On Collection Building

Every library has a formal collection policy, and the Paideia Library is no different.  The entire policy is online, but to paraphrase, we collect books, videos, audio books, and electronic resources to support the information needs of students (school as well as non-school learning) and the teaching and life-long learning needs of teachers.  I'm pretty sure that it's very similar, if not almost identical to the collection policies of many other school libraries in Atlanta.

Any useful and used library reflects the personality and interests of its community, and is also shaped by the personality of the collection builders, and their understanding of the community.  Most libraries' circulation computers beep or bomp, but ours make a unique sound to indicate a successful transaction -- I call it the "Go-ahead Goat."  There's also a sheep for "Oh, shoot, something didn't work right," and a crowing rooster to call attention to a pop-up message on the screen.   I thought it was funny.

One little bonus from the post-summer pileup of returned library books is that it creates a mini-snapshot of our collection all in one place.  This fall begins my 20th year as Paideia's junior high and high school librarian, and on the one hand, it's kind of cool that I've personally purchased a majority of the 15,000+ books and videos in the collection.  On the other hand, 20 years is kind of scary!  As I check in each book, swiping barcodes one at a time (and waiting for the goat to signal the go-ahead), I marvel not only at the range of the collection, but also the range of our community, and I think about when and why the book was added to the library.  Some of the titles that have just come back from the summer are:

• Rocket Boys, a memoir by NASA engineer Homer Hickam.  I bought this for the library when it was published in 1998.  It was pretty easy to "sell" after it was made into the movie October Sky.  Did you know that "October Sky" is an anagram of "Rocket Boys"?  Cool, huh?

• Japan: Its History and Culture, and Samurai: The Weapons and Spirit of the Japanese Warrior.   I really stocked up on this topic a few years ago when several boys chose samurai and ninjas for their East Asian History research topics.  I remember them sharing horrifying ninja assassin stories at the computers.  Those guys are now in their last years at college.

• It's a Boy! Understanding Your Son's Development from Birth Through Age 18 - This is a book from our PRF (professional, aka "parent/teacher") collection.   Paideia brought in author Michael Thompson several years ago for an all-levels faculty development session.  We have a really good collection of books "for grownups, about kids," and this book was Thompson's third in a series specifically about boys' development. Of course we had to add it as soon as it came out.

• Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence, a collection of short stories about gay and lesbian teens, all written by well-known writers for young adults.  Wow, another early purchase (from 1994), and it's still fantastic.  One thing that most likely distinguishes Paideia's libraries from many other school libraries is the number of GLBT-themed materials for young people, from novels to histories to DVD documentaries.  This reflects our community and our curriculum (a GLBT history course is often taught in high school short term).  It also always reminds me of a senior student who was really interested in understanding the gay and lesbian experience while she was in junior high. Over the course of a couple of years, she read every single GLBT novel we had.  I added lots in this genre to keep up with her!

• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Amigurumi, added just last year to the handcraft & art section.  This one makes me happy because it was checked out by a junior high friend who decided to teach herself to crochet over the summer.  I showed her a few tips on getting started, and she took off, crocheting little critters all summer long and posting them to a blog she created to show them off.  Her first amigurumi was a lavender hamster, from the pattern pictured on the cover of the book.

Now that we're back into the swing of the academic year, I'm remembering why and when we added all those books and DVDs on Ancient Persia, Ancient Greece, the Salem Witch Trials.  It's all part of the life cycle of a school community.  

We're Back!

"The true knowledge is not in the things, which are few, but in finding the connections between the things. There are many connections, Professor Wasserman. More than you know."

So says Archos, the powerful artificial intelligence that, in short time, will control all the world's machines and launch the New War against humankind, in Daniel H. Wilson's Robopocalypse, which I finished last night.  This quote jumped out at me at the beginning of the new school year -- above all, I hope to guide students toward skill in making connections between separate bits of the known, between the known and the speculated, and between and among things only as-yet imagined.  It's the skill that makes learning fun!

And the books are coming back . . .   A reminder that all summer checkouts are due by August 31 (next Friday).  It's such a wonderful period in the spring when family after family takes home a big stack of reading for the summer, but it's also kind of neat to see them all come back in the fall, having been read and enjoyed by one or more readers.  In the first few weeks of school, the books come home to roost and rest, ready to be read and enjoyed in this new turn of the school year wheel.

