I think every town should have a bike powered, mobile library. Here’s their blog.
Categories
Category: My two pennies
Categories
NPR Top 100 Sci-fi/Fantasy List
NPR recently released a list of the top 100 Sci-fi/Fantasy list. I’ve read some of these, but I’d like to crank through this list through the next couple of years. Below is the list, with what I’ve read as marked. I plan on updating this often!.
1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King I lack the last three books. When it started to mention Harry Potter and Dr. Doom, I started to become disinterested :/
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys
39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
49. Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max BrooksI think this was a poor choice to go on this list.
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote In God’s Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore
74. Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis
Categories
Netflix, Spotify, and eBooks
I read this great article in the Onion A.V. about Netflix’s new pricing plan. I think Sam makes some great observation about how viewers/listeners are becoming easier to please. He states how with every new video technology, some films get left behind, be it obscure art house movies or documentaries, and Netflix’s streaming video is no exception. He states:
“Movies that were mainstays of undergraduate film classes have been marginalized as colleges and universities zero out rental budgets and build new classrooms that only allow for projection from digital sources.”
As a multimedia librarian, this is something that I am partly concerned about. I am afraid that people will just settle with what’s given in front of them, instead of demanding quality films used to educate students. This is troubling. I feel that a growing trend is that students, faculty, and librarians will settle for what is easy to get, rather than hunt and search for more apt and intellectually stimulating material.
It’s very easy to sit in front of our computers and download/stream music. Yet I think we’re doing ourselves a disservice to people who don’t remember hunting down a particular video, musical piece, or even scholarly work, for their scholarly pursuits. There was a time before the internet, and the students today don’t remember that. Everything isn’t at their fingertips, and I feel that the stuff that is, just isn’t good enough.
This is my first post for the Library Day in the Life Project. Today is my first day back from a four day vacation, so I think I’m going to be doing some catching up. Here’s my day so far:
8:25 – Arrive at work from my 6 mile commute from Greenpoint. It’s really hot in Brooklyn today and it’s great to be on a bike again. I end up in downtown Brooklyn and lock up outside work, the New York City College of Technology, CUNY. It’s an academic library where I work as the Multimedia and Web Services librarian.
8:45 – Check email. There’s a few call for paper emails I’m inspecting.
9:00 – Connect a projector in the Multimedia Resource Center for a class. I manage the MRC, and we’re closing it this morning for a class on finding research material. We have enough computers for a small class (20), but lack a projector.
9:15 – One of the librarians reminds me I have a reference desk shift at 11 today.
9:30 – Start up the workstations in the MRC for students to use. A few of them don’t work…
10:00 – Editing a paper that got accepted for publication. It’s a usability study with data the size of a mountain. I’m also working on LACUNY.org . It’s the Library Association of CUNY website. I’m doing some back-end spam removal. Right now the site is using the Joomla content management system and I think we might move over to Drupal 7…We also use wordpress for this site and for the library’s website , where I’ll probably have to clean up some spam and update the core files.
10:45 – Set up a reference substitute for Thursday. Looks like I have a meeting I have to go to after being elected secretary for LACUNY.
11:00-1:00 – Helped several students at the reference desk. I helped some students with guest passes to our library computers, make copies, print out schedules, and use the catalog. While this was going on, I continued to edit my article.
12:30 – Gave my intern an assignment. Right now he is working on a video tutorial on how to make computer reservations.
1:00-1:30 – Lunch!
1:30-3:00 – Continued to work on my paper, as well as look at reviews for recently released films, as well as look at some new trailers.
4:00-4:45 – Still editing! It looks like I’ll be editing this paper until I leave at 6:00 today.
Categories
Library Day in the Life
I’m going to be participating in Round 7 of the Library Day in the Life! This year, it will run on July 25th. Basically, librarians all over the world describe what they are doing. Librarians can use flickr, twitter, blog, or youTube to talk about librarianship. It’s the brainchild of Bobbi Newman.
I think this is a GREAT project. For librarians, it allows one to reflect on their daily work…at least for me. Sometimes I feel like I’m caught up in so many projects, that the day goes by in a blur. Secondly, I think it’s important to show how the profession is constantly changing. It’s interesting to me that the public’s perception of librarians is mostly still about reading books. True, we’re still book people, but we also blog, edit video, tweet, podcast, and write.
I’m looking forward to recording my day!
Categories
This Picture is About 5 Years Old
Not to sound like a stick in the mud, but I think the term “Library 2.0” is kind of outdated. However, it’s a blanket term that still has its use today.
Categories
Professional Social Bookmarking
Delicious is great for sharing resources across the web. My delicious account is here. I share a lot of resources on usability, library web design, copyright, and citing sources. It’s also a way for me to keep up with research resources in case I have to refer back to anything found on the web. I also use its tagging system, as well utilizing other folks’ tags, to find what I’m looking for.
Categories
Computers in Libraries
I’ve published my first article! It’s in the April issue of Computers in Libraries . It explores mobile website development by using statistics collected by Google Analytics and Webalizer. I pretty much argue that if you’re going to create a mobile version of a website, you have to see if your users are demanding it. The library I work at has a very low demand for mobile users. However, this is problematic to accurately say since our current wireless infrastructure does not support iOS, the main operating system for iPads, iPhones, and iPads. I think librarians are very quick to just on the technology bandwagon. For instance, there was a recent column by Steven Bell in library journal that examined the use of Web 2.0 technologies among librarians. He stresses the importance of being more strategic about social networking. I think this something to really consider when it comes to any new technology. I think it’s great that librarians are early adopters of technology, but I think a lot of folks dive in with out thinking. There’s the issue of learning new technology, finding value in so users will take advantage of it, and looking pass the novelty of something new. I think it’s easy to mislead ourselves that students, faculty, and other library users are going to do research on their tiny phone rather than go up to a reference librarian and ask for help.
Categories
Introductions are in order
Hi there,
My name is Junior and this is my blog. I’m a librarian so I’m going to post some very heavy library related posts and how they relate to my profession. However, I think I should probably talk about myself a little bit…