is there a contest I can use to make my kid a famous poet?

That was it - no name, no other information, just that one line. The email address seemed legitimate, so I researched it a bit and replied:

I think I’ll need a little bit more information from you, but I do have some suggestions. It would be helpful to know the age of the child, and also what you’re looking for in a contest: are you looking for a venue for live readings, a mail-in contest with winners and prizes, just somewhere that will print poetry from children, or something else entirely?

Our Childrens Rooms subscribes to lots of magazines that accept poetry submissions from children. They’re not exactly contests, but the poetry is judged to see if it’s worthy of publishing in their magazines. One magazine that publishes a lot of poetry is “New Moon” but others do as well.

The Chelmsford Library has a “poetry slam” every April, which is open to all ages. It is a contest in which winners are chosen, but as our website says, it is a gentle contest. And it’s held in April because that is National Poetry Month - during that month, there are a lot of other local poetry-related events, but those usually aren’t announced or publicized until closer to April.

There are also lots of online poetry contests - here are a few websites I found:

• http://www.riverofwords.org/
• http://www.bc.edu/schools/lsoe/poetry/
• http://www.potatohill.com/contest.html
• http://www.poeticpower.com/
• http://www.stwcp.com/submit.html

Another resource is the Massachusetts Poetry Festival website, which is building a database of both poets and venues. It doesn’t seem like it’s ready yet, but their website has a list of the people building the database, so they may have information on contests they could provide you with.

Lastly, I found a article on the eHow.com website that probably says a lot of what you already know, but also had a few interesting tips relating to childrens’ poetry contests.

The woman here who organizes the poetry slams is out for the first part of this week, but I think she will have more ideas. I’ll ask her when she comes back, and will email you with whatever else she can suggest. In the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions, or if you can be more specific about what you are looking for. Thanks, and take care.

This was at least a month ago, and I never got a response. I’m not sure if it was real or not, but if it was, I hope it was helpful. However (and granted, I am not a parent), it always bothers me when people refer to their child as “kid” and when it seemed parents are forcing their kids* into something for their own benefit. To wit:

Bruno Parenting FAIL video:

I saw one recently I thought I’d share: in “Library Labyrinth,” you’re locked in the library with a serial killer, and you need to find objects and solve puzzles to survive him and get out of the library. Good times, I know, but I also liked that winning this game involved using Twitter (in the game - you don’t need an account yourself). Clever, and it also shows (again) how ubiquitous Twitter has become.

Give it a try, and if you get stuck, a helpful tips from previous players is also available.

My former co-worker Chris pointed out the iPhone app RedLaser, that turns the iPhone’s camera into a barcode scanner. The app was designed to do instant price checks while you’re in a store, to see if you could buy something cheaper online.

He also found that the database it scans can be customized - which means it could be modded to search a library catalog (among other things).

So a patron with an iPhone (or an Android) could be shopping in a bookstore, see a book they’d like to read, and instantly scan it to see if it’s available at their local library. Great stuff.

But wait, there’s more…
Another colleague, Scott Kehoe of NMRLS, posted about making customized versions that can search the MVLC (my library consortium), MassCat and the NOBLE consortium catalog. His post shows how he did it, links to Delicious for the customized databases, and explains how you can customize it yourself.

I think this is a great thing to promote to patrons, but they need to be careful about walking around bookstores scanning barcodes. I’ve heard many stores will throw people out if they appear to be doing “research” (recording a store’s prices or looking for country of origin). Also, about this app, one bookstore owner was quoted as saying:

If I see any lecherous internet bottomfeeders using my store as a display case for a discount website, I will politely ask them to leave.

As the world of mobile devices becomes more compatible with the world of ebooks, the next step will be to create customs searches of places like Overdrive and Project Gutenberg, so that patrons can not just locate but also download the desired book immediately. I tend to think instant gratification is not a good thing, but in this day and age, it is certainly easy to support.

For a few more library-related apps, check out Aaron’s post on Walking Paper.

Are you Andy?

I say no, and he looks a little puzzled, but then continues:

Oh. We can’t make the projector work for our meeting, and when I asked for help and the desk upstairs, they said come down here and ask for someone. I forget what name they said, but they said look for the redhead, so I just figured your name must be Andy.

And yes, he was serious, but he did apologize when I said my name is Brian.

Similarly, last year our Children’s Librarian started pulling books that she felt were good, but had misleading or unexciting covers, and had kids design their own covers. That’s a great idea, and it’s fun to take great ideas just a little bit further.

Yay for activities that involves patrons and lets them take more ownership of their library use.

via LISNews

It’s not uncommon for people to leave bookmarks in library books. But in this case, all of the bookmarks were identical - they were all business cards for a local yoga studio. Interesting. After I finished helping the patron, I went to the 613.7’s, and sure enough - all our yoga how-to books also had these business cards tucked in them.

I dislike businesses targeting patrons, and in fact it’s against our library policies, but I did think this approach was clever (although I shudder to think whose business card would end up in the 613.96’s).

It also reminded me of a library tactic I fail to use effectively: put promotional bookmarks in books. It’s a great way to drive traffic to your subscription databases, online subject guides, special programs, or general announcements, but it’s also tough to maintain.

But too, this book-based advertising could be used as a fundraiser for libraries. Local business could donate money to purchase books on a certain topic, and in exchange they’d get a label on the book saying it was donated by them. Libraries would be able to expand collections, and perhaps also charge these businesses a fee on top of that.

This last idea is of course a terrible one. But the one before that is legitimate, really. And for another interesting library/business idea, check out Brett’s idea for “Amazon Libraries.”

