Library & Literary Miscellany

In case you hadn’t heard, the Olympics have begun! Below are a few web resources and books to check out, in case you find yourself needing something to do in-between events.

A Few Olympic Web Resources

• BBC’s animation on the ancient Greek Olympics
• CBBC Newsround Special Report on The Olympics
• CNN’s Report on the Olympics
• The History Channel has a collection of video clips from different historic Olympic events
• Infoplease’s Olympics 2008
• Internet Public Library’s Olympics Pathfinder
• A Voice of America Special English piece on Tibet and the Olympics
• From the International Olympic Committee: Animated tutorials covering sports at the summer games and videos of moments in past Olympics
• PBS’ Online News Hour China Prepares for 2008 Olympics
• New York Times map of Olympic Medals with an interactive visual for charting medal winning over time
• Scholastic’s Olympics Research Starters
• What Sporting Type are You?: interactive quiz from CNN
• Lists:
  • 18 Smaller Olympic Countries to Root For
  • 25 Sites to Experience the Beijing Summer Olympics

A Few Olympic Books

Fiction

For Kids

• Asterix at the Olympic Games (Asterix) by Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo
• Elympics: Poems (Olympics) by X. J. Kennedy
• Koala Lou by Mem Fox
• The Mud Flat Olympics by James Stevenson
• Tacky and the Winter Games by Helen Lester
• Hour of the Olympics (Magic Treehouse #16) by Mary Pope Osborne

For Young Adults/Adults

• Before I Go by Riley Weston
• Bone Cage by Angie Abdou
• Lori: The Circle of Friends (Book 1) by L. Diane Wolfe

Nonfiction

For Kids

• Olympics (DK Eyewitness Books) by DK Publishing
• The Olympics: Legendary Sports Events by Matt Christopher
• Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman by Kathleen Krull
• The United States Olympics Committee has also made available publications for teachers to help them bring the Olympics into the classroom: Journey to Beijing, Grades 1-3 by United States Olympic Committee and Journey to Beijing, Grades 4-6 by United States Olympic Committee

For Young Adults/Adults

• Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China by Susan Brownell
• The Encyclopedia of the Summer Olympics (Watts Reference) by David Fischer
• The Night Olympic Team: Fighting to Keep Drugs Out of the Games by Caroline Hatton
• Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World by David Maraniss
• Swifter, Higher, Stronger: A Photographic History of the Summer Olympics by Sue Macy

Reference

• The Complete Book of the Olympics: 2008 Edition by David Wallechinsky

There’s no shortage of things to watch (for example, the first Team USA game, USA vs China, is at 10:15am ET the morning of August 10) and to think and pray about (for example, the Bachman family and all those who are present for the games and other controversies that have continued to surround the Beijing games) as the Olympics proceed.

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Technically, these are links of last week and this week (does the fact that I’ve been out of town exculpate me ). I’m actually thinking that this will be the last official Library & Literary Miscellany Links of the Week. I was hoping that these posts would be of use, but I haven’t really heard any feedback verifying this. But I will continue posting interesting finds on my Tumbleblog from here on out, so they’ll still be available just in a different way. Enjoy!

Library

Current Cites this month: Google Still Not Indexing Hidden Web URLs; Copyright Renewal, Copyright Restoration, and the Difficulty of Determining Copyright Status; Federated Search 101

Fair Use Resources by Mathew at Creating Lifelong Learners offers a few places to visit to learning more about fair use

Knowing The Mind Of The User contemplates elements involved in positioning our libraries to showcase what we do and what we offer users by Steven B. at Designing Better Libraries

Online Book Clubs at Libraries by LibrarianinBlack Sarah Houghton-Jan links to a couple of examples for taking book clubs online

Resurrecting Reference: the conversation continues! post over at Infoblog summarizing an Infopeople webinar and providing a link to the archived webinar

Literary

Books for Phonics Instruction - Accomplishing More Than Just Sounding Out Words article in Choice Literacy Magazine (thanks to A Year of Reading for the link)

Edward vs. Jacob: The Great Twilight Debate (featuring Eisha and Dana in the first ever 7-Imp Smackdown): yes, this is a pre-Breaking Dawn release article about the series characters in general, but it’s still well worth a read. You may also want to check out some of the many post-release reviews on the blogosphere such as the Booklist Online review and Bookroomreview’s review. Lastly, here’s a link to a follow-up post about fan response to the book and Meyer’s response to the fans entitled Stephanie Meyer Responds To Criticism: It Hurts by bookroomreviews.

