Cataloguing Corner

So much new stuff I can't keep track of it all!

2007-02-12T23:07:59Z

After a bit of a slowdown around the holidays, new materials are just pouring in! Come in and take a look at our bulging "New" shelves.

A couple of highlights:

We won a raffle prize at a recent library conference for five hot bestseller audiobook titles. An Innocent Man by John Grisham, For One More Day by Mitch Albom, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, Cross by James Patterson, and Echo Park by Michael Connolly are now on the CD Audio shelf.

We've been doing a lot of series backfilling, and it's starting to pay off! When our February book orders arrive at the end of this week, we'll have all of the titles in Stephen Coonts and Jim DeFelice's Deep Black technothriller paperback series and James Doss' Charlie Moon Mysteries, as well as the brand-new sequels to Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends (You Suck: A Love Story) and Lalita Tademy's Cane River (Red River). We've got the last few titles in the Junie B. Jones chapter book series and the Naruto manga series coming, along with the next batch of Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo books. We should have all of the Katie Kazoo books by April, so let us know which chapter book series you want to see next!

Many, many thanks to all of the wonderful patrons who've brought in donations in recent weeks! We've been struggling to keep up with them in the cataloging office (and as I'm writing this, someone just came in with an armload of donations!) There are no words for how deeply we appreciate every single one.

Link(s) of the week: A virtual (really!) world of museums

2007-02-09T19:49:18Z

I arrived at work this morning to find, much to my delight, a box from Jefferson County Public library containing the weeded copies of two-volume The Masterpieces of the J. Paul Getty Museum which we'd requested. Thanks JeffCo folks!

These are beautiful, beautiful books. Really. Come take a look. In celebration of these and other art and design books we've added recently (ranging all over the map, from The New Yorker Book of Cat Cartoons to Seeing America: Women Photographers Between the Wars to The Complete Guide to Calligraphy) - and also in celebration of our very cool new logo - I've decided to focus next week's main floor display on art and design. And also to share some of my favorite museum links.

Of course, starting with the Getty. There's some fun stuff here. Play Flash-based logic and observation games using images of the museum's vast collection of both paintings and antiquities; download lesson plans; explore the indexed collection, including current exhibitions with audio commentary and full pan-and-zoom images of the artworks. But all in all, this site is really intended to be more an introduction to the Getty's physical holdings. Likewise, Colorado's own Denver Art Museum is really a teaser for the bricks-and-mortar museum, although the Explore Art section offers beautifully presented and intuitively organized examples of art styles from around the world.

The coolest thing about the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the Timeline of Art History. This scrolling, totally interactive timeline spans 20,000 years and nineteen special subject categories.

The Interactive Museum of News is just that. Read the front pages of any of 560 daily newspapers from 54 countries. Play the Flash current events trivia game NewsMania. View current and past online exhibitions. Read a critical analysis of today's news, and learn about this week in news history, on the news page. Find out about student journalism awards. Do more in-depth reading about free speech and journalism in America by visiting the museum's partner institutions: the Freedom Forum, the Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt, and the First Amendment Center.

The Exploratorium created the standard for interactive museums over a decade ago, and it's still one of the best. Explore the permanent online exhibits, including Stories from the Path of Totality (solar eclipses), The Accidental Scientist (science in the kitchen), From Jungle to Lab (biodiversity), and Space Weather. Take a look at at the lists of online activities, hands-on projects, and Exploratorium Snacks (quick, simple hands-on projects requiring very few materials). Watch a webcast. Find something I've missed - the Exploratorium site is huge!

Of course, don't miss the Smithsonian, with its many member institutions, including the National Air and Space Museum and the National Zoo. Want more? Check out MuseumStuff, one of the most comprehensive and user-friendly of the many museum directories online.

If you're thinking about college...

2006-11-16T20:16:13Z

... now is the time to drop by the library. The lovely folks at Jefferson County Public Library have sent us a bunch of their 2006 college-seeking handbooks. Newer editions of books we already had include:

Peterson's Two-Year Colleges and Peterson's Four-Year Colleges
Peterson's Nursing Programs
Peterson's College Money Handbook and Peterson's Scholarships, Grants, and Prizes
The Princeton Review's Complete Book of Colleges
The Fiske Guide to Colleges
The Insider's Guide to the Colleges
CollegeBoard's Scholarship Handbook and CollegeBoard's College Cost and Financial Aid Handbook

New titles to our collection include:
CollegeBoard's College Handbook and CollegeBoard's Book of Majors
Peterson's Colleges in the West
and
The Best 117 Law Schools

And if you want to take them home, the mostly-still-up-to-date 2005 titles are on the FOL shelf for $2 apiece.

