j's scratchpad

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my selected Banned Books Week reading, intending to report back here with the results. No, it hasn’t taken me *that long* to read all of the books, just that long to have a moment at the blog to summarize them.

• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold: While this story is told from the novel perspective of a teenager after her death and provides an intriguing theory about what might happen to us after we die, it does include some graphic evil unsuitable for certain age groups and could challenge some religious beliefs.

• Lois Duncan’s Killing Mr. Griffin: What to do with young adults who act out, negatively influence others, and make bad decisions often puzzles adults. This tragic tale pushes those things past most people’s comfort zones. I’m not surprised some parents and teachers might be concerned about students learning about a plot to harm a strict teacher.
• Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy Part 2: The Revenge of the Ridiculous Robo-Boogers from Dav Pilkey: While I found this story hilarious, some parents who try hard to teach children manners and respect for educators could find it an affront to their efforts. Also, the librarian in the book follows one of the terrible negative stereotypes of the nasty old lady librarian who wishes no one would touch her collection.
• The Color Purple from Alice Walker: With elements of racism, spousal and child abuse, sexual trauma and rape, drug and alcohol addiction, explicit sex, prison life, incredible dishonesty and cruelty, and more, I’m hard-pressed to think of another evil that could have been in this book. It could be a difficult read presenting so many tough issues, but Walker’s talent really does turn it into a beautiful story well worth the time because of the positive lessons, like the value of hope and strength of good family and friends, woven throughout.

And I recently re-read the last Harry Potter—the whole series of which has been targeted regularly because of concerns over violence, witchcraft, and magic.

In case you’re worried about me being too objective above, let me assure you I enjoyed all of the books and am quite happy to have read them. The freedom to read is a blessing I enjoy all too well. In these posts, I usually make observations about how viable claims of these books being unsuitable reading material, particularly for children or young adults, are. Sometimes, what ruffles people’s feathers isn’t always obvious to others. I can see why these books make people nervous.

Snagging a few minutes to catch up on email brought me to a Newslib post announcing NPR librarian Kee Malesky will be on today’s (10/28) national radio call-in show Talk of the Nation to discuss her new book All Facts Considered. Rumor has it she’ll be on during the second hour*, which begins around 3 pm ET. Check your local public station to confirm broadcast times. If your local station doesn’t carry it, perhaps you could tune in via the Internet to one that does (which is what I may need to do myself). Audio and a transcript will be available on Talk of the Nation’s website later.

Some of you might have caught Kee on Weekend Edition Saturday last weekend, like my Mom did. (The one week I sleep in!)

*The real show is two hours long, though some radio stations only carry one hour. I’ve got to dash, but I’ll try to update this post later when I find a station that carries the show and broadcasts over the Internet.

Addendum: The show posted the page for Kee’s segment. Audio will be available later today. I just took a great trip around the country via public radio stations broadcasting online, from Cape Cod to Kenai and Talkeetna back to Wisconsin. While tempted to keep listening to a news show about Alaska, I feared missing Kee’s interview, so I tuned into WPR Ideas Network (as in Wisconsin Public Radio) playing Talk of the Nation from the start.

nbsp;Makeuseof.com has a free download called The (Very) Unofficial Facebook Privacy Manual that goes over tips on protecting your privacy including:

* Making sure a comment meant for your friends isn’t seen by co-workers
* Understanding what it means to upload content to Facebook
* Control whether others can check you in to certain locations
* Keeping your Facebook page off Google’s search results
* Blocking unwanted users from seeing your page
* Deleting your Facebook page completely, if it’s all just too much.

For the whole manual:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-unofficial-facebook-privacy-guide/

Posted by Rich

Greetings

Heading for the 2010 Internet Librarian Conference in Monterey CA. This will be my second conference.
Have to catch 3 connecting flights to get there from Boston though.

More posts and pics when I get there!

Posted by Rich

The 2nd Boston Book Festival is being held on Saturday, October 16, 2010 Copley Square Boston Ma 10 am-7 pm. And it’s free!

Some of the authors include Dennis Lehane, Nicholas Carr, Hallie Ephron, A.M Homes, Nicholas Negroponte, Richard Cohen, Noni Carter, Gish Jen and Elyssa East

For more information:

http://www.bostonbookfest.org/

Posted by Rich

To mark the publication of the book The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide by Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor, The (Boston) Phoenix published an article last week about the trendy works of art and the radio show The Connection On Point teases our imaginations with on air descriptions of fancy inkings right now. Not surprisingly, the authors learned many folks with these marks are in wordy industries, like publishing or librarianship.

