It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?: Banned Book Edition

Sheila at the Book Journey started the meme "It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?" that I am going to start participating in.



In honor of banned books week, some of my favorite banned books to read:

• The Giver by Lois Lowry: One of my top 3 favorite books of all time, this is a dystopian novel following a young boy as he is chosen to become the next Receiver of Memories.  As he learns more and more about his "perfect" world, we see that everyone being the same is not such a good thing, after all.  I cannot possibly describe how amazing I felt this novel was as a child and I find it even more brilliant and relevant as an adult.


• The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling: I doubt anyone has not heard of the story of a boy who goes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  I consider any book that is hundreds of pages long and children still want to read a good one!  (I think these are a fun read, too).


• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank: I find it difficult to understand how one can feel compelled to ban a book written by a girl the age of the people reading it.  As a young teen, Anne wrote about her life in hiding in Nazi Germany.  A true story of a time that should never be forgotten.

Want more information on Banned Books Week, check out the ALA website.  Then go to your local library and pick up a banned book or two to read this week!

Book: Library 2.0 and Beyond

Library 2.0 and Beyond: Innovative Technologies and Tomorrow's User, edited by Nancy Courtney, is an introductory book on Web 2.0 technology as used in libraries.  Published in 2007, most of the essays were written a few years prior, making them out-of-date with current Library 2.0 technology.  One example in the section on Wiki's, which does not mention the currently more popular LibGuides.

As Library 2.0 is constantly being discussed in my classes and was the focus of many of my projects this semester, I was very interested to read about the topics by the people who introduced or were among the first to use them.  What I found most fascinating was the chapter on cataloging and ways to make a library catalog more user friendly, often in an Amazon-type way.  After reading this, I now will be doing further research into WPopac, which now appears to be called Scriblio, a free, opensource, WordPress-based technology to attach to an online catalog to "offer rich content management features for all a library’s content" (according to the Scriblio website).

I would recommend this book to librarians who are new to Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 and to people who know the technology but are interested in the historical background of the ideas.

Book: The Accidental Library Manager

The Accidental Library Manager by Rachel Singer Gordon is the first book I have read to try to get a more well-rounded view of library management than I received in my school course on management.  I highly recommend this book for new library managers or those who would like to go into library management.  The most interesting and useful part of this book were the comments librarians and paraprofessionals made for a survey for the book.  They discussed good and bad managers they had had and made recommendations for others.  The recommended reading list also looks useful, with a multitude of books and journal articles on the different topics in the book.

Topics covered included managing change, people, finances and technology, just as my management textbook did, however these are easily readable and seemingly much more useful.  I will be rereading this book again in the next year or so.