PaperCuts

Pageflakes is a way to customize your own webpage with items that are of interest to you.  You can share them with a friend or with your family, or choose to have the page remain visible only to you. 

I've added a web radio with NPR shows, a CNET videocast, some local Topeka news, and national news to my page.  I've also been trying out a variety of other "flakes" - or feeds - from a variety of sources.

If you're a bit shy of techie things, give this a try.  It's similar to Google's iGoogle.com or Yahoo's customize the Toolbar option, but I think it's easier to use and more intuitive.

Posted on December 23, 2007 by Anne at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's simple, it's addictive, it's TwitterLit.  What is it?  It is a website you can visit that dishes out first lines from books twice each day.  Users can also have the TwitterLit quotes delivered to them via RSS feed, e-mail, or even sent to their mobile phone.  What's the point?  It's fun to read the quotes and try to guess what book they came from.  Users can find out the source by clicking on a link that takes them to the book's Amazon page (TwitterLit is affiliated with Amazon). See if you can guess these recent TwitterLit quotes (linked to the appropriate book in our library catalog):

Posted on December 18, 2007 by Deb at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted on December 16, 2007 by Anne at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

World Aids Day was started on December 1st, 1988 to raise awareness, educate, and fight the prejudice associatied with AIDS and HIV.  This year's theme is Stop AIDS, Keep the Promise--Leadership.  To find out more about World Aids Day, check out this website from Avert, an international AIDS Charity, and also the official World AIDS Campaign site where you can take a "leadership pledge" to help fight AIDS.  The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has also issued this news release, which lists some of the area events planned in recognition of the day.
Educate yourself!  The library has many books, videos, and DVD's about AIDS and HIV, including fiction and books for children.

Posted on December 01, 2007 by Deb at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Amazon.com's website:

Posted on November 20, 2007 by Anne at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

PC Magazine has compiled a "definitive list of the best that the Internet has to offer in 2007." Familiar heavyweights like Google, Wikipedia, and Amazon are represented, but you'll discover some that may be new to you like The Consumerist, The Straight Dope, and TechCrunch. Read all about it here.

Posted on August 24, 2007 by Brad at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The End User: Byte-sized e-books"

What do you think about this service?
Is it something you would enjoy trying?
How do you find more time to read during a busy day?

Posted on July 16, 2007 by Lissa at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You’ve heard of bloggers getting book deals for what they thought was originally just personal journaling or writing exercises- now everyone (with a Blogger account) can turn their blog into a book!

From The Book Standard:

The new Blog2Print widget from SharedBook, Inc. is now making it even easier for bloggers, and their readers, to publish books. The beta form of the widget was launched this week and users of Google's Blogger platform can upload the widget to make it easy to turn blog posts into a printed book.

"Built using our open application programming interface, which is available for anyone to use, the Blog2Print widget gives individuals a simple way to capture the online content that is the most relevant to them in a structured book product," said Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of SharedBook. Later this summer, SharedBook expects to launch compatibility with other blogging programs.
Continue reading this article here.

If you don’t have one already, get started with your own Blogger account (requires Gmail) and get blogging!

Posted on June 29, 2007 by Meghan at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As we begin the summer, some of us are dreaming about where we would like to travel.  Websites like The Last Best Places, Virtual Tours, and Lonely Planet are whetting our appetites to go someplace lovely and exotic.  And of course there are also the books in our travel collection with their colorful pictures and helpful information.  And you are really lucky if you are going someplace featured in our travel bag collection. Just pick up one of these handy bags and it has all the information (travel guides, maps, city guides, etc.) already packed inside.
So I ask you, if money was of no concern, where would you like to travel in 2007?  Let's have fun dreaming together.  And if we can do nothing else, you could always do a little armchair travelling by reading a book set in your favorite locale.

As for myself, my dream vacation is to go to Chang Mai, Thailand.  This is partly due to the fact that my sister is working in a nearby city, but also because the more I see pictures of this beautiful country the more I want to go there.  The lush forest, exotic dishes, and beautiful native clothing are all things I want to experience for myself. 
Happy traveling and if you go or have gone anyplace wonderful be sure to tell us about that too!   

Posted on May 12, 2007 by Deb at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When half a dozen students in Neil Waters’s Japanese history class at Middlebury College asserted on exams that the Jesuits supported the Shimabara Rebellion in 17th-century Japan, he knew something was wrong. The Jesuits were in “no position to aid a revolution,” he said; the few of them in Japan were in hiding.