A new way to do audio

2006-11-16T20:08:04Z

If you are an audiobook fan (or like the idea of audiobooks but think they're too clunky and inconvenient, and might use them if they were more like an iPod) then stop by the desk the next time you're in the library and take a look at our new Playaway electronic audiobook.

We've been hearing rumors about these neat little devices during most of 2006, and we finally got to see one in September when one of our book vendors came by to show off her demo unit. Now we have a demo unit of our own!

Playaways are smaller than a pack of cigarettes or playing cards, and run on a AAA battery (which we supply). They come with headphones and can be connected to a home or car stereo system with a basic line-in cord. They're a lot cheaper than CD audiobooks and a little cheaper than tapes, so we're seeing this as a very space-efficient, money-efficient way to get more titles on the shelf.

But! New tech is fun and exciting, and there are a lot of things about the Playaways that are great from the library's perspective. But none of that means anything unless the new service, or resource is useful to YOU, the patron. What we need to know is whether you actually like these new audiobooks, or whether you'd prefer that we stay with buying CDs. So drop by and take a look, play with it a little, and let us know what you think. It's all about your positive experience with the library!

Movies and more movies, part III

2006-11-09T19:23:38Z

Kids In Mind is just the coolest movie review site I've come across in a long time.

In a world where a lot of people are trying to tell us what's good for our kids, I always love a resource that gives me all of the information to decide for myself whether a particular thing is kid-appropriate - for my kids, by my standards. In this case, movies.

Kids In Mind rates movies on a 0-to-10 scale for sex/nudity, violence/gore, and profanity - and then discusses, in detail, every scene in the film that contributes to each of these scores. In addition, it gives each film a detailed list of substance use/abuse incidents (though not a rating); a list of discussion topics that the film might provoke, and a general "message" or moral.

What I love about it is that it's not moralistic at all. It's very much "just the facts"; there's no site rating for recommended age, or subtle equating of the ratings of the movie with its quality. By way of example, I ran two searches to get a feel for the site: Forrest Whittaker's new film The Last King of Scotland (which has LOTS of sex AND violence AND profanity and is by all accounts magnificent but definitely not for kids) and the animated Flushed Away, clearly marketed as a kids' film but loaded with opportunities for scatalogical humor. Flushed Away rates 1.3.2; The Last King of Scotland rates 7.9.6. Samples from the detailed analyses:

"A nearly unconscious man is dragged by soldiers, he is thrown to the floor, we see his badly bruised eye and bloody face from having been beaten, and a man squeezes his head between his hands while threatening him. Men are kicked and beaten and threatened by men with guns. A man hits another man, and he falls to the floor." (The Last King of Scotland, violence/gore)

"A lot of name calling and insults (stupid, dipstick, get stuffed), a couple of mild anatomical references (booty), a couple of mild profanities, one religious exclamation in French." (Flushed Away, profanity)

"A mouse has disgusting looking toenails. A mouse is covered in chocolate cake. A mouse runs into a melted chocolate bar floating in a sewer and thinks that it's feces. There are a lot of references to people going to the bathroom during the half-time period of a soccer match. One character flatulates and another burps a few times. Two mice spit in their palms and shake hands, twice." (Flushed Away, violence/gore)

"Political coups, Uganda, Africa, naiveté, bigamy, betrayal, treason, loyalty, fairness, the Libyan hijacking of a plane and the Entebbe airport raid, making a difference, human rights violations, assassination, cannibalism, paranoia, change, hope, beginning of civilization, fear, terror, hatred, weakness, omens." (The Last King of Scotland, discussion points)

Plenty of information here to make reasoned, informed decisions that will vary from family to family. And plenty of opportunities for using entertainment as a launching point for valuable family discussions about real-world issues.

Movies and more movies, part II

2006-11-09T18:55:51Z

And new stuff!

Thanks to the wonderful and much appreciated patron who donated:

Analyze This
Beaches
Finding Forrester
Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
Oklahoma!
Shrek
To Each His Own

And a fun Colorado-themed addition - The Legend of the Blake Street Bombers.

Take a movie home tonight!

Movies and more movies

2006-11-09T18:48:31Z

This week, the posts are all about movies. First, in the "new and cool" category:

We've just finished a HUGE re-cataloguing of all of our nonfiction VHS materials. There is a lot more information about each movie in the catalog than there was before; searching the catalog (from home or here at the library) for video materials by subject or keyword is meaningful now. We've weeded obsolute materials (and made a list of new things to replace them with over the next few months) and also reorganized the video wall to make it easier to find things.

