“The wait is over! The Boston Book Festival has just announced its official schedule of events, and with 31 to choose from, and you’re guaranteed a fun-filled, jam-packed day on Saturday, October 24 between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Click here for the list of sessions with times and locations.”

“In addition to our illustrious workshops, panels, presentations and performances, there will be more than 30 exhibitor booths set up in the plaza, featuring local booksellers, publishers, educators, and arts organizations. Meet authors and get books signed!”

“Don’t forget to bring the kids! We have several great events planned for the young ones, including fun activities put on by some of our exhibitors– the Boston Children’s Museum, 826 and One Laptop Per Child for example. And don’t be surprised if you run into Curious George or Madeline!”

“Also, be sure to check out the Festival Stage in Copley Square plaza, featuring live tunes ranging from a cappella to bluegrass, funk to reggae, with some impressive talent from Berklee College of Music.”

“Feeling peckish? Score a free cup of joe from Green Mountain Coffee or a chowdah sample from the Legal Seafoods Chowder Truck.”

Most events are free, but some require purchased tickets to attend.

Ken Burns, Anita Diamant, Anita Shreve, Jane Kamensky and Walter Isaacson are some of the writers who will be attending. Nicholas Negroponte will be talking about the One Laptop Per Child project, New York Times personal technology columnist David Pogue will leading a discussion on ebooks and digitalization.

For more information:

http://www.bostonbookfest.org/index.php

Posted by Rich

“This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks – the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.”

“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ [the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned]. We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.’’

“Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,’’ though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.”

For the whole article:

http://tinyurl.com/mnn986

Posted by Rich

Anyway … I think it’s a great read. The librarian marries a papermaker, so there’s a bit of discussion about that art form, too. The story hooked me early on. The time traveling element is really cool. There’s a lot of humor and a bit of sadness. Despite it being 500+ pages (I don’t read that many books that are 500+ pages), I didn’t find it to be too long. (Mind you, I’ve read some 200 page books that seemed too long …)

The redhead loves to read; and, I’ve learned she has great taste in books.

An amusing part of the presentation came when she explained how people can ask questions via the Kindle and get answers from the folks at Amazon Mechanical Turk, another Amazon project where people do on-demand work. To me, it didn’t sound any different from contacting the reference desk at a library—other than having an extremely easy way to do it through the Kindle. The audience’s reaction to this “amazing concept” reminded me that Gary Price is right when he says libraries need to market themselves better. It was almost as if people were thinking, “Wow! There’s a place I can go where people answer my questions?” We need more ebook readers to be plugged into the local library.

The effort is in conjunction with Jumpstart, a non-profit working to benefit children. They are also seeking donations to buy children books. (Yes, I don’t normally mention organizations asking for donations, but it’s Banned Books Week and it’s a program for giving books to children … I guess I’m experiencing a moment of weakness …)

*goes off to hug her teddy bear*

LISNews points to a National Public Radio piece about the week. The American Library Association has lots of Banned Books Week information, too, including lists of challenged books.

Banned Books Week is one of my favorite holiweeks, as some of you who have been following the scratchpad for the five years it’s been around know. I encourage everyone to celebrate the freedom to read by picking out at least one threatened work, especially if it challenges you, and doing what you can to enjoy it.

The book alternates between two worlds. In each world, the main character interacts with a librarian, who becomes one of the other primary characters. In one world, the library seems like a normal, modern library. In the other, the library is a world of wonder with lots of materials behind closed doors. The main character visits there daily because of its collection of skulls. The purposes of the two libraries seem like they’re trying to get the person to think about what the role of the library should be. In the world with the normal library, it’s a place where everyone goes to get information. It seems to be a collection intended for use. In the other world, the library seems to serve the role of preserving specific materials and only serving specific people in the community, like the main character. During the book, I don’t think anyone else besides the main character and the librarian use the library. The librarian is there, it seems, only to serve and care for the main character and the collection.

In this age when people are considering tossing out their newspaper subscriptions, there is at least one compelling reason to keep receiving the pages:

“When at last I awoke, it was half light out. The clock read six-fifteen, but I couldn’t tell whether it was morning or evening. I pulled on a pair of slacks and leaned out my door to check the neighbor’s doormat. The morning edition was lying there, which led me to conclude it was morning. Subscribing to a paper comes in handy at times like this. Maybe I ought to.”

