WorldCat Quick Click

We've added a WorldCat button to the catalog. It will pick up your search and kick it over to the free version of WorldCat.

Suppose you are looking for Tigers and Ice by Edward Hoagland. You search for the title and the catalog tells you we don't have it. Hit the WorldCat button. Voila! It's the first title offered. Click on it, put your zipcode in the box, and WorldCat will tell you the nearest libraries that have it. (The nearest in this case is Albuquerque. Too far to go get it yourself. OK, put in an interlibrary loan request.)

It might or might not work as elegantly every time. But boy is it slick when it works.

P.S. Home access to the full WorldCat is still coming, but not here yet. Meanwhile, access to the EbscoHost Health Database from within the library has been repaired. (It never stopped working from home.)

Naguib Mahfouz, 1911-2006

Naguib Mahfouz has died. The Egyptian novelist and playwright won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988. Today's news stories and obituaries (1) (2) (3) are just the beginning of what will become a flood of tributes.

We have a good many of his books.

P.S. His name in Arabic: نجيب محفوظ‎, Nağīb Maḥfūẓ

All Kinds of Events This Fall

Preschool Story Hour registration is in process. Storytime will meet Tuesdays, September 12 - November 27th at the La Farge Branch Library . Two sessions run concurrently, 2 & 3-year-olds, 10:30 AM to 11:00 AM; 4, 5 & 6-year-olds, 10:30 AM to 11:15 AM It's free! For more information call 955-4863

Registration is also in process for Books and Babies, a six-week program for babies 6 months to 2-years old and their caregivers. It will meet at La Farge Branch Library, Wednesdays, 10:30 AM to 11:00 AM, September 13 - October 18.

Monday, September 4th. The libraries will be closed for Labor Day.

Fiesta!!! On Thursday, September 7, the Main Library will close at 8 PM for Zozobra. (La Farge will close at 6 PM as usual for Thursdays.) Friday September 8th, both libraries will close at 1 PM. Saturday and Sunday, Main will be closed and La Farge will be open.

The Friends of the Library's Fall Book Sale will be at the Main Library on September 16 and 17. Saturday for 10:00 AM - 1 PM for members only, 1 - 4 PM open to the public. Sunday 1- 4 PM. Bag day.

Sunday, September 17th is also the Literacy Event. (See post below.)

September 24th. Sunday, at 2:00 p.m. for Banned Books Week. At the Main Library, Community Room, a panel discussion on "Banned Books Exposed." Free and open to the public.

October 8. The Spelling Bee is coming back!The Friends of the Library board is extra busy this year, CommodiCast has volunteered to sponsor the 4th Annual Adult Spelling Bee. The competition will take place on Sunday 8 October 2006 at 2:00 in the main library Community Room. First prize is $200 from CommodiCast. Entry fee is $10 (tax-deductible). Proceeds benefit the Friends of the Library. Download the flier and application form.

October 9th, the libraries will be closed in observance of Columbus Day.

October 18, Wednesday, at 7 PM at the Main Library, Dr. Nasario Garcia will present his New Mexico Humanities Council talk entitled "Would You Like to Meet the Devil, Bogeyman, or La Llorona?"

The library's holiday schedule information is always available on our website; events usually turn up here first, but eventually are listed on the news page.

Literacy Event With Ray Suarez

Literacy Volunteers of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Education Foundation proudly present the 2006 Carol J. Worrell Lecture on Sunday afternoon the 17th of September at 3 PM at the Lensic Theater. The speaker is Ray Suarez, senior correspondent for Public Broadcasting’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. His new book, Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America has just been released and this lecture coincides with Mr. Suarez’s book tour. The lecture is free to the public. Seating is limited. Free tickets may be obtained at the Lensic box office, 211 West San Francisco Street.

Following the lecture at 4:30 PM there will be a reception and book signing with Mr. Suarez at the Gerald Peters Gallery, 1011 Paseo de Peralta. Wine and hors d’ oeuvres will be served. Mr. Suarez’ book will be available for sale. Tickets to the reception cost $75 per person to benefit the programs of Literacy Volunteers of Santa Fe. Please call 505-428-1353 for more information and to reserve your ticket.

