Library & Literary Miscellany

Each week I come across a great many interesting links from other bloggers, newspapers, journals, etc. Many of these I share on my Tumblr tumbleblog, but I’ve decided for weeks that are just bursting with post/article/presentations/new release goodies I’ll link to them in a Library & Literary Miscellany Links of the Week post (of which this is the first; I’m just testing it out to see if anyone finds this useful).

So without further ado, here are my top Library & Literary Miscellany items of interest this week:

Library

• Building Academic Library 2.0 by Meredith Farkas who tackles the issues involved in creating 2.0 libraries for her presentation at the Association of Christian Librarians Convention (her post contains embedded presentation that’s also available on Slideshare)
• Fusenews: Library V. Library by Elizabeth Bird who takes a look at two innovative library spaces for the young (doesn’t indoor literacy playground just have a nice ring to it?).
• 50 Tips and Resources to Implement User-Generated Content at Your Library by Jessica Merritt at CollegeDegrees.com
• 10 Universal Truths About Teaching: humorously relayed ideas on the truths of teaching (thanks to Instructify for the link)

Literature

• Children’s Literature Alphabet: growing collection of images of children’s literature characters and ideas for how to use the images; brought to you by the Children’s Literature Book Club
• EarlyEmergingBeginningInterChapterMediateReaders from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast; this post offers oodles of reading suggestions for, well, early-emerging-beginning-inter-chapter-mediate readers
• Play the Elephant and Piggie Dance game which, of course, stems from Mo Willems Elephant & Piggie series (for example, I Love My New Toy! (Elephant and Piggie) and I Will Surprise My Friend! (Elephant and Piggie)). A way to make a delightful series even more delightful and engaging (thanks to Cheryl Rainfield for the link).
• J.K. Rowling’s “not a prequel” 2 pager of Sirius Black and James Potter motorcycle rendezvous with a pair of officers available on Waterstone’s website. Click: “read our authors’ stories” and then click “J.K. Rowling” (thanks to Wizards Wireless for the link).

Miscellany (by misc, this week mainly means technology)

• The Basics of Using Google Analytics from The Edublogger; a “just the facts Jack” approach to navigating and putting to use the googols of information within Google Analytics
• Docstoc Kills Email Attachments with New Desktop Utility by Adam Ostrow at Mashable; DocStoc offers a simple, useful way to share files privately or publicly via URL (does require software download and registration). There are numerous ways to share large files depending on what you want (e.g., file size needs, privacy options, downloads or web based, registration or no, both parties registration required, etc.), so this one will be interesting to watch, particularly now that they’re offering OneClick.
• Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nick Carr at The Atlantic (also check out Carr’s book The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (who knew so many parallels could be drawn between the historical development of electricity and the Internet?))
• Key Differences Between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 in First Monday (thanks to iLibrarian for the link)
• 100 Best Products of 2008 edited by Mark Sullivan over at PC World
• 100 Useful Web Tools for Writers by Laura Milligan at College Degree
• 100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner | College@Home
• Tidal TV Beta: similarities to Hulu and Joost in that it offers access to television and video programming, but more like Hulu it requires no application download but rather runs on a streaming, browser-based platform
• 280 Slides: another option for creating presentations (TechCrunch says 280 Slides: Like Apple Keynote, but Online)

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Mother Reader hosted a 48 hour book challenge this weekend (2008 marks the third annual). It looks like much fun was had by all, so I wanted to recognize some of the participants by linking to their reading summaries (the reviews of their reading choices make for interesting reading too).

Here are a few of the participants (Note: some of these link to the main blogs if the 48 hour challenge wrap-up had not been completed as of time of posting; I may change the links when all the wrap-ups are in):

• Mother Reader
• Abby the Librarian
• Becky’s Book Reviews
• Biblio File
• Book Nut
• The Reading Zone
• Slayground
• A Year of Reading

If I missed your summary, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll add it. As for my own reading, I fear I only got one paltry qualifying book read this weekend (Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park, which I’ll be reviewing in my subsequent post). I read a bunch of picture books too, including an old one that was new to me and was such an absolute hoot I just have to throw it in here–There are Rocks in My Socks Said the Ox to the Fox by Patricia Thomas, illus. by Mordecai Gerstein.

