Your Tuesday Twilight Update

Twilight fans----the excitement is building and here are some more tidbits about Bella, Edward and Jacob AND Stephenie Meyer.

Enjoy.

All About Romance

This cool site is for romance lovers---it lists what they claim are the top 100 romance novels according to their poll. Anyway, it might come in handy someday out on the RA desk, especially for those of us who aren't big consumers of this genre.

Twilight Lexicon

The ultimate site for the true fans of Twilight---movie trailers, trivia, and adulation and speculation. Even a countdown widget for the release of Breaking Dawn!

Exploring Twilight

For all you Twilight fans who just cannot get enough of Edward, Bella and Jacob (and who can?!), this is a cool new site developed by another library to give readers good read-alikes AND music to listen to while reading.

Check it out!

Literature Map

This is a useful site for Readers' Advisors and finding new authors for readers who know what author's they've liked in the past.

It's also a very cool use of internet technology. There is also a companion site for music.

Check it out!

I'm YA and I'm OK

Sunday's NY Times Book Review had an interesting article about publishers and authors views of the category of YA. Sounds like the publishing industry is ruthless.

YA Book into Movie!

According to today's VARIETY, Avi's THE TRUE CONFESSION OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE is in pre-production, will shoot in the fall, and has Danny DeVito writing the screenplay and directing. Morgan Freeman is attached, as is Saoirse Ronan in the title role.

Complete Review's Links to Literary Blogs

This site is definitely a place one could waste a lot of time. So check it out, bookmark it, and come back to it when you have a lot of time on your hands!

It's also a good place to get inspired creatively when you want to start your own blog......

Readers Advisor Online

This is an awesome place to read about what new and coming out soon in both fiction and nonfiction! Plus, it is available as an RSS feed!

If you click on the little yellow star and the green plus sign at the top of this page, it will ask you if you'd like to add it as a feed. Then the next time you read our FMM blog, you will be able to click on the yellow star and read what's new on the Readers Advisor Online blog.

Waaaaaay cool! Try it. You'll like it!

Susie's LEEP blog--Running Away...to college!

">Link
I'm going to try to keep a little journal here of my daily activities at the LEEP program July 16-26 in Champaign, aka "Boot Camp." It will be a way to keep in touch with you all. I'm still working on my homework to prepare, but feel pretty, no really, good about what's upcoming. I've finished my first paper due next Friday, so I've got that under my belt. I work on Monday, July 14, go for my Illinois State Library grant on Tuesday, July 15 (cross your fingers), and leave for Champaign on Wednesday, July 16--I might come in for the FMM meeting, though--not sure yet.

If you want to know more about the LEEP program, see http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/programs/leep/.
If you just want to have a little fun with a hilarious website, check outhttp://www.lipsticklibrarian.com/.

All Books All the Time

This amazing site (also called an aggregator) collects in ONE place the newest information about books from the NYT, the Guardian, book blogs, librarian blogs, bookstore sites, etc. etc.

If you love books and reading about what newest in the book world, this is the place for YOU!

http://books.alltop.com/

Our blog gets RSS Feeds!

What??!!, you ask. RSS feeds are like daily newsletters sent to our blog on topics relevant to FMM. So far, we have mostly book-related feeds, but I'm hoping that Someone on the AV side of FMM might add some useful movie and music feeds....hint, hint, hint......

To read our feed, follow the simple directions below.

You view feeds on the Feeds tab in the Favorites Center. To view your feeds, click the Favorites Center button (HINT: it's the yellow STAR shaped button at the top left of this blog) , and then click Feeds.

100 Useful Reference Sites You've Never Heard Of

The internet is an amazing place, but sometimes it can be overwhelming. This site which is worth bookmarking, identifies and describes 100 sites for teachers that might be useful for anyone! Don't have time to explore it completely? Don't worry! Just take a glance and scroll down the list, put it on your list of favorites and remember it when you just can't find the answer you need using good ol' Google.

Happy surfing!

July Monthly Report

The past twelve months have been very active for the Library and Adult Services! The following is a sampling of key accomplishments and events over the past year. Thanks to all Adult Services staff members for their hard work and dedication over the past year.

• Fiction, Movies and Music area opens in summer 2007, with new a new service desk and improved shelving and signage.
• YA staff implements video gaming as part of their programming, attracting non-traditional users to the library.
• Periodicals collection moves to new self-serve shelving near reference stacks. Back issues of magazines are now shelved with the most recent copy, enabling patrons to easily browse the collection.
• Bookletters expands to include different genres and formats, including new e-newsletters for genealogy, business, and library news.
• Cook Library Genealogy Networking group debuts in April.
• Job descriptions updated for many Adult Services staff members.
• DVD checkout limit doubled to 10.
• Harry Potter Lock-In Party attracts 32 teens who enjoyed an overnight of fun as the highly anticipated book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was officially released in July.
• Nearly all of the library’s 4,500 adult videocassette titles are sold to the public in order to proceed with the relocation of the DVD and CD collection to the main floor.
• New Family Film Collection is completed, offering over 550 family-friendly DVD titles.
  English Language Learning collection is established, consisting of books and multimedia materials to help adults improve their reading and comprehension.
• ELL reading and discussion group established, offering book discussions for non-native English speakers in a leisurely, fun setting.
• Instant messaging implemented, enabling patrons an additional means to communicate with reference librarians.
• Adult Services shelving operations reorganized, including naming 2 lead shelvers.
• Legal Forms and Small Business Resource Center databases added.
• After months of preparation and training, new online catalog system, Millennium, is launched in February.
• Monthly Pioneer Press column begins in April, exploring historical topics and events local to Mundelein, Vernon Hills and Libertyville.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Public Libraries 2.0

Recently in a conversation, Dan Armstrong told me he envisioned our library as being the "third place." I asked him what it meant and like many other new concepts, I've been hearing about it everywhere since. The third place refers to the several places you spend significant amounts of time, the first being your home. As I understand it, the Second Place can include your church, your children's school, Caribou, a favorite bar or restaurant--it's where you go and everybody knows your name.