Police Procedurals

On DorothyL, the email mystery discussion list, they were lately discussing private eye novels versus police procedurals. Someone proposed that Americans characteristically wrote/read more private eye novels and that the British mystery ran more to police procedurals. Several other list members disagreed, and came up with lists of good strong American mysteries about police investigations. Ed McBain, of course. Margaret Maron's Sigrid Harald series. Eleanor Taylor Bland. Steven Havill. Donald Harstad. Laurie King's Kate Martinelli series. Hillerman's Chee and Leaphorn. Lee Harris' Jane Bauer series. Michael Jahn. J. A. Jance, K. J. Erickson, William Kent Krueger, Archer Mayor, Charlene Weir, Elizabeth Gunn, Lee Martin, Robin Burcell, Leslie Glass. All focus on police investigations, usually with a recurring ensemble of colleagues teaming with the working cop protagonists, and often with regional flavor.

Speaking of mysteries, we have updated the list of recently ordered mysteries and the other What's New lists.

Retraction : It's Eight Planets, Not Twelve

You have already heard endlessly in the news that articles anticipating the expansion of the roster of planets to include Ceres, Charon, and Xena were premature. There are not twelve planets, but only eight: the International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly in Prague rejected the recommendations of its committee, and lopped Pluto off into a new class of dwarf planets. Sorry to have misled you. It was exciting while it lasted.

Classifying Knowledge

Three different readers sent us links to the editorial, "Where the Books Are", in the New York Times last week. The hot topic? The Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library is giving up its unique local classification system, called the Billings system, and adopting the Library of Congress classification. As the editorial points out, "Sooner or later, everyone who loves a library broods about how the books are arranged." Have you stared at your own bookshelves lately? Collected a number of titles together, or moved an armload to another spot?

We found an entertaining illustration comparing the contruction of a number for one particular book in the Dewey Decimal System (familiar to you as public library users; most US public libraries use it); in the Library of Congress system; and in the Universal Decimal Classification. Mostly we don't think of our catalog as embodying a philosophy of the classification of knowledge. It's a finding aid: what do we have, and where is it? And yet, unless they're on a mission for a known item, what public library users often want is to be pointed to a shelf where a number of items on their topic can be found. Where it is, in our library, is mapped out by Dewey's 22-times-revised system of knowledge. In most academic libraries, by Library of Congress' system. Imagine the dismay of those NYPL research users who know just where things have sat in the Main Reading Room for decades, when everything suddenly moves.

Unplugging For Just a Few Days

For a few days the library's principal blogger is going to be where there is little connectivity. Don't panic, we will be back on August 25th or so, and resume our more-or-less six-days-out-of-seven routine. 
       We've put up a whole flock of posts in the past couple of days, hoping you won't quite notice we're gone. Meanwhile if you start craving library blog input, try Sites and Soundbytes (Green Lake, WI); SJCPL Lifeline (Saint Joseph County, IN); Marin County Free Library (CA); or Papercuts from Tokeka & Shawnee County Public Library (KS). (Papercuts posted this week about the Mann Booker Prize long list. Let us know about any titles we've missed that you think we should order.)

PS About Planets : Mercury Venus Earth Mars Ceres

The International Astronomical Union is about to change the official definition of 'planet' to, basically, what orbits the sun and is big enough that its gravity makes it round. If adopted by the convocation on August 24th, this definition would embrace Pluto and also Ceres, Charon, and Xena (2003 UB313), bring the current count up to 12, and raise the possibility of still more planets being added to the list as we explore the further reaches of the solar system.

Read about it at SpaceWeather.com today, and note also the dynamite sunspot photo...

Being There

We found this nifty site, Don Bain's Virtual Guidebooks, that has VR panoramas of Northern New Mexico (and lots of other places). His captions are occasionally askew, but it is very pleasing to stand in some of his spots, spin in a circle, and see what's there. Donald Pike's New Mexico Ghost Towns site has mainly regular photographs, but he has a couple of what he calls PseudoNMs, the same kind of VR panorama. Have you been to Nutt?

A different kind of VR display is architect Dennis Holloway's Virtual Reality Archaeology, reconstructions of archaeological sites. His Tsping Pueblo on its ridgetop, for example, lays the constructed image perfectly on an aerial photograph.

