Banned Books Week 2010

Banned Books week 2010 is September 25th through October 2nd; "Banned Books Week - Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, the annual event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted" (ALA, Press Kit). Students enjoy discussing banned and challenged books, as well as different forms of censorship. One of the more difficult concepts to grasp is while a book may banned or challenged by one group or school district, it does not mean it is banned for everyone.

The fall release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows re-opens continuing discussion of the series place on the most frequently challenged lists. Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian was recently challenged and removed from a school district in Stockton, Missouri. When perusing the Banned and Challenged Classics list, I am continually surprised by the number of titles I recognize because they are classics and because they were required reading for English classes in high school.

ALA Links

• About Banned and Challenged Books
• ALA Banned and Challenged Books
• Books Challenged or Banned 2009-2010
• ALA Banned and Challenged Classics
• ALA Challenges by Year
• ALA Banned Books Week on Facebook
• ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom
• ALA Banned Books Week Calendar of Events
• ALA Banned Books Week Press Kit

Articles of Interest: Banned Books Week:

• Ten Ways to Celebrate Banned Books Week
• Banned Books Week 2010: Which Books Drew the Most Fire Last Year?
• Banned Books Week: Ten Flashlight Worthy Books People Most Wanted Banned
• Banned Books Week 2010: 15 Iconic Movies Based on Banned Books
• 10 Banned Books You Might Not Expect
• Celebrate Banned Books Week 2010
• Banned Books Week: Q & A How Books Get Banned

I found this video on OIF YouTube Channel, it's an interesting look at the Top Ten Banned and Challenged Books of 2009.

And last year's Puppet Book Banners video from ALA's YouTube Channel.

Time to go find a great book to read, it's my choice.

Weekly reader wrap-up

Compiling interesting posts from my reader is quickly becoming a Friday lunchtime habit. I promise to quit complaining about Google Reader, especially if it quits crashing in IE (guess it's a Google vs Microsoft thing). I'm learning default to Mozilla for Reader.

• 30 Days of Back to School: Learning From and With Devices
  "It is pretty exciting to learn about what’s being piloted in schools and libraries across the country and learn how the use of these devices can improve and enhance teaching, learning, and library services for teens." - YALSA Blog, Linda Braun (9/23/10) *Note, YALSA site was down earlier this morning.
  

• YouTube Instant Creater Accepts Job at YouTube
  "Stanford computer science student Feross Aboukhadijeh is celebrating two milestones this week, his YouTube Instant site hitting one million visitors in ten days as well as a new job, having accepted Chad Hurley’s job offer over Twitter shortly after his Google Instant-inspired service caught the attention of the YouTube founder." - TechCrunch, Alexia Tsotsis (9/24/10)
  

• Stop Blaming the Social Media Platform, Focus on Your Relationships
  "We are responsible for how we engage, inspire and connect with our audiences. We are responsible for our actions, our privacy settings and how transparent we are. Most importantly we must take responsibility personally for our overall success in social media."-- SocialMediaToday, Pam Moore (9/23/10)
  

• 'Gateway to Knowledge' Now Rolling Towards DC
  "After a very long time in the planning stages, our “Gateway to Knowledge” traveling exhibition is finally becoming a reality." Of particular interest, "The truck then will head west to Winchester, Va.; Cumberland, Md.; Charleston, W.Va.; and Marietta, Twinsburg, Oberlin and Troy, all in Ohio."-- Library of Congress Blog, Matt Raymond (9/23/10)
  

• CFP: Journal of Library and Information Service for Distance Learning
  "The Journal of Library and Information Service for Distance Learning, a peer-reviewed journal published by Routledge, welcomes the submission of manuscripts." -- posted on A Library Writers Blog (9/23/10)
  

• Immersion ’11 Applications Now Available
  "ACRL is currently accepting applications for the Immersion ’11 Program Teacher and Program tracks to be held July 24-29, 2011, at Seattle University. The ACRL Immersion ’11 Program provides four-and-a-half days of intensive information literacy training and education for academic librarians." -- ACRL Insider, Margot Conahan (9/22/10) *Note, ACRL Insider was experiencing the same problem as the YALSA blog.
  

• A Snapshot: What They Read and Why
  "The new school year started, for us, just ten days ago. I used the Library classes time to catch up with my 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students about their summer reads." -- ALSC Blog, Roxanne Feldman (9/22/10)
  

Anything interesting in the blogosphere catch your attention this week?

