North Texas Resource Guide

The North Texas Resource Guide has just been released and may be viewed at: northtexasresourceguide.pbworks.com

This guide has federal and state assistance information and links for unemployment, SNAP,TANF, WIC, housing and other programs for assistance for librarians to use with their patrons. You are welcome to share this resource with all staff and library users. Please note that the emphasis is on federal, state and regional organizations and programs. You are welcome to add comments for community specific programs. This is not an exhaustive list, but a resource to help begin the process of assisting library users with their personal needs.

14 Ways K–12 Librarians Can Teach Social Media by Joyce Valenza

14 Ways K–12 Librarians Can Teach Social Media by Joyce Valenza: "14 Ways K–12 Librarians Can Teach Social Media by Joyce Valenza
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This is the best time in history to be a teacher-librarian. Major shifts in our information and communication landscapes present new opportunities for librarians to teach and lead in areas that were always considered part of their role, helping learners of all ages effectively use, manage, evaluate, organize and communicate information, and to love reading in its glorious new variety.

A school’s teacher-librarian is its chief information officer, but in a networked world, the position is more that of moderator or coach, the person who ensures that students and teachers can effectively interact with information and leverage it to create and share and make a difference in the community and beyond.

For background, take a look at the Standards for the 21st Century Learner. These information-fluency standards scream inquiry, critical thinking, digital citizenship, creative communication, collaboration, and networking.

For librarians, and for most other professionals, the game has changed. There is no textbook for new practice, and it is absolutely true that some of us are a little more retooled than others. Nevertheless, there are at least 14 retooled learning strategies that teacher-librarians should be sharing with classroom teachers and learners in the 2009–2010 school year."

Linux PR: North Texas Library Consortium Goes Live With Evergreen

Linux PR: North Texas Library Consortium Goes Live With Evergreen: "North Texas Library Consortium Goes Live With Evergreen
Sep 23rd, 00:21 UTC
Thirteen libraries in Texas have gone live with Evergreen, the robust, highly scalable open-source library automation software, creating a shared Evergreen catalog representing nearly 100,000 registered users. Equinox Software, Inc., the support and development company established by the original Evergreen developers, provided bumper-to-bumper support for the migrations and is now providing round-the-clock ongoing technical support."

Libraries and H1N1

September 20, 2009

Asking library users to leave if they have H1N1

Grayson Barber, Attorney, writes:

I am writing to respond to questions about asking customers to leave the library if they appear to have symptoms of the H1N1 flu virus. Kindly allow me to express thanks to Deborah Caldwell-Stone at ALA, who provided very helpful advice.

As a public building, the library is analogous to city hall. Public officials cannot eject members of the public from city hall unless there’s a very, very good reason for doing so. Members of the public similarly cannot be asked to leave the library, without very strong justification.

The library is different from city hall, in a couple of important ways. As we learned from the case of Kreimer v. Morristown, members of the public have a First Amendment right to use the library. This means, among other things, that if we asked a coughing customer to leave, and it turned out the customer did not have swine flu, the customer could sue the library and win.

Another difference between the library and city hall is, of course, that customers don’t sit down for hours at a time in city hall to breathe on computer keyboards, and the like. But the fact remains that librarians are not doctors, and cannot diagnose H1N1. Moreover, if we started ejecting people for H1H1 symptoms, our boards might ask us to eject people for SARS. And MRSA. And conjunctivitis. This is beyond our level of expertise.

There IS one circumstance in which I believe it would be possible to ask patrons to leave, but it would be a scenario like Mexico’s last year, in which the public health authorities declared a state of emergency. Naturally, we all hope it doesn’t come to that.

That is to say, if a local public board of health declared an emergency, and closed the schools, we know that many parents would not hesitate to bring their children to the library. In such a situation, it might be prudent to ask the public health authorities to close the library as well. Again, the decision should be made by professionals who have the relevant expertise.

Meantime, the best we (and city hall) can do is to post information about H1N1 and preventive measures. Disinfectant gels and wipes can be strategically placed near computer mice and keyboards. Let’s encourage one another to get our immunizations, and to STAY HOME if we’re feeling ill. (I bet this last is the hardest for librarians.)

Bottom line: If you suspect a customer has H1N1, and you ask them to leave for that reason, you are taking a huge risk if you guess wrong. The better approach would be to encourage the customer to comply with posted guidelines for protecting himself, herself, and the community. I hope this is helpful.

From LibraryLaw Blog

Digital Books?

Google's digital library may find new life as, uh, real books

It looks like some of the 2 million books from Google's new digital library are going to end up being (gasp!) printed on paper, Wired and the Associated Press report.

Under a deal announced today, Google is opening up part of its index to the maker of a high-speed publishing machine that can manufacture a paperback book of about 300 pages in less than five minutes, the AP reports.

These “public domain” books were published before 1923 — an era that includes classics such as Moby Dick and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well as very obscure titles.