IndieNext August Titles: list of books to watch for in August from IndieBound

My Say: When YA Might Not be Okay by Sarah Stevenson in which she tackles ways to approach situations in which young kids are “reading up” and encountering books that have mature themes

Oprah Kids Reading List: which began giving recommendations August 01 (thanks to Big A Little A for the link)

Literacy Debate: spurred by an article in the New York Times–Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - Series - NYTimes.com–the first in a series of articles about how social and technological factors are impacting/changing the way we read. The debate spread across the blogosphere last week; a couple of interesting response are found at Librarilly Blonde with Carlie’s post Fanfiction: The future of literacy and Maybe We Should Spell it “R3@ding” by Keir over at Booklist Online

Man Booker Longlist announcement (the Longlist includes works such as Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 and Steve Toltz’ A Fraction of the Whole…plus 10 more)

Online Swap Meets for Books by Mary Pilon at the Wall Street Journal

Spinal Exam by Lisa over at Under the Covers points to and discusses other articles that delve into the hows and whys underlying the book jackets/cover art in young adult literature

Top Ten Food Scenes in Children’s Literature: another top-notch top 10 list from The Guardian

Miscellany

25 Sites to Experience the Beijing Summer Olympics by Sean P. Aune at Mashable

30+ Solutions to Start Your Own Wiki by Sean P. Aune at Mashable with a roundup of choices for your next wiki

Barkley the Cat by David K. Israel at the Mental_Floss Blog: he asks us “Why are Cats so Darn Popular on the Internet” and then produces a video starring Barkley the Cat (thanks to Big A Little A for the Link)

Creating Student Accounts Using One Gmail Account by Sue Waters at the EduBlogger

Cuil: Have you tried a Cuil search yet? You may or may not want to after reading such posts as A “Cuil” New Way to Search by Daniel A. Freeman over at ALATechSource Blog, Cuil - The Dark, Mysterious Version of Google by Stan Schroeder at Mashable, Cuil: Good, But Not Great by Frederic Lardinois atReadWriteWeb, and How To Lose Your Cuil 20 Seconds After Launch by Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch

File Extensions Reference: reference source for information on many file types along with the “how to” for opening the files

PlayCrafter Lets You Play and Create Casual Games (The Startup Review) by Paul Glazowski at Mashable reviews PlayCrafter, a startup with drag-and-drop features that make it worth looking at for those looking for easy ways to create games

Quote This: 11 Resources for Word Lovers by Doriano “Paisano” Carta at Mashable

Tools to Help You Celebrate Birthdays Online list of celebratory tools compiled at the Go2Web2.0 blog

The Lifehacker Editors’ Favorite Software and Hardware view this post to find out what the Lifehacker editors like to use

Simple Tools For Creating Screen Captures by Sue Waters at the EduBlogger outlining the use of tools such as Kwout, Picnik, Skitch, Jing, and Snagit to meet your screen capture needs

Wikipedia: who, what, how, and so on by amercer over at Instructify discusses some of Wikipedia’s strengths and weaknesses along with an embedded video of the development of the Wikipedia article for the 2005 London Train Bombing

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Library & Literary Miscellany links this week…

Library

7 Ways Your Public Library Can Help You During A Bad Economy a post filed under frugality over at the Consumerist listing, well, seven pluses to using a library but you’ll find many more additional suggestions in the comments…most positive (thanks to LibrarianinBlack for the link)

The 25 Most Modern Libraries in the World list from BestCollegesOnline.com broken up by architecture, technology and innovation, and digital collections

Copyright talk: Copyright in education, part 1: Fair use and Copyright in education, part 2: Transformative use over at Instructify (I’ve seen the Fair(y) Tale Use video mentioned in part two before but I enjoy it every time)

Experienceology: Seeing Your Library as if for the First Time over at Infoblog discusses the basics of creating the library experience

