On my way in to work one day last week, I heard a story on the radio (via the BBC) talking about how children are becoming more sexualized. I wouldn’t have thought this was possible, but the report described how, for decades, society has told little girls that they need to be thin and pretty. But recently, society has ramped up this message, telling them they need to be thin and pretty and sexually-attractive to boys. It seemed to say that now it’s not just about looks, but that sex appeal is also required.

Later at work, our Teen Librarian asked me if I’d heard of a “princess bible.” I hadn’t, so I looked it up, and sure enough they are for sale. Our reactions were the same, and echoed the point of the radio show earlier: isn’t this an odd mixture of religion and sassy sexy self-image?

Not necessarily, of course, because I know my niece likes Disney princesses, and that is totally innocent. Perhaps I’m just being over-sensitive on the little girl sex angle. Maybe it’s just the marketing gimmicky feel of it I don’t like - it seems akin to using a cartoon camel to peddle cigarette to children. I guess I just question what this princess message is trying to appeal to in young girls - and whether that should be necessary to sell Bibles. It seems a bit at odds with the pious modesty of Christianity.

Interestingly, this book appears in WorldCat.

And just for a counter-point, BoingBoing reports that Campus atheists offer free porn in exchange for Bibles. I guess there’s more than one way to connect religion and sex.

What is CoverGuess?

CoverGuess is a sort of game. We give you covers, and you describe them in words. If you guess the same things as other players, you get points.

Why are you doing this?

The goal is to have fun, but also to build up a database of cover descriptions, to answer questions like “Do you have that book with bride on the bicycle?”

You have to have a LibraryThing account to play, but it’s worth a free account to get in on the action.

CoverGuess was inspired by one of my favorite internet timesinks, Google’s Image Labeler. Both of these make the internet a better place, but CoverGuess could actually help in answering reference questions. I’ll be keeping watch for when the search component is released, but for now, racking up tagging points is fun.

Can the ceilings of any of your meeting rooms be raised?

I didn’t hear about this until the next day, but it should have been a tip-off that trouble lay ahead. However, she was told there was an available room, and she would need to fill out our online reservation form to reserve it.

That night the woman came in with her group, which is when I got involved. It turns out she never did actually reserve a room, but just showed up expecting one. All our rooms were in use by then, so after much scrambling around trying to find an available space, I ended up dividing our large meeting room with the movable wall - then I went back downstairs to the Reference Desk feeling satisfied about accommodating a patron’s request.

About ten minutes later, the Children’s Librarian came down to see me. Our Children’s Room is right next to the meeting room, so she can often hear what’s going on in there, even at moderate noise levels. I thought she was going to commiserate about our online room booking system or not having enough meeting space to meet community demand, but instead she asked:

Did you tell that group they could use a catapult?

Ha. Apparently, this group was a school group, and for a science project they built and are experimenting with a catapult. It wasn’t quiet as large as the one in the picture, but still it was too big, too loud, and too dangerous for us to let them use it in the library. I’m actually a little bit in awe of them for apparently thinking it would be perfectly okay.

Now, you know I like medieval siege weapons, but perhaps this is a good rule of thumb: if the library’s ceiling is too low to do something, then that is something you cannot do in the library.

Being a librarian, my most recent example came reading the title of Bobbi Newman’s recent post, For Digital Natives There Is No Web 2.0. Yes, of course. For kids growing up with the internet of today, this is their Web 1.0 - because they’ve never known anything else.

This is a total (probably long overdue) mindshift for me. My library is currently trying to figure out how to use Web 2.0 tools to reach kids in our community, and this one title changed the way I think about the task. We talk about tools kids may or may not use in their daily life, but for many kids, these tools are their daily lives.

This realization actually makes our task easier, but it certainly raises the bar for how good a job we need to do.

The video that prompted Bobbi’s post is below. She also points out in a subsequent post what a digital native is not.

From the New Canaan High School Library

My library purchased Last Train from Hiroshima, but haven’t put it out yet because we’re divided over how to handle it. Based on revelations in the New York Times and Washington Post, I’m opposed to just shelving this book in non-fiction. There are a lot of requests for it, so I do want to make it available for people to read, but I would like to include a note of some kind stating there are significant known inaccuracies in the book.

One argument is that it’s not a library’s place to censor books, and if people want to read it we should provide access. However, we do censor resources and information simply by the act of selection, and by choosing which websites to link to based on their factual accuracy and reliability.

Mainly I want to protect school kids and other unknowing people from taking portions of this book as fact - which is what the library is confirming by shelving it in non-fiction. But so far, neither the Charles Pellegrino (author) nor the Henry Holt (publisher) has issued an easy-to-print statement to include in the book. As of today, the book is still being promoted on the publisher’s homepage, but the author has addressed the issue in a forum posting linked to from his website.

So, what are libraries doing with this book? Shelving it as usual? Not shelving it at all? Including a note inside or on the cover? Putting it in fiction? We still have Million Little Pieces in non-fiction, but I think there’s a difference between a memoir and a book about World War II.

Hey, are you open?

My library had power all day, but most of the town and other nearby libraries did not. The library was packed, and more than a few times I was asked if I knew when power would be back on at a patron’s house.

