Friday Factoids....

Visit the Rare Book room... a digital repository.
The Big Read becomes the largest federal literature program since the W.P.A.
Calling all girl sleuths! The Mildred Wirt Benson (Nancy Drew's mama) Archive.
Take the weekly Mental Floss quiz: Discontinued Ben and Jerry's Flavor or Band I Found on MySpace? Lots of fun quizzes on the Mental Floss site and some very spiffy t-shirts.

Happy Independence Day....

The library will be closed on Saturday and Sunday, June 30 and July 1, and also on Wednesday, July 4. We will be open as usual on Monday and Tuesday, July 2 and 3.

The companion website to the PBS Celebration of a Capitol Fourth...
The Chemical of the Week: Fireworks!
All-American info from ResourceShelf...
4th of July post from 2005: Tips on photographing fireworks and more...

A Little Wordy...

• Can't think of the word? Try the One Look reverse dictionary... you supply the definition, they suggest words.
• 100 words every high school graduate should have in their lexicon....
  

Library 2.0 Meets Summer Reading...

Library Garden points to a summer reading program for grownups, complete with blog and myspace account. The idea is: pick a reading goal, read books, and share reviews online. Simple and delicious!

Left Behind....

Are you sitting at home wishing you were at the American Library Association conference? Stop your moping and sighing... check out the Unconference or the official Wiki. It's just like being there! Without the fun....

What is So Rare as a Day in June...

I'm still updating those Summer Reading Suggestions, including one I found amusing... children's books about the great outdoors, in case you can't get the little couch potato out into the open air, I guess.

Things to Do This Weekend if You Won't Go Outdoors, Either:
Bid on some rare Steinbeck letters...
Start collecting DNA for the ancestry.com genealogy database...
Browse through 310,000 digitized newspaper pages at the Library of Congress Chronicling America project....
Investigate an interview with Michael Rosen, the new Children's Laureate of England...
Listen to an NPR story about a visit to another famous recluse, J. D. Salinger...

Calling All Druids....

Party All Night on the Longest Day of the Year...
Summer Solstice Celebrations, Ancient and Modern from ReligiousTolerance.org
Fast Facts about the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere...
An animation from the BBC explains it all...
Thousands at Stonehenge from the Jerusalem Post...

Good News....

Congratulations! Librarians Martina Nicholas and Cathy Rudowsky and Professor Jesus Valencia have had their book proposal accepted by the Association of College and Research Libraries! Tentatively titled Library RX: Prevention and Treatment of Library Anxiety and tentatively scheduled for publication in Fall 2008, this book is the outgrowth of the trio's recent research and ACRL presentation. This is great news and makes the entire library proud!

Going Mobile*....

Let's talk about mobile search -- search for your cell phone or PDA. I wonder how the i-phone (which I am already lusting after) will affect this burgeoning industry... it looks like Apple is reformatting the web for the handheld without using special mobile applications. The point of these others linked below is to provide a small, pda-sized view, emphasizing the most in-demand and useful information.

Vivisimo just announced a mobile version of Clusty....
MSN mobile launches a new and improved version...

Some other examples of mobile search...
Yahoo OneSearch
Google Mobile
Ask Mobile
AOL Mobile
4Info
Answers.com Mobile
Medio
UpSnap Mobile Metasearch
411Sync: Customize
Mobiseer: Tag
Mobitopia: Share
Wampad

And for the library lover... Library Thing mobile, Ball State Library mobile., and here's a scaled down catalog. Check out our library or any other site for that matter on your internet-capable pda or cellphone with Skweezer. The idea is to bring what is considered most relevant to a mobile user to the top of the vertical scroll, like contact information, search boxes or hours of operation. Megan Fox discusses how academic libraries are using handheld technologies here.

*the rest of the lyrics

A Little Friday Quiz Action...

If the Famous Dads quiz was too hard for you, try this one... Which Peanuts Character Are You?

Dear Dad...

Fathers Day Fanfare from Infoplease...
Family Fun for Fathers Day...
Top Five Famous Fathers in Literature...
Famous TV Dads...
List of People Known as the Father or Mother of Something...
Test Your Famous Dad I.Q.

All the Library News That Fits....

• Google plans to digitize up to 10 million books from the Big Ten Schools.... this bit of news would make me yawn, except lately I have been finding Google book results surprising, helpful, and plentiful, for both old and new materials. My lovely and talented younger sister is a cataloger at Ohio State... maybe she can give me the inside scoop on the operation.
• Library Garden is an excellent library blog I've just started following. One of their recently recommended sites: The #1 Song on the Day You Were Born... fun. And speaking of music, here's a site that has CD and DVD covers...
  
• An article from U.S. News on Freshman Reads... this year, ours is Shackleton's Way, btw.
• Libraries smell... good. A Times editorial on why libraries will last...
• The Top 25 search terms on the CIA web site in April and May...
• Oooh, look at this... Search with Sputtr. All of these search engines arranged like typewriter keys.
  
• A new Abraham Lincoln note is discovered at the National Archives...
  

Recently Heard...

Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith. A new Precious Ramotswe book spells happiness for me and this audiobook did not disappoint. Mma Ramotswe and all of the usual characters were faced with several dilemmas and mysteries... a cobra under the desk, a blackmailed cook, a rumor of witchcraft, and an unethical doctor... all handily resolved by Disc 6. Some personal issues occupy Precious and her able assistant, Grace Makutsi. Precious finds herself questioning if she is perhaps a little too "traditionally built" and Mma Makutsi fears that she has driven away her hardwon fiance with talk of feminism. This is the seventh book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series set in Botswana. At first, it was a little disconcerting to hear the pronunciations of Mma and many of the African surnames, because I skip over those in my head when I reading from print. Do you? Maybe with Russian novels? A delightful summer listen, very soothing and gently amusing.

At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 by Taylor Branch. This history is absorbing, riveting, and very moving... volume 3 in a trilogy on King's life and preceded by Parting the Waters and Pillar of Fire. The price that was paid for social justice, the right to register to vote, to attend public schools, to be paid a fair wage, to ride public transportation or sit at integrated lunch counters.... it just makes me weep. Although the book is not in any way sentimentalized and objectively relates the events of these years, it is hard not to be shaken by the hatred and violence endured by those who sought change. The killings, beatings, and imprisonments make me never want to go south again. The role of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is just evil... on numerous occasions, he ordered that King not be warned of threats against his life and leaked information to discredit him. Lyndon Johnson is revealed as a conundrum, whose momentous speech on voting rights and support for King was soon overshadowed by Vietnam entanglements. The inner workings of the various movements and organizations such as SNCC and SCLC are also described... fascinating. All of these threads provide context for a stunning work on a true man of courage, Martin Luther King Jr. One reviewer described it as magisterial... good word.

And if you do not vote or are not registered to vote, seriously, shame, shame on you.

Summer Reading Suggestions...

New York Times Notable Books in our Reading Room...
Independent Booksellers Recommend on NPR...
American Library Association Notable Books...
2007 Book Club Listmania from Amazon...
Barnes and Noble online Book Clubs...
Top Authors: Read Any Good Books Lately?
Summer Books, 2007
The Best Car Books of Summer 2007
Rebecca's Pocket: Summer Reading 2007

many more to come, including recommendations for children and young adults...

KIDS UPDATE:
Top Books for Boys
Best Books for Babies, 2007
Tips for Summer Reading from PBS Parents
RIF's 2007 Summer Reading Guide
Recommended Kids Books by Theme from Reading Rockets
Boston Public Library Book Lists for Kids
Horn Book Summer Reading List
Reading in the Great Outdoors
Summer Reading Fun
Summer Reading Extravaganza 2007

Reference Services in Facebook....

Library 2.0 backlash!! I just quit myspace (I think it is a little skeezy) and I am having second thoughts about reference librarians in cyberspace. I've joined all of the groups, the latest being the ALA facebook group, also Library 2.0 on ning, but I am not really "doing" anything there. It's like being on one of those committees that never accomplishes anything. There doesn't seem to be much lively discourse; I'm not hearing new exciting ideas or even many good, successful examples of library use of social software. Maybe I am not checking in often enough...

I think some social software applications are relevant for libraries (IM for reference and obviously, blogs.) I like the idea of being able to push information to everyone in my network, but I am really beginning to suspect that college students don't get on facebook to ask reference questions. Or expecting to find some old librarian lurking around....

Before you brand me as a Luddite and traitor to the movement, I will qualify by saying that a new facebook group, Digital Reference in Facebook, looks promising, with some informative discussion and a cute tagline.... "no questions asked."

Helpful Hints...

• Ancestry.com is offering free access to its military collection through June 6. Search draft registration cards, POW records, and service records from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War.
• Continuing advice for summer reads: Read Any Good Books Lately? Noted authors report on their recent reading for the New York Times.
• New bibliography tools: BibMe and EasyBib. I started playing with BibMe, which is pretty slick although I haven't tested it on the journal article retrieved from a database question. It does, however, let you search for books, articles, etc. and recommends others. We have RefWorks in the library (look on the Cite It! page) and I have heard that we also have EndNote now, but haven't been able to find it (guess I shouldn't be confessing to that... of course I can find it, I'm a librarian!)
  
• Gift suggestions for Elizabeth Hasselbeck's children and little conservatives everywhere: Help, Mom! There are Liberals under My Bed and The Sky's Not Falling.

Look What You Can Do!

You know how you always had to type in your ID barcode before to get into the databases from off campus? Now you can log in on the right by simply putting in your network username and password. I just noticed this so I am not sure if it's official yet, but it seems to work just fine.

Friday Fun...

Go outside!!!!
Reserve your place under the stars at Recreation.gov: Find hiking, fishing, camping, climbing, biking opportunities all over the U.S. The search box lets you narrow your search by location, landmark, etc., pretty cool.
Tomorrow, June 2, is National Trails Day. Search for local events and hit the trail!

But if it rains....
An Arizona library is set to open with no classification system!!!! The sound you hear is Melvil Dewey rolling in his grave....
"To Billy on his Tenth Birthday from Aunt Ethel" ... The Book Inscriptions Project
A Study of Withdrawn Library Titles... that I kind of don't quite get
A new search engine with human-selected results.... Mahalo in alpha