Thanks , What classes are better if I want to go to college?, Jonas brothers fanclub webpage won't let me buy tickets! why?
• Want answer to a very"of the moment" question: When is the next season of the sho time show Weeds coming out
• Have a question that can be answered quickly, by the right person: "I can't remember the name of this movie. Can you remember this movie?"
• Want something besides answer of status quo, a fashion magazine or book might suggest this, but : Do jelly cubes really help strengthen and grow your hair?
• Want to ask for advice, then judge the quality themselves rather than be told what is "right, " you can accept what sounds good and reject the rest because
• Sometimes you want to hear what you want to hear!
  
  
  

More Thing 33: still traveling

Nessie from: http://flagranny2.wordpress.com/2007/06/01/tourist-says-hes-shot-video-of-loch-ness-monster/

Travel Review sites:

With just a quick glance Igougo looks the most appealing to me. There is a prominent search box, a map and a list of destinations at the top of the page. Searching for Scotland for my imaginary trip brings up an info page with a list of all possible destinations in Scotland. Pretending we are going to Loch Ness to visit Nessie, we select it and get info on hotels, things to do, one restaurant, photos, journals and more. There is also flight info to Loch Ness. I like this site.

Tripadvisor is really comprehensive. It gives me the above (plus more restaurants), and has a helpful "Before You Go" section that discusses things like history, suggested reading and typical weather. There is also "United Kingdom For Foreign Visitors" with info on banks, etiquette and emergencies. Two thumbs up!

Travel Journals:

My Life of Travel You can search by popular location to find blogs. I broadened out from Loch Ness to Glasgow, Vienna and all of India. If you had a traveling life, you could add your own blog.

Vcarious has both travel guides and journals. It also has message boards and discussions. The guides are nice but for serious information I'd absolutely reach for a good old guide book.

Travel Mashups:

These are the suggested Mashups:

Green Routes (helps you find one-of-a-kind places to eat that includes green businesses in MN, IA, ND, and WI)
TubeJP (London Tube journey planner)
District Taxi Fare Estimator (Washington Post's cab fare estimator)
Wines and Times (allows you to plan your own winery tour anywhere in the U.S.)
Hotspotr (find Wi-Fi hotspots and cafes around the U.S.)
Fastfoodmaps.com (Find fast food restaurants in the U.S; also has a link to Starbucks locations in the U.S.)
Travel Mashups - Mashup Awards (award winning travel mashups)

The only one that's really relevant for me is Green Routes. Searching it for places in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, I find one place to eat, Mill City Farmer's Market and a place to shop, Twin Cities Green.

Mill City

Address 2nd Street S and Chicago Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55401612.341.7580
Hours Saturdays, 8am - 1pm, May 10th - October 18th, 2008
The region's finest sustainable and organic farmers and food artisans offer everything from heirloom vegetables and organic fruits to free range and grass-fed meats, dairy & eggs. Check out our selection of specialty foods including farmstead cheeses and European-style breads. Weekly chef demos, live music, kids’ activities and more!

http://www.millcityfarmersmarket.org/

Twin Cities Green

Address2405 Hennepin Ave S Minneapolis, MN 55405612-374-4581
HoursTues - Sat 11 - 7, Sun 12 - 5
An eco-friendly home/life shop that sells furniture, home decor, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, baby and other green accessories and necessities that are recycled, reclaimed, natural, organic, and sustainable.

http://www.twincitiesgreen.com/