This blog began in 2003 as Mrs. Rabbitt's Bookbag and continued as From the Library Director from 2005-2010. You can read my newspaper columns at FromtheLibraryColumn published Thursdays in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Writer's Almanac

Garrison Keillor broadcasts a daily five-minute almanac. You can subscribe to the email to listen to the podcast ... or just read the daily post. From Saturday, June 30th:
It was on this day in 1936 that the novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was first published. When she handed the manuscript over to editors, it was in terrible shape, with more than 1,000 pages of faded and dog-eared paper, poorly typed and with penciled changes. But they loved the story. They asked Mitchell to change the original title "Tomorrow Is Another Day" because at the time there were already thirteen books in print with the word "Tomorrow" in the title. They also asked her to change the main character's name from Pansy to Scarlett.

Gone with the Wind sold 50,000 copies sold in one day, a million copies six months, and two million by the end of the year. The sales of the book were even more impressive because it was in the middle of the Great Depression. The year it came out, employees at the Macmillan publishing company received Christmas bonuses for the first time in nearly a decade.

Friday, June 29, 2007

Freecycle

If you hate to throw things out and yet hate to go through the process of Craig'sList or a yard sale ... then join Freecyle.org. I've joined several groups in New England over the past five years and have gotten rid of those great and useful items that someone else can use but that I just don't need to store anymore. It's recycling at its best. Join a group with lots of members but make sure it is local. There's nothing worse than finding an item over fifty miles away when it's not worth the gas to go get it. There are over 75 groups in Massachusetts and eight in Rhode Island. Subscribe and then sign up for the daily digest so your mailbox isn't full of email. If you're looking for good stuff, however, you'll need to sign up for the individual emails or someone else might find that case of antique Mason jars hours before YOU will.
The Freecycle Network™ is made up of many individual groups across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free. Number of Freecycle™ Communities: 4,041
Number of Freecycle™ Members: 3,540,995

Thursday, June 28, 2007

You've Heard the Hype ...

all the reasons why you should buy the iPhone from Apple ... from Forbes here are five reasons why not to:

1. You Must Have an iTunes Account. Not the hugest deal considering that most people use iTunes anyway, but it would be nice to have some other options for purchasing and managing your music.

2. No Direct-to-Phone Downloads. There's nothing like hearing a song you like (or thinking of a song you want) and downloading it right then and there, directly into your phone (or audio player). Sure, you can't do this with your iPod, either, but the feature is increasingly the norm on music-capable phones from Verizon and Sprint. Now, given that Apple has said that the iPhone will feature a full version of iTunes, it's perfectly possible that, come Friday, over-the-air downloads via Wi-Fi could well be a reality on the iPhone.

3. No built-in GPS. Like over-the-air downloads, built-in GPS is increasingly the norm on many lower cost phones from Sprint and Verizon. Sure, the iPhone has built-in Google Maps that give you directions from point A to point B, but good luck if you deviate from the route or get lost, since the lack of real-time GPS won't recalculate routes automatically based on your actual location (which you probably won't know anyway, since you'll be lost). To be fair, many of the other smart phones competing with the iPhone don't have GPS built-in either – case in point, the otherwise very satisfying BlackBerry Curve – but the feature is increasingly commonplace on many new phones from Verizon and Sprint.

4. Even 8-gigabytes (GB) of memory is not enough . If you watch a lot of TV, or are going on a long trip that involves even just one ten-hour-or-more flight, you'll quickly run out of video entertainment with just an iPhone. And since it has no expandable memory option, the iPhone can only hold a Nano's worth of media and that's it. Now, each movie takes up about 1-gigabyte of space or approximately 250 songs. This means that if you have, say, three movies and 1,000 or so songs, you've pretty much tapped out the larger iPhone's memory.

5. It won't play nice with your work e-mail. If you wanted to use the iPhone as your work phone, you'll most likely be out of luck, since the it won't play nice with Microsoft Exchange, which is one of the most widespread work e-mail systems. Yes, it'll connect with your Outlook and transfer emails that have already been retrieved on your desktop, but don't expect real-time push work e-mail a la BlackBerry.

