19 book cover clichés

From Buzzfeed: 19 book cover clichés.

Damn, I check a lot of these in.

See also:
Book Smugglers: Cover matters: On clichéd covers in fantasy
The Times Literary Supplement Blog: Cover versions
Pinterest user MaryMac69's board for Funny as shit book covers

Please remove your link to my post

This morning I had an email in my inbox which sort of puzzled me. It referenced a blog post made on the very first iteration of this blog right here several years ago. Before I started taking classes to earn my Library Tech diploma, even.

Salutations,

I am Ted, and I am writing you on behalf of CollegeInfoWebsiteHere. It has always been our goal to produce and provide the most useful and up to date information on online colleges. We want to help take the stress out of the decision making process. We also provide pages and blog posts with random, weird, and amusing facts for distraction.

It is these pages that have us concerned. We have kept an eye on changes made to linking and webmaster standards, and we fear our blog posts will soon be seen as irrelevant fluff. Therefore, though I am glad you linked to us on FirstIterationofMissScarletHere, I must ask that you remove any links leading to the pages of CollegeInfoWebsiteHere. They can be found on FirstIterationofMissScarletHere/archivepost.

Thank you,
Ted FirstFirstNameIsntReallyTedAnyway

Here is my not-really-a-problem-but-what-I'm-thinking-about-anyway:

• The post my old post links to still exists. You click the link, their post is still there. 
• If you search up some keywords you will still find that post on their site. 
• Does having a link to their site from my site bump where their site comes up in, say, a web search? Signs point to yes, though this version of my site hardly causes internet tube clogs, much less that first version. But it's there and that contributes to search results.
• I can change the content of my post to not link to their site or even mention their site name. However, I still find the content of their post applicable/interesting and I still have an opinion on it (which is positive, though yes, it is a fluff post). If I ditch the link and the name, I then have uncited content. 'This one website has a post that I found interesting and here are the parts I found interesting, but no, you can't verify that without, say, searching the text from their post or the keywords involved'.
• I don't like having uncited content. It makes it look like I'm trying to pass off the work of others as my own instead of just finding the work of others and pointing to it/expressing my thoughts/opinions about said content.
• I am happy with the content of my site.
• They are not happy with the content of their site.
• They have not removed the post they do not want linked. 
• Should they delete their post, I then have a broken link. Would I rather be the person who runs a library-related blog with a broken link or the person who runs a library-related blog with a very vague reference to another blog? Or would I rather be the person who deletes their old blog post entirely?

If I'm happy with my site content and they are not happy with their site content, isn't the onus on them to change their content?



I started making websites and posting things to the internet when I was all of fourteen years old. Back then, I didn't have a concept of how long things would stick around and how things I posted would remain pretty much forever in one form or another. That was the mid-90s, however, and that girl hadn't even told Mark Zuckerburg off. Zuckerburg's voice may not have even changed by that point.




Someone who put up a post a few years ago doesn't so much have that excuse.


I like being polite. I like common courtesy. I will likely take my old post down, and I don't think it will break a bunch of links in the websites of others. I just find the situation interesting. Thoughts?

Adventuretime in the library

Warmer... warrrrrmer... cold. Coldish?

Carl Sagan on the power of books

I found this quote yesterday and I love it. Maybe books aren't necessarily 'an assemblage of flat, flexible parts', but the rest of it is still applicable.

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts, still called “leaves”, imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and your hear the voice of another person–perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millenia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.

Some of the earliest authors wrote on clay. Cuneiform writing, the remote ancestor of the Western alphabet, was invented in the Near East about 5,000 years ago. Its purpose was to keep records: the purchase of grain, the sale of land, the triumphs of the king, the statutes of the priests, the positions of the stars, the prayers to the gods. For thousands of years, writing was chiseled into clay and stone, scratched onto wax or bark or leather; painted on bamboo or papyrus or silk–but always one copy at a time and, except for the inscriptions on monuments, always for a tiny readership. Then in China, between the second and sixth centuries, paper, ink and printing with carved wooden blocks were all invented, permitting many copies of a work to be made and distributed. It took a thousands years for the idea to catch on in remote and backward Europe. Then, suddenly, books were being printed all over the world. Just before the invention of movable type, around 1450, there were no more than a few tens of thousands of books in all of Europe, all handwritten; about as many as China in 100 B.C., and a tenth as many as in the Great Library of Alexandria. Fifty years later, around 1500, there were ten million printed books. Learning had become available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.

