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Written on: October 5th, 2009 in News
The Stanton Campus Library of Delaware Technical and Community College celebrated Banned Books Week (Sept.26 – Oct. 3) in style with t-shirts and displays.
Recently, popular young adult fiction author Chris Crutcher was the subject of a challenge in Delaware’s Caesar Rodney school district- he penned a thoughtful response to the challenge, addressing the reasons why he chooses the language and dramatic situations which the challengers found offensive. You can read the response on his blog.
Written on: October 5th, 2009 in Blog Posts
Another selection of great reads as reviewed in this weeks’ New York Times Book Review. The books listed below as well as a number of other titles from the review are now available from libraries throughout the Delaware Library Catalog- click on the links to read more about the books or place a hold:
Written on: October 5th, 2009 in News
For almost 15 years, the Internet Public Library has provided online reference to visitors from around to world. IPL is a partnership, hosted by Drexel University, between a number of American library and information science programs..
IPL provides lists of reviewed and approved internet resources within a huge number of categories in the arts, social sciences, business, health and technology, among other fields- library science students and information professionals review the sites and maintain the categories, so if you need a reliable and high-quality website on a specific topic, the IPL is a good place to go.
Another good place to go is the Librarian’s Index to the Internet (LII), which has been collecting and reviewing websites for almost twenty years- first from California’s Berkeley Public Library and later as a partnership between the California and Washington state libraries.
Ten years ago it was realistic to think that a resource could be maintained which depended on human review, ranking, and categorization, and there wasn’t much difference between the LII and a leading search engine of the day such as Yahoo.com- you can see archived versions from ten years ago at these links- here for LII and here for Yahoo!
The exponential growth of the web in the last decade made the prospect of indexing the web in a controlled fashion impossible, and automated, algorithm-dependent systems like Google became dominant. Removing the human element from creating directories of internet sites has been one of the most significant contributors to information overload- to the point where new search engines like Microsoft’s Bing market themselves on the basis of providing fewer results than Google: one of the few points in Western capitalism where decreasing choice has been seen as a market strategy.
Both ILL and IPL have continued to provide their quality service- the decision was recently made to merge the two organizations in 2010 and become IPL² (their new logo is at the top of this article). We hope that the new site will continue to be the incredible resource to library staff, information seekers, students and teachers that the predecessor sites have been for so long. Congratulations on the merger!
Written on: October 2nd, 2009 in Blog Posts
Since 1901, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has been responsible for maintaining and creating official metrological measures for the United States
NIST also maintains an amazing library. It’s a beautiful facility with incredible resources. Web visitors can access a limited set of their online resources and digital periodicals- you can search Web of Science, Transactions of the ACM, read summaries of articles from Science, Nature and other leading science publications, and read about current projects of NIST scientists across every imaginable technical and scientific discipline, including their comprehensive and authoritative report on the fall of the Twin Towers
Their online exhibits on all manner of standards and technology-related subjects are a tremendous resource for classroom educators. It’s quite a find for museum geeks- there are all kinds of displays of different meters (the illustration at the head of this post, for instance, is one of the first official yards used in the US) kilograms, and devices for measuring time and temperature. NIST also maintains the Time.gov website.
NIST is also the agency that supports the Baldrige National Quality Program and the Baldrige Awards given annually to organizations and businesses that demonstrate outstanding quality according to a set of challenging standards. The Delaware Division of Libraries is one of several State of Delaware agencies that have participated in quality initiatives through the Delaware Quality Partnership
I was at NIST to attend a regional meeting of libraries who use SirsiDynix products to manage their libraries. There were presentations from company executives concerning development plans and new services, a tremendous presentation on marketing from the RAND Corporation’s head librarian Walter Nelson– a presentation notable a.) for the fact that the presenter was in California for the event, and b.) for the phrase “social media is word of mouth marketing on steroids!”
Written on: September 30th, 2009 in Q & A's
A: The earliest mention of a liturgical celebration of Easter I found (so far) is from an article in Church History by James M. O’Toole.
The article presents a glimpse of the history of American Catholicism through Reverend Anthony Kohlmann’s sermons, as he preached in New York City from 1808 to 1809. He celebrated Easter Sunday mass in 1809.
Below is the citation and you can access the full-text article by logging in to the Delaware Library Catalog with your library card number and password. Once logged in select “Magazines and More” in the green bar and then select “Arts and Humanities.”
O’ Toole, James M., “From Advent to Easter: Catholic Preaching in New York City, 1808-1809.” Church History, Sep94, Vol. 63 Issue 3, p365, 13p
Fun fact: According to Encyclopedia Britannica, in 1878 Lucy Hayes, the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes, sponsored the first annual Easter egg roll on the White House lawn.
Thanks for using Ask a Librarian Delaware. Have a question? Ask us!
