Highlights

"Cooking Rule... If at first you don't succeed, order pizza."*

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:30:41 -0500

I always think about food at Thanksgiving. This year I’m thinking more about the chemistry behind baking and cooking:

This past weekend I made an apple pie—a test run of a new-to-me recipe to share at Thanksgiving. As I tossed apple slices with cinnamon and some flour, I wondered whether the flour was necessary to make the fruit “set-up” as it bakes. Otherwise, mixing flour in with that delicious fruit seems so wrong!

Do you know for sure what the flour does? And since we’re on the subject, why is there both baking soda and baking powder? I once thought they were the same thing—many baked goods were sacrificed so I could learn that’s just not so.**

To find out what all those ingredients are up to in our ovens, I searched SUNCAT for the keywords “science cookery.” These books caught my eye:

“Kitchen Mysteries” by Herve This

“What Einstein Told His Cook” ed. by Robert L. Wolke

“On Food and Cooking” by Harold McGee

Happy cooking, baking, and eating this Thanksgiving!

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*A quote attributed to Anonymous.

**This year I’m thankful I won’t be preparing the main course for Thanksgiving dinner. My relatives are thankful, too.

Thanksgiving Films Redux

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

I started searching for a list of Thanksgiving films but found almost the very same ones that I blogged about last year. So, here’s last year’s post again with changes in bolded type:

If you have vacation time during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, why not relax with a movie from the library?

I’m going to have to watch a marathon of ~~all “The Godfather~~” airplane-related**** movies—whether I like it or not—but if you have control over your viewing, try one of the Thanksgiving-related movies below. (Suggestions were gathered from these websites. Some seem more obviously Thanksgiving-y than others.)

Click the title to search the library catalog.

Hannah and Her Sisters
Home for the Holidays
The Ice Storm*
Miracle on 34th Street
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
Alice’s Restaurant
Avalon***
Making Thanksgiving Special
Scent of a Woman
~~The Waltons: The Thanksgiving Story~~ (removed in 2009: no longer listed in SUNCAT)
The Doors**
By the Light of the Silvery Moon
Raising Arizona***
Rocky***
The New World
Annie Hall
What’s Cooking (added in 2009 from this list)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (added in 2009 from this list)

What’s your favorite Thanksgiving film?

*Warning: Roger Ebert calls this the “most depressing” Thanksgiving movie.

**Flickgrrl remembers the Jim Morrison character throwing a turkey at his wife.

***All have key Thanksgiving scenes according to Flickgrrl. Besides, who doesn’t like “Rocky” and “Raising Arizona”?

****Want to join me in an “airplane picture” marathon? Search SUNCAT for the keyword “Airplanes” limited to Video and DVD formats.

Survey of Public Library Users in Florida

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Survey of Public Library Users in Florida:

Winners

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

It’s a bonus post on a non-work day. NaBloPoEvWoDaMo has brought on blogging fever—I can’t get enough!

The National Book Award winners were finally* announced on Wednesday night:

Fiction: “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann
Nonfiction: “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt” by T.J. Stiles
Poetry: “Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy” by Keith Waldrop
Young People’s Literature: “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice” by Phillip Hoose

See all the nominees on the National Book Awards webpage.

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*I’ve never anticipated a book award announcement as much as this one. The email newsletter I signed up for kept reminding me of it. I’m just glad it’s over and will try not to mention it again until next year.

I felt the same way about Project Runway—at some point, I stopped caring who won, but I’d put in so much time each week I felt I needed to see it through to the end.

Links I Love Friday

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:35:48 -0500

NOVA: Becoming Human Parts 1, 2 and 3: “Where did we come from? What makes us human? An explosion of recent discoveries sheds light on these questions, and NOVA’s comprehensive, three-part special, ‘Becoming Human,’ examines what the latest scientific research reveals about our hominid relatives.”

I watched this series the last three Tuesdays, but if you missed it, you can watch online. It’s fascinating!

If you like NOVA and want to watch other shows, search SUNCAT for “Nova (Television program)” as the title.

During almost every show I watch that involves real scientists doing what they do, there comes a point when I think, “That’s someone’s job? Why didn’t I major in science so I could do that!?”

