Oh, those kids

Natalie posted a great book title word search puzzle on the board in the hall (books on display inside). It took about ten minutes for somebody(ies) to find all 18 titles. Good thing she covered it in wipeable clear tape. It's since been erased and re-done numerous times.

Similar somebodies have apparently prompted this sign that's posted next to each elevator:



You go, Ms. Kovacs.

Snowing like crazy right now. Will we have a snow day tomorrow?

More chair goodness, MySpace kerfluffle

Kareem has put a whole new spin on my "chair buddies" theme.


Actually, I wish I could also take credit for the chair buddy picture Anna took of Isaac and Eunice in the library yesterday for the Online Gargoyle article on Twin Day.

By the way, did you know that today is "International Delete Your MySpace Account day"? I read about it in today's Daily Illini. Personally, I kind of agree with what Yahoo's Christopher Null had to say -- "The only thing worse than Myspace, it seems, is trying to leave it."

Books that make you dumb?

Cal Tech grad student Virgil Griffith believes that some books make you dumb. He compared average SAT scores with the 10 most popular books (as posted in Facebook) at the 1,352 colleges in the database. Then he made a nice graphic to display the results. You can also review the results by genre, title, school, and any other clickable item in the data set.

Of course, there's always the chicken-and-egg question about whether or not the books make you dumb or if you read these books because you are already dumb. Virgil pulled the genre labels from LibraryThing, another wonderful but prone-to-human-quirkiness creation. He got some flak about the assignment of certain books, which prompted this announcement on the site:

Update: I changed Lolita from 'Erotica' and 'Pride and Prejudice' from 'Chick Lit' both to Classics. You Literature majors all lack any sense of humor.

'Scuse me while I go reread Lolita.

Via Jessamyn, who got it from LISnews.

What WILL they think of next?

Via Tom Peters' post in the ALA TechSource blog, I learned about the phenomenon of cell phone novels in Japan. Some quotes for thought (from the New York Times article he cites, "Thumbs Race as Japan's Bestsellers Go Cellular," no-cost registration required):

"Of last year's 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels."

"Fans praised the novels as a new literary genre created and consumed by a generation whose reading habits had consisted mostly of manga, or comic books."

"Indeed, many cellphone novelists had never written fiction before, and many of their readers had never read novels before, according to publishers."

But is this phenom truly a genre?

"When a work is written on a computer, the nuance of the number of lines is different, and the rhythm is different from writing on a cellphone," said Keiko Kanematsu, an editor at Goma Books, a publisher of cellphone novels. "Some hard-core fans wouldn't consider that a cellphone novel."

Don't know what I think about this, except that neither my own thumbs nor my eyes could adapt to the medium.

On the other hand, other tech developments make much more sense to me. Much as I am against Internet filtering, the StupidFilter is one I could get behind. I read about it in a Fortune magazine article by Josh Quittner. The idea is that the filter would take those idiotic LOL!!!! and OMG!!! and ROFL!!! type online comments and relegate them to the equivalent of a spam file. My favorite bit comes from the company's FAQ page:

"Isn't filtering stupidity elitist?"
"Yes. Yes, it is. That's sort of the whole point."

Weird

Due to extreme cold temperatures, all the schools around here are closed today. I'm a little shocked because, back where I come from in Colorado, days like this are par for the course and no reason to keep the little ones home. Hope nobody lets Garrison Keillor know about this. I trundled on in anyway, glad for a chance to push some paper in the stillness. By tomorrow, I'll be really glad to see everyone back.

Myth busting

I was only able to catch the last 15 minutes of Frontline last night, but I plan to watch the whole segment online as soon as I can reserve an hour of time. Called Growing Up Online, it seems to do a good job of dispelling some of the fear mongering around Internet predator concerns. Instead, it confirms what I've often observed and tried to pass on to our students and their parents - that teenagers have a lot more to fear from those they know than those they don't know. Co-Producer Rachel Dretzin makes the following observation:

"One of the biggest surprises in making this film was the discovery that the threat of online predators is misunderstood and overblown. The data shows that giving out personal information over the Internet makes absolutely no difference when it comes to a child's vulnerability to predation. Also, the vast majority of kids who do end up having contact with a stranger they meet over the Internet are seeking out that contact, at least at first."