At any rate, congratulations to all of the challenge particpants. I enjoyed reading the reviews, and I’ll surely be picking up some of those books soon.

Update: Here’s a post from Mother Reader about the Winners and the readers (with many more participants than were previously mentioned above).

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It’s that time of year again. Today begins the second annual Summer Blog Blast where authors and bloggers get together and have a blast (also known as an interview). You can read all about the Summer Blog Blast from Colleen Mondor over at Chasing Ray; she has also posted a day one SBBT round-up.

But just in case you haven’t already seen the week’s schedule and you don’t want to leave this site, then here’s a taste of the “who” and the “where” for you. I’ve also added in some information about the who and where of today in case you’re not familiar with the author’s names and/or works.

Monday (i.e., today)

Adam Rex at A Fuse #8 Production

• Adam Rex is both an author and illustrator. He’s the illustrator of The Dirty Cowboy (2003), Lucy Rose: Here’s the Thing About Me (2004), Ste-e-e-e-eamboat a-Comin’! (2005), Lucy Rose: Big on Plans (2005), Lucy Rose: Busy Like You Can’t Believe (2006), and Small Beauties: The Journey of Darcy Heart O’Hara (2006). He’s the author/illustrator of Tree-Ring Circus (2006), Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich (2006), Pssst! (2007), and The True Meaning of Smekday (2007) not to mention the forthcoming Frankenstein takes the cake (September 01, 2008).
• A Fuse #8 Production is a part of School Library Journal’s website and is written and directed by Elizabeth Bird.

David Almond at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

• David Almond is the author of numerous works including Skellig (1998), Kit’s Wilderness (1999), Heaven Eyes (2000), Secret Heart (2001), The Fire Eaters (2003), Clay (2005), My Dad’s a Birdman (with Polly Dunbar, 2007), and The Savage (with Dave McKean, UK publication April 2008; US publication October 2008)
• Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast is “a blog about books” by Jules and Eisha. With a blog title that that, who can resist?

R.L. Lafevers at Finding Wonderland

• R.L. Lafevers is the author of such works as Werewolf Rising, The Falconmaster, the Lowthar’s Blade series (The Forging of the Blade, The Secrets of Grim Wood, and The True Blade of Power), and Cybils nominee Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos. Also watch for the coming-soon sequel to the latter, Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris (November 01, 2008).
• Finding Wonderland is the Writing YA Weblog by contributors Aquafortis and TadMack. Yet another well-named blog (I’d love to find Wonderland myself).

Dave Schwartz at Shaken & Stirred

• Dave Schwartz‘ first novel Superpowers is set for release in June 2008.
• Shaken & Stirred is written by Gwenda Bond who is herself an aspiring YA author. She has made some of her writing freely available online.

Elizabeth Scott at Bookshelves of Doom

• Elizabeth Scott is the author of Bloom, Perfect You, Stealing Heaven, and Living Dead Girl (September 2008). Her website mentions she has more works planned for 2009.
• Bookshelves of Doom from a “Librarian. Okay, okay. Uber-librarian. Minus the MLS. That might happen. Someday.” She lives in (and loves) Maine. She reads (and loves reading) books.

Laurie Halse Anderson at Writing & Ruminating

• Laurie Halse Anderson is the author of novels such as Fever, 1793 (2002), Catalyst (2003), Prom (2006), Speak (2006), Twisted (2007), and Chains (coming in October 2008).
• Writing & Ruminating is “one children’s writer’s journey”; it’s the fine ruminations of children’s author and poet Kelly Fineman.

Susan Beth Pfeffer at Interactive Reader

• Susan Beth Pfeffer is the author of post-natural disaster survival story Life as We Knew It and its upcoming (and purportedly darker and more horrifying, we’ll soon find out) sequel the dead and the gone (June 01, 2008). She has other, older works too such as Twice Taken, Kid Power, and The Year Without Michael.
• Interactive Reader is written by Jackie Parker, teen librarian. She quips, “hopefully they won’t eat me alive” (the rest of the blog is equally witty).