New HP movie trailer!

I can hardly wait! It's time to refresh my memory and gleefully re-read my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Collection presentation & adjustment

Most of last year, and the bulk of this summer, was spent planning, purchasing, and processing collection items for the new IRC at the AU Columbus Center. The beginning of September brought an 'official' space planning visit; time was spent arranging furniture and the collection. Determining what should go where is fraught with challenge. For me, the IRC has always been a more fluid area. With the exception of this summer, I have moved one collection or another on the second floor to make things 'fit better' and be more useful and accessible for patrons. Therefore, one of the last things I said to the GA helping me was, live with it for a few months (this term). We can always move things around later.

Truer words ... After ordering media bags for the big books in Columbus, I developed display envy and determined to find a better way to present the main campus collection. Several days' research into library shelving led me to Library Design Association, they sent sample media rack bars from MJ Industries and Estey. I was able to test them in our stacks; one was perfect for audio books and the other for big books.

Last Friday the bars arrived, Monday I began the task of putting each of the big books into a hanging bag (it took significantly longer than anticipated) and organizing the collection. It looks wonderful! The bags hang spine out so labels on the top and bottom left corner are easily visible; the collection is presented in LC order. There is adequate room for users to browse the collection without having to pull big books from the cart.

This move has an added benefit, the adjacent collection is audio books and several of the big books have corresponding audio elements available. Placing the collection in LC order revealed a few holes, it would benefit to have a few more basic fiction and Spanish language titles (though I probably will need to purchase two more racks to facilitate the weight of these purchases). Signage is in place, the collection is ready for use, and notices were posted on the IRC news blog and scheduled to post on the library news blog later this week. The best thing? Students required to use big books in one of the children's literature classes have already commented happily on the change.

ACRL: Cyber Zed Shed Proposals

 
Five weeks until the Cyber Zed Shed Proposal Deadline!



Deadline Nov 1. http://j.mp/acrlczs

Are you a tech savvy librarian using new technologies in innovative ways? Adapting existing technologies to reach user needs? Here is an opportunity to share your innovations with your colleagues, library administrators, and others at ACRL 2011. The ACRL 2011 Cyber Zed Shed Committee is looking for proposals that document technology-related innovations in every area of the library.

Whether you are teaching in a classroom; answering questions from patrons; acquiring, cataloging, processing or preserving materials; or providing other services, we're interested. We invite you to submit your most innovative proposals to help us make Philadelphia the site of a truly groundbreaking conference.

Cyber Zed Shed presentations are 20 minutes, with 15 minutes to present a demonstration, and five additional minutes for audience Q&A. Presentations should document technology-related innovations in academic and research libraries. A computer, data projector, screen, microphone, and stage will be provided in the Cyber Zed Shed theater. You will be responsible for bringing all other equipment required for your demonstration, except as agreed to in advance.

The deadline for submission is November 1, 2010.

Questions about Cyber Zed Shed submissions should be directed to:

Kenley Neufeld, Santa Barbara City College, kenleyneufeld@gmail.com
Emily Rimland, Pennsylvania State University, erimland@psu.edu

my Google Reader

Once in a while on a Friday afternoon I succumb to the sirens lure of my bloglines account and share interesting posts. After a week of using Google Reader, complete with browser crashes while reading feeds, instances of "oops, an error occurred, please try again," already read items returning to new status, I miss bloglines. How much is user impatience? How much is Google Reader inconsistency? Time will tell. Meanwhile, here are a few posts from my reader:

• Blog U: Are You Using RSS?
  "I'm an avid RSS (Really Simple Syndication) user. I admit it. I've been addicted to RSS for a very long time. My feed reader of choice since 2006 has been Bloglines. I have more than 360 subscriptions." - Eric Stoller, 9/17/10
• HotStuff will be taking a short break
  "The HotStuff code relies very heavily on the Bloglines API and, with the annoucement that Bloglines will shut down on Oct 1st, this means HotStuff will be unable to fetch and process new blog posts." - Dave Pattern, 9/15/10

Enough self indulgence ...

