Mephistopheles (Not The Cat): Free Goethe Audiobook, For When Young Adult Literature Isn't Your Jam

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Looking for a serious literary classic? Listen to a full-cast production of Faust, the 19th century play by Johann Goethe. When you’re making deals with the devil, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t go so well in the end! #paideialibrary

A post shared by Pilibrarian (@pilibrarian) on May 15, 2020 at 12:45pm PDT

School Supplies

I also have a stash of index cards and lined notebook paper, plus a few different iPad/Phone chargers to loan. We aim to be a full-service establishment here at the Paideia Library!

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Waste not. This box is full of the pencils rounded up from my mom & dad’s house when we cleared it out in 2013. Whenever the pencil jar is empty, I sharpen another 4 or 5 and refill. At this rate, they should last until retirement! #paideialibrary

A post shared by Pilibrarian (@pilibrarian) on Feb 25, 2020 at 7:35am PST

Out With the Old:A Goodbye to Perfectly Good Books

There comes a time in every librarian’s life when it becomes necessary to weed out Perfectly Good Books. I know because I’ve been here long enough that I personally bought most of them for the collection. Ouch!

It's been a while, but today I put out another FREE BOOK cart in the JH & HS library.  Some of the books on it are donations we already own (I always ask the donors if it's ok for books to end up as a Free Book), some were highly-reviewed novels from 10-15 years ago that have never have been read by anybody but me, or they might be duplicates of a formerly hot title that we only need one of now. 

With non-fiction, it's probably woefully out of date (Quick and Easy Web Pages from 2001??) and doesn't need to be in the world anymore with incomplete or inaccurate information (these usually go straight to book heaven -- do not pass Book Cart, do not collect $200). "We are not an archive," is a useful weeding mantra.

Until writers stop writing and publishers stop publishing, some things just have to go, to make space for the Brand New Books. Here’s hoping many of these volumes find new readers before they land in their final resting place.

Because . . .

BRAND NEW BOOKS!!!

Thankful for New Books!

Yikes!  We're almost to Thanksgiving without a single blog update.  Yes, things have been happening in the Big Kids' Library, but I'm not as good about keeping up here. 

One of the biggest events of the Library year happens in the fall -- the Library Book Sale held on Grandparents and Special Friends Day, and then again at the Fall BBQ the following day.  This is an exciting event for many reasons.  We (the librarians) get to select a huge number of the most awesome new books, we get to display them to the whole school plus a number of wonderful visitors and we get to talk about our collections and why we chose the displayed books.  And then, members of the community get to show their support for our library programs by donating to the library the price of books they select.   We created personalized bookplates for all donated books, and "honorees" get first dibs for two weeks.

Elementary librarian Natalie Bernstein and I spend a large amount of time selecting books that not only support teacher curricula and student learning needs, but that will speak to the diversity of our world and of the human experience, making sure our community has access to reading that will help their hearts as well as their minds to grow. 

From a new non-fiction work on the Vietnam War, or the latest YA fantasy novel, to a gender studies handbook or the new Black Panther comic, we're proud of our collections and love this annual opportunity to show them off.

Below is just a sampling of the new books joining the Junior High and High School library collection this fall.  I hope you're as pleased as I am.

Anna

(links go to book descriptions in Goodreads)

All the JH & HS Book Sale books
on display in the library.

Race and Gender Studies

Killerman, Sam.  A Guide to Gender: The Social Justice Advocate's Handbook.

Pollock, Mica, ed.  Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School

Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk About Race.

Anderson, Carol and Tonya Bolden.  We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide  (Young Readers adaptation of White Rage)

Mathison, Ymitri, ed. Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction. (scholarly criticism)

Fiction (grownup and YA)

Acevedo, Elizabeth. The Poet X.  (YA) (2018 National Book Award, young reader)

Jackson, Joshilyn. The Almost Sisters.

Chakraborty, S. A. The City of Brass.

Dray, Stephanie & Laura Kamoie. My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton.

Gortner, C. W. The Romanov Empress: A Novel of Tsarina Maria Feodorovna.