Program Planning: Online Brawl Tournaments by Joseph Wilk over at the YALSA blog provides insight into some of the ins and outs of hosting a gaming tourney with teams composed of teens from libraries in different cities

Literary

ARCs and Soapboxes by Colleen over at Chasing Ray provides the scoop on the week’s soapbox postings

Blog Central: Kidlitosphere FAQ by Anastasia Suen already answers quite a few questions and points to a variety of resources and will likely offer more in the future (thanks to Fuse 8 for the link)

On YA Lit this Week: Soapbox Day#1: We’ve got reactions and opinions and Margo Rabb, YA and why this issue is more complicated then you might think by Colleen at Chasing Ray, It’s Still Not Easy Completely Missing the Point by Carlie at Librarilly Blonde responding to the two recent YA lit stories in Newsweek, and YA Author Sets Her Characters a’Twittering over at Galleycat about YA author Jennifer Banash’s creation of Twitter microblogs for three of her characters

On Gender in kidlit this week: Boy Books Girl Books at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

E-Book Central by Theseus’s Posterous provides a mega-list of links to resources offering free e-books

Old Media Monday: Reviewing the Reviewers by Tom at Omnivoracious with a thorough round-up of adult titles reviewed by big name newspapers and magazines last week

QuickPicks: Historical Fiction that Doesn’t Seem Like Historical Fiction by Library Voice with some recommended titles for engaging readers with historical fiction

Top 10 Lists over at Big A Little A is a post of links pointing to recent Top 10 lists relating to various aspects of children’s literature over at The Guardian

Miscellany

7 Things You Should Know About Wii (pdf) by Educause as part of the “7 Things You Should Know About…” series

Top 10 Printable Paper Productivity Tools over at Lifehacker points to some paper-saving, productivity tools

30+ Tools for Synching Files and Folders by Aseem Kishore over at Mashable

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Library & Literary Miscellany links, links, links…

Library

Gearing Up for All Together Now post by Michael at Tame the Web announcing the All Together Now: A 2.0 Learning Experience. This learning experience opportunity looks to be somewhat akin to the Library 2.0 experiences previously offered by the Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg County, so if you didn’t get in on those, you might want to check it out.

Libraries are Going to Make it After All video at You Tube (thanks to American Libraries Direct this week for the link)

Library Application Program Interfaces (APIs) post by Roy Tennant providing a FYI list of generally useful library-related APIs

Library Day in the Life Wiki: wiki enabling librarians to share experiences of being a librarian; check it out to see how the experiences of your day compare with others in the same or different area of librarianship (thanks to American Libraries Direct this week for the link)

Web Services and Tech Training presentations post by LibrarianinBlack, Sarah Houghton-Jan including I Wanna Be 2.0 Too!: Web Services for Smaller Underfunded Libraries and Technology Training and Competencies

Literary

Books featuring Child Geniuses post over at the Children’s Literature Book Club listing some titles along with discussion of how the kids starring in these books view the world

If You Like Captain Underpants: Related Books for Students (BOOKLIST) article in Choice Literacy by Franki Sibberson from A Year of Reading with apt suggestions such as Roscoe Riley Rules

Get Ready to Stand on Your Soapbox by Chasing Ray reminding members of the kidlitosphere that next week will be as good a time as any to pontificate eloquently about issues today with the publishing world

Lost Book Club at ABC.com offers a roundup and place for discussion of all the books mentioned throughout the LOST episodes (thanks to Jen Robinson’s Growing Bookworms Newsletter for the link)

No Rich Kids Need Apply by Liz B at A Chair, A Fireplace, and A Tea Cozy digs into issues of class in YA lit

Savvy for Free post at Kids Lit providing links to the e-book of Ingrid Law’s Savvy.