Written on: September 29th, 2009 in Blog Posts
Click on the links below to get lists of new items available from the Delaware Library Catalog in various formats (lists will open in a new window):
Don’t forget to check out our other blog postings. This week we’ve written about recent conferences attended by Division of Libraries staff, reviewed new books and websites, and answered your reference questions! You can read the rest of the blog by clicking here.
Written on: September 29th, 2009 in Blog Posts
During part of last week, two Delaware Division of Libraries’ staff attended the 2009 COSLINE annual training event in upstate New York. COSLINE (the Council of State Libraries of the North East) is a group that represents 12 agencies providing statewide library services or support, and the annual meeting is oriented to sharing skills and resources between attendees, and hearing presentations from the creators of a number of groundbreaking programs.
Of course, the responses of large and small library systems to the current economic crisis were front and center in many of the sessions. The New Jersey State Library discussed their tellusyourstory website and their snapshotprogram, which reached out to state residents to collect their accounts of what their libraries meant to them and the everyday value that library programs give them.
A very good session was devoted to best practices for libraries using online social media to promote and provide access to library services. I enjoyed this session a lot, and I asked the presenter to quote me on that.) The presenter gave an entirely practical overview of the available tools and how libraries are using them to overcome their own budget and technology challenges. The Pittsfield Memorial Library in Vermont was used as an example. This very small, rural library actually closed for several months because of a lack of resources and community support. Now, run entirely by volunteers- albeit only open for 6 hours a week- it has used social media to create an online identity that places it at the heart of local activities and the town’s identity. It’s now so successful that the town approved the tripling of its annual budget- from $300 to $900, and with most of it’s technology services based on free or open-source applications, those dollars go directly to library services and library resources!
We had a great example of the power of social media as a promotional tool over the weekend- somehow our earlier blog post about Governor Markell’s humorous response to M.T. Anderson’s new Jasper Dash book caught the attention of Facebook and Twitter users- Sunday is usually a quiet day for blog traffic but we got the most hits ever on the blog on the 27th, and the vast majority (nearly 150) were for the article about the governor’s letter to M.T. Anderson. Most of the referrals to the blog were via twitter and facebook, including referrals an influential referral by Young Adult author Cynthia Leitich Smith.
A twitter search for mentions of the blog article showed that there was a wonderfully enthusiastic response to the Governor’s letter, for instance:
@williamsdb RT @LizB best letter from gov ever @varianjohnson letter fr Governor of Delaware to M.T. Anderson
Del-awesome. RT @anindita RT @varianjohnson Letter from Governor of Delaware to M.T. Anderson
RT @KateMessner: Love it! RT @anindita RT @varianjohnson Letter from Governor of Delaware to M.T. Anderson
so proud of my home state now! Gov. of DE writes to M.T. Anderson
So thanks to the Governor again for putting his name on the letter! The public reception- across the country- was wonderfully positive and it’s also a great example of the reach of our social media tools- not only did we get a positive portrayal of the state and Governor but we also created new connections with authors who we might be able to attract for future events.
Written on: September 28th, 2009 in Blog Posts
A couple of quick hits from this week’s New York Times Sunday Book Reviews:
Spooner, Pete Dexter’s “calamitously funny” fictional memoir gets a lengthy featured review. You can read more reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus Reviews at this link.
Seven Mile Beach, by Tom Gilling is a “deftly constructed psychological thriller…an interesting choice for book clubs.”
An archive of the Times Book Review is here– all the way back to 1997. A great resource to help you find books to check out from your Delaware library.
Written on: September 24th, 2009 in Blog Posts
Click on the image for a visualization of last month’s title searches in the Delaware Library Catalog
Down at the Delaware Tech Owens campus in Georgetown, students are mixing business with pleasure- J.D. Robb and MS Windows being among the top books checked out last week:
Written on: September 23rd, 2009 in Reviews
Choice Reviews Online is an amazing resource for librarians and library patrons with an interest in academic and non-fiction subjects. Most of the content is subscription-only, but there is enough free content to make an occasional visit worthwhile.
I use Choice primarily as another source to find out about high-quality free public websites- as a subscriber I can set up interest lists to have titles within specific topic areas sent to me, and I use this service to get monthly lists of websites that have been reviewed and recommended by Choice reviewers, who are mostly academic librarians and subject specialists. After a visit, I usually add these links to one or other of our website collections (you can read more about how we “collect” websites at this link)
This month’s reviews offered a typically great selection of websites on all kinds of topics:
Delaware's Governor
State Agencies
Elected Officials
General Assembly
Delaware Courts
State Employees
Cities & Towns
Delaware State Code
State Regulations
Business First Steps
Phone Directory
Locations Directory
Public Meetings
Voting & Elections
Transparency
Delaware Marketplace
Tax Center
Personal Income Tax
Privacy Policy
Weather & Travel
Contact Us
Corporations
Franchise Tax
Gross Receipts Tax
Withholding Tax
Delaware Topics
Help Center
Mobile Apps
E-mail / Text Alerts
Social Media
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