Google Lit Trips is a pretty cool site where users can submit their own mash-ups combining Google Earth files with the places visited in famous novels. Although it's aimed mostly at teachers looking to teach literature in a different way, this site can be enjoyed by any book lovers.
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Tuesday, July 27
Friday, July 23
Friday Fun Link - Best of Bookstore Bingo: 13 Most Ridiculous Things Overheard in Bookstores (July 23, 2010)
by
Jason
on Fri 23 Jul 2010 04:41 PM CST
Bookstore Bingo is apparently a new trend on Twitter where people post some of the silliest things they overhear at bookstores (and libraries?) HuffPost has collected some of the best ones.
Friday, July 16
Friday Fun Link - IWriteLike.me (July 15, 2010)
by
Jason
on Fri 16 Jul 2010 11:00 PM CST
A new site called IWriteLike.Me claims to analyse your writing and tell you which author's style you most resemble. I tried it with a couple recent blog posts and got Dan Brown (great!
 ). On the other hand, when I copied in the recent article I wrote for real money and with a bit of effort to it got me rated as Chuck Palahniuk. Because you know that the members of Credit Unions across Canada want nothing more than to read some blogger's quasi-Fight Club prose stylings!  Although it was an article about a kick boxing deposit specialist so who knows - maybe it's just looking for certain words? Hmmm, let's try something. "In the haunted house, Carrie stood covered in blood. Outside, a rabid dog watched as a vampire hovered at the window." And the result for this entire blog post is...not what I expected. (via MetaFilter) Thursday, July 8
A Few (More) Random Book Lists
by
Jason
on Thu 08 Jul 2010 07:44 PM CST
Wednesday, July 7
FIMS Student Explores Bibliotherapy with children living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa
by
Jason
on Wed 07 Jul 2010 07:26 PM CST
[Edit: It helps if I actually remember to put a link to the story I'm highlighting in the body of a post.]
Tuesday, May 4
Amazon Releases Info on Most Highlighted Kindle Books and Passages
by
Jason
on Tue 04 May 2010 08:19 PM CST
How many times have you been reading a book, come across a great quote and then, unless you're really anal diligent and somehow transcribed it, ended up forgetting all about it?
I've always thought that the tipping point for e-books would be something that easily allowed you to track these quotes as you came across them. (Do me a favour and go read that old blog entry because man, it's prescient when you hear what I'm about to say next!) And now, Amazon has released just such a feature for Kindle owners which track both the most highlighted books and individual passages from those books - with both all-time and recently highlighted lists for both books and passages. Arguments rage on the Metafilter thread where I found this story about how much of an invasion of privacy this is and if its worse than the tracking Amazon does with any surfing you do on their site or what any other major Internet site does. But overall, I think it's pretty cool. It might even become a new way to do a Coles notes-type speed reading of books that say, some blogger recommends but that you haven't got time to read for yourself. They don't have all the features I suggested in my earlier blog post (tagging, favouriting) but if that happens, look out! Now, the biggest hurdle is that the Kindle isn't library friendly. I know I could never afford to actually buy copies - digital or dead tree - of every book I read. But some suggest that the Kindle could create a business model that could even replace public libraries! (Search for "public library" to find comment from Josh.) Wednesday, April 28
Why Men Don't Read: How Publishing Is Alienating Half the Population
by
Jason
on Wed 28 Apr 2010 08:56 PM CST
Here's a good article poking holes in the fallacy that only women read. It's actually a bit of a chicken and the egg thing - do only women read because publishers only produce books targeted at women because those are the ones that have been the most successful in the past?
This is probably true in libraries too. We keep seeing studies that say that women are the majority of our patrons but often we don't ask why that is beyond "men don't read". There's also a gender bias in both publishing and libraries that the writer tip-toes around. But the truth is that the majority of people working in both publishing and libraries are female, the majority of library programmers are female, the majority of library collections development folks are female so a subtle bias is going to creep in no matter how conscious you try to be. Men read. Tons of them do. But they are not marketed to, not targeted, and often totally dismissed. Go to a book conference, a signing. Outside of a Tucker Max event, what percentage of attendees are men? I'm reminded of the program which I think ran in Southeast Regional where the branch held a "how to fix motorcycles" workshop. It was a huge success with tons of men in attendance. Same thing when another branch had a "hunting and fishing" program. (Oh, and I happen to have read the mystery book described in the lead-off anecdote of the article. I'm glad that teen nephew of the publisher gave it a thumb's up!  )Tuesday, April 27
The Crowdsourced Library?
by
Jason
on Tue 27 Apr 2010 10:00 PM CST
I recently gave kudos to the book "Crowdsourcing" which I'd just finished reading. You know a book's a good one when you're still thinking about it a few days later and you know it's a great one when you keep thinking of ways its lessons might apply in your everyday life beyond that.
Very briefly, the central premise of the book (which has many similarities to another good one, "The Wisdom of Crowds") is that given a large, varied and sufficiently independent enough crowd - the decisions, the achievements, the products - reached by such a group will always outshine a similar result from a single or small group of experts, no matter how esteemed they may be. How does that relate to libraries? Well, like the vast majority of organizations, libraries tend to have a hierarchical structure with a Director (and usually a Deputy Director) at the top then a variety of managers below that then supervisors then on down through the ranks. Which makes me wonder? What if somebody tried to implement a completely crowd-sourced library? This would be a *major* shift for anyone used to working in hierarchies but it could produce some very interesting results. Tapping into a typical library's staff, you'd definitely have a large and varied crew and it's not hard to imagine how the advantages could manifest themselves. Let's take a really simple example. Let's say you were trying to set-up a new adult program of some kind. In the traditional model, the decision might be made by someone like a Head of Programming in consultation with a Branch Manager and maybe (or maybe not) the actual staff who'd be delivering the program might have some input as well. Some libraries might do this via a committee structure, some might do it with a series of meetings. Now, imagine the crowd-sourced library program. Suddenly, everyone on staff anywhere in the library could weigh in with their thoughts, likely via some web-based mechanism. Suddenly, the Pages might throw in some ideas about an upcoming but still underneath-the-radar new author that the Branch Manager wasn't aware of but the page knows because they're re-shelving those books constantly. Someone in another branch might be on the board of a community organization that connects to the theme of the program. The maintenance crew could share ideas from a perspective that the rest of the staff rarely consider (or at least consider to the same depth that the physical plant folks would.) Or if you wanted to be truly crowd-sourced, you could open it up to the general public as well! After all, what are libraries at their core but a reflection of the communities in which they operate? And what better way to truly embody this (no, the occasional focus group doesn't cut it.) I know there are all kinds of problems connected with crowdsourcing as well. But it's an interesting idea to contemplate. [Edit: I did some further searching around after posting this and saw that the author of the crowdsourcing book is championing a "One Book, One Twitter" campaign based on the popular "One Book, One City" initiatives that have happened in various cities. Tomorrow's the last day so why not go vote?] Tuesday, April 13
50 Best Book People to Follow on Twitter
by
Jason
on Tue 13 Apr 2010 09:51 PM CST
Thursday, March 18
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