More recently, books, especially paperbacks, have been printed in massive and inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the origin of species, the interpretation of dreams, the nature of things. Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.

The great libraries of the world contain millions of volumes, the equivalent of about [10 to the 14th] bits of information in words, perhaps [10 to the 15th] bits in pictures. This is ten thousand times more information than in our genes, and about ten times more than in our brains. If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read. The information in books is not preprogrammed at birth but constantly changed, amended by events, adapted to the world. It is now twenty-three centuries since the founding of the Alexandrian Library. If there were no books, no written records, think how prodigious a time twenty-three centuries would be. With four generations per century, twenty-three centuries occupies almost a hundred generations of human beings.

If information could be passed on merely by word of mouth, how little we should know of our past, how slow would be our progress! Everything would depend on what ancient feelings we had accidentally been told about, and how accurate the account was. Past information might be revered, but in successive retellings it would become progressively more muddled and eventually lost. Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species.

Awesome.

Preserving digital data

From Computerworld: Cerf sees a problem: Today's digital data could be gone tomorrow.

"What I'm saying is that backward compatibility is very hard to preserve over very long periods of time." [said Cerf, who is Google's vice president and chief Internet evangelist].

The data objects are only meaningful if the application software is available to interpret them, Cerf said. "We won't lose the disk, but we may lose the ability to understand the disk."

I have more than a few A-drive disks in my desk drawer that illustrate this point. Not that there's anything important on them... at least, I don't think. But I don't know, now do I?

A quick search on ebay.ca reveals all hope is not lost - there are old floppy drives for sale, though I imagine they will become more and more rare as time goes on.

Bonus! Got old floppies lying around? Make them into pen holders, planters, or coasters. And probably a bunch of other things, too. Never underestimate the imagination of internet crafty types.

Also: 

I'm done now, I promise.

25 signs you're addicted to books

Some fluff from Buzzfeed: 25 signs you're addicted to books by Summer Anne Burton.

Applicable to me:
#2 - When you’re reading a good book, you forget to eat or sleep.

Well, I remember. I just don't care/put it off.

#3 - Your ups and downs are completely dictated by the book you’re reading.

Usually only for very very sad books bumming me out.

Really, I'm pretty much thinking of The Sparrow by Maria Dora Russell here.


#15 - The stack of books by your bed resembles the beginning of a Jenga game.

Not the nightstand. I use that for more nightstandy things! But I'd be lying if I denied Jenga towers in other places.

#22 - Sure, you work out! You know that even reading itself can be exhausting.

I like the term 'bookache'.


#23 - You often have spats of, uh, “insomnia.”

Not often. But once in a while...

And, just because I thought it was cute:

Hogwart's textbook covers by Allysah

Because I missed yesterday, have two posts today: Allysah's Hogwart's textbooks covers. They are delightfully retro and someone sixteen years old designed them? Seriously? Props. Hijacked from The Mary Sue via Flavorwire. It's hard to pick a favourite. One of these three!

10 of the coolest librarians alive

10 of the coolest librarians alive (at least according to flavorwire). I've been a fan of #4 for years now; 6, 7, and 8 have great ideas. Alex, sounds like you and Audrey Barbakoff would get along famously. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that meeting.

What to bring to an interview

Today, a link for job-hunting: what to bring to an interview by Julia Philips for 4BN. Maybe it's not strictly library-related, but hey. I just graduated. This kind of article is good for me at least.

In summary:
1. Your ID. Social security card, driver's license and so on.
2. Copies of the resume. More than one copy.
3. References.
4. Original copies of official transcripts - academic credits, licenses, degrees, and so on.
5. Good attitude.

While Julia recommends resumes be on plain white paper, I personally think that colour printing, if available, shows you've gone an extra step in presenting yourself favourably.

I would also suggest a sixth item:
6. A pen.

People tend to forget pens. You might need a pen to take notes or jot things down; your interviewer might need a pen, too, if he or she forgot to bring one or their own pen doesn't work. Even if you don't write anything, having a pen out shows you are prepared. If you lend that pen for a rescue? Bonus points. In my opinion, anyway. PS: make sure your pen works.

Marketing and elevator speeches

Another useful link from one of the groups I follow on LinkedIn - On men, elevator speeches, and market segments.

"But who uses a library nowadays, anyway?" 

"I can get books somewhere else."

I hear those two phrases much more often than I'd like. The blog post linked above suggests having two or three ideas prepared for people who will ask you "what's the benefit of a library?" In particular, the post concentrates on men, but keeping some suggestions on hand is a great idea.

Usually I counter 'what's a library good for' by listing the features of my local library system:

1. You can get books from all 33 branches and, given a bit of time, they will be sent to the branch of your choosing, which makes it easier to pick them up. You can't do it last minute, since it could take a few days to cross the city. Still - 33 branches is a lot of books. Not being limited to one branch is amazing.
1. You can order books from home. You don't even have to go into a library if you don't want to. Sometimes this is where I throw in something like 'you don't even need to get out of your pajama pants', depending on who I'm talking to.
2. 'You can return your books at any branch' is great for selling this feature, too. 
2. The library doesn't just have books - they also have DVDs, CDs, audiobooks, ebooks, and video games. Usually this garners a look of disbelief - DVDs? Video games? WHY? To make them available to everyone, as long as they have a library card... which is free.
3. Databases! I love databases so much. And I always forget...
4. Book recommendations. Reader's advisory. I am hesitant to offer it out, because reader's advisory is difficult (in my opinion) and hard to do if you haven't read books in the genre the patron's looking for. I fear someone approaching a librarian looking for science fiction only to be told they 'don't know the genre' and 'can't be any help'. 

Book recommendation: Don't make me think, Steve Krug

The instructor of my Library Software class had a few book recommendations for us when we began. At the time, I was also taking a Reader's Advisory class, so most of my reading time was spent on books I'd selected for that. I got the e-book of Steve Krug's Don't make me think and kept it until I could choose what I was reading again.

I F'd my blog a little more. It was always pretty F'd up. 

This is a great book! If you are at all interested in web design or in software, grab this book and give it a read. It's not long - the author stated he wanted to write a book that could be read during one plane ride - and it's pretty funny, or at least I think so. The concept is pretty simple: web navigation should be as easy and intuitive as possible; don't make the user slow down to think. I'm not finished it yet, but I've already made a small change on this site because of this book: I've changed the colours of the links so they're brighter and more obvious. I'm pretty happy with the rearranged sidebar, too, though I shifted that around before reading the book - that was a result of one of the LS classes, too, which touched on the F-layout design.

Snow White and the seven formats: a digital preservation fairy tale

Meanwhile (or I suppose a while ago), at the Library of Congress...

"In a recent meeting, some colleagues and I discussed the age in which individuals should start understanding the basics of digital preservation. I suggested that, with children creating digital files earlier and earlier, it should be taught as early as possible. The question, of course, is how to get youngsters interested in preserving their data. Fortunately, while doing some research I was able to find a digital preservation fairy tale in the digital archives of the Brothers Grimm. Here is the never-before published tale of Snow Byte and the Seven Formats (movie rights pending). I promise it will make a great bedtime story – they’ll fall right to sleep.  (I would like to thank my wonderful classmate Sara Allen for her invaluable contribution and illustrations)."

I laughed. Also I've been wanting to use that 'Post-It Note' picture on the left for ages now. I actually still have a stack of these in a desk drawer.

I like digitization - especially searchable text content - but constantly updating the file formats is maybe not so awesome.

Actually, while we're at it... I really like this table, too. Did anyone else absently thumb slide the metal bits on these disks back and forth like I did?

Film School Rejects: 7 unexplained movie moments that you'll only get if you've read the book

From Film School Rejects, 7 Unexplained Movie Moments That You’ll Only Get If You’ve Read the Book (Or Seen the Original). Random trivia is fun!

Open cover letters

I recently had to write a cover letter. I don't particularly enjoy writing them; I don't like to toot my own horn. Despite that, apparently they were impressed by the cover letter and it may have been what got me an interview. Anyway, here is a site with cover letters from anonymous cover letters from hired librarians and archivists. I may have snagged this from Only connect a while ago.

Ancient Egypt vs. the internet

Well, it's not untrue.

The Stephen King universe flow chart and friends

One thing I like about the internet is that people do obsessive things and share them with others so I don't have to the footwork to learn interesting things like how characters are connected in Stephen King's books. For one, I only own a few of King's books (The Dead Zone in paperback and The Stand as an ebook with some copy of the first Dark Tower book somewhere on the shelves), so there's no way I could have charted this one out. I'm a little sad about George Bannerman now, though. But thank you, Gillian James! Also of interest: The Lord of the Rings Project.

It all started when Johansson was 14 and reading Tolkien's The Silmarillion, or trying to. There are so many freaking characters in the book that the young fan felt he needed a giant family tree to keep track of all of them. So he created just that.

Both links taken from Cracked's 6 mind-blowing pop culture questions answered by super fans. Surely someone did this for Game of Thrones? Though there's the A Song of Ice and Fire Wiki, which maybe doesn't have a chart but does have chapter summaries that are super useful if you feel like you're missing something or forgetting something as you read.

A Hunger Games Pinterest board

Oh no, Pinterest. I know I'll spend too long on this site, so I only look at the weekly recommendations and try not to explore further. Here's a good one relating to The Hunger Games.

40 books you won't be able to put down

From the Half Price Books blog, 40 books you won't be able to put down. At a quick glance, this looks like a blog for a chain of used book stores. The website looks pretty active. I wonder if they see more business due to their dedication to their website? Books on the list I had a hard time putting down:

• Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Game
• Collins, Suzanne - The Hunger Games
• Goldman, William - The Princess Bride
• Larsson, Stieg - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
• Larsson, Stieg - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
• Stockett, Kathryn - The Help

Books I would add to the list:

• Irving, John - A Prayer for Owen Meany: Longtime favourite once suggested to me by an English teacher I had in high school. Best book recommendation I've ever had. She was spot on.
• Russell, Maria Doria - The Sparrow: Oh wow. By the last few chapters I could not put it down. Could not, would not. I actually pulled an all-nighter to finish this book. This is one of my all-time favourite books.

Vancouver Public Library plans to add rooftop garden

Snagged via a LinkedIn group, Vancouver Public Library Rooftop Garden Planned in New Strategic Vision. What an interesting idea.

Every Night

True.

The five stages of disruption denial

Yoinked from a LinkedIn group, The five stages of disruption denial. Originally I clicked on this when all I could see was 'the five stages of disruption' and I thought it was some kind of awesome new SHUSHING TECHNIQUE. As in, when do you step in to shush? How do you shush? However, this Harvard Business Review blog article is actually about adapting to and adopting change. In this case: Twitter. Which reminds me:

"Game of Thrones reminds me of Twitter a lot because there are 140 characters and terrible things are constantly happening"

Lord of the Rings PSAs

It made me laugh. My favourites are the first two and the second-last one. Talk, walk, and throw!

Made with the British Library

The British Library has a Pinterest page showcasing the many things it 'helped' create, whether by supplying research material, programming, or other resources. What a great idea! ...Well that was a short post.

Crowdfunding and Libraries

Via LISNews, Library Journal's Crowdfunding the Library.

What's crowdfunding, you might ask. Well! I have fished up a useful definition from Freebase (or really, Mashable fished it up and I liked it enough to use it, too).

Crowd funding or crowdfunding describes the collective effort of individuals who network and pool their money, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowdfunding is used in support of a wide variety of activities, including disaster relief, citizen journalism, support of artists by fans, political campaigns, startup company funding, motion picture promotion, free software development, inventions development, scientific research, and civic projects.

Kickstarter is a pretty well known crowd funding site. Recently, the cast and creator of a TV show I liked started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a movie. They got it, and they broke a few records along the way. (That was the first time I donated to a Kickstarter project. I just signed up without even watching the promo video. I really loved that show.)

But does it work for libraries? In short: depends! It works best for 'short-term and new' projects, which is good. Also, it takes work; apparently you don't just put up a post and watch money come rolling in. It helps if you have a video or other marketing strategy like the folks in Shutesbury, Maine, who used a site called Indiegogo. It really really helps if that video goes viral.

So what's a small enough project? I'm not sure. Maybe:

• Funding for a library collection - 'donate to improve our kids section' would probably work better than 'donate to improve our non-fiction section'
• Funding for a very small library - really really small
• Funding for equipment - new projector? New furniture? (Maybe a funny video featuring people sitting on old crates would be good - someone on an old chair that's rigged to fall apart, that kind of thing)
• Funding for very very specific things, like 'replace our crummy old sign'

What do you think you could use crowdfunding for?

Michael Geist on why the digital divide in Canada is going to get worse

Mr. Geist, a professor of law at Ottawa University, talks about the digital divide:

The state of Internet access in Canada has been the subject of considerable debate in recent years as consumers and businesses alike assess whether Canadians have universal access to fast, affordable broadband that compares favourably with other countries. A new House of Commons study currently being conducted by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology offers the chance to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of Canadian high-speed networks and what role the government might play in addressing any shortcomings.

