Why Vampires?

Check out our awesome new SlideCast presentation on the vampire phenomenon. This is a podcast/slide show hybrid that included book, movie and game reviews, interviews and musings about WHY people like vampires so much. 16 minutes long--ignore my lisp (I don't have a lisp in real life, do I? No one's ever said so. Why should I have one in this recording?!) Chick HERE to watch and listen.

Google Gadget anyone?

I just heard about the possiblity of creating a gadget that one could embed on iGoogle that would list books out, due dates, etc.  I want this!  As an avid used of various gadgets to make my life easier and at least quasi-organized, I can see this being very iuseful.  Anyone out there know how to code gadgets?  I think it would be a great addition to the creation of the Horicon Virtual Library.

Pets at the library

Tortoises & Chinchillas in the library! Kimberly Weggeland of Hoffers Tropic Life in Milwaukee has been bringing exotic pets to the Tuesday morning storytimes. On November 11th the kids got to pet the softest fur in the world--that of Chili the Chinchilla. Chili showed us how much chinchillas love to take dust baths.

On November 25th, Kimberly brought two tortoises to storytime--one tiny baby, and the other a much larger five-year-old. The storytime kids counted the bumps on the tortoises backs (always 13!) and held the baby tortoise (you hold it like a cheeseburger!) and touched the lumpy scaly skin of the larger tortoise.

Who knows what may come next? Come to storytime and find out: Tuesdays at 10 and 11 a.m. This year's last daytime storytime will be on December 16. Evening storytimes are Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m., until the 17th. Sadly, there are no pets at the evening storytimes--but we have plenty of fun without them.

Go to our flickr account to see lots of photos of our special guests.

When Librarians Go Bad

I must admit it; I have defected to the camp of e-books. I recently purchased an Amazon Kindle. This e-book reader allows me to instantaneously download any one of about 170,000 books, which I then can read on the non-backlit totally page-like screen. I bought it so I don't have to lug around so many textbooks, because I'm taking classes right now, and because I can send any article or assignment to my Kindle and not have to murder trees to print stuff out. But I confess, I never thought I'd like the thing. I'm a big fan of the dead tree--in the book that is. While I love audiobooks, there's really nothing like the smell of paper and ink, and the feel of the paper under your hands.

But then I got the Kindle, and suddenly I don't mind the lack of paper and ink smells at all--because the thing is so lightweight, and convenient, and I can set the text to the largest font size and read in bed without wearing my glasses (which I haven't been able to do since I was 8!)

Suddenly, I'm a convert. But, hey, what about libraries? Why can't we circulate Kindle editions just like other items? Shouldn't we be able to let any Kindle owners with Horicon cards check out these cool e-books? That's up to Amazon, and so far, they're not up for it. And I feel like a lousy librarian--suddenly I'm buying books instead of checking them out! Bad librarian, bad! (Now, will the NetLibrary books work on the Kindle, hmmm? I know I can download free ManyBooks or Project Gutenberg classics...)

But what do you think? Are e-book readers like the Kindle the wave of the future? Will you miss the smell of paper and ink? Or will you be thrilled to leave the trees intact and read without your glasses on? --Shannon B.

rss feeds and calendar downloads

Hey: I want everyone to get up to the most current information on what is going on at the library. So here are two ways you can be in the know: first of all, look at the "subscribe to" in the upper right hand corner of this blog and add the rss feed to your iGoogle, Atom, Yahoo homepage and so on. If you use Google Calendar, you can also add our calendar to yours through your GCal settings.

Rock bands at the library

So, we had 3 rock bands play at the library last Thursday at our End-Of-Summer bash and I'm finally getting time to blog about it. This tardiness should not be seen as lack of interest, because the bands were great. It was so much fun having loud music blasting through the library--I only wish they had played in the library proper, rather than the upstairs meeting room, because the image of rock bands shaking the stack would be permanently etched in all our patron's heads. (In a good way, I hope.)

So--the first band up was Postmarked From January, formerly known as Rosalin. Sam Hinz of Horicon was the guy who set up the bands for the library, and he sings lead vocals and plays guitar for this band. The rest of the band is from Fond du Lac. This particular lineup had just gelled in the week previous to their performance here, but you could never tell. They were very smooth, slightly pop-ish rock something like Sum 41 or suchlike. Great band, great energy.