He figured out the problem soon enough. The obscure, though incorrect, information was from Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, and the students had picked it up cramming for his exam.

Dr. Waters and other professors in the history department had begun noticing about a year ago that students were citing Wikipedia as a source in their papers. When confronted, many would say that their high school teachers had allowed the practice.

Read the rest of the article here.

Thanks to staffer Brad for the article!

Posted on February 26, 2007 by Anne at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 Not all of us are fans of Valentine's Day, especially a Mr. Al Capone, who in Chicago on February 14, 1929, had seven members of the Moran gang executed inside the S.M.C. Cartage Co. garage.  This was to become known as The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. 

Here's what wikipedia has to say about the incident:

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre is the name given to the shooting of seven people as part of a Prohibition Era conflict between two powerful criminal gangs in Chicago, Illinois in the winter of 1929: the South Side Italian gang led by Al "Scarface" Capone and the North Side Irish/German gang led by George 'Bugs' Moran.

On the morning of Thursday, February 14, St. Valentine's Day, seven members of George 'Bugs' Moran's gang were lined up against the rear inside wall of the garage of the S-M-C Cartage Company in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago's North Side. They were then shot and killed by five members of Al Capone's gang (two of whom were dressed as police officers). When one of the dying men, Frank "Tight Lips" Gusenberg, was asked who shot him, he replied, "Nobody shot me." Capone himself had arranged to be on vacation in Florida at the time.

Read the rest of the wikipedia article here.

Maybe you'd rather watch a DVD about the incident?  Get your copy here.

I wonder what the FBI has on file for this historical event.  Take a look.

Curious about where the Valentine's Day Massacre victims and killers are buried?  Check out Find A Grave.

Posted on February 14, 2007 by Anne at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BY BRENDAN BERNHARD
February 2, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/47929

There is something to be said for the silence of the page. On it, a poem — three neat quatrains, say — can speak, indestructibly, to the eye, ear, and mind.

But there is also something to be said for singing along. Recently I found myself doing just that to a poem by, of all people, Emily Dickinson, as performed by, of all people, Carla Bruni, the Italian ex-supermodel and ex-girlfriend of Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, and Donald Trump. Dickinson's poem, "I Went to Heaven," is featured on Ms. Bruni's new album, "No Promises." On it, she sets to music poems by W.B. Yeats, Dorothy Parker, Walter de la Mare, W.H. Auden, and Christina Rossetti, among others.

To the strumming of an acoustic guitar, the Dickinson poem — or can it now also be classified as a song lyric? — begins:

I went to Heaven
‘Twas a small Town
Lit, with a Ruby
Lathed, with Down
Stiller, than the fields
At the full Dew
Beautiful, as Pictures
No Man drew.

Continue reading "The Supermodel School of Poetry Pop" »

Posted on February 04, 2007 by Anne at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Washingtonpost.com:

By Thomas Washington
Sunday, January 21, 2007; B03

I'm a librarian in an independent Washington area school. We're doing all the right things. Our class sizes are small. Most graduating seniors gain admission to their college of choice. The facilities are first-rate.

Yet from my vantage point at the reference desk, something is amiss. The books in the library stacks are gathering dust.

When I started in this profession five years ago -- I used to teach English -- I presumed that librarians were mostly united in their attraction to books. But as I moved along in my library science program, I found that books weren't really our focus. Information management, database networking and research tools claimed the largest share of the curriculum. In other words, literacy today is defined less by how English departments or a librarian might teach Wordsworth or Faulkner than by how we find our way through the digital forest of information overload.

Continue reading "A Librarian's Lament: Books Are a Hard Sell" »

Posted on January 28, 2007 by Anne at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s that time of year again! Making or breaking your New Year’s resolutions? Not quite. It’s time for the 2007 weblog award nominees to be chosen! Click over to the 2007 Bloggies ballot and cast your vote for your favorite blogs of 2006. Just a suggestion: PaperCuts would make a fine choice for Best Topical Blog, Best Group Blog, Best-Kept Secret Blog or even the Best New Blog. Vote for us and get us on the official ballot! Votes must be cast before 9pm CST on Wednesday, January 10th. There's also the sticky situation of having to nominate at least three different weblogs on the ballot. Might I suggest Graffiti as a second choice?