Hughes, Dean. Four-Four-Two. (YA)

Ness, Patrick.  And the Ocean Was Our Sky.  (Moby Dick according to the whales; illustrated)

Owens, Delia. Where the Crawdads Sing.

Quigley, Dawn.  Apple in the Middle (YA)

Non-Fiction

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Even Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.  Katharine Wilkinson (Paideia '01), Senior Writer.

King, Maxwell.  The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers.

Redding, Anna Crowley.  Google It: A History of Google.

Partridge, Elizabeth.  Boots on the Ground: America's War in Vietnam. (YA)

Prout, Chessy.  I Have the Right To: A High School Survivor's Story of Sexual Assault, Justice and Hope.

Smarsh, Sarah.  Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.

Stewart, Jefrey C.  The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (2018 National Book Award)

Graphic Novels

Anderson, Laurie Halse.  Speak: The Graphic Novel. (new edition of the 1999 classic YA novel of the aftermath of a high school sexual assault)

Civil War:  Black Panther

Kaye, Julia. Super Late Bloomer: My Early Days in Transition.

Molver, Luke. Shaka Rising: A Legend of the Warrior Prince.

Néjib. Haddon Hall: When David Invented Bowie.

En Español

Green, John.  Mil Veces Hasta Siempre (YA, translation of Turtles All the Way Down)

Shetterly, Margot Lee. Talentos Ocultos (translation of Hidden Figures)

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. El Libro de la Alegría (translation of The Book of Joy)

Holy Threep, Batman!: Robots in the Library

I LOVE the Open Culture website.  The curators round up the most amazing and interesting news, articles and videos on all kinds of freely available educational and cultural information on the web, from math to art to language learning.  If you have brain cells that are even the slightest bit curious, check it out. I guarantee there will be something that grabs your interest.

Check out Atlas 
doing a back flip 
in the video 
embedded at the 
bottom of this post!

But the video from this Open Culture post, of Atlas the Robot executing some gymnastic moves, made my jaw drop.  I mean, robots are cool and all, but they're not quite like people, right?  This robot looks so human in its motions (down to the shaky legs), it's kind of scary. Like there really might be a sentient being in there somewhere.  If you watch any of the videos that follow this one on YouTube, it just gets more and more mind-blowing.  I love technology, but refuse to have Internet in my car.  You know, in case HAL 9000 or WOPR takes over and wants to drive my Forester somewhere I don't want to go.

All this made me investigate robots, androids and artificial intelligence in our fiction collection.  If you're intrigued, check out any of these novels for a look into the possibilities of electronic intelligences in the not-too-distant future.

Robopocalypse by  Daniel H. Wilson (ebook also available)  -- An oral history of the robot war.  The novel has many different kinds of robots and cyborgs (including a highly sentient Japanese android), plus, of course, Archos, a massively powerful Artificial Intelligence gone rogue.  There's a just-as-good sequel, Robogenesis.

The amazing and prolific writer Isaac Asimov invented the word "robotics," and Three Laws of Robotics.  The Laws were introduced in a short story, "Runaround," included in two different Asimov story collections, The Complete Robot and I, Robot.  The Will Smith movie I, Robot, includes elements from both the short stories and from The Caves of Steel, the first of Asimov's three futuristic mystery novels featuring NYC detective Elijah Baley and his robot/android partner R. Daneel Olivaw.

How about Blade Runner's written origins, Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  Set in a not-too-distant 2021 (the year my daughter graduates from college), humanishly-intelligent androids are are SO good it's hard to tell them from the biological people.   Is there a meaningful difference? What does it mean to be human?

John Scalzi's Lock In is a very different riff on intelligent robotic humanoids.  In the aftermath of a world-wide viral epidemic, 1% of recovered victims are awake and aware, but completely unable to move or respond to anything, a condition known as "lock in."  Neuro-implants allow "Hadens" (as they're called), trapped in their biological bodies, to interact in society by linking their minds with robotic bodies called Threeps (after C-3PO from Star Wars).  Fully human in thought and emotion,  a Haden in a Threep still isn't quite human (they can't taste food, or fall asleep), but isn't quite android either.  In a recurring comic theme, main character Chris the FBI agent destroys Threeps the way Starsky & Hutch crashed cars -- and always gets a new one for the next outing.