The Publication History of Stuart Little: Fusenews: Anne Carroll Moore Does Not Love Stuart Little* and The Monkey Speaks: Where modern children’s literature (and librarianship) came from and The Shifted Librarian: Corrupting Young Minds (with Books) in the Library (these discussions point to and discuss an article in the New Yorker article The Lion and the Mouse: The battle that reshaped children’s literature by Jill Lepore)

This Week’s Rundown Draft at the Reader’s Advisor Online Blog points to interesting lists such as August’s Indie Next

Miscellany

17+ Things to Do with your Online Photos by iLibrarian includes ideas such as create an Animoto music video or a LetterPop Newsletter

A Look at the iPhone 3G by Elyssa at iLibrarian

Another Article About Those Darn Bloggers by Liz B. at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy pointing to and discussing the article debating print vs. online reviewing Is it curtains for critics? from The Observer

Google Docs has templates (thanks to Nicole at What I Learned Today for the heads up)

The Free Dictionary: a word lover’s delight by Jane over at infodoodads points to a potentially useful reference tool for fielding language and pronunciation questions called The Free Dictionary

How To Handle A Blog Attack at ACRL Log

Five Best File Syncing Tools compiled in a Lifehacker Hive Five post

JibJab Debuts its Election Video Carnival for 2008 embedded by Paul Glazowski with commentary over at Mashable

MMO Games for Change? over at Mission to Learn offers links to a past post about games promoting social change and more commentary on the same

Outlook vs. Gmail The Definitive Comparison in a Lifehacker Faceoff

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Here’s the Library & Literary Miscellany Links for the Week…

Library

5 Things You Should Read about Copyright and Sharing Instructional Materials post by the Distant Librarian summarizing the first of ACRL’s Five Things You Should Read About… series (the first being 5 Things You Should Read about Copyright and Sharing Instructional Materials)

Build the Open Shelves Classification by Tim Spalding over at Thingology stirring up discussion regarding library classification systems and the future

Gaming Gone Wild by Jenny Levine over at the Shifted Librarian compiles a library-related gaming round-up with links to many wild resources

How much longer will libraries need librarians? by Walter Minkel over at The Monkey Speaks. Here’s a brief excerpt: “We need to be offering programming that pulls literacy together with the materials in our collections. Youth librarians need to be offering “literacy counseling” to parents who come in and ask us questions about the best materials for their children. We need to be more than the greeters that some public libraries seem to be moving their staff toward. ”

LA: Essentials of Listening Advisory by Joyce Saricks over at Booklist Online discussing the similarities and differences (and importance) of providing RA with audiobooks

Ten Years of Learned Helplessness Coming to an End by Lori Ayre over at Tech Essence exhorting librarians to jump in and help improve open source ILS systems

What Librarians Can Learn from Starbucks Fall by Designing Better Libraries reiterates the importance of the personal touch and identifying/maintaining/bolstering core services

Literary

2008 Notable Books for a Global Society Booklist sponsored by the Children’s Literature and Reading Special Interest Group, International Reading Association (thanks to Jen Robinson’s Growing Bookworms Newsletter for the link)

Book Review: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by the A.V.Club rockets this one to near the top of my reading pile (and then I may not even need to review it myself since Donna Bowman did such a brilliant job)

Booker Talk: BBC’s How Do You Win a Booker Prize followed up by Rushdie Wins Best of Booker Prize

British Book News by Tasha Saecker over at Kids Lit providing links to some articles in The Telegraph that cover children’s literature

Did Fleming Rescue Churchill? over at Literate Lives discussing a new book that may prove to be a useful and more interesting way to introduce youngsters to the research process

Good News for People Who Love Bad News, and Vice Versa by Kier Graf at Booklist Online’s Book Blog with links to and discussion of, well, some bad news and good news for booksellers and book lovers

Carry-On Books To Take You Up, Up And Away by Nancy Pearl over at The Morning Edition suggesting books for your in-flight reading pleasure

The ‘New Classics’ post by Nora Rawlinson over at Early Word points out the book display potential inherent in Entertainment Weekly’s lists such as the selection of the 100 “New Book Classics” and the 25 New Classic Book covers

Stephenie Meyer: Inside the ‘Twilight’ Saga by Karen Valby at Entertainment Weekly provides an inside scoop on the making of the Twilight vampire empire

Upcoming Movies Based on Kids/Teen Books By Tasha Saecker includes some screenshots and links to the IMDB entry

Miscellany

Virtual Worlds: 20+ Tools for Creating 3D Graphics and Environments: suggestions from Sean P. Aune over at Mashable

