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FTRW 2008 – German Authorities Slam "The God Delusion For Kids"

I was a bit disappointed to click through and realise this book wasn't actually a version of Richard Dawkins' book for young people (which would be awesome!). 

But the sentiment of this controversial German kid's book certainly fits with Dawkins anti-religion polemic. 

The German Family Ministry is pushing for the children's book “How Do I
Get to God, Asked the Small Piglet,” written by Michael
Schmidt-Salomon and illustrated by Helge Nyncke, to be included on a
list of literature considered dangerous for young people.

The authors and publishers have released the book online in English so that interested parties can read it themselves. 

Posted 26 February 2008 § Censorship § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

FTRW 2008 – Happy Freedom To Read Week (Feb 24 – March 1)

Didn't get a chance to post yesterday so missed kicking off FTRW on its official start date.  But never one to be a day late and a dollar short, here's a link to the main web site for Freedom to Read to kick off the week.  Explore, read, look for events in a community near you!

Posted 26 February 2008 § Censorship § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Think Facebook Is The Only Game In Town?

It is in Canada but this map of social network popularity around the world shows there are a number of other services that are popular depending on where you are in the world – MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, etc. 

(via Reddit)

Posted 25 February 2008 § Internet § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Braverman Prize for Essays on Progressive Library Issues (Deadline: April 15)

Thanks to Heather M. for forwarding this to me…

Message from Terry Epperson, chair of PLG’s Braverman Prize committee

Hello –

We’re
pleased to announce the fifth annual Miriam Braverman prize, sponsored
by the Progressive Librarians Guild, for the best student paper on
progressive library issues. Below are the guidelines for the prize. The
announcement flyer can be found at: http://libr.org/plg/Braverman-08-flyer.pdf. Feel free to pass this announcement on to other listservs or groups that may be interested.

Braverman Prize Guidelines for PLG

1. Entrants must be Library/Information Science students attending a graduate level program in the United States or Canada.

2. Entries must be the original, unpublished work of the entrant, in English, and must not exceed 3,000 words.

3.
The topic of the paper should concern an aspect of the social
responsibilities of librarians, libraries, or librarianship. Papers
related to archivists, archives, or archival work are also acceptable.
Topics could include, but are not limited to, such concerns as
professional ethics in the age of the USA PATRIOT Act; the
commodification of information; the political value choices of
cataloging and indexing; the role of libraries in bridging the
information gap; democratic management systems within libraries, etc.

4.
Each entry should include a cover sheet containing the entrant’s name,
full contact information (address, phone number, e-mail address), name
of the institution where the entrant is enrolled, and the title of the
paper. No identifying information, other than the title, should appear
on the paper itself.

5. Entries must be submitted electronically, in MS Word or RTF format, to bravermansubmissions@gmail.com

6. Entries must be received no later than 6pm on, April 15, 2008.

7.
The winning entry will be published in Progressive Librarian and must
conform to MLA in-text citation style. The winning entrant will also
receive a $300 stipend toward attendance at the 2008 American Library
Association annual conference in Anaheim, CA and an award at the annual
PLG dinner. Award money is available only for ALA conference
attendance; if the winner is unable to attend, the money will remain in
the Braverman Award fund account or be donated at the discretion of the
committee..

8. The judges’ decision is final. The act of
submission implies the unqualified acceptance of the conditions of
entry by the entrant.

Terrence W. Epperson, Ph.D.
Social Sciences Librarian
TCNJ Library
The College of New Jersey
P.O. Box 7718
Ewing, NJ 08628-0718
Phone: (609) 771-3352
Fax: (609) 637-5177
E-mail epperson@tcnj.edu
http://www.tcnj.edu/~library/epperson/index.html

Posted 23 February 2008 § Library § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

From Books To Beers and Stacks To Snacks (Leap Year Edition)

From Books to Beers and Stacks to Snacks (Leap Year Edition)

"You Work An Extra Day This Year - Why Not Celebrate The Fact?"

Come to O'Hanlon's at 1947 Scarth St. -- we'll start at 5 pm on Friday February 29.  

RSVP on the event page. Spread the word far and wide -- especially to others who are not on Facebook.  The event page has RSVP instructions for those who are not on Facebook or you can post to the wall to let us know you are bringing more people.

Hope to see you there!

Your hosts,
Julie Arie, Jason Hammond and Julie McKenna
Posted 23 February 2008 § Library § Main Page § Photo ‡ Comments (0) °

Friday Fun Link – Misc Book Stuff (Feb 23, 2008)

Borders and Lulu.com have teamed up to create Border's Lifestyle,
a new service allowing anyone to design and publish their own book and
have it distributed through Borders stores, even including your own
book tour and in-store readings. Is it, according to Ben Vershbow of if:book, “bringing vanity publishing to a whole new level of fantasy role-playing,” or a real innovation in book distribution, bypassing the professional gatekeepers?

(via MetaFilter which, as always, has lots of good comments worth reading about self-publishing, print-on-demand services and the libraries' role in all of this)

Better World Books – Recently recognized by Fast Company as one of the best for-profit social enterprises of 2008,
they offer a wide selection of new and used books with free shipping in
the US and less than $3 shipping elsewhere. A portion of the profits go
to fund literacy organizations such as Room to Read and WorldFund, and their shipping is carbon-neutral. The only thing missing is the ability to import Amazon wishlists.


(via MetaFilter)

The Book Staircase

2007 Bookshelves of the Year

Posted 23 February 2008 § FridayFunLink § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Big Beaver

Like many places, Saskatchewan has numerous towns with unique names – for example, Moose Jaw, Elbow, Eyebrow, Climax (which is just down the road from Conquest)!  Even my own hometown of Indian Head has provided the occasional laugh for the less politically correct among us (although the true reason it has that name is no laughing matter.) 

But there is one town that tops them all for “huhzawhat?” reactions in our province.  In fact, I know a guy who dated a girl for six months before she admitted to being from this town and then, only because they were getting engaged and she realised she'd no longer be able to only arrange meetings with her family in Regina, in his hometown, at Moose Jaw and other neutral locations.  The town?  Big Beaver, Saskatchewan.

I was in a nearby town today and had a couple hours for my lunch break so decided to take a little tour to see the Big Muddy badlands and then Big Beaver.

It's a town of 21 people, most famous for an old-fashioned prairie general store named Aust's with the slogan “If We Don't Have It, You Don't Need It”.  They also sell cute t-shirts showing Canada's national animal with the words, “Big Beaver, SK” on it (which you can buy from the web site I linked to above.)  I'm not saying whether I bought one for Pace or not but I do think he's going to be quite the hit at playtime in a couple years!

Posted 22 February 2008 § Humour § Main Page § Photo § Saskatchewan ‡ Comments (2) °

CookThink – Recipe Web Sites Meets Web 2.0

Find a recipe (with drool-inducing photo) using a search by ingredient, dish, cuisine or mood.  Very cool!

Cookthink

Posted 21 February 2008 § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Happy Reverse Gestation Day, Pace!

If you're an English major, you might see some great and deep symbolism in the fact that we took Pace to the womb-like waters of a mineral spa almost exactly nine months to the day after he was born.  Today is his nine-month birthday and it's almost unbelievable how quickly the time has flown – and I know it will only go faster.

Did I ever share that cool explanation of why time seems to go faster as you're older?  It's not just your mind playing tricks on you – there's a logical explanation.  When you're 10, a year is 1/10th of your entire lifetime.  When you're 20, a year is 1/20th.  When you're 50, it's 1/50th and so on.  So yes, each year that you're alive will seem shorter because it is a smaller fraction of your overall time being alive relatively speaking.  Kinda cool (and kinda depressing.) 

But anyhew, Pace was nine months in gestation and now he's nine months old and I'm not sure what that means but I'm sure it means something.  Here's a shot of Pace, Shea and I at the Mineral Spa. 

(Note to self: always remember to change the batteries in the digital camera or else the only shot you might be lucky enough to get is one of your son rubbing his eyes instead of smiling happily at the camera.)

Posted 19 February 2008 § Baby § Main Page § Photo ‡ Comments (0) °

The Demographics of Search (and A List of The Internet's Most Popular Sites)

TechCrunch recently had a story about a new study which found that  lower-income people tend to prefer Yahoo! and higher-income people prefer Google. 

(Shea's reading over my shoulder and goes “That's funny – I didn't know anyone preferred Yahoo!”)

Anyhow, that made me think about the “Everything You Wanted To Know About the Internet (But Were Afraid To Ask)” public sessions I've been giving in rural libraries for the last month and a half.  I introduce my presentation as “a guided tour of the Internet's most useful and most popular web sites” and tend to have an audience of very new, inexperienced Internet users who are mostly online for e-mail and some basic web surfing.  In very general terms, they've heard of Google, Hotmail, Ebay (but definitely haven't bought or sold anything online!) and occasionally Facebook but that's about it. 

And to be fair, “rural villages” are almost perfectly split between using Yahoo! and Google according to the TechCrunch article while “small towns” skew towards Google.  It's places like “struggling societies”, “blue collar backbone” and “remote America” that spend more time with Yahoo! (Just don't ask me what those different categories mean!)

During the presentation, I also do a section on sites that are useful
for our everyday life in the province – sites for maps, phone books,
local news, etc. and a plug for the library's web site and all it has to offer.


But for the bulk of the presentation, these are the sites I talk about (with related subjects I cover in brackets.)

Amazon.com (buying online and e-commerce)
Download.com (viruses and keeping your computer secure)
Ebay.com (how sites like Amazon and Ebay among others have leveled the playing field for people in rural areas who are now able to buy (and sell) a massive range of products that used to require special trips to the nearest major centre to obtain in the past)
Facebook.com (online privacy)
Flickr.com (your digital footprint)
Google.com (basic tips to improve your searches, different features of Google beyond search)
Hotmail.com
Wikipedia.org
YouTube.com

Do you notice a glaring omission?  Did my own anti-Yahoo! bias factor into my choice of sites to talk about during my presentation, even when Yahoo is the number one site for traffic on a global basis and one of the top three companies for Internet traffic in the United States? 

This is also especially ironic given my recent discovery that only three of the four major search engines find my blog – Yahoo! is one that does along with MSN Live and Ask.com.  Google is the only one that doesn't! 

I've only got a couple weeks left but are there any other sites that you'd introduce to an audience of beginning Internet users (er, other than Yahoo?  )

Posted 19 February 2008 § Internet § Library § List § Main Page § Work ‡ Comments (2) °