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Written on: March 18th, 2009 in News
Written on: March 18th, 2009 in News
Written on: March 16th, 2009 in News
Over the last week, I’ve travelled far downstate to Delmar (twice), Selbyville, Laurel, and Bethany, visiting the public libraries and doing some training and presentations to library staff. Before working at the Division of Libraries, the sum total of my downstate travels in 15 years of living in Delaware was comprised of innumerable trips to Rehoboth and Lewes.
It’s a nice time to travel in Southern Delaware- fields and trees are starting to sprout and bud and there’s no pesky beach traffic. My favorite drive last week was the stretch between Delmar and Selbyville, cutting straight through the Great Cypress Swamp on Rt. 54. It may be that this local landscape hasn’t changed much since the Federal Works Project Administration’s writers’ project wrote about it in 1938 in Delaware: A Guide to the First State. Its certainly a strangely beautiful and peaceful stretch of driving in between meetings. And not only did I see the largest herd of deer I have seen in years, running through a barely greening field in bright sunshine, I also drove past a parked fleet of watermelon buses, which I had read about last year in a News-Journal article, but had never seen before.
Written on: March 15th, 2009 in News
Just as a reminder, I have been using Tabbloid to push updates of the blogs I follow to my email in a digest format. This format has helped add real value to those notices for me. Here’s how:
The downside? I now have way too many books at home waiting to be read. What a delightful problem.
Note: Colleagues on WebJunction just alerted me to another service called feedmyinbox that accomplishes the same task as Tabbloid…give one of them a try and let us know what you think.
Written on: March 15th, 2009 in Reviews
In this week’s return engagement, here are some of the top picks from the NYT Sunday Book Review. One novel and three significant non-fiction works make the cut this week, on topics including an account of the Kelo “eminent domain” case, the origins of 9-11, and the history and culture of ancient Rome. You can click the links to go directly to the Delaware Library Catalog record to read more about each title, check availability, or place a hold:
Written on: March 14th, 2009 in News
This story was in today’s New York Times. The writer interviewed a number of patrons at a Long Island library, asking him why they were returning to libraries after long absences in some cases. Free movie rentals, internet access, reading new bestsellers were all identified as ways in which patrons were using libraries to save regular expenses during the recession.
Written on: March 12th, 2009 in News
This was a recent posting on the NPR librarian blog that caught my eye:
Problem 1: Need to check in for tomorrow’s flight in case it’s oversold (let’s just say, lessons learned)
Problem 2: Gracious host, like self, has gone paperless at home and chucked her inkjet
Solution: Is the library open on Sunday?When we pulled into the parking lot it was about 70% full, and every reserve computer was taken. But our task was brief, so after getting a visitor ID from the helpful staff, we scored a short-term use computer that didn’t require a reservation. Fifteen minutes and forty cents later, we were already debating where to eat next. Added bonus: we even made it into the “A” boarding group. Thanks, Austin!
Libraries open on Sunday in Kent and Sussex counties include Dover Public Library, Kent County Public Library, and Georgetown Public Library. Most of our libraries offer either a guest privilege for computer use or an internet use only library card for out-of-state users.
Written on: March 11th, 2009 in Reviews
Making lists of books (or bibliographies, as we call them in library speak) is something that we like to do here in Delaware Library Land.
List topics vary from the straightforward New Book List (also available by email or RSS delivery) to highly specific, customized lists on topics such as Delaware history, financial literacy, and journal creation (in support of our Learning Journeys lifelong education initiative).
You can see a full list of lists in the “have you read” link in the library catalog. Got an idea for a list topic? Let us know, they’re simple to create and very helpful.
Written on: March 10th, 2009 in Learning, News
Representatives of the Delaware Library Community gathered in Dover last December to debate the way forward for Delaware libraries- panels of Delaware librarians and outside experts discussed library services in what had been identified by the Council on Libraries and Delaware Library Association as three key fields in which libraries could contribute to Delaware citizens. Out of these discussions, “action items” were developed and published recently to further the discussion and help guide the development and service strategies of libraries within the state:
Economic Development
Lifelong Learning
Health
Written on: March 10th, 2009 in News
As newspaper professionals gather in Las Vegas for the Newspaper Association of America’s first annual mediaXchange conference, new data from Nielsen Online indicates that average monthly unique audience figures for newspaper Web sites grew by more than 7.9 million in January to 74.8 million visitors, an increase of 11.9 percent over the same period a year ago. These figures, which comprise home and work Internet usage, are the highest for any month since NAA began tracking these numbers in 2004…(continued)
While there is something very pleasant about reading the newspaper in the “old-fashioned” way- especially if it involves coffee and a croissant at Brew HaHa on a Sunday morning- the Delaware Library Catalog does offer a number of alternative ways to get the news info you need: most libraries subscribe to print copies one or more of their local papers, and several regional and national titles, such as the New York Times, Baltimore Sun, and Washington Post, and with the subscription resources offered through the Delaware Division of Libraries, library patrons can read news from around the country and the world, by logging into their library accounts and selecting the link to the ProQuest Newspapers database. This service provides full-text, searchable content for hundreds of newspapers, going back to the early 1980s. Popular titles available in this database include the York and Lancaster PA dailies, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, and a number of Maryland county newpapers.
UPDATE (July 2009): While we are still accessing the Wall Street Journal online through a ProQuest subscription, access to most other online newspapers is now via EBSCO’s Newspaper Source
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