Free books for iPad and Kindle

Below are a few public domain books that look interesting, recently converted to ebook formats and available to download for free from Project Gutenberg.  The first one could be a Kindle beach read -- it's been compared to Peyton Place!

• The Trial of Callista Blake by Edgar Pangborn
  1961 crime novel of adultery, scandal and murder -- a young woman is on trial for poisoning the wife of her married lover.

• The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
  Published in 1839 as Darwin's "Journal and Remarks", and also known as Darwin's Journal of Researches, this is his account of the second exploratory voyage of his ship the HMS Beagle, from 1831-1836. A vivid and exciting travel memoir as well as a detailed scientific field journal covering biology, geology, and anthropology, Darwin's notes include comments illustrating his changing views at a time when he was developing his theory of evolution by natural selection

• History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 1 by Edward Gibbon - Project Gutenberg
  Published in 6 volumes, from 1776-1789, "the work covers the history of the Roman Empire, Europe, and the Catholic Church from 98 to 1590 and discusses the decline of the Roman Empire in the East and West. Because of its relative objectivity and heavy use of primary sources, at the time, its methodology became a model for later historians. This led to Gibbon being called the first "modern historian of ancient Rome."
  
  

School's Out --Let the Reading Begin!

For the last couple of weeks, it's been busier after school than during the school day.  Why?  This is when both elementary and the junior high/high school libraries have been checking out books and audio books, on parent accounts, with a late August due date. From mid-May through the end of school, we welcome and encourage the Paideia community to come stock up on reading and listening for the long summer break.  Elementary students come in with their parents to select and check out, while older students can come in on their own (with a note from the parents.  Since we make them responsible for several hundred dollars of books, it seems only fair to get an ok in writing).

Believe it or not, it's really exciting to have so many parents and students flood the library for their summer reading options!   When we first started the summer checkout program, it was mostly elementary parents taking advantage of it, but now, as those first summer reading customers have gotten older, more and more junior high and high school students anxiously await the arrival of their summer reading lists and the day we open for summer checkouts.  As of this morning, the last day of school, I am thrilled to note that there are at least 700 books and audiobooks checked out to 42 high school and junior high families, and they're still coming.  Yay!

It's not common for school libraries to allow books to go out for the entire summer, for reasonable reasons.  It works for Paideia because we want to do all we can to promote reading over the break, and we have a small and known community with a vested interest in the library.  We are not open for academics in the summer, and what are the books going to do while we're closed?  Books need a vacation too, and, thanks to summer checkouts, our books have been to Italy and Norway, and all over the USA as well.

Every spring, Natalie and I revise and add to our Summer Reading lists, which are more like annotated 'readers advisory' guides than anything else.  Paideia's summer reading requirement?  "Read 5 (elementary), 6 (jh) or 4 (high school) books" and you can pick from any of the hundreds in the list, or any others that appeal to you.  Now, if you're in 10th grade, you're probably not going to get away with reading 4 Magic Tree House books, but we almost always find that kids go to their own level and interests.  We just want kids to read, and for that purpose, and quantity is as good as, or better than, 'quality'.  We want summer reading to be FUN! 

All three of the Paideia summer reading lists are available online as PDF downloads.

• Elementary Summer Reading List 
• Junior High Summer Reading List 
• High School Summer Reading List

So find a title that sounds good, head to your nearest public library (first) or indie bookstore, and put up the Do Not Disturb sign while you disappear into the pages.  Maybe you'll feel like Julian Smith if you're interrupted?

Click here if the video doesn't load.

Have a fabulous summer!!

Free eBooks for iPad & Kindle:An Every-So-Often Roundup

In the interest of helping the community discover free books of value (as opposed to some of the appallingly poorly written free books on Amazon.com), I'm collecting and annotating links to Project Gutenberg links that have some sort of popular historical or literary value.  I'll try to post them on a more or less weekly basis.

As I've noted before, a major drawback to the Project Gutenberg resources is that there's no summary or even tagging of the books they've digitized; there's no easy way to investigate a book through the site before deciding to download it. This is my value-added contribution to readers; may you discover something new and wonderful to read (and the choices be ever in your favor).

This week's possibilities:

• Kipps by H. G. Wells
  Humorous yet sympathetic, this perceptive social novel of an orphan's sudden rise to wealth is generally regarded as a masterpiece, and was the author's own favorite work. First published in 1905.

• Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

  The Cuthbert siblings asked to adopt a boy orphan, to help out on their rural Canadian farm, but instead they got lively, red-headed Anne Shirley. This 1908 classic children's novel has inspired several sequels and numerous TV and film adaptations.

• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

  Seminal short novel of the early 20th century, about a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, who wakes one day to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect-like creature. Originally published in German in 1915, this is a 2003 translation by David Wyllie.
  
  

  The Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs

  A 1902 horror story, in which the paw of a dead monkey is a talisman that grants its possessor three wishes, but the wishes come with an enormous price for interfering with fate.

  
  

  Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle

  Otto of the Silver Hand is a children's novel about the Dark Ages. It was first published in 1888 by Charles Scribner's Sons. The novel was one of the first written for young readers that went beyond the chivalric ideals of the time period, and centers around Otto, the son of a German warlord whose mother dies soon after giving birth to him. He is raised in a monastery until he is thirteen, at which point he returns to live with his father in their ancestral castle.

  
  

  Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey

  Zane Grey's best-known novel, originally published in 1912, that played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre. In it, ranch heiress Jane Withersteen resists pressure to mary a church elder, and defends her right to associate with those outside her religion.

  
  

  Indiscretions of Archie by P. G. Wodehouse

  This 1921 comic novel was adapted from a series of short stories orginally published in The Strand magazine. It tells the story of impoverished, embarrassment-prone Drone Archibald "Archie" Moffam (pronounced "Moom"), and his difficult relationship with art-collecting, hotel-owning millionaire father-in-law Daniel Brewster, father of Archie's new bride Lucille. Archie's attempts to ingratiate himself with Brewster only get him further into trouble.

  
  

  
  Check out all of my annotated free ebook listings in PiLibrarian's Diigo bookmarks.
  
  

21st Century Gutenberg Revolution:Free eBooks for iPad & Kindle

If I gave in to frustration, I'd be totally bald from pulling out my hair over the ebook dilemma.  The best delivery systems either don't have the titles I want to offer or cost way too much for our little school, or both.  We are "evolving" on this issue, but for now progress is stalled.

When I first got my iPad and began to explore ebooks, I scoffed at friends who were all about free ebook downloads.  "They're all ancient," I thought, "who wants to read that?"  Yes, a librarian who was being a dumbhead about the classics. Gosh, sometimes I am so dense.  In any case, I'm now getting a daily list of all the books in the public domain that have been added to the Project Gutenberg electronic book collection, and you know, there really is some good stuff there!

"Public Domain" is a legal concept -- under United States law, creators (or assignees) automatically own the right to decide what happens to their creative works as long as they live, and the right extends to the creator's estate for 75 more years.  After that, unless an extension has been granted, that creative work goes into the public domain -- it is owned by the people.

Project Gutenberg began in the 1980s as a labor of love by a man named Michael Hart.  Since the beginning, PG volunteers have hand-typed and proof-read thousands of public domain texts, in many languages.  The first PG electronic books were computer only, but now almost every title is available in Kindle, Nook, iPad and other e-reader compatible formats.  Some even include full color illustrations!

Below is just a tiny sample of the public domain books you can download for free from Project Gutenberg.   The annotations are mine (a drawback to the project is that there's no synopsis or other description for any of the titles, so using a few research skills, and Wikipedia, does come in handy).  The PG catalog also includes audiobooks (both human-read and computer-read), and if you'd like to practice reading in  Yiddish, Norwegian, Tagalog, or any of 60+ other written languages, PG has ebooks for you too.

• The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 
  "The Lady with the Dog" was first published in 1899. It tells the story of an adulterous affair between a Russian banker and a young lady he meets while vacationing in Yalta. This collection includes 7 other short stories by Chekhov.

• Unicorns by James Huneker 
  A collection of essays, published in 1917, by American music writer and critic James Huneker. Included are essays "In Praise of Unicorns," on George Sand, James Joyce, Henry James, Brahms, Wagner, Cezanne, and "The Great American Novel."

• Two Boy Gold Miners by Frank V. Webster
  Frank V. Webster was a pseudonym controlled by the Stratemeyer Syndicate (publisher of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books). This pseudonym was used on books for boys from the early 1900s through the 1930s. Two Boy Gold Miners was published in 1909.