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“Fashion Lessons for Graduate Students” from The Chronicle of Higher Education: Ever felt—or been made to feel—silly for watching a reality show on television?* I think you’ll like this article because we know they aren’t silly at all.

“On Project Runway, fashion becomes a metaphor for every creative endeavor: the necessity of training and hard work, requiring the ability to manage time and budgets, the importance of being current in your field and having a historical perspective, and the realization that bad luck and happy chance sometimes play a part.”

*I started writing this post on Thursday night, right before the Project Runway season finale.

Did you watch the season finale, too? Interested in learning to sew? Search SUNCAT for “Sewing” as a subject.

Or maybe you’re interested in graduate school? Search SUNCAT for “Graduate Students” and “Universities and Colleges—Graduate work” as subjects.

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Obsessive Consumption: What Did You Buy Today?, obsessiveconsumption.typepad.com/what_did_you_buy_today/: A blog documenting one artist/designer/craftivist’s personal consumption.

I read about this site in a magazine. The artist makes a drawing of almost everything she purchases. She even draws pictures of receipts. (See her daily drawings on Flickr.)

The idea of recording everything of something you do every day and sharing it on the Internet fascinates me…and bothers me at the same time. Would I ever want to share everything with everyone? Probably not, but that’s why I find people who do interesting. What do you think?

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."*

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Were you one of the 1,800 who saw Stephen King at the Van Wezel on Monday night? Me, neither. But, I enjoyed reading Susan Rife’s blog post about the experience of interviewing him.

I’m not a Stephen King fan, or rather, I’m not a hardcore Stephen King fan as so many of his fans are: My mother and brother devoured both the original and uncut versions of “The Stand” and could pick out which sentences had been even slightly altered. Scary or impressive? You decide.

When I first started to work for this library system, I commuted from Tampa. Although not a huge fan of audiobooks—I’m a visual learner—I decided I needed something to listen to during my daily drives. I chose Stephen King’s “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” on CD.

Not a King fan, not an audiobook fan—what was I thinking?!
But I loved that book, and I developed an appreciation for Stephen King’s writing.

Long story short: come join me in the hold queue for “Under the Dome” by Stephen King. The wait won’t be that long.

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*A quote attributed to Stephen King found here.

NewsBank!

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0500

The library system has subscribed to another database: NewsBank.

Are you excited? I am!

The subscription includes:

America’s Newspapers: Electronic editions of record for local, regional, and national U.S. newspapers.
America’s Obituaries and Death Notices: The largest and most comprehensive collection of newspaper obituaries and death notices.
Electronic Image Editions: Exact digital reproduction of the printed edition of the Sarasota Herald Tribune, with keyword search and the ability to browse the full publication.

NewsBank is accessed through the library website’s Electronic Information Resources page, http://sclibs.net/resources.aspx. From home, you’ll need your Sarasota County Library card number to log in.

Enjoy!

"It's only words, and words are all I have..."*

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:16:09 -0500

Oxford University Press announced their choice for Word of the Year yesterday: unfriend.

“Unfriend” means “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”

Since I find it painful to “unfriend” someone on Facebook or Twitter, I compensate by not searching for and not accepting many “friends” in the first place. Sometimes even the small group of “friends” I have post updates often enough so that I find social networking overwhelming.

Can next year’s word of the year be “information overload”? Or has that already been honored?

Social networking I’m still a little iffy about, but I’m excited about words and language. If you feel likewise, you’ll find some great books in SUNCAT about the English language by searching for the subjects “English language—History” and “English language—New words.”

For books about online social networking, try searching for these subjects: Facebook, Twitter and Online Social Networks.

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*”Words” sung by the Bee Gees.

Naked Lunch @ 50

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Yesterday my boss and I oohed and aahed over the brand new edition of “Naked Lunch” by William S. Burroughs, “Naked Lunch: The Restored Text.” Neither of us were interested in reading it—just not our kind of book—but it certainly is an interesting and beautiful object.

I went searching for a picture of this edition to share with you and discovered “Naked Lunch” is fifty this year. If “Naked Lunch” is your kind of book, you might want to take a look at the website Naked Lunch @ 50, http://nakedlunch.org.