Newspapers are mentioned several other times during the book, too.

I found Murakami’s writing style to be quite enjoyable. To me, it’s not like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ work where I carefully read each line and enjoy the way he crafted the sentences together. Rather, I enjoy the prose for its simplicity and every so often stumble across a phrase or paragraph that makes me think “Wow! That’s great.” I recently finished a mystery that did not move the plot along nearly as well as Murakami does. I found lots of good tagline material in the book, but I’m not yet sure if I will write them all down for use later.

I am glad my coworker encouraged me to read this book. I almost did not because I’m in a phase where I am trying hard to make progress on my “I’ll read that someday” list and not add more to it.

“This Article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the law and policy of privacy on social network sites, using Facebook as its principal example. It explains how Facebook users socialize on the site, why they misunderstand the risks involved, and how their privacy suffers as a result. Facebook offers a socially compelling platform that also facilitates peer-to-peer privacy violations: users harming each others’ privacy interests. These two facts are inextricably linked; people use Facebook with the goal of sharing some information about themselves. Policymakers cannot make Facebook completely safe, but they can help people use it safely.”

For the whole article:

http://works.bepress.comjames_grimmelmann/20/

Info via the Librarian.net blog:

http://tinyurl.com/5qfkk8

Posted by Rich

# AllReaders.com – One of the first free, online readers advisory tools, no list of this nature would be complete without AllReaders. Search by what you’re interested in – title, author, plot, setting, character, adversaries, setting, style, etc. The guided searching offers thousands of permutations and options and gets very specific (and largely user-loved) results. You have to try this to believe it.
# Bettendorf Public Library’s Young Adult Books in Series and Sequels – Teen series & sequels browseable by author and series title or searchable by author, series title, or book title.
# Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Picture Book Index – Browse picture books by subject (they get really, really detailed). Great for finding a list of books about “X” for that kid who seems to think he’s read everything (oh yeah, and that kid’s parents).
# Database of Award Winning Children’s Literature – Created and maintained by fellow-California librarian Lisa Bartle, DAWCL is searchable by 13 different fields including reader’s age, historical period, setting, genre, format, and more. Resulting lists of award-winners are a great place to get young readers started.
# Downer’s Grove Public Library Author Read-Alikes – The author read-alike feature of the subscription database NoveList is one of its most popular features. Here’s a very respectable list of some of the most popular authors for whom people request read-alikes, with a half-dozen recommendations (or more) for each author.
# Fantastic Fiction – Browse for authors or series names, or search for authors or titles to get some pretty comprehensive bibliographies, cover shots, book descriptions, and more (like information on various editions). Great for those looking for quick and comprehensive book information for their favorite authors. The site also includes award information and new U.S. releases in hardback, paperback, and audio.

 FictionDB.com – Half-free, half-commercial site operated by the Riviera Group. The free parts of the site offers a huge list of book lists (200,000+ titles, which you can browse by genre or search) as well as a access to series and sequels lists (only by author’s last name though, which is useless in multi-author series). Still, worth a look.
# FictionFinder (beta) – This prototype from OCLC lets you search or browse by genre, subject, imaginary place or setting (how cool is that?), or fictional character (equally cool), including through a tag-cloud interface with popular folksonomies. More specific is better here, as this is a huge database (immigrants returns nearly 700 hits). Each record has extensive information about reading level, genres, characters, settings, etc.
# Gnooks – My students either love this or hate it. For recommendations you can try either Gnod’s Suggestions (supply it with 3 authors you like, and it will start suggesting other similar authors) or the Map of Literature (supply it with 1 author you like, and it will provide a seizure-inducing ever-moving visual map of authors).
# Guys Read – A wonderfully fun and interactive site from guys-reading-guru Jon Scieszka that lets you search or browse for recommendations for adults in general or “young, middle, and older” guys.
# Internet Speculative Fiction Database – The center for all things science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Search by author, title, series, and more to get some serious information. Author pages include complete bibliographies (including collections they took part in), series information, links to various official and unofficial web resources, and more. The site also offers an extensive list of award winners.

Here’s the link for the whole list: