May I recommend?

I read an excellent article/blog from the New York Times Business Day Personal Tech section about gadgets that we should or should not keep based on the current technology. If you are wondering whether you should get a new digital camera or desktop computer or even a USB drive, take a look at this article, Gadgets you should get rid of (or not) by Sam Grobart from March 23rd. He has some interesting recommendations on what is necessary (or not) and why in the field of current technology gadgets that may surprise you. I don't necessarily agree with his recommendations but do agree that they are food for thought.

His final recommendation I do agree with only slight reservations. Books- recommendation is to keep them with one exception, cookbooks. I prefer, personally, to read books in printed format for all the reasons he gives in his recommendation. I do believe that e-Books are a convenient way to transport titles when traveling or where space is an issue but I do not own an eReader and have no plans to purchase one.

However, I am a cookbook reader just because I find them interesting and inspiring (just bought Greg Patents' latest and can hardly wait to dig in). I love to collect old cookbooks, just because they are fun to have, and yes I use them to cook from, finding recipes and ideas that the new ones don't have. I use online websites and food blogs regularly so I do agree that for expediency's sake online for recipes is good but don't know that I'm convinced about cookbooks - hooray for 641.5 and it's extensions.

And remember, as Grobart points out, "You can even borrow them for free at sites called libraries."

Get it now - on your phone!

There's an app for that! Don't have time to come into the library to do a quick bit of research? You can have access to Missoula Public Library's electronic magazine database from your phone!! Just download the free AccessMyLibrary app from the App Store for use on your iPhone or iPod touch® today.

Ben's One Minute Book Review

Today, yours truly reviews a book of technology essays by Cory Doctorow. To get a free copy of this book go to his website. We also have it here at the library, of course.

Teen Tech Jewelry

As part of our ongoing Teen Tech Week madness, the teens are upstairs today watching online videos and making "techno" jewelry. They're using old CDs, amongst other things, to make some bling. Linette, our head teen librarian, decided it would be a good idea to put some CDs in the microwave to create some neat designs. I decided it would be a good idea to record her doing it. Don't try this if it is not your microwave or you don't have permission. BE SAFE!



Instructions for making your own jewelry from CDs can be found all over the Internet:

Crafting Green World

Crafty Crafty

Thrifty Fun

Teen Tech Review: Little Brother

In his novel Little Brother, Cory Doctorow envisions a time in the not-so-distant future where the power of the police and military branches of the government are usurped by the Department of Homeland Security after a devastating terrorist attack on San Francisco. The protagonist, a teenage boy, is taken into custody without arrest, interrogated and released days later with an explicit warning to not tell anyone about his ordeal unless he wants to "disappear." Throughout the course of the book, the protagonist creates a network of like-minded teens, using currently available technology, to act as a "Little Brother" to the Department of Homeland Security's "Big Brother."

The book deals with themes of free speech and censorship as it relates to technology. What do you have the right to chat about with your friends while online? What kinds of programs or operating systems are you allowed to install on your computer, or for that matter, what kinds of programs or operating systems are you allowed to author? It deals with the theme of a marginalized teenager whose father is quick to discount, instead taking the word handed down from the Department of Homeland Security as the ultimate truth, until it is almost too late. The book also deals with the paranoia of a town under siege from imaginary foes and the penchant of angry mobs of people looking for a scapegoat, in this case unruly teens they don't fully understand.

Little Brother is essentially a primer on the cutting edge technology available today and how to use that technology to preserve your right to free speech, freedom of association and freedom from unlawful imprisonment, and was by far the most important book published in 2008 for teens and adults alike.

Download Little Brother for free (from the author!) right here.

See Cory read a section from the novel.

Teen Tech Week

It's that time again...today marks the beginning of Teen Tech Week! A week in which we provide teen programs for teens focusing on technology.

This week we'll be starting a teen media club, share some online videos, and learn how to make tech jewelry. Should be awesome. Check back here throughout this week for videos, book reviews and more - all related to Teens and Technology.

We're all A-Twitter

Lots of people are saying 2009 will be the year of Twitter, so the Missoula Public Library has decided to hop on board with our very own Twitter feed.

We'll be using Twitter to update you on what's going on in the Library, send out morsels of knowledge, and drop links to web pages. We've been getting geared up to go this past week, and now we're ready.

How many of you use Twitter? Let us know so we can follow you. Also, let us know if you have any tips or tricks for us!

Downloadable audio has arrived!

After months and months of planning, we're proud to announce we now offer downloadable audiobooks!

