Carnival Of The Infosciences #51

Ferris Wheel
Originally uploaded by dwfree1967.

Step right up! Welcome to the Carnival of the Infosciences #51.

At a carnival you can't escape the constant sounds of the barker calling you to win a giant teddy bear or have some funnel cake. In the spirit of marketing, 'Brary Web Diva Kelli Staley submits "Advertising Advice from 1885". The advice deals with consumer behavior and thought after seeing an ad a certain number of times. Kelli does a great job relating the advice to the library marketing of today:

According to this example, it probably takes about 15 times seeing an ad before that patron actually attends the program/visits the library/checks out that book. Ok, so how to use this to your advantage? Tell 'em, tell 'em again, and tell 'em again!

Get your message out often in lots of different ways! But always remember: no matter how hard you try, you can't win the ring toss.

One cool thing about a carnival is all interesting people hanging around. Chadwick Seagraves of InfoSciPhi sent me a great post from a few weeks ago entitled "The Idiosyncratic Artist and The Philosopher of the Future" about Max Podstolski, an outsider artist from New Zealand who also happens to be a librarian.

Max's art definitely makes one feel more human while revealing the intangible reaches of the subconscious. Librarian, artist, essayist, philosopher...breaking the librarian stereotype and enhancing it.

Great post about a fascinating librarian.

With all the flashing neon and the hall of mirrors, carnivals can be pretty psychedelic at times. So can libraries, especially if you were at the Princeton (NJ) Public Library last Friday. Janie Hermann of Library Garden sent me her post "The Wizard of Oz Meets Pink Floyd" about their library sponsored showing of the classic movie synced to Dark Side of the Moon.

Quite frankly, we are a little shocked at how many people are here on a Friday night for this event. We expected maybe 40 or 50 to show up and instead we have a full-house with people of all ages from tweens to seniors. It just goes to show that you never know what will appeal to the community you serve.

Awesome community outreach!

Janie also pointed out "Books For Teenage Girls Are A Little Too Popular" posted by Liz B. over at Pop Goes The Library. Liz uses a New York Times article about the placement of books for teen girls in bookstores as a starting point for a great discussion of YA/teen literature issues both in and out of libraries.

...I appreciate the parent who is trying to keep on top of what her child is reading, and is concerned. To this parent, I say: use me. Use my young adult colleagues. Come in, ask for me, tell me what your child is reading and what she likes and let's see what we have to make you both happy.

Thanks for the excellent submission Janie. I need to read Pop Goes The Library more often.

Sometimes you can see interesting new stuff at a carnival, like animal oddities or the world's biggest corn dog. Or a new version of your blogging software. Chris Zammarelli of Libraryola submits "Blogger Blog Baked", his review of the new Blogger Beta.

I began playing with the Blogger Beta using one of my Google accounts. Take a look at my Libraryola Blogspot page. I'm using one of the generic templates Blogger offers instead of my own. If I wanted to use my current template, I would have to turn off the fancy-schmancy layout editor that the beta test offers.

I've got too much going on right now to work on a play beta blog, but I'm looking forward to the link appearing in my dashboard.

And now, a couple of editor's choices.

Of course at the carnival you'll want to let your hair down and have some fun. But should you post the resulting pics to flickr? "Jane" at A Wandering Eyre writes about the online photo conundrum in "What Is Private? Who is looking and do I care".

I decided when I put my name on my blog that if I ever interviewed with an employer who took offense at something I said or put online and, as a result, would not hire me, I did not want to work for them anyway. I think part of this attitude comes from my young age. Maybe I am just pig headed.

This is something that I think about from time to time myself, I generally keep my more personal pics in a different flickr account from the one I link on this blog. It also made me think about my sage advice to students to keep in mind that employers are going to read your MySpace page and look at your pictures. Where should the line between work and "life" be drawn? Or should there be a line?

Speaking of carnival games, you can't beat trying to guess someone's weight or height. Or generational demographic traits. The Impromptu Librarian points out the new edition of the Mindset List, which I believe exists for the sole purpose of making me feel old. But, as the post notes,

The list is fun to read if you are (ahem) a bit older than the incoming freshmen, and really does give an insight as to why they view the world so differently.

Very true. The first person who can guess how many Presidents I've known gets a free copy of The Naked Corporation. Post paid. But you still can never win the ring toss.

I found Michael Habib's updated "Academic Library 2.0 Concept Models" through librarian.net this week. It's a very interesting look at ongoing thesis research. And Michael has one of the coolest customized Blogger blogs ever with lots of useful tags and bookmarks.

And to wrap it up, the call for proposals for the super cool Five Weeks To A Social Library online course started circulating this week. Should be a great learning opportunity for everyone involved. I'm sure there will be lots of great proposals for the course. And if for some reason yours doesn't make the cut, Steven Bell has some great advice on moving on from conference rejections at ACRLog.

Thanks to everyone who submitted posts this week! And to all the great bibliobloggers out there. I discovered a ton of great new stuff this week. And thank you for reading.

Next week the Carnival moves to Grumpator. Send submissions to anali [dot] perry at gmail.com.