Posted on January 07, 2007 by Meghan at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted on January 06, 2007 by Deb at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

If you're like me and you've ever wanted to read a classic, but have no imaginable amount of time allocated in your busy schedule for this fun activity, read on!  A website called Squashed Writers by Glyn Hughes has you covered.

I found titles that I've been eyeing since graduate school but simply have not found the time to get to reading.  Some are over 300 pages long (I can generally read that in a day if I have ample free time), so that's my cutoff page length.  I also have a 50 page rule that goes something like this:  if it's not piquing my interest within 50 pages, I put it down for another book.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe, Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift, Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Undine by Friedrich Fouque are among some of my next "squashed" work choices.  I admit, it's not the most collegial way to approach these works.  In fact, it's rather akin to Cliff's Notes, but in general conversation some basic knowledge of these books always comes in handy for me.

Or, check out the regular length works on the library catalog.  Either way, you're reading classics, and that's a good thing!

Posted on December 18, 2006 by Anne at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From the January 2007 issue of Popular Mechanics:

10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2007
BY Alex Hutchinson

From concrete that can flex to sensors that you swallow, here are the technologies you’ll be talking about.

Bendable Concrete

The nickname for Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) is self-explanatory: bendable concrete. Specially coated microscopic polymer fibers slide past each other instead of snapping under stress, so ECC bends without breaking. The material has been used to create stretchable expansion joints for a Michigan bridge, and to allow the coupling beams in a 41-story tower in Yokohama to flex during Japan's frequent earthquakes.

SHORT-TERM IMPACT: LOWIt could take years for ECC to be commonly used in construction, unless a major earthquake puts it in the spotlight.  

PRAM (Phase-Change Random Access Memory)

Flash memory, with no moving parts to break or wear down, is the data storage technology of choice for devices such as iPods and digital cameras. But phase-change RAM is set to overtake flash entirely as it uses a chemical found in rewritable discs, which is alternately heated and cooled to store data. The result is memory that's 30 times faster than flash, with more than 10 times the life span.

SHORT-TERM IMPACT: HIGHSamsung demonstrated a PRAM prototype in September and expects PRAM-enabled devices to be available in 2008.

Printed Solar Panel

Tomorrow's solar panels may not need to be produced in high-vacuum conditions in billion-dollar fabrication facilities. If California-based Nanosolar has its way, plants will use a nanostructured "ink" to form semiconductors, which would be printed on flexible sheets. Nanosolar is currently building a plant that will print 430 megawatts' worth of solar cells annually, more than triple the current solar output of the entire country.

SHORT-TERM IMPACT: LOWSolar power still isn't in wide use, so even a tech breakthrough will take time to have an effect. But the long-term outlook is brighter.

Read the rest of the article here.

Posted on December 15, 2006 by Anne at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted on December 09, 2006 by Deb at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From The New York Times

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
In the late summer of 1926, when P. L. Travers was 27 — the age she later imagined for her seemingly ageless creation, Mary Poppins — she set out on a pilgrimage to see William Butler Yeats in Dublin. But this aspiring young poet first asked a boatman to take her across the lake Lough Gill, to the place described in Yeats’s poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”
The boatman did not know anything about the poet’s version of the isle with its “bee-loud glade.” To locals, he sneered, the place was known as “Rat Island.”
But, according to Valerie Lawson, the author of a recent biography of Travers (“Mary Poppins, She Wrote”), the young devotee insisted on going despite a threatening sky. In the driving rain Travers found not the poet’s “small cabin” nor the boatman’s rats, but an island covered with red-berried rowan trees. She carried off as many branches as she could as an offering for Yeats, and arrived at his door in Dublin, soaked and bedraggled, her arms laden with branches and berries.

Read the rest of the article here.

Want to read some of P.L. Travers’ works from the library?  Check this out!

Posted on November 27, 2006 by Anne at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From NPR's website:

National Book Awards Celebrates This Year's Best Books
by Neda Ulaby 

Morning Edition, November 16, 2006 · Star writers gathered in New York City on Wednesday night for the National Book Awards ceremony. Books dealing with the events of Sept. 11, and war, were among the nominees. A graphic novel was also among the nominees, a first. Among the winners was Richard Powers' The Echo Maker, which took the prize for fiction.