Okay, okay. So here are the ten reasons to buy, from Sally Walker Davies.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Miles To Go Before I Sleep

After driving what seemed like thousands of miles yesterday (and killing my poor VW in the process) I discovered Mapquest's new destination tool currently in Beta testing. Enter your departure address and add up to an infinite amount of sidetrips. Not only will you map the whole adventure but it adds up the total miles for you. A handy tool for figuring out how much fossil-fuel you've burned in one day. It wasn't a thousand miles ... but it felt like in this heat with a zonked out air conditioning system.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Streets of San Francisco

Will wonders never cease? Google now has both 'street' and 'traffic' views to add to their three other map views (road, satellite and hybrid.) In San Francisco and New York, and a few other cities, (not Boston) the street view will being up four angles of actual photographs of the location. It is a bit tricky to use - you have to use your 'human' icon and 'walk' to your location to bring up the street view. Not all streets are available in those cities, either.

More useful is the new traffic view. Is this new or have I never noticed? Wherever there is a traffic light (Springfield, Boston, Providence, etc.) the map will offer you current traffic conditions in red, yellow or green. I refreshed my screen and watched Westboro's traffic on the Pike change from a large red jam to moving green traffic. Pretty cool.

I recommend the Google Maps User's Guide as a place to start.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Grammar Snobs

For those of you who are punctuation snobs, there are a few sites to suit your fancy:
Apostrophe Abuse is one of them; Quotation Mark Abuse is another. Want a whole Flickr site of photos of abuse? They've got 'em. And if you want to read the book on grammar etiquette check out on audio Grammar Snobs: A Guide to Language For Fun and Spite by June Casagrande.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Book Movements

Bookmovement.com is a great site for organizing book club meetings. All members are invited and options are automatic reminders and RSVP requests. It's easy to use once you've gathered your email addresses. One person deemed the organizer can easily upload future book discussion information including venues and cover graphics of the book you've chosen. Members can add commentary of their own.

BookMovement has online book discussion guides, lists and reviews.

For the past 3 years, BookMovement has been collecting, sorting and ranking the book selections of thousands of book clubs. From this information, [they] are able to bring you the first-ever Book Club Bestseller List.


Another great site for book group guidelines and suggestions is NancyPearl.com, home of the inspiration for the first librarian action-figure doll.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Groaners

From Newswriting.org comes 'Groaners!'
You know ‘em. You love ‘em. But can’t we live without ‘em? Groaners are those horrible, overused, hackneyed phrases that turn news copy into boring, “same old, same old” stuff.
Some of those overused words and expressions include amidst, center stage, death toll, rank and file, and torrential rain. Want to avoid sounding like a cliche? Bookmark this site. Additional good information on the site are articles and writing tools from a veteran news writer.

Building Your Home Library

The American Library Association has some wonderful booklists for those of you compulsive enough to build a comprehensive home library. (Then again, there's the PUBLIC library at your disposal, as well.)

The good news is that the lists are short and are available in PDF format by age group.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Road to 2008

If you want the daily news, politics and opinions on the 2008 Election, this will feed that hunger.

Word Imperfect

If you like Balderdash and other forms of word play, the Word Imperfect blog is pretty cool.

The blog owner, a writer from New Zealand explains how to play:
"I choose an obscure dictionary word [nearly every day]. You invent a wacky meaning. I put 3 invented meanings on the voting poll below and list the true meaning."
Words so far in June: Limbate, squacco, abbacy, tierce, wivern, pilose, splenius, kymograph, jobation, nonage, mattoid, horopter, asperity bleb, quaquaversal, orlop, francolin, reliquary, graminaceous.

I would think even Scrabble players would learn something new. And speaking of words, the book American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture Of Word Nerds : The Lives Of Five Top Ppellers As They Compete For Glory and Fame by James Maguire is a great read and includes several introductory chapters about the history of the American Bee and the English language. Wordnerd heaven.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

How a Bluetooth Works

I don't know about you but I am constantly boggled about electronics in general and just use them, hoping for the best. To find out just exactly HOW a Bluetooth works you'll be compelled to work backwards to the basics they call Building Blocks. Ever wondered how a lithium battery works or how avalanches work or how bees work? How Stuff Works is a great site.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Book Review: Flower Confidential

Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers by Amy Stewart. Did you think that we really received our flowers from a greenhouse in Western Massachusetts ... or perhaps from Atlanta or Nashville? Think again.
From the Washington Post review: "Our blooms are more likely to have been raised in high-altitude flower factories in Ecuador or Colombia, dunked in chemicals, flown to Miami and distributed to wholesale markets around the country. A rose cut on a Monday morning in the shadow of a snow-capped volcano might find its way to a Manhattan florist the following Friday, and then be good for a week or more with a little care. In your local supermarket, you will find roses completely devoid of fragrance -- pretty in a stiff and uniform sort of way, but not the earthy roses of the garden."
And Americans are not the largest consumers of cut flowers but are 17th behind consumers in many other countries around the world.

If you are a lover of flowers ... or if you love to give them ... OR if you hate the whole romantic idea of flowers at all ... then this book will interest you.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Juneteenth Day

"Juneteenth day celebrates and symbolizes the end of slavery in the United States. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. But, it was not until June 19, 1865 that all slaves were finally freed. That concluding event was when General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas with his troops and issued Order Number 3 which finally freed the last of the slaves. The formal end of slavery was marked by the passing of the 13th amendment of the constitution."


This tidbit and MANY others from Holiday Insights. Did you know that June 22 is National Chocolate Eclair Day? Plenty to celebrate if you check out the Bizarre and Unique Days.

We have the new DVD, The Holiday, starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Keyboard Shortcuts

Even though I can't seem to leave Windows, I found a great Mozilla web page listing keyboard shortcuts for Firefox, Windows and Opera operating systems. A firm believer in 'sink or swim'learning, I haven't had the time over the years to fully train myself in keyboarding, Word and other applications and I'm always amazed at tricks I should have known about.

From this site I learned how to instantly clear my cache (Control F5) so that my blogging updates come through immediately using my AOL browser. It's bugged me for years and I've bookmarked this site for future use. For those of you brave and savvy enough to use a Firefox or Opera, you might like this site. There's a mouse shortcuts page, as well.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

You're Not Just in High School Anymore: College Summer Reading

More colleges and universities across the country are requiring summer reading of their incoming freshmen class. The book is sometimes called The Common Read and includes a book discussion during orientation week and into the fall semester. Some colleges have required this for a decade or more. (I know my oldest daughter was required to read Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond before she began her freshman year at Dartmouth College in 2000 but I don't see them listed in the article.)
Michael Arnush—director of first-year experience at Skidmore College, which started its summer reading requirement a decade ago—says the goal is to engage students early with a "proactive discussion of challenging reading."
Read the whole article, June 16, 2007 - "Incoming Freshmen Get Summer Reading Assignments" by Jackie Mantey in
US News and World Report

For the younger set, go to the PBS Parents Site to their Bookfinder to find just the right books for your child. Give Bookfinder the age of the child, the theme that interests her or him and whether it's book to be read aloud or read alone.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Retail Me NOT

A light-hearted link for the weekend: RetailMeNot.com. My staff, family and friends know me as someone who hates to pay retail ... I'm a shameless coupon-user from my early marriage-on-a-shoestring days of the 70's. One of the staff suggested I offer a workshop at the library on finding coupons and discounts on the Web that can be used either online or in the retail stores. I found this site just the other day and bookmarked it along with the others I've found over the last few years.

A not-so-light-hearted link for the weekend to remind us to count our blessings. From Library Link of the Day.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

A Papercut That Won't Sting

Paper Cuts, a blog about books and is written by Dwight Garner, senior editor of The NY Times Book Review. I've added this link to the right and encourage you to bookmark it.

The very first Papercuts.Blog was posted just last week on June 11th with this comment:
Paper Cuts will be a daily round-up of news and opinion about books and other printed matter. Make that an almost daily round-up. There won’t be posts on weekends. Or holidays. Or on the mornings after the Book Review’s bimonthly drinks nights at Jimmy’s Corner, a bar in midtown Manhattan.


Great blogger's think alike!