I think the power companies learned a public relations lesson last year, and have been more proactive in providing information. In searching the internet, I found some helpful National Grid storm resources:

• Power Outage Map (the situation Friday)
• Not-too-difficult-to-find customer service phone numbers
• Storm update news releases
• Chelmsford’s Town Offices were also in contact with National Grid, and created their own concise and useful Storm Update page

When I asked my Director if we’d be staying open late to serve as a shelter for people without power, she said we officially cannot do that. Apparently there are strict certifications necessary for a Town building to function as an emergency shelter, and the library is not certified (neither is our Senior Center, which did stay open last year, but was closed when someone noticed the lack of certification). Granted, this week’s outage (and weather) is certainly not as bad as last year’s ice storm, but I really don’t know how involved certification would need to be. We wouldn’t be providing food or aid or beds for people, just heat and power and chairs and internet, which we already do every day. Of course, we’d have to pay staff to stay open, and that is tough with our budget situation.

So, not a very inspiring reference question, but it’s been that kind of week. For a real Reference Question this week, check out a great transaction from The Surly Librarian.

Given the changes in the economy and the re-organization/downsizing of many public library systems these days, public librarian jobs are few and far between. So, if you could no longer work as a librarian, what work would you do?

Read the rest of the question (including the parameters), and other peoples’ answers, and give it some thought.

I posted my answer (too wordy as usual), but who knows what I’d end up doing in this situation - paperboy? volunteer fireman? park ranger? fry cook on Venus? I’m really not sure.

Last week my director received the following email from a patron and forwarded it to all the department heads to see what we thought about it:

Ms. Herrmann,

I just heard about Red Box doing a trial with Libraries across the country. This is a fantastic idea, there currently is no Red Box in Chelmsford Center. Attached is a link for you to look at.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jan/27/henderson-libraries-become-redbox-locations/

In case you’ve never heard of Red Box, they are dvd vending machines which rent new movies at $1 per night. The machines are located outdoors and are available to the consumer 24/7. Red Box pays the library and also allows the library to free up cash from having to purchase current films.

It would be great if Chelmsford could get in on this trial!!

I had heard of libraries using both Redbox and Netflix, but never really gave it too much though. So I was kind of surprised at my response to my director:

Maybe this is just a reaction based on the kind of day this has been, but I have mostly negative feelings about this. Based on http://tametheweb.com/2009/07/01/red-box-rentals-at-princeton-public-library/ is seems any money we get is minimal, and I’m always reluctant to give
businesses a green light to target library patrons.

If we did put one of these in, I sincerely hope it wouldn’t mean we’d be buying fewer DVDs and rely on this as a crutch, because just like Rosetta Stone, they can pull out at any time and we’d be left
scrambling to fill the holes in our collection.

Its biggest benefit would be providing patrons access to DVDs 24 hours a day, but it also means patrons have a reason to be at the front door 24 hours a day, doing who knows what - the police department might not like that idea. Then there’s also the patrons who return the RedBox
DVDs in our dropbox, those who put ours into the RedBox, patrons demanding refunds and tech support from the circ desk, blah blah blah.

More reading on this:

• http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6717298.html
• http://www.insideredbox.com/redbox-partners-with-libraries-in-nationwide-trial/

I know Conway makes money off our printers and the FaxVend people do too, but RedBox feels way more commercial - like letting a dealership put used cars in our parking lot to make it easier for patrons to shop for cars. Or letting a bookstore set up a table of bestsellers in the lobby and sell books so patrons don’t have to wait on a long reserve list.

I don’t know exactly why I don’t like it, but right now I’m leaning against it - but again, it might just my mood. Blah.

So my question is this: why I am wrong?

I don’t feel like I’m right, because I can see positive aspects to a Redbox being in front of the library (especially for libraries that already charge $1/DVD), and it’s unusual for me to be this negative. I don’t think that every new idea or technology has a place in every library, but still, my answer on this surprised me.

So I thought I’d ask the wider library world for your opinions on Redboxes and libraries. Lots of good comments were posted on Tame the Web when Michael talked about this last year, but I’m still not entirely convinced. What do you think?

Patron: You know how when I have a book on hold, someone from the library calls me?
Me: Well, yes, but it’s not a real person - we have a computer system that automatically makes the calls.
Patron: Yeah, exactly - since it’s a computer, can you set it to call me really early to be a wake-up call?
Me: Um, no.

So I can go two ways with this. First, I mean, yes, technically, we could absolutely do this, without really any staff involvement. And when we could do something, I feel bad saying no - but really, we have to draw the line on the services we provide somewhere, and here be that line.

But since he actually was looking for a free wake-up service (and didn’t necessarily need someone from the library to do it), I searched around to see what I could find. I knew that hotels offer this for their guests, and have never thought of this in any other context before - but plenty of people must:

• http://www.wakeupland.com
• http://www.wake123.com
• http://antsers.org
• http://wakerupper.com
• http://www.freewakeup.com

Some of these are free, or at least have a free trial (which would be good enough for a one-time call). Lifehacker also has suggestions for free wakeup calls from Telepixie and automating calls with Skype. They also reference combining Skype with Google Calendar - so many options.

Happily, I never need to be to work before 9am, and my house has lots of windows, so I generally just let the sun wake me up. Ah, the blissful life of a librarian.

It’s not perfect, but it’s easier than a typewriter. I’ll use this both for patrons and myself, and I’m still surprised there aren’t tons of these sites out there.

via LibraryStuff