Read the rest of the story here.

Check out the National Books Awards page for a full listing of this year's winners.

Posted on November 16, 2006 by Anne at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you're looking for a fun fall and winter activity that doesn't involve chilling winds or even emerging from the warmth of your vehicle, look no further!  Check out the Shawnee County Historical Society's tour of historic Topeka house styles!

Or, if you don't even want to leave the house, take one of their virtual tours and learn something without leaving the comfort of your easy chair.

The library has a number of wonderful histories of Topeka.  Let us help you find them!

Posted on November 06, 2006 by Anne at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Web inventor fears for the future

The changes experienced to date because of the web are just the start of a more radical transformation of society, he said. But Sir Tim is concerned about the way it could end up being used.

He told the BBC: "If we don't have the ability to understand the web as it's now emerging, we will end up with things that are very bad.

"Certain undemocratic things could emerge and misinformation will start spreading over the web.
"Studying these forces and the way they're affected by the underlying technology is one of the things that we think is really important," he said.

Read the rest of the article here.

Posted on November 02, 2006 by Anne at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happy Birthday John Lennon!

It’s a good day to listen to The Beatles and remember John Lennon.  He was born this day in 1940. 

From Wikipedia.org:

John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (born John Winston Lennon October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980), was an iconic English 20th century composer and singer of popular music, best known as the founding member of The Beatles, in which he and Paul McCartney formed the massively successful Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership throughout the 1960s.

Read the rest of the article here.

In the mood to listen or watch?  Check out one of many Beatles albums, or go on a freaky visual journey with The Yellow Submarine.

Posted on October 09, 2006 by Anne at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Right now and until October 5th there is an online book fair running at the Love of Reading website.  The fair features free book raffles (every hour!), a $50 gift card giveaway from Barnes & Noble, audio and video interviews with popular authors such as Dean Koontz, guest bloggers, a giveaway contest for book clubs, and more!

Posted on October 03, 2006 by Deb at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Go to the Quill Book Awards homepage and vote for your favorite books of 2006 in 20 categories.  The Quills are based on consumer choice, so your opinion counts.  Vote online in romance, graphic novel, and other categories of interest.  Tomorrow is the last date to vote, so DO IT NOW!

The Quills were established to:

• Celebrate excellence in writing and publishing
• Recognize and praise the writers & illustrators of wonderful books and great literature
• Interest more consumers in acquiring books and reading
• Act as a bellwether for literacy initiatives
  
  2005 winners of the Quill Awards are also presented here. 

Posted on September 29, 2006 by Anne at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From USAToday OnDeadline:

Read the rest of the article here. Or subscribe to the RSS feed here.

Thanks to staffer Kathy for the fun article!

Posted on September 29, 2006 by Anne at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning as I was listening to NPR with one eye open and my chihuahua's head on the pillow next to mine, I realized that not only was it Shostokovich's 100th birthday, but that I had really no idea how influential and important he was in Russian musical history. 

Want to get schooled like I did?  Morning Edition is ready to help you out.  Here's the beginning of the excerpt:

"The 100th anniversary of the birth of composer Dmitri Shostokovich has been celebrated all year with concerts and recordings of his music. There has also been more discussion about whether his music was written in support of Russia's communist government, or in protest against it." 

Read the whole article, or listen to the entire Morning Edition show here. 

Another interesting fact - or just something I've noticed - you will find Dmitri's last name spelled in two different ways, as Shostakovich or as Shostokovich, so if you look in the library catalog, use the "A". 

Here, I've already done the search for you.

Some people claim that his music has secret code embedded in it about the KGB, or that he was using music as a vehicle for his underappreciation of Communism.  Listen for yourself and see what you think!

Posted on September 25, 2006 by Anne at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What the heck is an aggregator?  Read up and teach yourself all about it.  The simple version: an aggregator is a virtual, personalized newspaper.  You personalize it yourself.  But what do they do and how does this work?  Here's an example:

If you're looking for a news source to compliment CJOnline, try Topix.net.  This aggregator allows you to enter your zip code at the top right hand side of the page and find webpages listed in that zip code, as well as national news for Topeka.

You can also search by topic or city in Topix's search box. There's also a forum feature that allows you to have discussions with other users about topics relevant to other folks.  Start your own if you have a need to voice your opinions.  Find out if others agree or disagree.   Topix.net is not a personal aggregator because you can't set the specific sites that it's returning to you.  The owners of the site do that for you.  If you're like me, you want to do the choosing for what gets sent to you. 