And that’s just today. What’s coming up for the rest of the week you may ask? We have a variety of authors coupled with a variety of bloggers to create a variety of interview and book options for you. The schedule is as follows:

Tuesday

• Ben Towle at Chasing Ray
• Sean Qualls at Fuse #8 Production
• Susane Colasanti at Bildungsroman
• Robin Brande at HipWriterMama
• Susan Beth Pfeffer at The YA YA YAs
• Debby Garfinkle at A Chair, a Fireplace & a Tea Cozy
• Jennifer Lynn Barnes at Writing & Ruminating

Wednesday

• Delia Sherman at Chasing Ray
• Ingrid Law at Fuse #8 Production
• Polly Dunbar at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
• Tera Lynn Childs at Bildungsroman
• Siena Cherson Siegel at Miss Erin
• Barry Lyga at A Chair, a Fireplace & a Tea Cozy

Thursday

• Elisha Cooper at Chasing Ray
• Dar Williams at Fuse #8 Production
• Jennifer Bradbury at Bildungsroman
• E. Lockhart at The YA YA YAs
• Mary Hooper at Miss Erin
• Charles R. Smith at Writing & Ruminating
• Mary Pearson at A Chair, A Fireplace & a Tea Cozy

Friday

• Varian Johnson at Finding Wonderland
• Jincy Willet at Shaken & Stirred
• John Grandits at Writing & Ruminating
• Meg Burden at Bookshelves of Doom
• Gary D. Schmidt at Miss Erin
• Javaka Steptoe at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

So there’s quite a bit going on this week. And when you’re done reading author interviews, there’s always the option to head to the library to pick up their books (unless, of course, you wait until Memorial Day when many libraries will be closed, but why wait?).

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Need to remember something or just want to track your activities? Evernote is there (and we’re not talking paid insurance services of the State Farm variety here, although Evernote does offer insurance of sorts in the remembering things category). Evernote is there for you via its desktop (Windows and Mac), web, and mobile offerings.

Besides its mobility, a few other features to note about Evernote:

• Evernote plays well with other applications such as Jott and Skitch (and who can tell what the future holds?)
• Evernote has admirable text recognition of captured items (thus making the text searchable and the items findable)
• Evernote’s captured content can be of a wide variety (Evernote’s examples of “things to capture” being: Webpages, Wine labels, Whiteboards, Scribbles, To-dos, and Photos)
• Evernote notes can be entered multiple ways such as manually typing, captured images (webcam), clipping web pages or pictures, email, and/or voice.

From the Evernote Corporation Getting Started:

Evernote is a Web Service that helps users manage all the digital information most relevant to them. The Service can be accessed through free, user-friendly Evernote software running on a personal computer or mobile device, or any Web browser.

If you’re like many people in the world today who are trying to keep up with an ever increasing onslaught of information, whether personal or business, it’s getting harder and harder to keep track of all the information that you care about - and to find it when and where you need it.

Evernote can help. Our services and software are so simple, easy to use, and valuable that you’ll wonder how you ever got by without them. You’ll always have access to your information, even as the devices and applications that you use to access them changes over time. Imagine, no more manually reentering or copying information, no more digging through pieces of paper and software applications to find photos, that favorite restaurant review, a research report, scanned documents, web clipping, and much more.

So if any of that sounds interesting, here’s how to proceed. First, request an invite. Then sit back and wait for your invite to arrive (it didn’t take me too long to get mine, and I don’t think it’s solely because I’m irresistible…). Perhaps you could sleep a little, enjoy a good meal, or read a good book (perhaps even try one I have reviewed ).

Also, in the meantime, you can get started watching these YouTube videos by Evernote Phil and reading other reviews of Evernote. My review wasn’t that extensive, because why reinvent the wheel when others have already provided such enlightening synopses, for example:

