Marie's Biblioblog

2,500 of our books were relocated to our Pop-Up Library today. The temporary space above the cafeteria will house an essential collection during the spring. Meanwhile, the library building will be  remodeled, beginning during December holiday. Most of the collection will be in storage during the renovation, which is expected to take seven months. Take a look at this clip, showing the ceremonial passing of the last book.

There are so many things to love about the library I work in--40,000 books for middle and high school readers, lots of seating areas, and gorgeous windows. But it's time for a facelift! When December break begins, so will the construction.

Soon I'll launch into my Master's program at the University of Maryland. As a full-time student in the Information and Diverse Populations Cohort of the College of Information Studies, I'll have the opportunity to mentor at the knee of an experienced librarian. And here is my mentor, Johnnie Love . With a name like that, how can I not be optimistic?

So I'm really pleased at how many of the award winners' sites that I already recognize! I already use Craigslist, Zillow, Technorati, google docs, google maps, Flikr, Rollyo, facebook, youtube, and pbwiki (most thanks to this 23 things program!). So this time I tried out Yelp , a city directory service where you can read and post reviews of local businesses. Frederick doesn't have much on there. It looks like the listings are there, perhaps taken from the phone book, but there aren't enough reviews to be really useful yet. So I logged on and tried to review my dentist, and I kept getting an error message! So I guess I'll have to try again later and hope the link glitch has cleared. But I am excited about web tools that allow us to see the "softer side" of a place; the facts and stats are easy to come by, but the personal feel of a place is hard to derive without talking to folks who are in the know. So that's it for my 23 things--how very exciting. (

1. Google and yahoo are behemoth 2. I finally feel like I'm conversant with the possibilities of Web 2.0 3. I'm excited that many of my colleagues are now familiar with these technologies, too. Now when someone puts a Rollyo search engine for legal research on the desktop, we'll know what the heck is going on. (Boy, I hope some of us do actually start applying these things at work!) 4. Sometimes knowing how much IS out there and possible, I get frustrated when I CAN'T find what I'm looking for! Hasn't anyone already pulled together all relevant links and research on locating the best graveyards in the Rhone Valley in France (complete with data on number of coniferous trees, plot sizes, vistas, the quality of upkeep, character of grave markers, etc)? Shouldn't our every quirky curiosity be able to be satisfied on the Internet?!? Ah, maybe someday... 5. Still not really clear on what widgets are and how to use them. (Guess that'll be my lifelong learning h

I didn't know Gutenberg had audio titles! Very excellent to know. I'd much rather listen to Beowulf than read it (I think so anyway...) I'd like to see more plays there, though. The list is pretty skimpy right now. But since audiobooks aren't loaned through ILL, it's nice to discover another resource (because I'm pretty sure that all the Overdrive and NetLibrary books are already listed in Sirsi, right?) later amendment: obviously NetLibrary books AREN'T in Sirsi. When I do a general search for "ebook" I only bring up 649 items, and the first dozen are all from Overdrive, so I'm deducing that only Overdrive's books show up in Sirsi so far. So I did a search for the book I'm reading, Sons and Lovers , and found it in NetLibrary. Now I remember why I haven't ever tried doing the download: I have the lowest DSL, not cable, so to download this book so that I could put in on my MP3 player, it would take me HOURS! Then I'd have to tra