• Tom Swift and His Motorcycle; or, Fun and Adventure on the Road  by Victor Appleton. 
  The first book (1910)  in a long-running series from the Stratemeyer Syndicate.  Tom is a teenage genius inventor, modeled after such real-life inventors such as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, whose adventures have inspired young people from Issac Asimove to Steve Wozniak.  As with so many older books, readers should be aware that ethnic and racial depictions can follow negative stereotypes, and parents may want to be prepared to discuss changes in society since then.

• Life of Beethoven by Anton Schindler  
  Anton Felix Schindler was an associate, secretary, and early biographer of Ludwig van Beethoven. His "Life of Beethoven," first published in 1840, had a great deal of influence on later Beethoven biography. He claimed to have been Beethoven's best friend.

• The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood 
  1910 horror story by Algernon Blackwood, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre.   In the Canadian wilderness, a hunting party separates to track moose, and one member is abducted by the Wendigo of legend (a malevlolent canibalistic monster, possibly created when a person ate human flesh).

• The Man in Black by Stanley John Weyman
  Written by an author much celebrated in his time, and later by modern author Graham Greene, The Man in Black is a short and spellbinding Cinderella tale with a monkey, a cruel, crafty-eyed showman and the evil of the man in black, a charlatan and wizard. This is a tale of corruption, abuse of the innocent and the complete destruction of evil by good. One of the most imaginative and clever works by Weyman, it is a magnificent tale.

• The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan
  
  
• The Million Dollar Mystery by Harold MacGrath 
  Harold MacGrath (September 4, 1871 - October 30, 1932) was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. This 1915 novel was written from MacGrath's work on the 1914 serialized silent film, and was also adapted for a second "Million Dollar Mystery" film in 1927.  There's a review of the novel (with plot summary) at http://www.angelfire.com/planet/edwardian/million_dollar_mystery.htm
  
  
• The Book of the Little Past by Josephine Preston Peabody
  A 1903 collection of poems by Josephine Preston Peabody, entitled "The Little Past", which relate experiences of childhood from a child's perspective. Josephine Preston Peabody (May 30, 1874 - December 4, 1922) was an American poet and dramatist, born in New York and educated at the Girls' Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe College. From 1901 to 1903 she was instructor in English at Wellesley.

If you have an eReader, but aren't quite sure how to go about downloading from Project Gutenberg (or for that matter, from your Atlanta area public library), zap me a message, come on by the library and we'll try to get you set up.  It's one of those tricky things that, once you know how, it's not so hard, but a helping hand is really really useful in getting started.

Are you planning to read any classics over the sumer?  On paper, or "pad?" 

More Poetry, Year-Round

We have bid National Poetry Month adieu for another year.  Today is May Day, a rite of spring, and also the first day of Mystery Month.

But poetry is not far away.  As noted earlier,  I am crazy about podcasts and Open University-type courses.  There are a couple of new university-level Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs, if ever there was a goofy acronym) in the mix this spring -- Coursera and Udacity.  As with most of the other MOOCs (like MIT and Yale), a majority of the classes are tech and science related, but Coursera is offering several Humanities classes too!

In September 2012, The University of Pennsylvania, through Coursera, is offering a 10 week class in Modern and Contemporary Poetry, taught by Penn professor Al Filreis.  The course is described as videotaped seminar-style, collaborative close readings of poetry from Dickinson and Whitman to poets of the early 21st century, with online discussion forums and occasional quizzes or short essays.

Professor Filreis is also the host of a regular podcast, Poem Talk, sponsored by The Poetry Foundation.  Each podcast is a close reading of a poem, led by Filreis, with roundtable discussion featuring a rotating groups of contemporary poets.  If you are interested in the online class, check out a couple of the podcasts, as the descriptions are very similar and you can see ahead of time if this approach works for you.

As always, an investigation into one source turns up so many other sources previously unimagined. Who knew there were so many other podcasts and online resources for studying poetry??  A short list would include

• English 310: Modern Poetry  a downloadable course from Open Yale Courses

• Restoration and 18th Century Poetry, a survey of currently unfashionable poetry, from Brandeis professor William Flesch.  Available as a collection of downloadable podcasts.

• Podcast series from The Poetry Foundation -- Poem of the Day, Poetry magazine, poetry lectures

• PBS NewsHour Poetry series -- short podcasts (under 10 mins each) that couple profiles of contemporary poets with reports on poetry news and trends. (NewsHour poetry website)

Another of the Coursera humanities courses that caught my eye is a survey of World Music, which starts in July?  Have you ever taken an online academic course?  Was it a good experience?   Your comments on online learning are welcome!