To get started go to our website and click on the downloadable audiobooks link or head to http://montanalibrary2go.org. You will be instructed to download and install a media console, which will allow you to download audiobooks to your computer. You can download complete books, or select individual chapters if you have a slow connection. Head to the help section if you're having trouble getting started. To see if your mp3 player/iPod will work take a look at the supported device page, but remember, everyone with a computer computer running windows can listen on the computer itself. (edit: reader jon brought up the fact that the media console currently only works in a windows environment. A mac friendly console should be out around the end of the year, but there is no firm release date set. And Linux will be later down the line.)

(photo by flickr user aditza121. Some rights reserved)

We have titles for adults, teens and children. Right now our selection for iPods is pretty small, but growing everyday, so be sure to check back often! The library has mp3 players for available for check out and will soon have a download station in our building for those of you who don't have internet access at home. We're getting that set up right now, and will update the blog when it is ready to go.

Be sure to let us know how the service is working, we're excited to provide this service and want it to work well for everyone!

Branching Out

Today a sizable number of the library staff ventured northward to pay a visit to our two branch libraries in Condon and Seeley Lake. I had never been inside either branch in my two and a half years of working for the library so I was excited to see what they had to offer.

My van listened to Christmas carols performed by cats on the drive up, and we were so thoroughly engrossed in the music we overshot the Swan Valley Public Library, located in Condon, by about 10 minutes. Luckily, we turned ourselves around, got directions, and quickly found the library in question.

Fern showed us around the one room library and I chatted with her about computers and such as I worked on replacing one of her monitors and changing the homepage of her Internet Explorer page on one of the Public PCs. Since Swan Valley has a paid staff of one we set up all of the computers for them, but rarely make it up there to do maintenence. Nonetheless, the computers seemed to be holding up well, and they are a 24/7 WiFi hotspot (unless the power goes out, which is a frequent occurrence up in that part of the state). We all milled around for a bit, then decided to head to the Hungry Bear Restaurant to grab lunch. They were ready for us.


No one had any soup. At least as far as I could see. But we did get to kick back and smoke a couple of stogies (or what appeared to be stogies) and enjoy what looks like some sort of killer anecdote courtesy of yours truly.


Then it was off to Seeley Lake, whose public library is located inside their high school. The library was very nice. I was a little bit surprised, and a bit intimidated to work on computers in front of a room full of high schoolers, but I knuckled down and did some quick and dirty registry editing to get one PC back in good graces with Sue, the branch librarian.


The library was laid out really well, and I particularly liked the sheer number of displays they had, ranging from books made into movies to girlie girl books.


Then came the ride home. We ate some chocolate, engaged in a little library gossip and then got back to work here at home. It's nice to know that we've got such great branches serving the patrons in an extremely rural area.

Online Public Library

The Internet is a really big deal. A really, really big deal. With people spending more and more time online creating content, there isn't a shortage of material. The Internet Archive has been compiling a huge collection of this material, and it seems a lot like a public library. Everything is free, no subscription fees, no pay-per-use fees, and there is seemingly no censorship or bias in the collection. And like public libraries a lot of the content in entertainment based. Take a look at www.archive.org

There's tons of live concerts, movies, recorded songs, and even e-books. Also, take a look at the wayback machine, and look at all those old pages you used to look at every day in the mid-90s, its pretty cool.

The amount of stuff here is so staggering its almost intimidating, so just dive in and start playing.

The Future of The Web/Libraries?

Check out this video on a possible future of the web.



Where would a public library fit into this world? I think the predictions are pretty reasonable, given current trends. I use bloglines to get 99% of my news these days, even though I have cable and access to 20 some newspapers here at work. We, as librarians, are used to making print resources available to our patrons, and now making access to the internet readily available. We make electronic databases available and libraries are starting to allow patrons to download books, songs, movies, etc. for their own portable players. We belong to social networks to get our brand out there, and advertise. We have blogs, and send RSS feeds of new materials arriving at the library. The trick is to stay ahead of the curve. Where do we go from here?

It feels like libraries, for the most part, are simply playing catch up with advancing technology, waiting to see if things like myspace are "safe" enough for the library world. Waiting to see if Wikipedia is authoritative enough. But if libraries are to play the part of an intellectual marketplace of ideas, which is what they should be, we should be willing to try things out before we know they are safe or reliable. We should be willing to allow our patrons to tag our materials themselves(some libraries already are). We should arrange our materials in a easier to understand way, like they've done at the Maricopa County Library. We should be willing to shoulder the load of getting information out to the public in new ways and be able to dynamically deliver information to patrons based on what they are interested in. I think that is the point of a public library.