Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

I’m very excited to announce that the American Library Association has issued the official press release announcing the publication of the latest set of ten volumes in my book series, The Tech Set #11-20. This is the series of cutting-edge technology books that started in 2010 with The Tech Set #1-10, which won the 2011 Greenwood Publishing Group Award for the Best Book in Library Literature. Once again, we had an amazing group of authors writing on the hottest tech topics relevant to libraries today. These are the newest ten books in the series, check them all out here on the Neal-Schuman page!!

• 11. Cloud Computing for Libraries
• 12. Building Mobile Library Applications
• 13. Location-Aware Services and QR Codes for Libraries
• 14. Drupal in Libraries
• 15. Strategic Planning for Social Media in Libraries
• 16. Next-Gen Library Resdesign
• 17. Screencasting for Libraries
• 18. User Experience (UX) Design for Libraries
• 19. IM and SMS Reference Services for Libraries
• 20. Semantic Web Technologies and Social Searching for Librarians

The folks at Educause have put together a new “7 Things” guide, this time describing 7 Things You Should Know About™ the Evolution of the Textbook. As usual, the quick reference resource answers the following questions:

1. What is it?
2. How does it work?
3. Who’s doing it?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

Chris Perez at Apartment Therapy suggests a new spin on an old idea and provides a quick guide for how to Reinvent the Book Club: How To Host Your Own Audiobook Gathering. Libraries might consider this type of audiobook event for their young adults and children’s audiences as well as adults!

1. Pick a Book
2. Broadcast your Media
3. Organize and Schedule
4. Set the Spread
5. Tune-in and Manage
6. Have a conversation

Buffy Hamilton at the Unquiet Librarian writes about Book Tasting in the Library. This great article discusses an immersive activity that she organizes at her library which encourages students to select five books on a particular topic and evaluate them.

“Susan and I have worked together in past years to develop a collection of book sets (fiction and nonfiction) on issues related to countries and/or regions in Africa including the HIV epidemic, ethnic wars and genocide, famine, environmental issues, women’s rights, apartheid, and children soldiers. We’ve expanded the offerings for this fall to include other contemporary titles related to these issues in other regions of the world as well as immigrant rights, poverty, human trafficking, and privacy issues in a post 9/11 world. We placed the books on carts that were ready for students when they arrived in the library today…”

Image: Horla Varlan

Audrey Watters writes an interesting piece for MindShift about How Social Networks Might Change the Way We Read Books.

“…critics will point out that the social aspect create distractions from reading. But we can also argue that the social element can add depth to the understanding of what’s being read, just as book clubs do. Peers can help define words and concepts that are sometimes hard to grasp when reading alone.”

Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers has put together a great list of 5 Free Tools for Creating Book Trailer Videos. Each entry in the list includes a brief review with feature highlights. Here are the tools discussed:

1. Animoto
2. Stupeflix
3. Shwup
4. Flixtime
5. Masher

Liz Dwyer at GOOD asks Are College Libraries About to Become Bookless? In a time of e-books and ubiquitous computing, what lies ahead for libraries? This is quite a though-provoking piece.

“The number of colleges using electronic textbooks available to students is on the rise. But what about the rest of the books on campus—the millions of volumes stored in the library? It turns out the digital text revolution is beginning to turn college libraries into places that no longer stock physical books.

As Time reports, the engineering libraries at Kansas State University, Stanford and the University of Texas are almost completely book-free. And now at Drexel University in Philadelphia, the new Library Learning Terrace, a 3,000 square foot residence hall-based space that opened in June, there are no books at all.”

Jason Boog at GalleyCat rounds up the Top 20 Facebook Apps for Book Lovers. This comprehensive list will help you pick books, find book clubs, take quizzes, and swap books. Here are the top five:

1. Goodreads
2. Visual Bookshelf
3. weRead
4. aNobii Books App
5. I’m Reading

I am thrilled and honored to share that “The Tech Set” book series has been named the winner of the ALA’s 2011 Greenwood Publishing Group Award for the Best Book in Library Literature!!! Congrats to all the incredibly talented authors and the wonderful folks at Neal-Schuman. This was an amazing project to be a part of!!!

If you’re researching which e-book reader is right for you, you’ll want to check out Justin The Librarian VS e-Book Readers. Justin Hoenke rates and reviews four popular e-book devices detailing which features he enjoyed and which he disliked as well as providing further comments.

via LibrarianinBlack

Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers reviews BlogBooker, an application which will Turn Your Blog to a PDF Book. This brief posts provides a feature summary of the application and short screenshot tutorial for how to export your Blogger or WordPress blogs as XML files for use with BlogBooker.

The folks at Technology to Software have put together a helpful list of 25+ Useful Free E-books Every Blogger Should Read. If you’re a blogger, you’ll want to check out the entries here.

Jason Fitzpatrick at Lifehacker reviews the Five Best Book Recommendation Services. Each list entry includes a review of the website features, cost, and a screenshot. I rely on Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This…” service as well as LibraryThing. What’s your favorite?

Yogesh Mankani at Save Delete rounds up the Top 10 Best And Free E-Book Reader Apps For Your iPhone. If you’re an iPhone owner, you won’t want to miss this list.

My friend Pauline Rothstein has just published a new book titled Boomers and Beyond: Reconsidering the Role of Libraries with Diantha Dow Schull. The book is “A roadmap to the trends and perspectives on the library’s role in meeting the needs of our aging population”, with perspectives from contributors such as Stephen Abram and R. David Lankes. Congrats Pauline!

via Stephen’s Lighthouse