Health Program, August 24th

Are you at risk for disease? On August 24 at 6:30pm in the Main Library's Community Room, Natalie Armijo, M.D. will offer a slide presentation and discussion on health screening guidelines for a number of diseases in cluding heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

The program is free, and all ages are welcome.

Los Bebés y los Libros

Los Bebés y los Libros : Un programa de seis clases, de media hora cada una (los miércoles) para los peques de 6 meses, hasta los dos años de edad y para sus cuidadores también (sus caregivers en inglés) El infante puede ir acompañado de su: mamá, papá, abuelita, nana, niñera, hermana mayor etc. Nunca es demasiado temprano para enseñarle a su bebé el camino a la lectura.

Únase a nuestro grupo de juego y lectura para niños pequeñitos. Su pequeñín disfrutar&accute; de libros, canciones y juegos desde la comodidad de su regazo. En el grupo, contamos tradiciones y platicamos libros. Esto le da al niño una experiencia muy importante para cuando empieza a leer. Aprenda cómo, las experiencias de todos los días, pueden encaminar a su hijo hacia el éxito en el aprendizaje.

Se imparten en la biblioteca La Farge de la calle Llano. Empiezan el 13 septiembre hasta el 18 de octubre. Se llevan a cabo los miércoles de 10:30 a 11:00 de la mañana. Inscripciones abiertas desde el lunes 14 de agosto. Para inscripciones o para mayor información, comuníquese al 955-4863

Este programa es gratis. Patrocinado por la fundación Brindle.

Email Hold Notices Have Begun

Wednesday, August 16, we will begin sending out the hold notices by email to those of our users who have a) given us their email address and b) expressed a preference. This could be you. Please log in to your record to make sure we have your current address, telephone number, and email address. Bring everything up to date, and mark the check box to say how you prefer to receive your notices. By choosing email, you won't need to wait for that yellow pickup notice postcard to crawl your way by snailmail.

Browser Report

The visitors to our webpages continue to slowly migrate away from Internet Explorer. Last month the percentages were as follows:
   Internet Explorer     72.72%
   FireFox     17.02%
   Safari     7.55%
   Netscape     1.43%
   Mozilla     0.96%
   Opera     0.25%
   Unknown     0.06%

A year ago (July 2005) the numbers were:
   Internet Explorer     78.36%
   FireFox     11.66%
   Safari     5.59%
   Netscape     2.39%
   Mozilla     1.49%
   Opera     0.44%
   Konqueror     0.04%
   Unknown     0.01%
For you 17-percenters, we do have Firefox search plugins for the catalog.

Pre-School Story Hour Registration

Registration began on Monday, August 14th for Pre-School Story Hour at the La Farge Branch Library, 1730 Llano Street. Join us for stories, songs, finger rhymes, puppets, and crafts.

Storytime will meet Tuesdays, September 12 - December 12th. Two sessions run concurrently, 2 & 3-year-olds, 10:30 AM to 11:00 AM; 4, 5 & 6-year-olds, 10:30 AM to 11:15 AM. It's free! ADA accomodations available. Sponsored by the Friends of the Library. For more information call 955-4863

Books and Babies

Books and Babies is a six-week program for babies 6 months to 2-years old and their caregivers. It's never too early to start your child on the road to reading!

Come join our play and language group. Your child will enjoy books, and songs, and finger finger games from the comfort of your lap. Oral traditions and books will provide an important pre-reading experience for your child. Learn how everyday experiences can pave the way to learning success in the future.

La Farge Branch Library, Wednesdays, 10:30 AM to 11:00 AM, September 13 - October 18. Registration begins Monday, August 14th.

To register or for more information call the children's room at the La Farge Branch at 955-4863. This is a free program. ADA accomodations available. Sponsored by the Brindle Foundation.

Wikipedia: "...in the context of knowledge held in common"

Wikipedia is much in the mainstream press right now. Lately there were articles in the New Yorker, Know It All : Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? by Stacy Schiff; and in Atlantic Monthly, The Hive : Can thousands of Wikipedians be wrong? How an attempt to build an online encyclopedia touched off history’s biggest experiment in collaborative knowledge by Harvard academic Marshall Poe. (Poe by the way is also author of the charming and self-deprecating article, Note to self: Print Monograph Dead; Invent new Publishing model).

Earlier there was a lot of flapping in the news media about how it is sometimes nececessary for certain Wikipedia articles to be locked down to break up editing wars. The media stories were divided between those who said, 'See, people behave badly and they have to be controlled; Wikipedia doesn't work,' and those who said, 'See, out of the more than a million articles, only this handful need to be protected; Wikipedia works.' (See list of protected pages.)

Do reference librarians use it? Some say, "Well, if you want to know what other people think about it..." and might well bypass Wikipedia links that come up in a search. Others of us, depending on the topic, might use it as a starting point, or a sufficient piece of general knowledge, or a pass-through to good links (the carbon emissions chart from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Library which we gave you last month came via a link in a Wikipedia article).

On the Public Librarians email list, PUBLIB, we were discussing Wikipedia recently. Joe Schallan, a librarian from the Phoenix area, posted the following: "Again I make my plea that the best way for librarians to understand the Wikipedia phenomenon is to participate in it. I've launched pages on nine topics and done heavy editing on 16 more. I've done minor edits -- fixing typos, spelling, punctuation, and so on -- on hundreds of pages. Not only will this give you an idea of how Wikipedia authorship and editing works, but it will make you appreciate just how difficult it is to write a entry that is accurate, clear, and well referenced. It will make you appreciate the work of encyclopedists of the past. It may even start you wondering about the nature of truth in the context of knowledge held in common. "

The Elegant Library Company of Philadelphia

Almost the entire August issue of The Magazine Antiques is about The Library Company of Philadelphia, the mothership of US libraries, which is celebrating its 275th anniversary this year. Alas, the more than fifty pages of articles are not online, and their pictures are copyrighted so we can't just show you a couple of them. But track down the magazine when you are in the library, if you are interested in seeing the history and collections detailed with beautifully illustrated artifacts.

Our favorite: a box with a (barely recognizable) image of a lion, a slot for a mouth. "Gentlemen are requested To deposite in the Lion's Mouth the TITLES of such BOOKS As they may wish to have IMPORTED", it reads. (We do it with a blue postcard, in exactly the same spirit. You ask for it, we get it.)

We have a couple of very nice books about the history of libraries. Matthew Battles' Library : an unquiet history is extremely readable. He has some material on the early history of libraries in the US. Though Luciano Canfora's The vanished library, about Alexandria, is not nearly so smooth, if you love libraries you may always have wanted to learn more about the library at Alexandria; this book will satisfy that wish. The book on the bookshelf by Henry Petroski is not explicitly focused on the history of libraries, but sure has a lot to say on the subject.

Rough-Ins, Steel Studs, Ceilings, Data and All

The August 7 Field Report from the architects for Southside Library includes the following Work in Progress: "Wall insulation and lath is being put on the building this week. Ducts are being run. Data runs are being installed. Power is being installed. Steel studs are being framed up. Interior walls are being framed. Steel erection at East Portal is underway. The supply and return hot water runs for the heating system are being run. Masons will be working on rock and block at the East Patio. Inspections in walls, ceilings, data, and electrical room for electrical rough-ins will occur this week. Afterwards, they will begin the insulation installation."We've read some of these items before, processes which can't be accomplished in a day, or a week. But we're still hoping for a December opening, which would make it 15 months from Groundbreaking. Not bad at all.

Catalog Changes

On Wednesday, August 9th, we moved in the new catalog screens.

There are probably plenty of inconsistencies, clicks that don't work, puzzling aspects. Please let us know about everything you have questions about. Write to us at library@santafenm.org or leave a message with the reference librarian. If we don't know how to fix it we will try to find out.

We left the cover screen fairly familiar looking, except for an immediate search box using the fabulous new expanded wonderful keyword search :-) Later the cover screen may change further. In fact, everything may change further. New features, amended color scheme, repair of egregious errors. It is not the done thing in the world of human/computer interfaces to offer you a work in progress, but we'll never get there any other way. Consider this a beta version of a catalog revision.

No-o-o-o, we didn't invent this spiffy new look. We took the default set of catalog screens offered by the catalog vendor, Innovative Interfaces, and tweaked them. Expect more tweaking.

What Are You Reading?

...or, actually, what do you wish you were reading? Here's a baker's dozen of the titles with the longest waiting lists:
   Twelve sharp / Janet Evanvanovich
   Sweet swan of Avon : did a woman write Shakespeare? / Robin P. Williams
   Pegasus descending / James Lee Burke
   Dead watch / John Sandford
   Digging to America / Anne Tyler
   Break no bones / Kathy Reichs
   The Book of the dead / Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs
   The Cold moon / Jeffery Deaver
   Blue screen / Robert B. Parker
   The Hard way / Lee Child
   Blue shoes and happiness / Alexander McCall Smith
   The Art of detection / Laurie R. King
   Suite française / Irène Némirovsky

We are sure reading our mysteries this month... A longer list of the books you're willing to wait in line for is always available on the About Books and Literature page, and from the catalog top page. It should be up to date by the end of today.

The top titles on the technorati books page has changed completely since last we looked: right now it's A Cherokee Feast of Days : Many Moons by Joyce Sequichie Hifler ; Virtually normal : an argument about homosexuality / Andrew Sullivan ; Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West / Gregory Maguire ; The catcher in the rye / J. D. Salinger ; and Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk With Customers / Robert Scoble, Shel Israel. Huh? J. D. Salinger? Would a robot blog crawler lie?

WorldCat Reaches Out

OCLC's WorldCat has just released its new free access to all the tens of millions of titles in the WorldCat database. Zowie.

The records in this view are abbreviated, you might not be able to use them to solve problems of identifying which edition to borrow by Interlibrary Loan, or puzzle out a publishing history. (For that you will soon be able to access the full WorldCat records from home, through a deal with the State Library.) But my oh my, we have been waiting a long long time to be able to play freely with this database, and here it is. Too bad Dr. Kilgour died before he could see this happen.

Southside Library Grants

The Friends of the Library have raised the following grant funds from the following sources. A nutshell description of what the grant/money was secured for is also included:

• Brindle Foundation $25,000 for Book and Babies program providing support and programming for children age 6 months through 3 years for pre-reading and library usage. Includes staffing and materials. The Brindle funded program will begin in September at the La Farge Branch and then be at both La Farge and Southside in 2007.
• New Mexico Library Foundation $1,000 for publications and signage in Spanish for the new Southside Library. Signage has been ordered.
• Santa Fe Community Foundation Allan Houser Native American Advised Endowment Fund $500 for children’s Native American books. Native American children’s book are on order; a booklist will be created this fall highlighting these items.
• Enterprise Community Partners Grant Fund $5,000 for books and media, including books on CD. Materials are on order.
• Buckaroo Ball $20,000 For staffing, materials and resources to work with at-risk youth, mentoring, outreach to involve young people in reading. The hiring of a .5 FTE youth outreach librarian and securing materials will be in place in early 2007.
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation $22,500 for computers. 15 public computers are on order for the Southside Branch.
• Wachovia Foundation $500 matching. Unrestricted.
• S.B Foundation $5000 Unrestricted.
• Sam's Club Foundation $500 unrestricted.

A total of $80,000 in grants has been raised to date for the Southside Library’s many needs. Unrestricted funding is allocated to books, materials and program needs not funded by the General Fund.

The Friends of the Library’s mission is to raise funding for books and materials, programs and projects not funded by City general funds. The 501 c 3, volunteer organization was founded in 1974. The Friends take part in many projects, such as Community Days, Borders Day of Giving and Tierra Contenta Days to raise awareness about libraries and their many resources and services. The Friends’ volunteers also run the Book Store in the Main Library and hold many book sales of donated books throughout the year to benefit the library’s book collection.

Lots Going on at Southside Library

News from the architects' Field Report for July 31st for Southside Library includes:

"Work in progress: Wall insulation and lath is being put on the building this week. Ducts are being run. Data runs are being installed. Power is being installed. Steel studs are being framed up. Interior walls are being framed. Steel erection at East Portal is underway. The supply and return hot water runs for the heating system are being run. Masons will be working on rock and block at the East Patio. Cameron has been installing backing for equipment in bathrooms and various locations within the building.

"Materials on site: Veneer masonry stone ; Rigid insulation under stucco ; CMU ; Roofing – EPDM / Perlite ; Steel framing ; Steel fence ; Sound attenuators ; Ducts ; Gypsum sheathing ; Batt insulation ; Glass block."

As far as we know, we are still on track for a midwinter opening.

Vertical File Action

There was a run on the vertical file the other day. These clipping files reach back a long way, fifty and sixty years and more depending on the topic. (We just popped open a folder at random and found an article from a 1933 magazine about churches in Santa Fe. The paper wasn't even yellowed.)

There were people looking for material on the Japanese Internment Camp ('SF Concentration Camp') and other World War II topics; for Fort Marcy ('SF Historic Landmarks-Fort Marcy'); and chasing other topics in 'SF Churches and Synagogues' and in 'SF Schools - Private I (Prior to 1990)'. Sometimes we can go a long time without anyone asking for one of these folders, and then just in one afternoon, four different people.

The same day a handful of pamphlets turned up in the donated books which are now on their way into the files. (That doesn't happen every day either.) The small treasures included H. L. James, The Santa Fe Trail (1972); Genevieve La Tourette, Fort Union Memories (n.d., reprinted from a 1951 issue of New Mexico Historical Review ); and The Historic Palace of the Governors, text by Bruce T. Ellis (1968).

Catalog Changes, Beginning With Keyword Search

On Friday, August 4th, the catalog will be re-indexed to give us a much larger and more flexible keyword search. Right now when you do a keyword search it is searching only title and notes fields. After the re-index, it will also be searching subjects and other fields. You should get a much more inclusive set of results when you search.

While this work is happening inside the catalog server, there will be a couple of hours where you won't be able to do a keyword search at all. Call the library if you are having trouble locating what you need during that period.

Once the re-index is done, you will have two different keyword searches available. (We can't show you today because they're not THERE yet.) The simple keyword search will be quite similar to the present one in how it functions, except that it will have more points to help you find what you want. The advanced keyword search will allow you to limit by location, format, etc. before you search so your results are more focussed on what you know you want.

The new search screens will not match the look of the present catalog screens. Next week we will be shifting to a somewhat new look, and the new search screens you see late on Friday will be borrowed from the-catalog-as-it-will-appear-next-week.

Toward 100 Percent Availability

The title above comes from a 1989 Library Journal article by Frederick Kilgour. He was the founder of OCLC, the big bibliographic network we belong to and use for Interlibrary Loan. From the original network of 54 libraries in 1971, it has grown to 55,000 institutions in 110 countries. It works. 'Every 4 seconds an OCLC member library fills an interlibrary loan request...' (see oclc stats)

Dr. Kilgour died at age 92 this week, and tributes to him are appearing here and there around Libraryland. (1)(2)(3). In his long career he never lost track of exactly what his purpose was: to make it possible for everyone to find the book they want, more or less right away, more or less every time.

Of course it's not possible. But 'Toward 100 Percent Availability' is an intention worth photocopying really large and hanging on the wall. Thank you, Dr. Kilgour. Frederick G. Kilgour, "Toward 100 Percent Availability," Library Journal 114 (Nov. 15, 1989).

technorati says

The book getting the most buzz in the blog world right this minute, according to Technorati, is Chris Anderson's The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. It's not in our database yet (can't imagine why not, it's been on our mind for weeks to make sure we'd order it...)

What technorati is actually counting is the number of new links on blogs to a title's Amazon entry, a somewhat mysterious measure of interest. Other things the geek world are reading : Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter. Travel books about Austria and Italy. Clive Barker's 2004 title, Days of Magic, Nights of War.

Another view of what people are reading is Library Journal's monthly list of The Books Most Borrowed in U.S. Libraries - Nonfiction (the fiction list is also available, but not nearly as entertaining.) The top five: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Thomas L. Friedman ; Teacher Man, Frank McCourt ; Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Stephen J. Dubner ; Marley and Me, John Grogan ; Confessions of a Video Vixen, Karrine Steffans. Eee-too-bad. We don't have that last one in the database either.