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Keeping Magazines Real Simple

Real Simple is the one magazine I get at home, a gift from a wonderful friend who just keeps it coming. From Real Simple's July issue come more gems that I can include here, among them AmericanFlags.com and why Old Glory gets folded 13 times. The blurb from the magazine tells us that we can get a free three-by-five-foot polyester flag. I checked it out and it is true ... just $5.99 in shipping and handling charges although it's too late to arrive for Flag Day tomorrow, June 14th.

Librarians who 'love books ... and lists' all know about LibraryThing.com but you may not. Real Simple tells us it's free for 200 volumes, and 'you don't have to whisper.' Well, it is free to usjust like we are but we don't exactly shusshhhh you anymore at the library either. Interstingly, LibraryThing.com seems to be down due to the fact that they lost the main "read slave." Bookmark the site anyway.

Real Simple tells us that we can buy a Sun Calculator from LeeValley.com to figure out those partial shade/full shade/sun/full sun issues that novice gardeners get confused about. I checked it out and the item is a bit hard to find on their site. Look under 'weather/time' and then let them know you are using US dollars - $29.95. Sounds good to me because I can't be home to plot the sun's rays.

Do you hate the feel of bug spray or ointment on your body? From DontBugMePatch.com you can buy over-the-counter natural, transdermal insect patches. I checked this one out and they seemed reasonably priced per box.

The best tip from Real Simple in July is the site Drive-ins.com where you can search by zipcode for a drive-in near you! (Mendon perhaps.) The most interesting information on this website? The names of all the drive-ins near you that have closed. You might remember them from childhood. And the GoogleEarth map in the Drive-in Museum. Check out this site for some nostalgia and fun.

You can subscribe to a daily Real Simple Thought like I do and receive it via email ... or you can view it online each day at the daily view. Yesterday's thought:
When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends
was a good one. You can even select a thoughtful wallpaper background for your computer and be inspired to keep it clean and neat. Yes, it's 'real simple.'

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Libraries Shelve Old Image

Libraries across the country are becoming active community centers. At the Bellingham Public Library the number of visitors, Internet users, website hits, and materials checked out, renewed and requested have risen each year since 2005. We have an average of 9000 visitors per month, 1000 Internet users per month, 4000 website hits PER DAY and we circulate over 10,000 items per month. Read our recently published 2006 Annual Report of the Library Director in PDF format at our website.

The Charlotte Observer in North Carolina reports:

  • "The number of visits per year to U.S. public libraries increased 61 percent between 1994 and 2004, according to federal data.
  • Circulation (items checked out) increased 28 percent over the decade.
  • 99 percent of U.S. public libraries provide free public access to the Internet, compared with 25 percent 10 years ago."

Read the whole article >"Quiet? Libraries Shelve Old Image" (sent through >Library Link of the Day, June 12, 2007.)

Monday, June 11, 2007

Tired of Amazon for your reading information?

Try Booklist, a 100-year-old journal published by the American Library Association. Booklist has also become a valuable tool that helps librarians make reading recommendations. The best part is that >Booklist Online is both a free Web site with a subscription database. The free site offers a generous selection of Booklist content—plus some Web-only features—and is updated daily or weekly, depending on the portion of the site. (The subscription database contains archived reviews.) The site has loads of lists, reviews and other great stuff for readers and librarians. While you can't read the past reviews without a subscription, you can browse the award lists and read articles and more.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Op Ed For Libraries

Glenn Ickler, a former newspaper editor who lives in Hopedale writes this in the Milford Daily News on June 9, 2007. To see the entire article, read >Milford Daily News Online June 9, 2007.
Convincing voters that libraries are a vital part of their community is also a tough sell in an era of ever-rising real estate taxes. Proposition 2 1/2 overrides are becoming increasingly unpopular and public officials are finding it easier to chop library funding than to lay off police officers and fire fighters.
Prop 2 1/2 was designed to limit local tax increases in conjunction with adequate aid from the state. It's not working that way, and the communities are facing higher costs of providing services without the means of meeting them. So there go the libraries, along with numerous school programs and activities.
According to a report done by the Urban Institute and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, libraries are an unappreciated economic engine as a core of a community's literacy and connection with technology and job opportunities.
"Rather than succumbing to obsolescence with the advent of new information technologies, the basic business of public libraries is being recast," the report said. "Public libraries are positioned to fuel not only new, but next economies."