And finally, if you're more of a fantasy than a sci-fi reader, try Marissa Meyers' fairy tale Space Opera series, The Lunar Chronicles.  The title character of the first entry, Cinder, is the opposite of a Haden in a Threep -- yep, she's a Cyborg (but a good one).   Instead of a human mind in a robotic body, the robotic parts have been incorporated into Cinder's remaining human body.  Miraculously saved from a deadly fire as a toddler, 36.28% of Cinder's body (including a leg, a hand, and much of her neural network) is cybernetic.  She has a control panel, visual and audio scanners, and access to a data network.  The 63.72% human part of Cinder, however, loves one of her stepsisters, dislikes the other one as well as her unloving, cruel and greedy stepmother, and falls for Prince Kai, who stops into her electronics repair stall in the market one day to get his personal assistant robot fixed.  That's the fairy tale part.  Add a programmer trapped in an orbiting satellite; an evil, beautiful ruler from the moon, Queen Levana, who's scheming to become an Earthen Empress; and impending war between Earth and the Lunars, and you've got your Space Opera.   Each Lunar Chronicle entry riffs on a different European fairy tale, placed in an East Asian or Medieval French-inspired setting.  See if you can guess which one is which!  Scarlet, Cress, Fairest, and Winter.


 

As I was finishing up this list, I saw this Time Special Edition on my grocery store newsstand.  Wow.

If your reader is younger, the elementary library has some wonderful chapter books and graphic novels for the grade school reader.  Look for:

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown (wonderful for all ages)
- when Roz the robot is shipwrecked, she must learn survival skills from the wild animals on the remote island

Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot series by Dav Pilkey
- a small mouse and his giant flying robot save the world on a regular basis

The Robobots by Matt Novak (a picture book)
- it takes a while for the neighbors to get used to the new robotic family on Littlewood Lane

Little Robot by Ben Hatke  (graphic novel)
- when a little brown-skinned girl discovers a robot that looks like a trash can, she finds a friend worth protecting.

Happy Holidays!

#1Lib1Ref, Wikipedia and Me

I love Wikipedia.  For a long time librarians were supposed to ban the online user-edited encyclopedia (maybe we still are), but man, it's just too useful.  What we have to teach our students is that, just as with all tertiary sources, researchers have to move beyond the encyclopedia's text, mine it for clues and get closer to the primary source of the information.  Just as with revenge, Wikipedia is a great place to start, but not a place to stay.

Ok, so I love Wikipedia, and here's an example of why.  At the beginning of this January short term, Catharine came in looking for books of Greek mythology.  Her class was reading Yeats' sonnet "Leda and the Swan," and Catharine wanted to find an "original" version of the myth to add to the discussion.  We headed over to the 200s "religion" area on the shelf and checked book after book in vain. The few that mentioned Leda didn't tell the story at all.  Ovid's two lines also weren't satisfactory.

As so often I do when I need context and clues for a search, I checked into good ol' Wikipedia, which has a substantial article on "Leda and the Swan," but it's all about depictions of the myth in art and poetry.  The article mentions "many versions of the story," but didn't point to any of them. I scanned the whole article, but no luck.  No links, no pointers to any actual sources for the myth. Aargh.

At the end of the second paragraph, though, the sentence "Thanks to the literary renditions of Ovid and Fulgentius it was a well-known myth through the Middle Ages . . ." held the clue I needed!  I did a web search for Fulgentius and Leda, and came up with Fulgentius the Mythographer, a 1971 translation from Latin with citations and commentary, of the five known works of Fulgentius, and on page 78 begins "The Fable of the Swan and Leda."  A couple of screenshots later (we librarians have our ways to get the info to our people), and I get to present Catharine with what she'd come for.  Yippee!!