1. The question is unusual
2. I hardly played a role at all in answering it
3. Despite #2, the patron got an excellent answer

Here’s what happened: an email came to the reference desk from someone in the Netherlands, who is writing a book on the Allied pilots who took part in the air war over his country during WWII. In his book, he wants to focus on the lives of the men as people, instead of them as soldiers, and so is trying to track down things like what they did before the war, who their wives/girlfriends were, what growing up was like for them, etc.

Through his research in identifying and tracing the crews of planes shot down in his area, he found that one of the men was a Chelmsford resident. He sent me the man’s name and date of death, and asked us to find out whatever we could about his life before the war.

This sounded like an impossible question, especially since we don’t have the staff to research something like this. However, I forwarded it to the local genealogy club (with the patron’s permission), as they often have volunteers who are willing to work on projects like this.

Within a day, a genealogy club volunteer located an obituary for a descendant of the Chelmsford WWII flier (which mentioned the deceased WWII flier by name), and the obituary also listed the names of living relatives. The volunteer looked up the relatives in the phone book, contacted them, explained about the book the man from the Netherlands was working on, and gave them his contact information. They said they’d be delighted to provide information for him, and would contact him as soon as they organized some photos and other information.

How great is that? I hope the author has this much success in locating information on the other airmen in his book, and I’m happy that there are other organizations in town I can rely on to pick up where the library leaves off.

This is another example of the reference librarian’s motto: “you don’t have to know the answer to every question, you just have to know where to find the answers.”

Kathy Lussier Named MassLNC Project Coordinator
First, congratulations to Kathy Lussier, who was recently chosen to be Project Coordinator for the Massachusetts Open Source Project. She will begin February 1st, and I really can’t think of someone who would do a better job. Congratulations again, and I’m looking forward to Kathy moving everything forward.

Technology Librarian position available with GMLICS
Second, there is a great technology position open at GMLICS, a library consortium in southern New Hampshire. The basics details are:

• The Technology Librarian will deliver hardware and software support for the central computer system and telecommunications network, maintain the consortium’s web pages and work with librarians in the member libraries to insure a well-functioning shared system. Weekly driving to member libraries. Strong customer service attitude, excellent communications skills and the ability to juggle multiple tasks with changing priorities are required. Experience working in a consortium is desired.
• This position offers opportunities for learning and professional development.
• Salary $45,000+ and a generous benefit package.
• MLS from ALA accredited institution preferred. Will consider a candidate with equivalent training and experience.
• Applications will be accepted until January 29, 2010.

See their website for more details and a full position description [pdf].

Apps: Past or Future?
Despite not having a cell phone, I still ended up talking a lot about apps at the show. Gale has a great approach for AccessMyLibrary. Check out the Librarian in Black’s writeup, but what I liked about it is the geolocation authentication: it shows you all libraries within 10 miles, and lets you into their (Gale) database - no typing in library card numbers.

At the LibraryThing party, there was lots of talk about LT’s new Local Books app. Some people loved it, and some people didn’t (especially the Android user I talked to, who couldn’t find one for his phone). This also led to an interesting discussion on whether or not apps are even needed - one theory was that if the mobile version of your website is good enough, then you shouldn’t need a separate app. Therefore, a good app does some kind of mashup not possible on the website.

Then again, I also heard that apps are on their way out in 2010.

eBooks: Present and Future
This is an area I’ve been paying attention to, and I still learned a lot. The eBooks that Overdrive offers are in epub and pdf formats, and circulate just like their audio books. But the best part is that they work on the Sony Reader and Nook - I did not know that. Apparently they have lots of both fiction and non-fiction titles, so I’m going to explore this avenue for my library.

Gale also offers eBooks, but I forgot to ask about the format. What I did like was that they aren’t limited to one user at a time - they were more like a database, where anyone can log in, search and use them.

I also saw a demo of B&T’s new eBook software, Blio (pronounced blee-O). I kept hearing they were coming out with something great, but I thought it was a physical eBook device - it’s not, it’s just the software. But the software really was pretty great:

• will work on computers and mobile devices
• it does full-color
• videos embedded in books (so a book on the circulation system shows videos of how the body works)
• quizzes in books for review
• text-to-speech in multiple voices, so different characters have different voices
• can highlight words as it reads, or will pronounce words you click on (to help kids or ESL students learn to read)
• has full-spread view of kids picture books (so it looks the same on screen as in print, with all the pictures and text - the pages even flip as if you were holding the book)

They’re concentrating on the consumer version first - the software is free, but it sounded like books will be on the expensive end, due to the enhanced content. Whenever I asked a library-specific question, the answer I got was, “oh, we’re still working on the details of the library model.”

So, yay for a successful conference. And in this case, successful = two shirts, three books, earbuds, notebook, pencils, pins, and lots of candy.

My book group met last night to talk about Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian. A question came up that we couldn’t agree on, so I hope you can answer it for us. On the cover of the book there is a woman in an orange dress - who is she?

The patron went off to look for her book group’s new selection, and I started searching. I haven’t read this book and didn’t know what the cover looked like, but I was hoping she was asking which character the cover represented, and not who the actual model was.

After a searching for various combinations of the title, author, “cover,” “woman,” and “orange dress,” I found something rather surprising on the She Reads and Reads blog:

Have you seen these women?

The first lot of similar covers I’m featuring this week are Lives of the Saints by Nino Ricci, Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor and Verbena by Nanci Kincaid:

Working in a library, I’ve seen a lot of similar book covers, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the exact same stock photo reused before. This makes me sad, because it reinforces that it’s probably the publisher making decisions like this, rather than the author.

With that in mind, I next looked for Chris Bohjalian’s website to ask him who he felt the woman in the orange dress represented. Delightfully, he provided an answer a few days later.

I let the patron know the next time I saw her, and she was very happy - thrilled, actually, to have an answer right from the author. So yay for Web 2.0 and direct dialog.