• The Apple Blog: Evernote=Ubiquitous Personal Memory by Bob Rudis (April 03, 2008)
• Ars Technica (the art of technology): A review of Evernote with invites, exclusive iPhone preview by David Chartier (April 29, 2008)
• Lifehacker: Jott Your Way to Evernote Bliss by Brad Isaac (March 30, 2008)
• MadPercolator: Evernote After the Initial Infatuation Wears Off (May 01, 2008)
• MakeUseOf.com: Become a Rockstar Note Taker with EverNote by Shankar Ganesh (April 22, 2008)
• Mashable: Evernote Public Bookmarks, and Invites for Mashable Readers by Kristen Nicole (April 29, 2008)
• O’Reilly Blog: Evernote: Notes Everywhere - Mac, Web, Phone by Todd Ogasawara (April 09, 2008)
• Salon: Software to Help you Remember Everything, Forever (at Machinist: inside tech, gizmo, and big ideas column by Farhad Manjoo posted April 16, 2008)
• TechCrunch: Extend Your Brain with Evernote (Private Beta Invites) by Erick Schonfeld (Februrary 21, 2008
• TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Blog): Evernote Universal Human Memory Extension by Brett Terpstra (March 20, 2008)
• Wikipedia: EverNote
• WIRED: Evernote is Noteworthy by Michael Calore (April 19, 2007)
• WIRED: Evernote A Database for your Life by Michael Calore (January 24, 2007)
• WIRED: Evernote Offers a Backup for Your Brain by Scott Gilbertson (March 14, 2008)
• ZDNet: First Thoughts on the Evernote Web Public Beta and the Incredible Search Technology (February 27, 2008)

You can also view Evernote’s What is Evernote or read the Evernote blog (or just request an invitation and play). On that note, enjoy (and have a great weekend)…

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You may have noticed I added a link to my Library & Literary Miscellany Tumbles on the sidebar of this site; here’s a brief explanation of where you’ll go if you click on that link.

This link is to what is known as a lifestream (it happens to be my lifestream at Tumblr, although I haven’t added many streams to it as yet). Word Spy defines a “lifestream” as:

An online record of a person’s daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person’s online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos.

Various tools exist through which you can create your own lifestream. The Lifestream Blog has created a nice long list of these tools with examples, some reviews, and links to the home pages of the sites. While I recently started using Tumblr, you can see that many options exist. Jaiku, having recently been acquired by Google, is likely to be another service to watch. As others have pointed out, Tumblr is noteworthy for its simplicity (see melange’s Tumblr, a Different Way to Blog for a well-written post with links to other posts pertaining to Tumblr’s offerings).

As with other lifestream offerings, Tumblr enables users to specify social media services that they use—such as del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, LastFM, Twitter, YouTube, and personal blog(s)—and to output those feeds together all in one place. Basically, where a feed exists, you can have it display on Tumblr.

Any changes you make to any of the services you have included into your lifestream—adding a link to del.icio.us, updating your Facebook status, writing a new blog post—will be reflected in your stream. A lifestream service such as Tumblr exists to aggregate your content into your own customized stream of information.

You can also add content directly to Tumblr that will not be fed in from any of the other services you have linked to your Tumblelog.  For this purpose, Tumblr offers seven types of posts: text (title and body), photo (browse for file or add URL and caption), quote (quote and source), link (title and URL and description), chat (title and dialogue), audio (file and description, limit one per day), and video (embed or upload file and caption). The Tumblr bookmarklet (accessible via your Dashboard under Account–Goodies) makes it quick, easy, and painless to add content that you tumble upon to your Tumblelog.

Tumblr offers other customizations (e.g., change the theme, have your URL point to a domain other than tumblr.com) as well as social features (e.g., follow others, be followed, create a group). Tumblr can be used for a wide variety of intents and purposes.  Some users have migrated their sites over to Tumblr (e.g. the Rocketboom blog (http://www.rocketboom.com/blog/) has moved to a new Tumblr platform at http://rocketboom.tumblr.com/); others use their tumblelogs as a supplement (e.g., me).

Regardless, Tumblr does provide an easy way to record and aggregate online activity.  I’m finding it useful for including information I run across that I don’t necessarily want to mention or discuss on my main site, but that I still find interesting enough that I’d like to include said information in my tumbles.

For more-detailed looks at lifestreams in general and Tumblr in particular, see the following posts:

LifeHacker’s Gina Tripani: Instant, no-overhead blog with Tumblr

Melange: Tumblr, a different way to blog

The Butter Room’s Todd Wickersty: Tumblr 101

ReadWriteWeb’s Richard MacManus: Lifestreaming: a ReadWriteWeb Primer

Wikipedia: Tumblelogs

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It’s been awhile since I came across Erik Kastner’s Spell with Flickr, but it’s such a fun and user-friendly tool that I thought I’d highlight it.