The attached article talks about libraries as the Third Place for people in their communities and I'd be interested in your thoughts about this concept. Do you think Cook is already the Third Place for some? What can we do to make the new branch in VH the Third Place for that community?

ej

Hot Summer Reading!!

Stumbled upon a great website that claims to connect librarians and publishers by Nora Rawlinson. She is a Readers' Advisor and recently spoke at BEA about how she goes about selecting books for her library. Her system might not be for everyone, but I thought it was worth reading about and sharing with all of you!

To get to the site, click on the title above: Hot Summer Reading.

Enjoy!

Yours,
Ellen

100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library

Just found an interesting list of manly books on a website called The Art of Manliness. Great list of classic books with an emphasis on testosterone and heroic adventures. Here is their introductory blurb to their list of the 100 Essential Must-Read Books for Men:

There are the books you read, and then there are the books that change your life. We can all look back on the books that have shaped our perspective on politics, religion, money, and love. Some will even become a source of inspiration for the rest of your life. From a seemingly infinite list of books of anecdotal or literal merit, we have narrowed down the top 100 books that have shaped the lives of individual men while also helping define broader cultural ideas of what it means to be a man.
Whether it be a book on adventure, war, or manners, there is so much to learn about life’s great questions from these gems. Let us know in the comments which of these you loved, hated, and the books that meant a lot to you and should have made the list (you can even get really indignant about your favorite book). And without further ado, this is our list.
">Link

Harry Potter updates

The emotional rollercoaster that the Harry Potter court case seems to be in danger of becoming (Shelf Awareness, April 15, 2008), continued when Steven Vander Ark "broke down and cried on the witness stand Tuesday as he faced off in court against his idol J.K. Rowling," according to the Associated Press (via USA Today). Described in the article as stammering and "choking on his words," the man accused of infringing upon Rowling's copyright testified, "It's been . . . It's been . . . It's been difficult because there has been a lot of criticism, obviously, and that was never the intention. . . . This has been an important part of my life for the last nine years or so."USA Today reported that Vander Ark "acknowledged that he, too, had substantial concerns all along about whether publishing an encyclopedia based on Rowling's Potter universe would constitute copyright infringement. He said he was talked into doing it by the publishing company [RDR Books]."


--- In an editorial entitled "J.K. Rowling may own Harry's world, but we own her words now," yesterday's Times of London (©News Corp.) offered this take on the issue:"A generation has now grown up besotted (©Milton) with Quidditch and Hogwarts. However, it is not astonishing that J.K. Rowling is using a court case to remind the writers of a zany (©Shakespeare) Harry Potter lexicon, now making the jump from cyberspace (©William Gibson) to print, that it is not common property and she did invent it all. She may succeed in persuading the court that her copyright is violated by some parts of the proposed encyclopedia. Indeed, she may have a respectable commercial case, but not much of a cultural one. However, unless she employs a mole (©le Carré) to oversee our every conversation and written exchange, she should not try to suppress a collection of her invented words. For Voldemort, Muggles, Horcruxes and all Rowling's other serendipitous (©Walpole) coinages are ours now; it would be pig-headed (©Jonson) not to let us use them as we wish."English is so full of the neologisms of authors that if we had to credit each one, we would assassinate (©Shakespeare) our prose, and make readers chortle (©Carroll) mightily. Without being didactic (©Milton), Rowling can be assured that she is in good company in contributing words, gratis, to the language. The best she should hope for is that her words become as widely adopted as those of other authors. Perhaps the highest honour has been bestowed on the quark (©Joyce), used as the name for a sub-atomic particle. As there are quarks across the Universe, Joyce may be our most disseminated author. Rowling should be proud if Doxies, Thestrals or Butterbeer make it as far as a lexicon."
">Link

Oprah's Book Club selections

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
3. Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell
4. The Best Way To Play by Bill Cosby
5. Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen
6. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
7. The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
8. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
9. Cane River by Lalita Tademy
10. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
11. Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
12. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
13. The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard
14. Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
15. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
16. Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
17. Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
18. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
19. Gap Creek by Robert Morgan
20. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
21. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
22. The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou
23. Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman
24. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
25. I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
26. Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
27. Jewel by Bret Lott
28. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
29. Light in August by William Faulkner
30. Love in the Time of Cholera By Gabriel García Márquez
31. A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton
32. The Meanest Thing To Say by Bill Cosby
33. The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier
34. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
35. Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
36. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
37. Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes
38. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
39. Night by Elie Wiesel
40. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
41. Open House by Elizabeth Berg
42. Paradise by Toni Morrison
43. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
44. The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve
45. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
46. The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
47. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink River
48. Cross My Heart by Breena Clarke
49. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
50. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
51. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
52. Songs In Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris
53. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
54. Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir
55. Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
56. Sula by Toni Morrison
57. Tara Road by Maeve Binchy
58. The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby
59. Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay
60. A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
61. We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
62. What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
63. Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
64. While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
65. White Oleander by Janet Fitch
    
    ">Link
    

Ellen's avatar