i decided to take pinkwerewolf's advice and read a book. Well, talk about a book I finished a day or two ago. And to prove that I am not just interested in superheros and supervillians. I like vampires , too. Wicked Games by Jeri Smith-Ready is an excellent vampire novel.
Ciara Griffin is an ex con artist that needs an internship to finish her college degree. She finds a job at WVMP, a radio station With DJs that are unusual . You guessed it , they are vampires. The station is about to be sold to a big corporate radio station. Ciara uses her skills as a con artist and the outong ( ?) of the vampires to try and save the station.
Things I liked:
1) The vampires are dangerous. and not sparklely.
2) Our heroine can take care of herself.
3) Sequel is possible, but not needed
4) Ciara is a con artist and we see the cons
Thing I don't like:
1) Ihave to search for more books. No more books by Jeri Smith-Ready in my library.
Okay, I'm late to the game on this by two years but hey, I've been busy. It is the night before the Dark Night and feeling sorry for myself that I will not be able to see it in the theaters until sometime in the next couple of weeks. With that, I was in the mood for some type of superhero action movie. The best thing I can say about Ghost Rider is that I enjoyed the pint of Ben & Jerry's Stephen Cobert Americone Ice Cream.
7:30 coffe in hand I hit the computer to see what happened while I slept. I check my email accounts, Twitter, & FriendFeed. One of my Twitter firends lets me know the Day in the Life project made it into American Libraries Direct. Sweet! But I feel a bit nervous.
8:30 Now I'm just playing around, on the net, checking blogs etc. I don't have to be to work until 11 today, I work till 9pm tonight.
8:50 Ttime to get ready for work! I'll be back when I arrive at the library.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="196" caption="Cool gift from coworker! "][/caption]
10:40 arrive in the office, check voicemail; I have a message from another librarian about a program he's canceling. I got his email about the samething last night after I got home, so I've already updated the blog. Turn on computer and get the blue screen of death. Not good. I have to be at the Reference Desk in a few minutes and I don't have time to deal with this so I head across the street to the main library building. I chat with the Circulation Manager about what times they need me to fill in over there, since they are short staffed.
11:00 I'm at the Reference Desk and I'm hoping it's slow and I get get some ordering done, I order for the 800 & 900s. I get distracted listening to an interesting conversation the Circulation people are having, the minute I drift back to the net they start talking about a tail!. This gets my attention again, of course I'm hoping there is a monkey involved. Nope back to the net. Craving a cheeseburger and I have an hour to go!
12:00 Check my email start working on an email from the Technical Services Librarian who wants recommendations for magazines for some areas.
1:00 back to my desk, I scored some free pizza from the break room which solves the lunch problem. Then I talk with one of my fellow librarians about a /from yesterday and how great it is to be able to share all of this stuff.
1:45 check voicemail, message from a patron who wants to sign up for next weeks computer class. I check the sign up sheet in google docs, add her name and call her back to let her know she's all signed up. Which reminds me I need to get the presentation and handouts finished. (I'll post these when they are done, but I"m not sure what interest they'll be to anyone who doesn't use my library)
3:00 Time to start ordering again!
4:15 Chat with my boss who's been in meetings all day, we mostly talk about what we'll need to work on next week. Then I check my email. Uh-oh one of the databases isn't working right, I walk next door to talk with the Librarian who orginally alerted me to the problem then back to my desk to send an email to IT.
4:45 I head to head across the street to work the reference desk and supervise.
6:01 It's been a pretty quiet night so far and I've had time to rewrite this so it (hopefully) makes sense to someone other than me. Now to work on the Friday/Saturday post.
7:00 off the Ref Desk and head down stairs to give the Computer Center Clerk a break. While I'm there we have a problem patron situation to handle. Then upstairs to give the Teen Center Clerk a break. It's nice and uneventful up there tonight!
7:45 Back to the Circulation office. My office is across the street and since I'm supervising I have to stay in the main building so I use someone else's computer to write up these notes.
7:55 I just noticed there is a back log of new books that need to be shelved. The circulation department is short staffed and we're a small library so most everyone pitches in. I'm going go shelve those before I have to start closing up. Also checked and locked some DVDs, the person who does this is out sick and they pile up really fast. Even though I did it for half an hour I' m not even sure I made a dent.
8:40 Time to start closing up the library! I should be out of here by 9:15, if all goes well.
10:00 Home! I'm off tomorrow for working last weekend, so I get a 3 day weekend. Tomorrow I'll be working on presentations!
I took these notes today as part of , if you’re interested in reading more or documenting your own day, please add your name to the wiki.