Many of these communities are described as "uneconomic", since the costs associated with building broadband networks are viewed as too expensive given the expected return on investment. The government has funded some programs to foster improved access, however more may be needed to finish the job. This could include direct subsidies funded from revenues obtained through the forthcoming spectrum auction or tax relief for community-based broadband initiatives. Many of these communities are described as "uneconomic", since the costs associated with building broadband networks are viewed as too expensive given the expected return on investment. The government has funded some programs to foster improved access, however more may be needed to finish the job. This could include direct subsidies funded from revenues obtained through the forthcoming spectrum auction or tax relief for community-based broadband initiatives. The access issue is no surprise as there are still hundreds of thousands of Canadians without access to broadband services from local providers. While this is often painted as an urban vs. rural issue (with universal access in urban areas vs. sparse access or reliance on pricey satellite services in rural communities), the reality is that there are still pockets within major cities in Canada without access to either cable or DSL broadband service.

This is why libraries need computers. Lots of computers that give people access.

Reader's Advisory: Westerns bookmark

Over the course of my schoolin', I've pretty much taken three adult readership advisory courses; I've only completed two of them. One was a Gen Ed and the latest is online through my college. The last assignment was due today; I passed it in on Friday 'cause I was eager to finish.

Anyway, boring back story aside, this time through adult reader's advisory I decided to focus on genres I have very little experience with. One of the assignments (actually two, but a different genre each time) was to design a bookmark. Not of the 'this is the library' bookmark, but one with recommendations along the lines of 'if you like crime thrillers, try these authors'. The Iowa Library has some examples on their site; they are .doc files and require you to download them to view them.

I decided to work on Westerns, which I had zero experience with. Almost. My experience with Westerns is essentially limited to the short-lived sci-fi series Firefly and a passing interest in Wyatt Earp. Better than nothing.

At first I thought I might link it to Firefly by choosing a book appropriate to each character, but that didn't stick. Then I thought about the appeal of Firefly itself and how it was a cross-genre show. I ordinarily have no interest in Westerns, but Westerns with spaceships? Those I'm okay with. So then I thought, 'why not lure people to Westerns via genres they already like?' and instead chose five of the genres covered in the course - fantasy, mystery, horror, historical, and science fiction - to choose cross-genre books from. That turned out to be much easier, though the thing where I was determined to find books I'd read myself added an extra layer of difficulty. I did okay on that front, though. I don't think I'd read the romance, but if there was nothing else to read... Anyway. Here are the results:

Bull, Emma. Territory. New York: Tor, 2007. Print.

Hockensmith, Steve. Holmes on the Range. New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2006. Print.

Lovelace, Merline. A Savage Beauty. Don Mills, Ont: MIRA, 2003. Print.

Matheson, Richard. Shadow on the Sun. New York: M. Evans and Co, 1994. Print.

Parry, Richard. The Winter Wolf: Wyatt Earp in Alaska. New York: Forge, 1996. Print.

Resnick, Michael D. Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future. New York, N.Y: Tom Doherty Associates, 1986. Print.

Related junk:

TV Tropes' "Badass preacher"

Goodreads: "Book recommendations: Weird West"

RPGnet Forum: "Fantasy Western in fiction"

Slap Bookleather: "Fistful of credits - Mike Resnick’s Inner Frontier" and "Here comes the space cavalry: Seeking the link between Westerns and MilitarySci-Fi"

Matt Molgaar's Horror Review: "Richard Matheson 'Shadow On The Sun' review". 

Base image for bookmark: "Old western silhouette" by mollygrue @ DeviantArt

HistoricalNovels.info: "Old West novels: Historical novels of the American Old West"

Western Writers of America: Literature of the West for the world

Publishers Weekly: "The winter wolf: Wyatt Earp in Alaska"

Library Journal review by Kristin Ramsdell: "A savage beauty". (EBSCO link)

Library Journal review by Ken St. Andre: "Holmes on the range" (EBSCO link)

Wikipedia (I know, I know): "Weird west". 

Templeton Gate: "Santiago: A myth from the far future"

I didn't have time to find this book, but it looks liked it'd been helpful: 

Green, Paul. Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns: Supernatural and Science Fiction Elements in Novels, Pulps, Comics, Films, Television, and Games. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co., Publishers, 2009. Print.

If you end up using this, if you could credit scarletinthelibrary.blogspot.com and mollygrue at DeviantArt, that'd be nifty.

Paging Becky...

It's LIKE content, only not quite.
Graduation is right around the corner. See you soon?