• Lessons from the Oatmeal (the website, not the food)
  "This isn’t a “get a million followers NOW NOW NOW!” type of video. It’s just a look at what’s worked for Matt, and what people want on the Web." - Digitizd, 9/15/10
• Fearlessly Facing the Freshman Seminar
  "True confession: I’ve never taught freshmen in my life. So why am I, a provost, offering a class to 18-year olds? I asked myself this question earlier this summer as I enrolled as a participant in a faculty workshop." - Steven Allred, 9/16/10
• Is Lecture Capture the New Lecture?
  "Much like learning management systems (LMS) a decade ago, or podcasting just a few years ago, lecture capture is an emerging/arriving technology: data from the 2009 Campus Computing Survey indicate that 3.5 percent of college courses make some use of lecture capture technology, up from 3.1 percent in 2008;" - Kenneth C. Green, 9/15/10
• Drexel Freshman Get Help from Personal Librarians
  "With students spending more research time in front of the screen and less in the stacks, librarians at Drexel University are trying a fresh approach to helping new freshmen navigate their resources: 'personal librarians.'"- Travis Kaya, 9/14/10
• The Rhythm of Online Teaching
  "Thought I'd try an experiment of sharing with you some of the best practices I'm trying to write up about the rhythm of online teaching, in the hopes that you will provide some ideas and feedback." - Joshua Kim, 9/14/10

A great Friday afternoon option? My shelving rods (hanging media) just arrived from Library Design Associates! I am going to build, replace old shelving with new,and Monday I will gleefully move the big book collection to their new home.

How LibGuides Link Librarians

I'm not sure how many of you use LibGuides at your libraries or how many of you have even heard of LibGuides. Just in case here is a little background. LibGuides is a knowledge sharing system which allows librarians to create individual guides or pathfinders that link users to library resources. While providing access to resources these guides also embrace the push towards web 2.0 by allowing librarians to share RSS feeds, podcasts, videos and polls.
I have had the pleasure of using LibGuides for the past few years while working at Ashland University and at my current position at Stark State College. I love the simplicity of creating guides for my patrons and the fact that I can update or change information in the blink of an eye. Along with the ease and enjoyment of creating LibGuides I'm finding there is an added bonus feature, so to speak.
LibGuides are a great way for librarians of all walks, to network and share ideas. I know I am always looking to my colleagues for ideas and I'm finding that LibGuides is wonderful for this! One way to gather ideas is to use the LibGuides Community Site. The Community Site is set up as a database of its own. You can search for guides by subject, school, author or keyword. I not only get ideas about guide design and layout but I find great links to online tools and resources. But this isn't the best part. If you find a guide that you would like to re-create but you don't know how or you find a tutorial created by another librarian you can contact them! Each guide has the author prominently displayed along with their contact information.
In the past three years of using LibGuides I have been contacted by four librarians from all regions of the country, asking me how I created something or asking if they could use a particular activity I posted. On the flip side, I myself have contacted numerous librarians asking them similar questions and never once has a librarian ever said "no".
So many of us are working on similar projects or putting together similar courses for our students and faculty without much time to get them done. Why reinvent the wheel when we can work as a community and share are ideas. The networking options through LibGuides and other social media tools are endless for librarians!

Sad Demise of Bloglines

Logging in to my Bloglines account this afternoon, I was greeted with a prominently displayed message next to my updated feeds:

"As you may have heard, we are sorry to share that Bloglines will officially shut down on October 1, 2010." (Bloglines, 9/10/10).

The notice was accompanied by helpful instructions on how to export my feeds for later use. I've been using Bloglines for several years and enjoy the convenience of a web-based service; lacking the "bells and whistles" of other rss readers, it does what I want it to do. At least, it did. I have noticed a number of feeds that it no longer catches, downtimes appear with increasing regularity, and login began requiring word identification. Obviously, signs I ignored while mired in blogline complacency (smile).

• TechCrunch Exclusive: IAC Finally Kills Off Bloglines
• The Ask.com Blog: Bloglines Update
• ReadWriteWeb: The End of Bloglines is Nigh

I'm not relishing the task of finding a new reader and moving my feeds. I've considered Pageflakes, Netvibes, and iGoogle, but like the general reader format. The simplest option may be using Google Reader along with my other Google account items (Gmail, YouTube, Picassa, and Blogger). At the very least I need to move the feeds so I don't lose them.

The old fashioned way

For the first time since arriving at Ashland University Library, incoming freshman from the college of education are not required to take an introductory technology course. This course served a dual purpose of presenting basic technology skills to be mastered and, from a library and Instructional Resource Center standpoint, guaranteed we would see every one of them in the library at least twice during the term. This week my student workers have been helping me brainstorm marketing ideas.