About a week later, I heard about Wikipedia's 15th Anniversary project #1Lib1Ref, which is asking librarians around the world to add one reference, a citation to a reliable source, that backs up a statement in any Wikipedia article.  Participating was a no-brainer -- I already had the goods! So as of right now, the 3rd footnote in the article (near the end of that second paragraph) is the addition of yours truly.  And a link to another source, attributed to Latin writer Hyginus, in the External Links section.  Cool, huh?

 Are you a Wikipedia fan or a skeptic?   Have you ever edited a Wikipedia article?  What do you think of the #1Lib1Ref project?  Comments welcome!

The "Big Kids" Library Has A Brand New Look!

The "Old Elementary Library," which
never officially got another name,
is now the Learning Specialists' space.

When I was a kid, I used to make scale drawings of my bedroom and all the furniture, then cut out and move the furniture pieces to see how things would fit before actually rearranging my room. And I never wanted to be anything like an architect or interior designer!

Last spring, we did something like that in planning a new library space, and back in June, we saw the end of the Paideia Junior High and High School Library as we've known it for the past 20 years.  Over the summer, this entire wing of the high school building was gutted, reconfigured, rearranged and revived, and I think it works really well.

My desk has never been so clean!

The planning process with architect Miriam Dolson began back during the winter.  She met several times with me, Brett Hardin and Laura Hardy to learn about what happens in the library, what's working & not working, how it's used by students and teachers, what could happen if the space were different.  She came up with some ideas, and we talked about them.  Most impressive was that Miriam came to school and just sat in the library for half a day. Observing the ebb and flow of students during study hall, class periods and breaks, she realized that some of her ideas just didn't work in this real-life situation.  In this renovation, Function was the driver of Form, and that's pretty darn cool.

These old collections of biographical
articles and primary document excerpts
are fine, but never used. They'd make a
great "book art" Christmas tree.

Since January I had been weeding the book collection, knowing that there would be much less shelf space in the new space.  Boxes and boxes of books were removed from the collection, many of them "perfectly good books," but not likely to be checked out again (or ever) by our student population - they went on to hopeful other lives with other readers.  Some of them were just embarrassing to find out we still had -- the ones on the "drug crisis" published in 1984, the one on the "new" ex-Soviet states published in 1990.  People -- no matter how good their physical condition, there are some books that just have to leave this world -- if the information contained is inaccurate or out-of-date, they've got no purpose for continuing to exist.  White paper recycling was invented for this purpose! 

In order to prepare for the demolition and construction, we closed the library for the last week of school, something we've never done before, which compacted summer checkouts to a 2-week period instead of three.  Then the last 4 days of school were frantic tidying, de-cluttering and boxing up of the circulation desk, my office, and the library workroom.  As anyone who's move house remembers, this is a fantastic time (even for genetically-programmed packrats) to get rid of lots and lots of random stuff.  The ancient vinyl record collection went to an IT guy from Emory who had just gotten a turntable and was really excited to introduce his kids to Western classical music in analog sound.  The Dictionary of Slang went to a skeptically thrilled Clark Cloyd for his classroom collection.  An old overhead projector went to the science department for robotics parts.  The World Book encyclopedia went to the elementary school. And so forth.

The office and circulation desk, all boxed up.

What was left went into boxes.

Getting ready for storage.

Goodbye to the old entry.

The zen of tidiness!

Never fear!  The school hired Professionals to box and move the books.  (Whew!!)

The movers came in the day after school finished to tag and box the books shelf by shelf, then take apart and move all the furniture and put every little thing into storage for the summer. Then the demolition began.

That little room in the back right is my new office!

All gone, even the carpet.  You can even see all the new electrical outlets along the east wall.

While the library was an empty shell inside, this was going on out in the world.  Yippee for summer reading!!

A junior high student engrossed in March: Book 2,
the graphic novel autobiography by John Lewis. Books 1 & 2
were the junior high's "all read" assignment for the summer.