57 Useful Google Tools You’ve Never Heard Of by College @Home pointing to some familiar resources such as Google Docs, Google Scholar, and Google Book Search and some less well-known tools such as Goog-411, Cooking with Google, and GrandCentral

Dictionary adds new batch of words at CNN.com-including pescatarian, mondegreen, and more (I find mondegreen to be particularly enjoyable as I’ve experienced more than a few of these in my time)

Free Sounds to Relax Your Brain Or Improve Concentration Levels post about I Dose Sounds that are available for various purposes by Digital Inspiration

Getting Started with Social Media - A Guide and Resource List a how-to posted over at Technotheory (thanks to iLibrarian for the link)

Google Launches Lively to Create a Virtual World Across Social Networks Mashable’s take on Google’s new virtual world offering

And, yes, I realize the new iPhone 3G was released this week, but you can read news about that from a plethora of other sites should you so choose…

Enjoy the day!

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Hoorah, hooray for holiday weekends and for freedom itself! I hope everyone enjoyed the day yesterday and that you find some of the following Links of the Week stimulating, useful, or at least worth looking at:

Library

Dot-Mania: ICANN Opens the Domain Door by Barbara Quint at InfoToday (thanks to Librarian in Black with her dot-library or dot-lib…which do you like better? post for the link)

Keeping Your Computers Running Session posted at the LITA blog summarizing an ALA session on a topic near and dear to all our hearts (by necessity, if not by nature, anyway)-technology maintenance and troubleshooting

LibGig Your Career Your Community is a networking site for librarians and includes sections for careers, schools, and community with a bit of fun on the side such as the recent 6 Books we’d recommend to Batman post (thanks to the post at OPL Plus (not just OPLs anymore) for the heads up)

Mashing Up the Library by Beth Gallaway provides a summary of OCLC’s Library Mashups session

Thoughts on EBSCO 2.0 by The Krafty Librarian…like it or not, EBSCO 2.0’s coming soon and The Krafty Librarian discusses some of the features

Top Technology Trends for Libraries to Note: Sarah’s Top Technology Trends - Virtual Presentation for ALA 2008 by Sarah Houghton-Jan at Librarian in Black and Virtual Karen’s Top Tech Trends by Karen Coombs at the LITA blog; pointing to issues such as APIs, mobile devices, open access, and more

Literary

Comprehension is Not a Commodity presentation by Angela Maiers discussing reading comprehension and the importance of creating a deeper appreciation for reading (as in beyond extrinsic rewards); Maiers has made available other reading-related presentations on Slideshare as well

The Books That Changed Your Lives compilation of opinions over at Lifehacker (list includes the Bible, works from Ayn Rand, Douglas Adams, and many more…also many more opinions are proffered in the comments)

Ancient Plots: the Mystery in History (Part I) and Dark Age Detection: Historical Mysteries (Part II) by Sarah Weinman whose regular blog is Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind; this multi-part series is a fun and informative read for all who enjoy historical mysteries (which I do )

Ultimate Teen Reading List at Teenreads.com has been recently expanded and updated

Miscellany

10 Essential Sites for Tips and How-To’s recommended by Palin Ningthoujam at Mashable

10 Great Software Programs You Can Get Gratis by Peter Grad over at TechNewsWorld lists software recommendations such as OpenOffice and 7-Zip (thanks to iLibrarian for the link)

Common Craft Video: LinkedIn In Simple English embedded in a post over at Digital Inspiration (or view at the Common Craft site)

Keep Rocking: 30+ Sites for Free & Legal Musicby Sean P. Aune overat Mashable

Once Nearly Invisible To Search Engines, Flash Files Can Now Be Found And Indexed: Washington Post Article by Erik Shonfeld from Tech Crunch discussing how swf files have been made search-engine readable

Thing 63: PDF Form-topia PDF Form-filler Freeware by Learning 2.1: Explore…Discover…Play explores the use of Fox-It Reader as “a tool to add to your PDF arsenal” for filling in non-editable PDF forms

The Ultimate Guide to Special Needs Teaching from Teaching Tips offers more than 100+ resources and links pertaining to various special learning needs