We talked about creating a Facebook fan page, developing a short series of podcasts featuring the IRC collection, increasing the number (and quality) of IRC blog posts, adding instructional videos to my education LibGuides, creating new Prezi and Animoto videos, and continuing to update the second floor space (visual appeal).

In two weeks the Accent on Success classes, Ashland's first year experience program, will arrive in the library for instruction sessions with the reference librarians. Many of these classes are grouped by declared majors, meaning there will be sessions for education students led by education faculty. While there is generally not time for tours built into the classes, I can certainly provide a parting gift. I updated my old book marks to business cards, featured resources that would be of interest to new students, printed them in color (created in Publisher for the correct Pantone colors), used a square hole-punch and attached them to my IRC pens. I have 126 pens in a clear sterlite box that I will give to a reference librarian later this week. Sometimes simpler is better.

Well, of course

On overload from a busy day, my mind is wandering a bit as I decompress by watching Designed to Sell on HGTV.  Out of the blue, a technology a-ha moment. Interestingly enough, it highlights a study discussed today on the ALA Learning Round Table blog. But I digress.

The university web team recently updated the current students page. Included within the page is a new rss feed that features the library news blog. It's a great marketing function for the library - I've already scheduled posts for first year instruction sessions - and provides an opportunity for our blog news to reach a wider audience. When students select the headline, they are taken to a separate page generated by the Drupal module. I noticed, however, it displays only a snippet of each post as opposed to full text. Wondering if this was a function of the module, this morning I sent a help ticket thanking them for the prime real-estate on the student page and asking if it was possible to present the full post with links or if a link to the blog could be added within the created page.

A week into the new academic year, students in my technology class(es) have already successfully completed their first assignment. Several have worked ahead to the second and third assignment, publishing their first blog reflection post. Looking at their work, I noticed three elected to add social bookmarking links to post footers. I liked the idea and investigated how to add it to this blog and the library blog. Happily clicking the blog tab functions, I located what I needed and quickly adapted blogs footers to feature quick links (see below). While moving through tabs, I selected settings then site feed and noticed this blogs feeds were set to full, short, and short. Aha! I checked and the library news blog feed was set to short. I changed the feed option to full and saved. With luck, when we publish next the post will display as needed.

Now, what about the ALA Learning Round Table post? Today the blog featured a post titled Learn More, Do Nothing. The author discusses how taking a break from a problem and ruminating on it during quiet times often leads to success. Well, of course.

ALAO: Jay Ladd Award Nominations

From the ALAO List Serv 8/30/10
Nominations are being accepted for the Jay Ladd Distinguished Service Award

The ALAO Awards Committee seeks nominations for the 2010 Jay Ladd Distinguished Service Award. This award recognizes an individual who (1) has been an ALAO member for at least 5 years, and (2) who has promoted academic libraries and librarianship not only on his or her own campus, but also within the state. The award also recognizes someone who has provided leadership in the promotion of ALAO through service such as committee membership, executive board office, or interest group office. The Jay Ladd Distinguished Service Award honors the memory of Jay Ladd, a founding member of ALAO in the early 1970s.

This is a wonderful way to recognize a colleague who has provided leadership in ALAO and in the profession. The recipient of this year's award will receive an honorary 5-year membership in ALAO and will be recognized at the ALAO Annual Conference in Columbus, OH on October 29, 2010.

You may access the nomination form from the ALAO web site at:
http://www.alaoweb.org/procmanual/c31.pdf

Please include the following information:

• Name of nominee
• Nominee's position title
• Nominee's college or university
• Nominee's ALAO activities
• Your reasons for nominating this person
• Your name and contact information, including phone and email

NOTE: You may nominate more than one person. Your reasons for nominating your candidate(s) for the Jay Ladd Distinguished Service Award will be especially valuable to the Awards Committee.

Please send your nominations via mail, US Cargo, fax, or as an email attachment by Friday, September 17, 2010 to:

Rob Withers, ALAO Past President
Assistant to the Dean and University Librarian
225 King Library
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
Fax: 513-529-3110
Email: rob.withers at muohio.edu

Interested in learning more? Library Cloud contributor, Besty Blankenship, was the 2007 Jay Ladd Distinguished Service Award Winner!