Want a personal aggregator?  There are a number of free aggregators available for use online.  It's easy to sign up and start your own aggregator list, which is wonderful because it brings the news you're interested in from all of your favorite sites right to you in one convenient location. 

Just subscribe to the RSS feed listed on your sites and everyday you'll have all the news (and probably much more) than you could possibly read! What would I start with?  Try Bloglines or Feedreader.  It's also helpful to know that aggregators can exist either on the web or be downloaded to your platform, whether Mac or PC. 

So there are plenty of options for news, just use your aggregator wisely!

Posted on September 18, 2006 by Anne at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From The New York Times:

Who’s This Guy Dylan Who’s Borrowing Lines From Henry Timrod?

Posted on September 14, 2006 by Anne at 03:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Go and vote for your favorite banned book here through the American Library Association's website. 

If you're like me, you're interested in which books have been banned.  Are they some of your favorites?  I was surprised to find some titles that I found to be profoundly helpful to me, particularly in my growing-up years.  Go vote for your favorite banned book title and spread the word to your friends so they can go vote for theirs as well.

Or, check out some information on Banned Books here at TSCPL.

Here are a few to whet your appetite:

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Blubber by Judy Blume
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Or, check out the entire list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990-200 here.  Read one today!

Thanks to staffer Jeff I. for this entry!

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Anne at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two of my favorite Christian fiction authors have new books coming out soon--Saint by Ted Dekker and Violet Dawn by Brandilyn Collins.  Thanks to the Internet I already know a lot about these books--the characters, the setting, and how the stories begin. 
Thanks to Brandylin Collin's Kanner Lake website, I can explore the setting for her new book and learn that it is "in the Idaho panhandle a little east of highway 41".  I can preview the book by reading the first 12 chapters online (the chapters are really short, and will only be available for a few more weeks)  But the coolest thing is that Collins has allowed a select group of fans to write as characters from her series on the Scenes and Beans blog.  Here I can enter the virtual "Java Joint" and hear all about the goings on at Kanner Lake, from such characters as "Wilbur Hicks--You gotta love him" or "Carla Radling--Realtor at your service".  There's even a link to the Simple Pleasures home decor shop that is featured in the book.
When I'm done learning about the folks over at Kanner Lake, I can hope over to http://www.teddekker.com/readted/SAINT_INTRO_PART1.pdf to see the preview of Ted Dekker's latest novel Saint--in the form of a graphic novel.  I first found out about this from http://www.christianfictionreview.com/, where you can also see the preview and obtain an access code which you can use to get two bonus pages of the story at http://www.readted.com/. 
Now that I've previewed these two exciting novels, I can't wait to get the actual books in my hands and find out how they end!

Posted on September 09, 2006 by Deb at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 Oh my gosh!  If you're anything like me, you sometimes miss the "old" way of searching through the library card catalog files.  Remember how neatly they were typed, cross-referenced, and sorted?

Try out the online version from blyberg.net called Catalog Card Generator.  This nifty little application will let you create virtual cards for Print, Video, and Audio materials.  An online form asks for appropriate information, synthesizes what you've given it and spits out a great vintage image for the information you've input! 
Or, check out a great book and learn the Dewey Decimal system yourself, so you can mess with all of the librarians! 

Here's what wikipedia has to say on the subject of the Dewey Decimal system.

Want to read about the Library of Congress's classification system, known as LC?  Our public library doesn't use this system, but it's a good thing to know about.  Check this out!

Thanks to staffer Brad for the post!

Posted on September 07, 2006 by Anne at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Are you wondering if there’s anyone else out there your age into blogging or maybe even someone who has a blog that you could relate to or copy to create your own personal space? 

Look no further than The Ageless Project, a website that organizes blogs by the birth year of the person blogging!  If you choose, you can input your own birth year and demonstrate your blogging abilities on your own page.  Share it with the world or maybe meet some other fun folks.

Don’t know how to blog yet?  That’s okay, the library has a number of titles to help you learn in a flash!  Check out Blog On: the essential guide to building dynamic weblogs, Blogging in a Snap, or do your own blog search on the catalog.  Explore new horizons, learn to blog!