What They Play–video game information for the rest of us over at Infodoodads points us to resources to help us move beyond our n00bs status

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Here’s what caught my eye on the Web this week…

Library

• Discovery Skills Versus Evaluation Skills by Librarians Matter: discusses whether we are focusing too much on teaching discovery of information resources to the detriment of providing instruction on strategies for evaluating said resources
• ALSC’s Kids @ Your Library Public Awareness Campaign: see especially the tool kit which includes sample materials and activity suggestions
• Recent Library Presentations compiled by iLibrarian: provides links to myriad recent presentations from notable presenters such as Steven Abram, Sarah Houghton-Jan, David Lee King, and more
• Reference Question of the Week by Swiss Army Librarian is not actually a reference question from the week like it usually is; instead, it’s a compilation of links pointing to other places where reference questions are archived

Literary

• Booklist Online: Top 10 Biographies for Youth
• Futuristic, Speculative, Science Fiction and Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults over at Jen Robinson’s Book Page is a thorough list to which many contributed, making it diverse list with a lot of substance
• June carnival of Children’s Literature - Fathers in Children’s books: from Susan Taylor Brown at Susan Writes offers a meaty overview of contributors’ posts discussing, well, fathers in children’s books
• June edition of the Edge of the Forest (after June, you’ll want to check the archives to view this edition; you may want to check the archives anyway to view past editions); as per usual, it is full of interesting interviews and reviews making it a sound destination for maintaining current awareness of kidlit world happenings
• Times Online: Critics choose their most-loathed book (thanks to Fuse #8 for the link)
• Summer Books Season at Worth Reading includes links to a plethora of booklists (USA Today, the Telegraph, Library Journal, Wall Street Journal, Salon, etc.) for your summer reading pleasure (the USA Interactive is particularly fun if you’re looking for an interactive means of choosing adult fiction or nonfiction for your summer reading)
• Last week I pointed to Fuse 8 Production’s Newbery/Caldecott predictions. A couple more I found this week (although they aren’t from this week) are from Literate Lives: Newbery/Caldecott Short Lists and Anokaberry: Anokaberry 2009 Short List
• Still More Booklists over at Semicolon provides links to a variety of timely summer booklists that provide reading suggestions for fiction, nonfiction, writers of faith, etc.

Miscellany

• 101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes by Deke McClelland (thanks to Digital Inspiration for the link); if not perhaps useful in the sense that much of it is likely to be retained, it’s entertaining nonetheless
• Library Thing: Member Home Pages: Tim Spalding writes, “The basic idea was to give members a ‘center’ from which to visit the rest of the site.” Library Thing just keeps getting better and better!
• Tech’s 15 Turning Points by Neil McAllister at InfoWorld (not technically from this week either, but it was in American Libraries Direct this week)

And to all those who are fortunate to be at ALA this week, have a blast!

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The Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP) chose Catch the Reading Bug (kids) and Metamorphosis@Your Library (teens) as the 2008 theme, and it’s now in full-swing (it almost being July after all). A couple of recent posts I particularly enjoyed relating to the CSLP are By the Cover: June Bugs at Proper Noun (which also links to a longer insects booklist at Mindy’s Book Lists wiki) and Speaking of Crafts and Bugs at Library Voice (includes multiple images of some really fun looking bug crafts and displays).

A few sites offering related resources include:

• A to Z Kids Stuff: Bugs–songs, crafts, snack ideas mainly for bees, ladybugs, and caterpillars/butterflies
• Librarian’s Internet Index–Insects and Arachnids links
• LibraryPalooza–this is the site that I was led to the link to download the 2008 theme song that you hear in the videos by Billy Gorilly
• NetState.com’s Official State Insects list
• Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s 2008 SLP Training Workshop–includes display ideas , myriad downloadable breakout session handouts, and more

So you can see that there’s a plethora of buggy fun and/or information out there, but I thought I’d add a couple of 30 second promotional videos in case anyone needs any more ideas. I created them using Animoto just like my previous Mysteries at Your library video.

Animoto’s simple and it’s fun, although the Animoto shorts don’t allow for quite as many pictures as I’d like. But for the cost of free, it’s a great resource to spark creativity and create content for a variety of purposes.

