I like the idea of curating tweets - be sure to follow the YALSA blog

Here's a sample from this week's blog:

Tweets of the Week – November 5, 2010
Linda W Braun | Prof. Development | Friday, November 5th, 2010

Tweets of the Week – November 5, 2010

Linda W Braun | Prof. Development | Friday, November 5th, 2010

A short list of tweets posted over the last week that librarians and the teens that they serve may find interesting:

• eschoolnews: parents more likely to purchase mobile device for child for classroom use http://tinyurl.com/2vx5olz – @wsstephens
• FCC taking on cyberbullying in schools http://reut.rs/a3lkQ4 Order linked to e-rate – @StephenBalkam
• 8 Tools Your Virtual Team Shouldn’t Live Without http://tinyurl.com/2abznod – @OPENForum
• WSJ.com – Why E-Books Aren’t Scary, according to Stephen King (unless an electromagnetic pulse deletes everything!) http://on.wsj.com/akBi7U – @jendimmick
• Does Screen Reading Count?: It should, according to this study. I’m not so sure the experience is the same, and I’… http://bit.ly/ciKmPK – @educationweek
• NPR.org » Wikipedia Teams Up With Academia http://tinyurl.com/2fa5lks – @pollyalida
• School Principals and Social Networking in Educationhttp://www.mchdata.com/PDFs/PrincipalsandSocialNetworkingReport.pdf – @libraryms
• Time to start reading & digesting latest Project Info Lit report. http://bit.ly/9Z0vqh – @sfrancoeur
• Supreme Court’s Video Game Violence Word Cloud http://bit.ly/aVOfhw – @fastcompany
• You’re the Boss: When the Tech Guy Is 13 (or Even 10) http://nyti.ms/dkpD6z – @nytimestech

If you aren't on Twitter yet for professional development, you need to be!

Night of the Living Librarians

Have fun watching: ALA Book Cart Drill Team Competition in Washington D.C., June 27th, 2010

Here are the winners of the competition which includes Mindi Maneck, our very own student teacher/librarian. The Pitt team took home "The Golden Book Cart."

Mindi explains:

We chose Saint-Saens's music, and asked Neil Gaiman permission to use parts of his audiobook from The Graveyard Book (he wrote us yes! A very exciting moment, indeed). Our graves included names from the book, and funny library names (like "Melvil Dui" and "The Card Catalog"). Jon Scieska and Mo Willems were the MCs. I was so excited when Mo Willems chose me to interview at the end (I was also out of breath, and very nervous!). He's one of my very favorite children's books authors.

If you're a Lord of the Rings fan...

and have about 16 minutes to kill you may enjoy The Lord of the Libraries, shared by librarian Phil Bradley on Twitter.

Summary of an article about ebooks: "At the Tipping Point"
from Library Journal, August 2010 Vol. 135 No. 13

This article is split into four sections. The first is called “Libraries, Ebooks, and Competition” by Eric Hellman. He compares ebooks to the internet and how it changed the balance of knowledge with the public. It is important for libraries to stay with technology to keep up with the shifting needs of the community.

The second section is called “Ebooks and the Retailization of Research” by Barbara Fisher. This section looks at the downside of ebooks. Four major points against ebooks are the inability to share books, the ability of amazon to simply make a book vanish, the ability for others to see what and how long you were looking at a book, and the lack of browsing capabilities like in a bookstore. While this could make books cheaper and easier for everyone to get, there are also a lot of problems with ebooks and ebook readers.

The third section is called “Ebook Sanity” by Jason Griffey. This section questions what exactly libraries are trying to do with ebooks. The purpose of a library is to share knowledge and in what Griffey calls a “misfit between models,” limiting the number of digital copies to fit the limitation on checkout copies is simply silly.

The fourth section is called “E-Texts for All (Even Lucy)” by Char Booth. This section is about the inaccessibility of ebooks for the blind. Originally, because Braille texts aren’t very practical, online texts were created for blind people. However, as ebooks have become increasingly commercial, they have become increasingly inaccessible to people unable to see.

Every section was interesting, but most of them brought up points that don't have answers yet, especially the section by Jason Griffey. This article focuses on how ebooks relate to libraries, but authors, publishers and literary agents are also arguing over the prices and accessibility of ebooks. Even amazon is in the fray, trying to lower ebook prices so more people will buy kindles.

Banned Book Week starts today

Thanks to Stephen's Lighthouse for showcasing this video and keeping an important idea at the forefront of our thinking.

Jeannette Walls in Winnetka

From the Bookstall website: JEANNETTE WALLS talks about her writing and the phenomenal success of her memoir The Glass Castle and her most recent bestseller, Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, the compelling story of her grandmother that became an instant classic when it was first published, in 2009. It’s new in paperback. For more information call: 847 446-8880. In addition to a luncheon, JEANNETTE WALLS will speak about and sign her books at the store at 7 pm on Tuesday, September 14, 2010.