Next up was Because I Can from Lomira. They were fabulous, very tight and precise. Poppy riffs and a fat bass line, with screamo influences. The only nervous moment of the night was when the guitarist stood on a desk during the opening song. I was frantically waving him down and he didn't do it again. But, of course, the best video clip I captured of them was when he was up there. So, below is a clip of him looking fabulous on a desk. Man, the alderperson whose desk that is will KILL me. I'm sorry! I never considered they'd stand on a desk! Don't fire me! Anyway, I'm not really into the screamo thing, but the rest of it sounded so good, I could get used to the screaming. I know, I'm old. But even in my punk days I was not really into the scream thing. Suicidal Tendencies...Sure. Black Flag...Not So Much.

Finally, Had Me at Hello, a 100% Horicon band, played. Evidently there was some sort of interpersonal hullaballoo going on with this band earlier in the day and they nearly didn't play. Luckily for us, they ironed everything out. They were a very fun pop band. I especially loved the way their fanbase danced for them!

Hopefully we will have these and/or other bands in the future. We're all about encouraging the arts here. And frankly, rock music is one of the arts I'm particularly interested in. You?

New Political Books

Get your political junkie groove on, with these new books:

Yes We Can, a Biography of Barack Obama by Garen Thomas. This books is aimed at teens or middle-school kids.

Obama : From Promise to Power by David Mendell.

Hard Call, the Art of Great Decisions by John McCain.

Worth the Fighting for : The Education of an American Maverick, and the Heroes Who Inspired Him by John McCain.

The Revolution: a Manifesto by Ron Paul

Be an informed citizen! Check out these books and others at the library.--scb

Cooking Classes and other stuff you don't normally find at the library

Sometimes I'll tell people about my upcoming events at the library and they are shocked. Recently I was telling a friend about our teen cooking classes and she couldn't believe it. "Why on earth would a library have a cooking class?!" she wondered. It's a fair question. Lots of people still think of libraries as those hushed emporiums of the serious and scholarly. In last weeks' charades with Scooby, a 4-year-old, when posed with the dilemma of acting out "librarian" simply put her fingers to her lips as if to say "Shh." Everyone knew immediately what she was getting at (it was sad.) So what happened? Why are libraries now raucous, busy places, with cooking classes and such?

I've always said my job is to connect people with ideas. Notice how the word "Books" doesn't come into play there. Books are part of it, of course, but ideas are everywhere: books, movies, games, classes, just hanging out...so we include all of that into our standard library procedure. Looking up a recipe for tiramisu isn't the same as making it with guidance and a bunch of your friends--which do you think will be more likely to encourage a 15-year-old to cook?

Next week's 'Queen for a Day' spa program is another stumper for some people. Why paint girls' nails and do facials and their "colors"? What is the idea we're promoting anyway? Beauty comes from bottles?! I have some problems with that idea, but let's face it, makeup is fun, especially when you're 12 and just figuring all that girl stuff out. Anyway, boys are allowed too, as long as their willing to paint their fingernails and wear a tiara. Basically, I just want these teens to have fun and play and maybe learn about skin care, hair care, and even *gasp* makeup. After all, most of them are going to be using it.

Waat do you think about the library's new role? Do you agree with the makeup? The cooking? And how'd you like last night's Bubble Wonders program? Let us know. And now I've got to go make some tiramisu (yum!)--scb

Librarians and blogging and science

It seems a perfect fit--my job is to connect people with ideas, and the blog format is perfect for that. And there's so much going on at the library that I feel like I spend a quarter of my time just letting people know about it. So here we go--I'll let you know what's happening here and, sometimes, why.

The whole issue of privacy and libraries is paramount though, so I'll do my utmost to keep details vague when speaking of individuals. But what about this story?: Last year I overheard a mom say to her kid, who was holding a simple nonfiction book on science, "Not that one, it looks boring." I was surprised and saddened. Science is so incredibly cool when stripped of the dreariness imparted by the less-talented science teachers that I was stuck with for much of my school years. So I made it a priority to include more science in storytimes, summer performances, whatever.

This effort is more for the parents than the kids, by the way. The kids will hopefully get the good science teachers and know all about the insane magic that is quantum physics, or whatever scientific field they like. But the parents who are deadened to the thrill of science may find it resurrected by super-cool shows like the Chemistry Magic show we hosted last summer. Maybe then the mom will say, "Hey, how about this book on magnets, it looks fascinating" to her four -year-old. Or not.

That's the beauty of the blog, isn't it? Now you get to answer. Tell me what you think about sciencein general, science programs in particular, our library programs (scientific or otherwise), or whatever you like. You can explore the ramifications of blogging librarians or anything else. I hope you will, anyway.--SCB