I wasn't willing to put money on whether all the construction would be done by the start of school (oh, me of little faith!), but just in time for the faculty retreat & planning week, the carpet was in and the shelving was reassembled and placed according to the new plan.  And then ... I walked in and said "oh, no!"   And Miriam walked in 30 minutes later and said "oh, no."  You know how sometimes you move into a new place and realize that where you told the movers to put the sofa and the lamps and the TV cabinet just doesn't work in real life??   We fixed it, and said "yeah, ok."  And the books came in, and my boxes came in, and then the students came in!

The library is as packed as ever, before school, during break and at lunch.

The doors were removed from the old entryway, and a new wall and doors built.
Now the elevator and the classroom open into this vestibule, not the library.

Remember how the elementary library entrance was diagonal across the corner? 
The same trim was moved to the new door into the Library Meeting Room. 
The Paideia-in-Print and display shelves on the wall are where the office window used to be.
That's Morgan Potts, new Learning Specialist, in front of the door to their space.

The view from the Learning Specialists' door.

New (exceedingly sturdy) armchairs, and additional armless seats too!

The study carrels are now all lined up along the wall with the new outlets.

New library floor plan. Can you still remember how it used to be?

I'm still adjusting and tweaking details, things that nobody would think or notice until actually working in the space, but as I was quoted saying in a recent Forum article on the renovations: "I like them, I think it was well thought out, and I really appreciate being a part of the planning."  Nuff said.

So do like these folks say --  come on in, and Check It Out!!!

Amnesty in the Library (It's Not What You Might Be Thinking)

What's wrong with this picture of students studying in the library for finals?  Oh my goodness, they're blatantly eating lunch in the library! Yep, that's what going on.

Normally, no food or drink (except water) is allowed in the library at any time.  If you've ever seen the high school commons after lunch (it's a gross trashy disaster), you'll understand why.  Usually I take the offending items to my office for pickup on the way out (with assurance that I won't taste anything), but repeat offenders are requested to leave, immediately (alumni, you know who you are!).  Most of the time, the student can come back the next day (or next week) to try again, but ever so rarely a student gets asked to leave, permanently, for the rest of the year.  Sigh.

So what's going on this week?  Long term finals, with the attendant anxiety and stress, and morning snacks provided by our awesome high school parents.  Last year, rather than continuing to police and enforce the "no food" policy, I decided to offer a Food Amnesty for the three days of finals at the end of each long term. 

So far, so good.  Students seem to appreciate the luxury of snacks while studying, and as long as I walk around right before the final reminding everyone to "Leave No Trace -- even if you HATE the person who left trash behind (do you want that person to ruin it for everyone???)", the place is left in pretty good shape.  It's an ecumenical holiday gift!

And the library is packed with studiers every morning before the first final, and during the entire lunch period.

I have my stack of vacation reading all ready.  Do you?  Enjoy the next 2 1/2 weeks!

 с новым годом!!

Happy New Year!  

A List of Dubious Accomplishments

There are definite ebbs and flows in the library schedule.  Last week, I met one-on-one with sophomores getting started on their big US History research papers.  This week's schedule has been sort of quiet. So, following the lead of the most amazing librarian I know, "when you don't know what to do, start cleaning."

It sounds, well, insipid, but holy kittycats!  When you start to clear out clutter, life begins to open up.  I've made major progress in clearing space in the workroom, toward meeting with my advisees every week in 'our' own area.  I've made several students and teachers happy with treasures found on the "free books" cart in the library and teachers lounge.  I've sold several paperbacks that I bought for high school book club borrowing -- once we've met to discuss the book, we don't need 4 copies of every book -- and I've sold some iPad accessories bought for the 1st generation that are no longer used.  All proceeds go back into the budget. Yippee!

Gave 20+ bubblewrap mailing envelopes (from DVD & paperback purchases) to a staff member who can use them to mail holiday gifts.  Passed on 2 bags of old binders to a parent who volunteers at a local elementary school, for whom our "old" binders are in better condition than the ones they have now. Plus a big passel of cardboard magazine file boxes in great shape.  And an old record player (if you're old enough, you'll remember the record player with its own lid, self-contained) that the recipient told me today has already, in one day, made a big bunch of elementary boys, and their mom, very happy.  Asia, 38 Special, Journey, 78 rpms . . . anybody remember???