I also appreciate this excerpt from the Frontline interview with Anne Collier, author of MySpace Unraveled.

"We need to start thinking about our kids less as victims and more as participants, because this is the participatory Web, it's the social Web. They're participants, they're driving this space, and the research also shows that the kids who are most at risk online ... are kids who are showing aggressive behavior themselves. So they're the ones most at risk, not the kids who passively sitting around like sitting ducks ..."

So... I take all this to mean that it's more important than ever to talk, talk, TALK about this stuff at school and at home. About what it means to represent yourself online, and about how you read and process the information you find online.

Ouch

Alan showed me a posting on Joystiq, a video game blog he follows. The poster was "amused" by a new Dewey Decimal (oops, no, make that Library of Congress, his bad) classification/shelving game developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Yes, the game is lame, to say the least (though not knowing the reason for its being and the whole back story, I am in no position to criticize). What hurts is the blast o' scorn coming from blogger Justin McElroy, who describes libraries as "the crappy, flammable Internet that also has homeless people." Then there are the tags ("libraries," "sadness"). Don't get me started on the comments.

Well, it's a good reality check for me. All the LibraryLove I get every day probably skews my perspective. But maybe some of us should give Justin a ring (oops, old-school reference) and offer to show him a different side of the stereotype?

Men at work

When we run out of available workstations, what can we do but give over the circ desk computer to a desperate student?

Mr. Vaughn and Seth are staring in amazement at Will's findings on ArtStor. Don't you think they look like naturals behind the desk?

This is a cool project. Using pbwiki as a collaborative writing and posting space, the freshmen are comparing art across cultures. Specifically, they are looking at how the human body was depicted by the ancient Greeks in comparison to other cultures. So the students are using some of the great online databases and reference sources provided by the University Library, as well as books and other materials from our collection. The students each have individual wiki spaces to post images and analyses of art from their selected cultures. Then, in small groups, they look at each others' work and together compose and post a summary comparison to Greek art. The comparison wiki links to their individual wikis. Whew, that sounded a lot more complicated than it actually is.

Because the students are posting copyrighted artwork, I can't link to the password-protected wikis. But, wow, they are on this in a way I seldom see (think "ancient history" and "excitement" and "teenager" all in the same sentence).

Team Edward or Team Jacob?

If you get the reference (and you are really into it), stop by to put your dibs in for one of the rare items I brought home from my conference in Philadelphia. First come, first served!

Here's a hint.

Required reading

That's what I think about Sherman Alexie's new book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. When I finished it, I went right back to the beginning and started reading it over again. Alexie tells the semi-autobiographical story of Junior (aka Arnold) Spirit, a budding cartoonist who leaves the Spokane Indian reservation to attend an all-white high school 20 miles away. Junior has a variety of medical problems, the least of which are zits and the usual excess allotment of hormones. Alexie makes you laugh and cry at the same time. Powerful stuff, but told simply, one zinger after another. The text is accompanied by Ellen Forney's perfect illustrations, like this one of Mr. P, the geometry teacher at Junior's old school on the rez:



I'm off for a few days to the American Library Association Midwinter meeting in Philadelphia. This is the one when all the book awards are announced. Wonder if Absolutely True Diary will make a showing?

Everyone's a critic

Natalie put up a display of "readable reference books," reserving the board in the hall for "quotations about and for the new year" (along with a sign referring folks to some of the reference books inside for inspiration). Submissions are coming along nicely but, like our last attempt at this sort of thing, they aren't always friendly.



Translation: "Write-in boards are a lame way of generating interest in the library." The quotation marks are a nice touch, I think. I also appreciate the editorial comment off to the left.

I want this

I really could have used this shirt while we were on the road over break:



On the other hand, I wasn't really online all that much (look for the dancing librarian in the white shirt on the far right).