LC's Read.gov Site

The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress has a new site Read.gov with a cool interface for reading rare classic books online. It's almost as if you're turning the pages in real life. For example, here's the link to a public domain version of "The Story of the Three Little Pigs", published in 1904 by Frederick Warne & Co. with drawings by L. Leslie Brooke.

Picture Clips from Google's Public Domain Books

From A Book of Cheerful Cats and Other Animated Animals (1903), showing a "Study of Hedgehog Stealing Apple".

Using Google Books' "Advanced Book Search", search with "Public domain only" and "Books" selected to narrow to whatever topic you want. Click on the search result to load the book into Google's reader. Scroll to the picture you want to copy and use the tool to create a box around the picture. After loading, a "Share a clip" dialogue box will appear. Copy the URL in the image field. When you post to Blogger.com, paste this URL into the "Or add an image from the Web" field to upload your clipped picture.

I always add the title with a link back to the book on Google to give credit where credit is due.

Sony Reader Touch Edition

You are going to love this, a walk through of the new Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS-600. Talk about technolust. All that and support for local library books! You can read more, as well as see some still images, on Matthew Miller's blog on ZDNet at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer/?p=1949&tag=nl.e589

Meek Librarian Becomes MegaBeth Roller Babe

Amazon's 1984 e-Book Bungle

Read more about it at The Know Something Project page at:
http://www.knowsomethingproject.com/home.html

Ooo, just when the e-book market was just taking off! Although this was an inauspicious move by Amazon that hopefully made everyone mindful of the fact that buying an e-book on Kindle (or some other proprietary format on someone else's special hardware) is very different from purchasing a physical book. You don't own it. You've signed away your rights to owning it in the electronic format. You've only paid for the privilege of having it reside on your e-reader until Amazon decides to zap it into oblivion wirelessly.

I love the fact that it was Orwell's book. That's so ironic. Big Brother is watching. Amazon as Big Brother. Next he'll let the government know what books you're buying...what thoughts you're entertaining...whether you're being a bad/naughty/rebellious citizen. Or he'll sell your buying habits to other companies and they'll start marketing to you based on what books you're buying. Yow.

Thing #23: Reflection

I feel like Timothy Leary, this has been a definitely mind-altering experience. My most favorite Thing of the NT23 is the Google Reader. It has made my life so much easier. I was frantically trying to keep up with professional reading from so many different resources and the Reader just pulls it all into the same window. My second most favorite Thing is delicious; it frees me from my local browser and let's me still have the benefits of storing favorite bookmarks.

The most challenging for me was getting over my hesitation and actually trying out all of these "new fangled" sites. I'm not a trendy person, but extremely practical, so I need to see how something will make my life easier or my work more efficient before I'm willing to expend the time to investigate. NT23 gave me a legitimate reason to play with social networking 2.0 tools and discover some real gems.

As far as new technologies that we will use in my library, since I work at a university, we already use most (if not all) of these tools in some capacity or other. Mainly because of my job being in tech services, I haven't had reason to explore these Things. I'm just about to embark on a volunteer effort that will make all of what I've learned very relevant, since the site is to be very edgy and trendy in order to draw in college-age students.

Thanks so much NT23 team, you've been most helpful.

Thing #22: Developing your own 23 Things for your library

NT23 has been a great way to experience a bunch of social networking tools that I would not have otherwise tried. I've challenged myself to come up with a list of 23 Things for my library, though I haven't decided yet whether to gear it toward students and faculty, or my fellow librarians and staff.