Basically, you can just type in the letters, characters, words, and/or phrases that you’d like to have spelled into the Spell box and click spell. Almost immediately you’ll get your letters, characters, words, and/or phrases returned to you created out of fun images that are available on Flickr. You can then embed the code on your website or blog or you can be more creative.

Also, if your aesthetic sensibilities lead you to desire to replace a particular letter or character, then that’s as easy as clicking on that image. Spell with Flickr will replace that image with another. You can do this until you are satisfied with your results. My Spelling examples are below (first, displaying each letter as a separate image with the code directly from Spell with Flickr and then collapsed together into one image):

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In preparation for ALA awards announcement on January 14th (including but by no means limited to the Newbery and the Caldecott), I’ve linked to a few of my fellow kidlitosphere bloggers predictions as to the winners:

100 Scope Notes: Newbery/Caldecott Placement Predictions

Children’s Literature Book Club: Newbery Buzz

A Fuse #8 Production: Newbery & Caldecott 2008: Predict-o-rama

Look Books: Newbery Predictions and Recollections

Mother Reader: ALA, Newbery, Caldecott

Wizards Wireless: Why Hugo Cabret is Going to Break my Heart and Predicting the Winners

The Kiddosphere @ Fauqiuer has an informative post A New Year and a New Newbery on the awards process that also includes a compilation of links to groups that are hosting Mock Newbery Awards (for example, see the ACPL Mock Newbery Results and Anderson’s Bookshop Candidates). The Kiddosphere @ Fauquier also has its own Newbery prediction in the post New Newbery Favorite.

As for my own predictions, I’ll just throw out a few of my favorites for the Newbery: A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban, No Talking by Andrew Clements, and The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt. These books seem to fit well with the ALA defined criteria for the award.

But the awards go beyond the Newbery and the Caldecott. The following award information is from the press release about the live webcast offered by ALA regarding the awards. Awards to be announced on January 14th include:

• Alex Awards: for the best adult books that appeal to a teen audience
• Andrew Carnegie Medal: for excellence in children’s video
• Coretta Scott King Book Award: recognizing an African American author and illustrator of books for children and young adults that reflect the best in artistic and literary expression of the Black experience in a pluralistic society
• John Newbery Medal: for the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature
• Margaret A. Edwards Award: for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults
• May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award: recognizing an author, critic, librarian, historian, or teacher of children’s literature, who then presents a lecture at a winning host site
• Michael L. Printz Award: for excellence in literature written for young adults
• Mildred L. Batchelder Award: for an outstanding children’s book translated from a foreign language in a foreign country and subsequently published in English in the United States
• Odyssey Award: for excellence in audiobook production for youth
• Pura Belpré Award: recognizing a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth
• Randolph Caldecott Medal: for the most distinguished American picture book for children
• Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award: for most distinguished informational book for children
• Schneider Family Book Award for books: that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience
• Theodor Seuss Geisel Award: for the most distinguished book for beginning readers

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In honor of the impending deadline for YALSA’s Create Your Own Avatar contest, I thought I’d create a couple of my own avatars and paste them here (click here to view the PDF description of the contest). Here goes, in no particular order (okay, alphabetical):

Doppel Me: Doppel Me labels itself as the free dynamic avatar maker with no need of Flash, Active X controls, downloads or toolbars

Gravatar- I uploaded my avatars created from other sites into Gravatar. Gravatar enables users to associate avatars with email addresses, thus simplifying the appearance of the avatar image on Gravatar-enabled blogs, forums, and websites.

Meez.com: Meez has many accoutrement options and allows for easy creation and export via download or embedding on multiple social networks and other platforms.

Reasonably Clever Minimizers: At Reasonably Clever, you can “picture yourself in plastic.” Loads of customization available. To export your image, you will need to capture the screenshot and then paste it into an editing program such as Paint or Photoshop in order to save your figure.

Tektek.org Dream Avatar: At Tektek, you can easily create your own dream avatar and easily download the image to place on other sites.

Yahoo: Create a Yahoo account and then create your Yahoo Avatar.

For more avatar fun, Mashable created a great list Avatars Everywhere: 27 of the best Avatar Makers. Most of these sites require account creation, but if you’re willing to do that, then it’s all downhill from there…

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Visit MyNameOnFire.com or Flaming Text to create your own scorching sayings.

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