Enjoy and feel free to remix, embed, or create your own (Video Production: Animoto; Songs: Billy Gorilly). Also feel free to leave comments if you have any feedback and/or resources to share relating to enticing people of all ages towards libraries and summer reading. Without further ado, here are the video shorts for kids and teens respectively (you’ll notice that I chose the instrumental version for the teens video : ))…

Catching the Reading Bug

Metamorphosis @ Your Library

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Here we go again with Library & Literary Miscellany links from this week…

Library

• The Actionable Blog by David Lee King speaks to the idea of intentionally creating content enabling/requiring action (his example of an actionable blog that requires action is his library’s posts titled “What’s in Your Top 5?” where the library begins the conversation and then patrons add their own ideas)
• Information Overload: the Problem (Part 1) and Information Overload: What Can We Do (Part 2) by Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb
• More libraries using delicious by mélange: Angela has added to her libraries using del.icio.us list; the list links to numerous library-created Del.icio.us accounts, thus, providing examples of ways Del.icio.us has been used (and perhaps stimulating ideas for how it can be used in the future) in a library setting to enhance library services and guides
• On the Information Experience: An ALA TechSource Conversation with John Blyberg by Michael Stephens: discusses Blyberg’s Library 2.0 Debased article from months back and delves further into these ideas (particularly interesting is the notion of hiring 51% employees–49 % skills, 51% intrinsic desire to serve and to create fulfilling customer experiences)

Literary

• 2008 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children’s Literature: announced June 18, 2008 for the categories of Fiction and Poetry (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Ellen Forney), Picture Book (At Night by Jonathan Bean), Nonfiction (The Wall by Peter Sís), with a Special Citation (The Arrival by Shaun Tan); click the link to view the honor books as well
• 2009 Newbery and Caldecott Predictions - Halfway Mark by Fuse News where Elizabeth Bird moves beyond 2008 awards to offer her ideas regarding the best Newbery & Caldecott eligible titles of the year so far (from all that I’ve heard The Underneath by Kathi Appelt must have quite a shot at the Newbery. I’m quite looking forward to reading it)
• 12th Bookworms Carnival: posted over at Things Mean a Lot this is a wonderful summation of a bunch of posts about the month’s theme–fairy tales (the next theme is relationships for those who are interested in submitting posts to be included submit posts via her contact page by July 11 to Jenn at Mixed Metaphor)
• Great Early Elementary Reads: The Association for Library to Children (ALSC) bibliography Great Early Elementary Reads, features recommended book titles for children who are just learning to read and beginning to read on their own (featured in American Libraries Direct this week)
• What’s the Deal with all these mice? by Library Voice with a follow-up over at Lisa Chellman’s blog with a post entitled Mice Are Nice: these are library and literary really since they pertain to patron interaction and children’s literature; you may find yourself able to relate to the first post and you may also find some nice mice reading recommendations in the latter post
• YA is Awesome: post over at YA Fabulous! with links to a great many recent  reviews of YA books from across the kidlit blogosphere

Miscellany

• 4+ Ways to Quickly Create Excellent Presentations Online by Corvida over at ReadWriteWeb; the post discusses Zoho Show, Google Docs, 280 Slides, and SlideRocket (with brief mention of reZentit, Empressr, and Preezo).
• Boston Globe: How to Nap (thanks to Lifehacker for the link)
• Totlol: provides access to the kid-friendly YouTube content while omitting the rest (thanks to Lifehacker for the link)
• College@home: 57 Useful Google Tools You’ve Never Heard Of and 100 Useful Niche Search Engines You’ve Never Heard Of
• Thing 62: PDF Form-Topia: PDFEscape.com at Learning 2.1: Explore…Discover…Play–discusses PDFEscape as a useful tool for filling out locked PDFs (e.g., for a job applicaton)
• Zoomii.com - The “Real” Online Bookstore: Zoomii presents Amazon books on shelves as if viewing books in a real bookstore. The mouse zooms in/out and left/right to peruse different shelves.

Does anyone have any thoughts on any of the above or anything else you’d like to share that you found to be useful/interesting/worth passing on this week?

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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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