Read more about “Naked Lunch” in the library’s database Literature Resource Center—search for “The Naked Lunch (Novel)” as a subject.

And listen or read the recent NPR story on the novel’s 50th anniversary.

Tapping the Power of the Local Library Anytime, Anywhere

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:56:31 -0500

Tapping the Power of the Local Library Anytime, Anywhere:

This article isn’t about our library system in particular, but it could be about almost any public library.

Do you use all the library services you could be using?

“Many dedicated library-card holders don’t know the wealth of data and entertainment that’s available with the click of a mouse.”

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*Seen on LISNews.org.

Links I Love Friday

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00:00 -0500

“One in 8 Million” on NYTimes.com: “New York is a city of characters….This is a collection of a few of their passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions….”

I linked to one of these stories in Monday’s post about walking. I love stories about real people and their lives—remember, I’m very nosy and like to read interviews.

If you like these, too, you might like Studs Terkel’s “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do.” Or some of his other books.

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“8 Liberating Strategies for Clearing the Queues in Your Life” on Zenhabits.net: “Are the queues in your life stressing you out? … . Let’s look at how to simplify things, how to clear your queues, and how to let go of the stress of managing them all.”

Such good advice…if only I would follow it! Maybe you’ll do better.

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Advanced Style, advancedstyle.blogspot.com: “proof…that personal style advances with age”

I love personal blogs about fashion but have only mentioned them here a few times. This blog might be the best ever because it proves you can be any age and have great style.

Interviews with Writers about Writing

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

At the start of “National Book Award Season”* I subscribed to an e-newsletter from the National Book Foundation. (Is it alright to admit that I usually just delete it without reading it?) In this week’s issue, I saw the 2009 National Book Awards nominee webpage includes interviews with the authors: www.nationalbook.org/nba2009.html.

I love watching and reading interviews with writers, even with authors of books I don’t think I want to read. Sometimes the interviews make me want to read a book I’d never have read before!

How do you feel about interviews with authors?
The library collection has many books of interviews. Finding them in SUNCAT can be a little tricky:

You could try searching for the subject “Authors—Interviews” or for the keywords “Authors Interviews.”
The best search is by subject for “Authors, [nationality]—[Time period]—Interviews.” For example, “Authors, American—20th Century—Interviews” or “Authors, Japanese—20th Century—Interviews.” Give it a try!

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*I don’t know if anyone else calls it that, but I do.

"The power of time off"*

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

A TED Talk by Stefan Sagmeister, “The power of time off”:

I thought this was an appropriate post for a holiday. Posting on a non-workday is breaking my self-imposed NaBloPoEvWoDaMo rules, but I thought you wouldn’t mind.

You might not be in a position to take a sabbatical like Sagmeister. I think I’ll have to settle for just reading about it—search SUNCAT for the subject “Sabbatical Leave.” Or here’s an interesting-looking book, “Clarity Quest: How to Take a Sabbatical Without Taking More Than a Week Off” by Pamela Ammondson.

*Seen on Library Link of the Day for 11-6-09.

Veterans Day is Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

All eight libraries will be closed tomorrow, November 11, 2009, to observe Veterans Day.

To read more about Veterans Day and its history, visit the Veterans Day pages on the website of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

You can also search SUNCAT but not for “Veterans Day” or “Armistice Day.” Search for the subject “World War, 1914-1918 — Armistices.”

"I've been walkin' in my sleep / Countin' troubles 'stead of countin' sheep"*

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

The other day I came across this on the NYTimes’ Well blog: “Walking for Miles in New York City” by Tara Parker-Pope. Years ago I heard a similar story on NPR about a woman somewhere (in the Midwest? maybe Minneapolis?) who was walking every street in her city.

The NPR story led me—also all those years ago—to check out ”Wanderlust: A History of Walking” by Rebecca Solnit from my local library. This NYTimes blog post reminds me that I never have read that book. I’ve checked it out then returned it unread a few times. It’s not just this book—there have been quite a few others that I serially check out and don’t read. I think I want to read them but then I’m not in the mood for them right then.

Have you ever done that? Or am I the only one?

Maybe you should read “Wanderlust” and confirm that I should read it?

If you are interested in books about walking, “The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism” by Geoff Nicholson looks fascinating, too. Or just search SUNCAT for the subject “Walking.”