On Demand Books, the maker of the "Espresso Book Machine." potentially could get access to even more hard-to-find books if Google wins court approval of a class-action settlement giving it the right to sell out-of-print books.

On Demand’s printing machines are in more than a dozen locations in the USA, Canada, Australia, England and Egypt, mostly at campus book stores, libraries and small retailers.

Some of Google’s rivals and a long list of other critics hope to block the settlement, mainly because they say it will give Google a monopoly on the digital rights to out-of-print books, the AP says.

Click here to read Wired's FAQ on the fight over Google's digital

13 New Wii Titles for Checkout!

We now have several new Wii Titles for checkout at the system office.

Heres the List, enjoy!


Wii Resort with 4 Wii Motion Plus Adapters

Lego Batman the Video Game

Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga

Lego Indiana Jones the Original Adventures

Madden NFL ’09 All Play

ExciteBots Trick Racing

Monopoly featuring Classic and World Edition Boards

Trivia Pursuit

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings

Star Wars the Clone Wars Lightsaber Duels

Namco Museum Remix 14 arcade style games

WWII Aces Wings SeriesPunch-Out!!

Facebook: We've got 300 million users...and we're making money

by Caroline McCarthy from C/Net

Another one from Facebook: The company announced Tuesday, just as it was about to take the stage in a "developer garage" event at the TechCrunch50 conference, that it has reached 300 million active users around the world.

Also: It's cash-flow positive.

"As of today, Facebook now serves 300 million people across the world. It's a large number, but the way we think about this is that we're just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone," a blog post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg read. "We're also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I'm pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term."

So I guess that's code for "no IPO soon."

Web Site to Review Self-Published Works

New Book Review Website Seeking Self-Published Works

Does this sound familiar?

You have gone to a lot of effort to get a book self-published and now you are trying to get the book sold. You have read in numerous locations that one of the best selling devices is to get a book reviewed. However, no one will even look at your book. What do you do? Are you tired of getting ignored by book review authors and publications? A new website dedicated to reviewing self-published works is about to ease your frustration.

"We created Wright's Online Book Reviews for Self-Published Works as a way for authors to have someone consider their book after all their hard work to get it published. We feel that self-publishing is now a legitimate path for an author to take and we want to acknowledge this by taking a look at their book." said co-founder Adam Wright, a long-time librarian and leader in his field.

"At the same time, we realize that libraries and book stores have a difficult time fitting self-published items into their collection development policies because of the lack of credibility attached to self-publishing." Adam continues. "We would like to do the hard work for libraries and book stores by filtering out the jewels from the junk of the self-publishing world."

Adam started the site with his Kerry after visiting San Francisco and reading an article on the plane trip back about how self-publishing has become more widespread but people have difficulty getting their self-published works taken seriously. Adam, as a library consultant, knew that many libraries required at least one reputable review to consider purchasing a book, went searching the web for a review source."

"We didn't find many so we thought it was a shame that some voices were not being heard just because a book had been self-published versus the traditional means. We wanted to change that." Adam stated when asked.

In response, Adam and Kerry started Wright's Online Book Reviews for Self-Published Works (WBR) with the mission of "To promote self-published works by providing honest, credible reviews of them." WBR has figured out a review process that will consider each submission fairly, but only the best of the best will get an actual review written.

"We are going to use Nancy Pearl's 50 page test when it comes to reviewing books. If after 50 pages, we do not feel the book is high quality, we will move onto the next one." Kerry says, a longtime teacher and Speech Therapist. "Every week, we plan to list out the books who made the cut and those who did not. In this way, libraries and book stores know whether the book is worthy of purchase. We also give more in-depth reviews of the good ones."

During the month of September, WBR will accepting inquires from interested authors to be some of the first reviewed by the site, which will debut with reviews on October 11, 2009. Interested authors should go to the website at
http://www.wrightbookreviews.com to fill out the form to have their book considered.

It should be noted that all books received by WBR for review will be donated to a local library.

About WBR

WBR is one of the first sites dedicated to reviewing self-published titles.
It's mission is to help authors promote their books through their reviews.

Culture

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Culture

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Web Analytics

Both ClickTale and UserFly offer silent movies of your users' interactions with your website. You place JavaScript on your Web pages that causes users' mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes to be recorded. The result looks like a screen cast of the users' screen. Basic coverage is free for both and pricing begins with increased usage. Great reviews have been posted for both in several computer magazines - check it out if you are looking for Web Analytics.

Wikipedia to Tinge Suspect Entries With Orange Cast

By Erika Morphy
TechNewsWorld
08/31/09 2:20 PM PT

Wikipedia wants to give users more confidence in the reliability of its information, so it has come up with a color-coding scheme that will assign an orange background to less-trustworthy information -- the darker, the more suspect -- and a white background to content that ranks high for accuracy. However, Wikipedia hasn't said much about how it will arrive at its rankings.