So I work at a library. This summer, part of my job is helping with the children's summer reading program. (By helping I mean bribing children with prizes for reading books when they don't have to). Yesterday, Moreland the Magician came to the library to put on a magic show as part of the program. I didn't get to see the show. But I was there right before it, when the aforementioned magician came to my desk and asked if he could rubber cement some feathers to the wall as part of his act. (Not having wall/rubber cement clearance, I had to refer him to another staff member.) I was also there right after the show, when the twice aforementioned magician marched his entire audience (primarily children about ages three to ten) into the children's section and said, in a semi-fake Australian accent, "Okay kids, let's see if we can find where the rabid bird hit the wall!"
I was going to try to say something clever but I think I'll just leave it at that.
Wow, this has been a crazy week for the site! Monday July 14th we had 67 hits! Holy crap!! That brings the grand total to 146 views, and one person commented this week, keep em coming. It's nice to know people are actually finding the work I do here useful.
On the subject of the person who commented, thanks Corky, the page has an update. He figured out how to remove the subtitles from ripped DVDs. The other update is to the right column which now lists all the pages on the site for easier access to specific sections of the .
So that's it for this week, the general tips and tricks page is still coming... Civ Rev is just so fun! Sorry lol. Anyways, if you find this stuff useful be sure and link to it (please don't just bite my research and tutorials as yours). Tell your friends! And have a good week.
This isn't really how a Thursday looks. It's a look at the library where I work.
My day today started out with a department meeting. Things to discuss before some of us head off for vacations and other places in the next couple of weeks. After that, I spent most of the day working on finishing up things for the Summer Institute. I still need to make a Staples run for a few more supplies, but I think things are good.
Tonight I'm going to the community band concert with a friend. After a nap and some dinner.
I was looking at today and found some things I'd like to pass on. One of them is a cool online game very similar to Scrabble called . I checked it out, signed up and played a game. You can play against other people (and chat with them while you play) or you can play alone against a robot. All in all, a cool way to pass the time!!!
Another interesting tool is . Here is what they say about themselves: "Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what's great (and not so great) in your world. You already know that asking friends is the best way to find restaurants, dentists, hairstylists, and anything local. Yelp makes it fast and easy by collecting and organizing your friends' recommendations in one convenient place." I tried it to look up restaurants in West Palm Beach and found quite a few reviews. You can, of course, also write reviews and post them.
And finally, you really need to take a look at ! It's all about customer service, the good, the bad and the ugly!
This raised by David Pogue asks whether an electronic version of a book will boost sales of print versions of books. I don't really know since I don't have a book, electronic or otherwise, to sell. I kind of think the selling of books is similar to musicians who want to sell their music. When you're first starting out, I think it makes sense to either sell things really cheap and hope that the volume of material that you can sell via CD or through an online retailer is profitable OR to give away a track or maybe even a whole CD for free to get your music out there. Then, one would hope that if your material is good enough you will get a following so that you can start charging or charging more for said material.
Pogue says this though:
Many of you pointed out experiments by Cory Doctorow and Baen.com. They have each experimented with giving away free electronic copies of their books — and both claim to have seen spikes in their print-edition sales as a result.
That’s no proof that I’d see the same effect, though, for two reasons.
First, there’s the “small band/big band” argument: unknown bands, like little-known authors and publishers, love free electronic online distribution, because it exposes them to new potential fans.
But established, brand-name bands see file swapping as eating into their CD sales. Similarly, established book brands might legitimately worry that free PDF downloads will eat into book sales.
There’s a big difference in the type of book, too. The Doctorow and Baen.com experiments involve science-fiction novels — and there’s no particular reason you’d want to read those on a computer screen. So a free PDF copy might well convince you to buy the print edition.
He is right, I think, that reading a PDF of an entire book on your computer is not worth your while so if you really want to read it you're either going to go out and buy the book or get it from your library. But with the advent of the Kindle and eReader from Sony I think that there are going to be more and more people who will want that medium and will be reading PDF versions of books.
Pogue is obviously skeptical of the idea that ebooks boost print sales will be offering paid for (not free) versions of his books. It will be interesting to see his results. But, as he said, maybe even mentioning it on his blog will skew results. I wonder if what should really take place is something along the line of releasing a print version and electronic version that is hard for lay people to pirate) for the first few years and try making money off of a book that way. After a certain period of time (3-5 years for stuff like the technology books that Pogue publishes, longer for other materials) you should then give your book away for free. I don't have any statistics to make me believe one thing or the other but I think it makes sense that the majority of a books sales take place in the first few years. After that it probably drops off significantly. So, why not give it away for free? I don't know why Lawrence Lessig gives his books away for free...well I kind of do since he's a Creative Commons proponent, but I think he's on the right track.
If I see the results of Pogue's non-scientific study, I'll be sure to post them. In the meantime, what do you think? Has what I proposed struck a nerve? Do you have a good idea on how to deal with electronic publishing?
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