*Lyrics from “Across the Great Divide” by Kate Wolf

Links I Love Friday

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Daily Drop Cap, dailydropcap.com:* “The Daily Drop Cap is an ongoing project by typographer and illustrator Jessica Hische. Each day (or at least each WORK day), a new hand-crafted decorative initial cap will be posted for your enjoyment and for the beautification of blog posts everywhere.”

Remember I like fonts … a LOT. Even if you don’t like fonts too much, I think you’ll love this site.

heck it out!

You can become a fontaholic, too…

…if you’re lucky.

When I’ve mentioned fonts before, I’ve linked to searches for “Graphic Design” or “Type.” But, today’s a day for something completely different: a SUNCAT search for the subject “Lettering.”

*Seen on the blog, How About Orange.

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Tutorial Tuesday: DIY Paper Flowers on Creature Comforts: I can’t believe making paper flowers is so easy. Watch out, Martha Stewart!

I spent all last night making flowers from construction paper! … Could someone tell me what to do with a hundred paper flowers?

Interested in other paper crafts? Search SUNCAT for the subject “Paper work.”

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Vélocouture group on Flickr: Now that the weather is getting cooler, I’m considering trying to ride my bike to work again.

Ever wondered what to wear if you don’t have a place to change from biking clothes to working clothes? Take a look! Vélocouturists wear whatever they please!

Read up on bicycling with a SUNCAT search for the subject “Cycling.”

Be Your Own Tech Support

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

I just saw this post, “Web Work 101: Be Your Own Tech Support,” on Web Worker Daily. 10 things to check or do when you’re having problems with equipment.

I know this is information we’ve all heard many times, but it’s good advice that’s worth repeating! You might not be able to fix all your tech problems yourself, but when you call tech support and are asked, “Did you try rebooting? Did you check your cables?,” you can say, “Yes. Yes, I did!”

You might also impress your friends and family with your “knowledge.” Although my husband is quite knowledgeable about technology, he was puzzling over how to fix a problem he had noticed with some equipment. I chimed in, “Did you try rebooting it yet?” And no, no he hadn’t.

"Kindle, Price War Changing the Way We Read" from PBS's NewsHour

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

"Kindle, Price War Changing the Way We Read" from PBS's NewsHour:

Did you see this story on Monday’s NewsHour?

I agree with the woman filmed in a bookstore who said, “It’s the whole experience of going to the bookstore, reading the reviews, reading the backs of the book, being in a bookstore, and then buying the book, and having the book, and cuddling up in bed and reading the book.”

But, I also agree with the critic from “Time” who said, “It’s great when anybody reads anything anywhere. And e-readers create this great new retail channel for selling books, because you can buy them — buy books impulsively wherever you are, just download them wirelessly. And that’s fantastic.”

Library Journal’s latest cover story is about this same topic: “The Future of Reading.”

What do you think a book is?
Do e-books and paper books offer the same experience?
Is reading anything a good thing?

In the Cards

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

When was the last time you saw a card from a library’s card catalog?
Or maybe you don’t even remember that libraries had card catalogs?

I work in libraries, and I haven’t seen a catalog card in years!

The University of South Carolina’s library is celebrating their old cards with a “What Can You Make with Catalog Cards” contest: www.sc.edu/library/inthecards.html, .

I know I could make a very heavy paper airplane. What about you?

Source: LISNews.org

This month is NaBloPoEvWoDaMo.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:26:03 -0500

I already talked about NaNoWriMo, which started yesterday. But, have you heard about NaBloPoMo and NaBloWriMo (National Blog Posting Month and National Blog Writing Month)?

Each site encourages posting to your blog every day for a month. I can’t post here every day for a couple of reasons. The most important one is that I would have had to post yesterday, which I obviously didn’t. So, in the spirit of NaBlo[Po/Wri]Mo, I’m creating NaBloPoEvWoDaMo, National Blog Posting Every Workday Month.

Why? Hey, why not!
Will I post every workday? Can I really do it? Wait and see!

(In my favor is the fact that November has 3 holidays: Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, and the day after Thanksgiving.)

If you’d like to find out more about blogging, search SUNCAT for the subject “Blogs.”