Search the Blog
Categories
- Books & Reading
- Broadband Buzz
- Census
- Education & Training
- General
- Grants
- Information Resources
- Library Management
- Nebraska Center for the Book
- Nebraska Memories
- Now hiring @ your library
- Preservation
- Pretty Sweet Tech
- Programming
- Public Library Boards of Trustees
- Public Relations
- Talking Book & Braille Service (TBBS)
- Technology
- Uncategorized
- What's Up Doc / Govdocs
- Youth Services
Archives
Subscribe
Author Archives: Laura Johnson
Award for Best Comedy Romance
Jenny Colgan has won the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance for her novel Meet Me At The Cupcake Café.
The Melissa Nathan Award, named in honor of the late author, “is for a book that is suffused with humour, where the jokes are not an added extra, but where the writer’s voice and the comedy are interdependent, . . . and that the romance is utterly believable and so important to the reader that the romance is a page-turner. ”
The other shortlisted novels were: An Autumn Crush by Milly Johnson; Girl on the Run by Jane Costello; Summer Loving by Allie Spencer; You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sarra Manning; and Please Don’t Stop The Music by Jane Lovering.
Posted in Books & Reading
Leave a comment
Natasha Tretheway named Poet Laureate
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has announced that Natasha Trethewey, an English and creative writing professor at Emory University, will be the Library’s Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2012-2013. Since 1986, a Poet Laureate has been appointed for a one-year term, based on poetic merit. Recent Poet Laureates have worked on projects that broaden the audience for poetry. Trethewey will take up her duties in September. For further information see the LC announcement.
Posted in Books & Reading, General
Leave a comment
New Webinars Available in June
The early crop of Webinars is in, and there’s some great viewing available for free. Two of the programs caught my eye–next Thursday the 7th, WebJunction is offering “Best Kept Secret: Marketing the Small & Rural Library ” and then on the 13th the American Management Association is broadcasting “Word of Mouth Marketing 101 .” For those of you who caught Peggy Barber’s great NCompass Live Webinar , “The Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing ” last spring, this one could be a great companion.
Check out the list of all 28 June programs on the Free Webinars list on the Nebraska Library Commission Website.
Posted in Education & Training
Leave a comment
Advocacy Training Online
Turning the Page 2.0 will be offered online, free of charge, by PLA this summer, the week of July 9 through the week of August 13, 2012. In this six-week, facilitated online course, library staff and supporters will learn how to create and tell their library’s story, deliver effective presentations, develop a compelling case for support, and build and sustain partnerships along the way. Over 50 Nebraska librarians have already participated in this program. To find out more, and register, go to http://www.ala.org/pla/education/turningthepage.
The 2011 Nebula Award Winners Announced
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America announced the recipients of the 2011 Nebula Awards over the weekend. The winners are
Novel: Jo Walton, Among Others
Novella: Kij Johnson, “The Man Who Bridged the Mist” (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November 2011)
Novelette: Geoff Ryman, “What We Found” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2011)
Short Story: Ken Liu, “The Paper Menagerie” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2011)
Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: Delia Sherman, The Freedom Maze
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Doctor Who episode “The Doctor’s Wife,” written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Richard Clark.
For a list of all the nominees see the SFWA Website at http://www.sfwa.org/2012/05/2011-nebula-awards-announced/.
Posted in Books & Reading
Leave a comment
The Tech Rodeo is Coming Up July 26
All Nebraska librarians are invited to join us at the Tech Rodeo, Thursday, July 26 midday, through Saturday, July 28 midday, for some learning through doing. We’ll bulldog those security steers, rope that screencapture software, and ride the networks! A Website giving more detail is available at: http://nlcblogs.nebraska.gov/rodeo/. Registration is open on the NLC Library Calendar at: http://nlc.nebraska.gov/calendar/calendar.asp?Month2Show=7/1/2012. The numbers of participants is limited, so register soon!
Posted in Education & Training
Leave a comment
Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced
No Prize for Fiction was awarded! That was the big surprise of the 2012 Pulitzers. There are 21 Pulitzer categories–7 of them for Letters, Drama, and Music, one Special Award and the rest for Journalism. For the first time since 1977, no Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded. The winners in the Letters and Drama categories were:
- History: Manning Marable: Malcolm X: A Life in Reinvention
- Biography: John Lewis Gaddis: George F. Kennan: An American Life
- Poetry: Tracy K. Smith: Life on Mars
- General Nonfiction: Stephen Greenblatt: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
- Drama: Quiara Alegría Hudes: “Water by the Spoonful.”
The fiction titles nominated for the prize were:
- Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson
- Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, and
- The Pale King, by the late David Foster Wallace
For further information on the 2012 winners and on the Pulitzer Prizes, see
http://www.pulitzer.org/.
Posted in Books & Reading, General
Leave a comment
Have Your Trustees Attended the Academy?
This set of five Webinars, each a little under an hour long, is available FREE to every public library trustee and public library director in Nebraska through the end of 2012.
By viewing the Webinars, library trustees can
- become more effective community leaders
- build skills in governing
- learn communication and leadership techniques
- earn board certification
Through over 400 viewings of Trustee Academy Webinars in the last year, a lot of Nebraska public library board members have already found out what great information the Trustee Academy offers.
Each of the five Webinars is self-contained, and can be viewed from almost any computer with Internet access, so board members can view individually or have a viewing party. Contact Laura Johnson for your season tickets for the events. She will send you the Web address and password to get you started on a great learning experience.