Lest you begin to worry, never fear -- the week did have professional accomplishments as well.  Yesterday I helped a student who had gotten halfway on his own to checking out an ebook, but got stuck.  We sat down together and worked through the remaining steps to getting set up, and he got the book he wanted. We chatted about the book briefly today.  I also helped one of my most avid 7th grade customers find a couple of books for the weekend -- she's very sincere in looking for one book in her favorite genre (fantasy) and one book that's a stretch.  Since during the summer her parents require she read half her books in Chinese,  perhaps the 'stretch' books are easy as well --  I haven't heard that the Chinese publishers have jumped wholeheartedly into YA as of yet. And I helped a junior find resources on life as a Civil War soldier.  It's great to help a student who embarassedly confesses that he hasn't checked out a book in a while.  It's cool -- just glad to help. 

I created list of print materials in the library relevant to a JH teacher's teaching of The Invention of Wings  by Sue Monk Kidd.  As I wrote to her, I'm most thrilled to discover, in addition to  that we have in our collection a book with a several-page profile of the real-life Grimke sisters, the historical basis of the novel they're reading. Plus books on slavery in Charleston, Quakers, Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass and Denmark Vesey.  I'll pull everything onto a cart, and we've scheduled a day after Thanksgiving for her class to come in and check them out.

Next week is going to be even better for cleaning.  I'm sort of looking forward to that, and totally looking forward to what I can do with more room in the back room!

Happy Thanksgiving!

To Marietta By Way of Macon . . ., or:Little Things Can Make a Librarian Happy

So yeah, I'm a little proud of myself.  Yesterday was one of those days with nothing big on the calendar, so I'm taking care of desk business and being pretty much "on call" for anybody who needs something in the library -- computer help, copier help, checking out, finding a book, the usual.

Near the end of the day, a fellow came in, sent by JH teacher Tom Painting, to get the novel Bee Season by Myla Goldberg.   We own the book, I've read it and it's supposed to be in and on the shelf.  But -- every librarian's horror story -- it's not there!  We can't find it!  A customer might have to go away empty-handed -- NOOOOOOOO!

As it turns out, the fellow is a visiting teacher and friend of Tom, and he wanted to read the first couple of pages of the novel to Tom's writing students today in class. Knowing that, I start to think. How can we get hold of just the opening passages of the novel?  Google Books? Nah, too recent.  Maybe, just maybe, Amazon.com has a "Look Inside" feature for this one.  So I go to my computer and check.  Yes, they do on the paperback edition -- but for some reason, it wasn't apparent on my screen. I checked to see if the Kindle version offered a downloadable sample.  SCORE!  There it was.  Can I somehow send it to Tom?

Not so easy.  Tom doesn't exactly love technology, and while he has an iPad, he's not fond of it.    Alternate next step, send the sample to my iPad.  Alas, you can't print previews, either from the Amazon.com site or from the Kindle Reader sample file. Think think think.  Screen shot!  From the sample (usually the first chapter or so) displayed in the Kindle Reader app on my iPad, I took screen shots of the first two pages.  Now just to print them, and we're done.

Not so fast . . .  The Handiprint service that's supposed to allow iPads to print to the library laserjet hasn't been working this week, even after some troubleshooting and reboots.   I have to tell the students to email from the iPad to their FirstClass email and print from a iMac workstation.  I had to do the same thing.   Wait wait wait for the email to go from the Photos app through my  Yahoo email account, out into the 'internets,' where a simple file transfer from Atlanta to Atlanta could conceivably be routed through Pittsburg or San Diego, and into my school FirstClass email. 

Finally the emails arrive in my inbox, and I print out the .png photo files on the library printer.  Success!  Two sheets of paper and a mission accomplished.

And that's how I ended up metaphorically travelling from Atlanta to Marietta (normally a straightforward mission, 20 miles straight up I-75) via Macon, Savannah, Columbus, Albany and possibly even Birmingham.

Kind of geeky, maybe, but it sure did feel good to send that customer away with exactly what he needed when he walked in.

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