Welcome new readers!

If you read the shout out in today’s Shallot (thanks Ben!), I hope you enjoy my musings about schools, books and technology.

What my students miss

The other day I was working in my Meeting's library, helping catalog new books and reshelve borrowed books. It took me back to my youth, working as a library volunteer at Emma Willard: matching the date due cards to the books, searching the shelves without a computer catalog's help. Back then the date due cards…

Identity crisis

In January, after attending what once was called ALA Midwinter Conference, I was left with the question what is LLX? I know many publishers stayed away, preferring to send exhibits and staff to PLA's conference this month. I know that many vendors stayed away, possibly due to how few people attended. Why such low attendance…

Coming soon to a library near you

For a number of reasons, our Research Season has shifted. We used to have Part I during February/March, then Part II in March-May. This year we're starting once Spring Break ends and going through May. An even bigger change is that because we've moved, we will no longer have the classes moving from their classrooms…

Everything Old, etc.

Recently on one of my professional elists, someone wrote about creating a sig file that included a bitmoji avatar. Without getting into some of the problems with that (including some elists don't allow attachments/images or that some schools or districts have a template for your sig file), I was curious that this poster wrote as though…

No, I don’t want to read this book

I have a bit of a reputation as a reader, and am whitelisted by several publishers on Edelweiss and Netgalley. At work we get Library Journal, Booklist and Publisher's Weekly so we can keep up with what's being published and consider those books for our collection. There are a few things I look for in a…

Just having fun

Over on the AASL elist, someone posted that for a state exam, they had to memorize the Dewey Decimal Categories and were trying to think of a way to memorize them using musicals. I won't shame the state requiring this but... honestly??? Why, in 2024CE are we requiring this?I stopped giving DDC lessons around 20 years ago,…

We have a winner!

Serving on a book award committee is always fun: reading books outside my comfort zone and talking about books with thoughtful, intelligent readers? Yes, more, please. And at the end, you get to call the winner. You’re emotional… they’re emotional. So many emotions. This time it was a Zoom, so in addition to the words…

My Year in Reading (2023 edition)

This year was better than last in terms of reading: in addition to the book award books, more books were above "meh" and there were several that I love recommending. Herewith, the round-up for the year: Thanks to m.e.g. lewis' Instagram, I was inspired to share my five-star reads as bookshelves (sorry, I couldn't find all…

Minor Musings

Books, Reading, etc. Something to watch out for: books written by AI (they literally can kill you!) Where did slang expressions come from? Green's Dictionary of Slang has some answers. A good argument against most books (spoiler: they could be shorter... or even pamphlets) I should do this with my ~2,000 books. The BBC has…