Romance Award Finalists Announced
The Romance Writers of America have announced the finalists for their annual Rita Awards. The RWA Awards can be great collection development guides. If romance novels are popular in your library, maybe you’d like to check out this list for possible purchases–in print or as e-books. The Awards for best book in each of the 12 categories will be announced July 28th.
Posted in Books & Reading
Leave a comment
ProQuest Will Publish the Statistical Abstract
ProQuest announced today that the company will publish the Statistical Abstract of the United States in both print and digital formats. The U.S. Census Bureau, which had published the annual resource, decided earlier this year to cease publication after 2012. The Statistical Abstract has been produced since 1878. The ProQuest announcement includes more details.
Encyclopedia Britannica No Longer a Print Resource
A moment of silence! The 2010 edition of the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica (first published in 1768) will be the last to be available in print. The company will now focus on its online encyclopedias and curricula for schools. Read more in the New York Times. (seen in PW Daily.)
Posted in Information Resources
Leave a comment
Audible Video for Book Discussions
Wow! Here are some resources where three different media meet. Audible, the audio book service, is offering videos about making recordings of books. They’re available through Audible’s YouTube Channel, AudibleAccess. if you’re a fan of audio books–and who doesn’t like to be read to–they’re great fun. With over a hundred videos of various lengths, book trailers, author interviews, narrator interviews, these could enliven a book discussion or a new materials list on the library Website.
Posted in Books & Reading
Leave a comment
Additional Webinars in February
Several Webinars have been added to the Free Webinars list for Feburary since the list came out at the end of last month. Additions are marked with an asterisk. The added titles include:
- 2/22: Library P.I.: Process Improvement Library-Style (Infopeople)
- 2/27: The Legislative Process and You: How it Works and How to Make a Difference (ALA)
- 2/28: Getting Started: An Introduction to Convening Forums @ your library (ALA)
- 2/28: Strategic Downsizing (Infopeople)
Posted in Education & Training
Leave a comment
A Valentine for Librarians
Barbara Vey, a blogger for Publishers Weekly, has posted a nice appreciation of librarians. It’s just the thing to tuck away for rereading on a day when things haven’t gone so well.
Thanks, Barbara.
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Grant Opportunities for Your Library
The latest issue of Programming Librarian includes a great list of “Library Awards and Grants by Deadline.” Even if you’re not ready to write a grant now, it could be worth it to know about the grant opportunities that are out there.
And if you’d like some examples of interesting grant proposals that have been funded lately, the article in the February 1 American Libraries Direct about the projects that 16 public libraries across the coutry proposed and had funded–for 1.2 million dollars–by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Investor Education Foundation, provide inspiration.
Want a C.E. project for 2012? How about learning to program?
Wouldn’t you like to know how to get from “Wouldn’t it be great if…” or “Our Website could really use…” to “Here’s our new library app?” Codecademy is offering some digital empowerment in the form of a year’s worth of lessons in computer programming–free! When you sign up for the Code Year program, you’ll get an interactive programming lesson sent to you each week. The first lesson will be emailed next Monday, January 9. The developers of the program make a pretty good case that knowing how to program (digital literacy) is becoming an important skill that will make you more employable, and just better at navigating this increasingly technological world.
If you’re enrolled in the Nebraska Librarian Certification program, this would be a great way to earn C.E. credit–complete the code year and earn 15 c.e. credits–a year’s worth! If you’d like to do this, drop me a line. Then sign up at Code Year, do the lessons–share your progress with friends, if you like. I’ve signed up; Michael Sauers is signed up–maybe we’ll all become programming ninjas!
Here’s an article from Slate with some more info. There’s a time commitment involved, but acquiring digital literacy could really be worth it.
Posted in Education & Training, Technology
4 Comments
New Book Club from the Huffington Post
The HuffPost Book Club, starting January 3, hopes to combine virtual and in-person modes of discussion. They plan to read 10 books during the year–first up is The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht. Follow the book club on Twitter or Facebook, or sign up for email updates. It may be fun to join in. It’s sure to be interesting from a professional standpoint to see how this hybrid format works.
Posted in Books & Reading
Leave a comment
National Book Awards Announced
The 2011 National Book Awards were presented Wednesday the 16th. The winners are:
- Thanhha Lai for Inside Out & Back Again (Young People’s Literature
- Nikky Finney for Head Off & Split (Poetry)
- Stephen Greenblatt for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Nonfiction)
- Jesmyn Ward for Salvage the Bones (Fiction)
All the finalists are listed by the National Book Foundation. There are more details on the awards dinner in the stories in Publisher’s Weekly and the New York Times.
Posted in Books & Reading
Leave a comment
Continuing Education and Training Grants Available
The 2012 Continuing Education and Training Grants are now available to accredited Nebraska public libraries, to Nebraska institutional libraries, and to Nebraska Library Systems. This year the grants have been revamped to make them more responsive to the needs of the library community and easier to apply for. There are three categories of grants, each with its own application requirements: reimbursements for taking an online course, reimbursements for attending a professional conference, and funding for a program or project.
2012 Basic Skills Schedule Available
The 2012 schedule of Basic Skills online classes was annnounced at the recent NLA/NEMA Conference. We’ll get the classes entered into the Nebraska Library Commission Training & Events Calendar within the next couple of weeks. As promised, each of the classes will be offered during 2012. We’ve included the dates that registration will open for each class.
The Basic Skills requirements for librarian certification can be fulfilled by taking six requisite and seven elective courses. Participants new to the certification program have three years to fulfill the requirements. If you have any questions about Basic Skills, or about certification, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Posted in Education & Training
Leave a comment