Do you have such a tattoo? What would you put on your body if you could put any literary passage on your body (think hypothetics, no consequences, all is possible)?

“April is the cruelest month …” comes to my mind. “Although I do not hope to turn …”

Maybe something Deadman. Against Information. Lying in a Hammock on William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota, particularly the last line, which I feel much of right about … now. A poem that I think was a handout at that summer arts program that had something to do with goldfish, flying dogs(?), urban apartment life, and breaking free for a road trip to Iowa. (Wow. That could be my summer.) I remember lines from that poem in a hazy fog. I always liked the tone. I can’t find it online, but knowing more about it would help a lot. I wonder if I have it somewhere at home.

And speaking of that summer arts program … I’d love to go sit in the grass and discuss the merits of various authors and tattoos with those folks, wouldn’t *you*? What would Amanda get? Ian probably already had one. And Manning’s reaction: “You have what?!? tattooed where?!? Why?!?” (I miss you folks.)

(I love the juxtaposition of visual discussions and the radio.)

Addendum 102410: Flight by James Tate for K. How could I forget? I couldn’t find it in my pile of creative writing stuff, but suddenly I remembered the line “Were you here, we would not tolerate mongrels in the air …” and Google Book Search came through for me. Hooray!

Also, when discussing this topic with friends, I realized another good one for me would be: “Let it rain, who cares? I’ve a train upstairs!” which my Dad often recited to me. Except that I really love the rain.

The October 1 Boston Globe is reporting that the Boston Public Library is cutting 40 services and support personnel today. 4 library management positions were cut yesterday. Also 4 branches are still slated for closure, probably in March.

The city of Boston reported that they had a $ 9 million surplus from FY 2010 budget.

For the whole story:

http://tinyurl.com/2bdycus

h/t to Resourceshelf.com

Posted by Rich

Once again, it is Banned Books Week, one week I feel is most definitely worth noting. I dashed off to the library this evening (a bit literally, too, as I was on foot and in a hurry) to pick up:

• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

• Lois Duncan’s Killing Mr. Griffin
• Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy Part 2: The Revenge of the Ridiculous Robo-Boogers from Dav Pilkey

I was aiming for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, but not finding it diverted my ship. Ironically, despite borrowing all those books, I might start reading Alice Walker’s The Color Purple from my own collection because I need something very portable tomorrow and it has been on my reading list for a while. Sorry, book group: the book I should read for the upcoming meeting might just have to wait.

The last segment of tonight’s Marketplace made me laugh out loud. (Good thing my officemate left for the weekend already!) While the radio show’s staff breezed through story ideas, one of them mentioned The New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr’s announcement they’ll stop printing on paper. One of these days. The reporter said the irony of the announcement is that he read about it using a mobile device while on a bus.

I could not find an article about it in the Times, either by browsing their online edition or performing an Internet search. More irony. *shrugs*

OCLC is holding a two-day WorldCat Mashathon on September 23-24, 2010 at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cost is $30.

“Join fellow coders for a two-day WorldCat Mashathon at the Microsoft New England Research & Development Center (NERD). Sponsored by the OCLC Developer Network and Brandeis University, the WorldCat Mashathon gives participants the opportunity for two full days of brainstorming and coding mash-ups with local systems and other Web services to take advantage of all that WorldCat, the world’s largest bibliographic database, has to offer. To get an impression of what the event may be like, take a look at pictures from the WorldCat Hackathon in New York and the WorldCat Mashathon in Amsterdam, WorldCat Mashathon in Seattle, VALA Bootcamp OCLC API Mashathon, or WorldCat Mashathon UK.”

* It’s a chance for anyone interested in structured data to get their hands on the WorldCat Search API.
* Participants both inside and outside the library industry are encouraged to participate.
* Gain development access to over 144 million bibliographic records from more than 10,000 libraries worldwide.
* Integrate these resources with many others to create innovative new services.
* Share your creative vision and be a part of the next wave of online library development.

Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer for OCLC Research will kick off the session. OCLC Developer Network manager Karen Coombs and OCLC Research engineer Bruce Washburn will present, walk participants through building a simple sample application and be available for questions and breakout facilitation. Ideas, outcomes and code from the Mashathon, together with a linked participants list, will be shared during and after the event for others to download and build on.”

For more info:

http://www.oclc.org/developer/events/boston-mashathon

Posted by Rich