On the left-hand shelf, by the FOL booksale shelf, from top to bottom, are:

-Feature film and television DVDs, shelved alphabetically by title.
-Nonfction DVDs, shelved by Dewey number.
-Television feature miniseries and television series VHS, shelved alphabetically by series title.

And on the right-hand shelf, by the water fountain, are all of the nonfiction VHS, shelved by Dewey number.

Some of the neat items I came across while re-cataloguing include:

A Glorious Accident, a seven-tape miniseries in which great thinkers in diverse fields - from physics (Freeman Dyson) to evolutionary biology (Stephen Jay Gould and Rupert Sheldrake) to philosophy (Stephen Toulmin and Daniel Dennet) to human neuropsychiatry (Oliver Sacks) talk about the meaning of the the human experience and our place in the universe.

Colfax Avenue: Main Street Colorado, a history of Colfax Avenue, Denver, and the West.

A&E's "Great Performances" presentation of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi.

The Great Pharaohs of Egypt, a four-tape set covering the history of Ancient Egypt from Imhotep to Cleopatra.

This is all stuff that we've had in our collection for a while; it's just been pretty hard to find, until now. And there's a lot more. Take a look.

Link of the week: Bill Moyers

2006-10-20T16:38:46Z

We recently recieved a purchase request for the DVD of a recent Moyers on America episode, "Capitol Crimes." Well, it's not available on DVD (yet), but you can watch it from the PBS.org website.

"It's a dizzying scope of perfidy and politics that boggles the imagination, and although Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay have been brought down, the system remains as vulnerable as ever," says Bill Moyers. "The scale of corruption still coming to light dwarfs anything since Watergate. In one sense it's the age-old tale of greed, but greed encouraged now by the way our system works. Deep in the plea agreements of Jack Abramoff and his cronies is the admission that they conspired to use campaign contributions to bribe politicians; campaign finance is at the core of the corruption. They took great pains to cover their tracks, and they might have pulled it off except for a handful of honest people, and the work of some enterprising print reporters, Senate investigators, and the ethics team at the department of justice. Following the money in this story leads through a bizarre maze of cocktail parties, golf courses, private jets, four-star restaurants, sweatshops - and the aura of chandeliered rooms frequented by the high and mighty of Washington."

The main page for the Moyers on America series is here.

What's coming up

2006-10-11T22:52:45Z

First, the news that I know a lot of you have been waiting for...

Lemony Snicket is here! The End arrived this morning, is catalogued, and is ready to go out to the lucky first requester on Friday morning. We do only have one copy, so if you haven't placed your hold yet, call or drop in and get on the list. It looks like great fun. In an unfortunate sort of way, of course.

We've recently recieved two future-release announcements that I'm very excited about. Michael Crichton releases his next, Next (yes, that's the title) on November 28th. Is that on a bit of a short notice? Yes, it is - less than two and a half months from the initial press release to the street date. There's going to be a lot of hype about this one.

Also on very short notice, Thomas Harris' long-awaited prequel to Red Dragon, Hannibal Rising will be out December 5. This exploration of the child, Hannibal Lecter, was simultaneously written as a novel and a screenplay - and it's in post-production in both media now. The film's release date is set for February 9th. It will be interesting to see whether this experiment leads to more near-simultaneous book/film releases.

Get holds placed for these titles early! We're also really excited about new Stephen King (October 24), new Nicholas Sparks (October 31), and new Tony Hillerman (November 1).

Link of the Week : oral history online

2006-10-06T22:47:59Z

As many of you know, resources for genealogical research online are becoming more sophisticated and more readily available every day. (If you haven't checked out our ProQuest free trial, hurry! It's only available until October 14!) We recently purchased Online Roots: How to Discover Your Family's History and Heritage With the Power of the Internet and we're actively building our own digital collection, including oral histories and online obituary search (coming soon).

So it was really nice to be kicking around Google's new BlogSearch function and come across this story about a woman who connected with her family history through our oral histories, in the course of doing broader research about oral histories online. And then I started looking around at the rest of her site. It's an extraordinary collection of links, stories, tips, tricks, and general reference for conducting personal history research. From reviews of digital recording devices to guidelines for interviewing to discussion about and links to large archival projects and oral histories of major historic events. Just wonderful stuff. Check it out.

Link of the week: cool science

2006-09-30T00:02:07Z

LiveScience is a little bit like Popular Science, with streaming video. Mostly a science news portal with some of its own content, gee-whiz features like Top Ten lists (from "animal senses humans don't have" to "Leonardo DaVinci's best ideas"), a great array of headlines, divided into several content areas: Animal Domain, Health Sci-Tech, Forces of Nature, Environment, Technology, Science of Fiction, History,and Strange News. Each subject area also has its own blog, featuring shorter pieces and links.

There's a video of a trip aboard the Virgin Galactic, which will eventually be the world's first tourism space-plane. An amazing image gallery of microscopic sea life from the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the southeastern U.S. And all sorts of other wierd, new, and otherwise interesting stuff.

Of course, there are a lot of ads. And a store. But it's not quite as overtly franchised as Discovery.com. Probably, a lot of the information isn't particularly immediately useful to the average person. But, if you're a person (like me) who thought that the first zero-gee surgery or the discovery of a new kangaroo species is really exciting (for five minutes) - or if you have to turn in an essay about current events in science by Monday - then it's worth taking a look.

A cool new tool for finding what you're looking for

2006-08-19T21:56:54Z

Earlier this month, one of my favorite behind-the-scenes library tools became (in a very streamlined and easy-to-use format) available to the public. Worldcat.org gives users access to the 1.3 billion-item OCLC collaborative library catalog.

What does that mean?

If you've been a university student or a library worker in the last couple of decades, you've probably used the OCLC WorldCat catalog. You've been able to access it from our website for a long time, and some patrons look up interlibrary loan requests before submitting them, to make sure that the author, title, and ISBN info are correct, and that there are libraries in the state that own the item. (Not every library is an OCLC member - we're not - but many of the biggest ILL lenders are, and it's a pretty good bet that if WorldCat shows at least one listing in Colorado, I'll be able to order the item successfully.) WorldCat is just one of a group of online databases offered as part of the FirstSearch database package that we buy, but it's probably the one that people are most familiar with. WorldCat.org offers just WorldCat, free of charge, without requiring a login, to anybody with an Internet connection.

There are pros and cons to both the old FirstSearch database login and the new open interface. FirstSearch is much more powerful; you can search for exactly what you're looking for, by author, title, date, publisher, Library of Congress catalog number, ISBN, or a host of other criteria. But it's ugly, clunky, and confusing. Worldcat.org is just a simple,single name/title/keyword search box; if you're certain of what you're looking for and just want to know where it is, Worldcat.org is much easier to use. And once you've located the item, just type in your zip code and it sorts the hits by distance. You can see that Pikes Peak Library District has the book you want, but Pueblo doesn't; so it's simplest (and fastest) to place an ILL through us. Or that Denver Public has a dozen copies, but only one available, so it would be a good idea to place a hold on the book before driving up for the weekend.

You'll still need to use the old FirstSearch login for the other FirstSearch databases we offer - ArticlesFirst, MedLine, WorldAlmanac, etc. But Worldcat.org is a fast, easy, comprehensive way to search for a variety of materials, from books to DVDs to maps, without the commerical clutter of an Amazon.com search.

Fall reads, and placing holds on books that haven't been released yet

2006-08-17T23:51:35Z

The Denver Post had a fantastic article about upcoming fall books recently - in fact, it was so intriguing that I immediately bought many of the mentioned titles. It's going to be a good season, from James Patterson and Michael Connolly to Margaret Atwood and Isabelle Allende to Cormac McCarthy and Alice McDermott.

Veteran thriller writers Delson DeMille (Wild Fire, Nov. 6); Frederick Forsyth (yes, Frederick Forsyth! The Afghan, Aug. 22) and John LeCarre (The Mission Song, Sep. 19) have new releases coming. So do critically acclaimed Isabelle Allende (Ines of My Soul, Nov. 1); Alice McDermott (After This, Sep. 5); Susannah Clarke (The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, Oct. 17); and Margaret Atwood (Moral Disorder: and Other Stories, Sep. 19). Charles Frazier's much-anticipated Thirteen Moons (Oct. 3) is his first release since the National Book Award-winning Cold Mountain almost ten years ago. And lots, lots more.

And, we JUST (I mean fifteen minutes ago!) set up pre-publication holds functionality. For the next few months, it's going to be just the most intensely anticipated titles, but we'll expand it as we go. (Right now, ~~the only~~ the first titles available for reserve are the latest in Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson's ambitious Dune series, Hunters of Dune (Aug 22); Stephen King's Lisey's Story (Oct. 24); Janet Evanovich's Motor Mouth (Oct. 1); and Lemony Snickett's The Beatrice Letters (Sep. 1) and The End (Oct. 1).)

(I've just added all of the books mentioned in this e-mail, as well as Tony Hillerman's Shape Shifter (Oct. 1); Nicholas Sparks' Dear John (Oct. 31); Dean Koontz' Brother Odd (Nov. 28); and Jed Reubenfeld's much talked about debut novel, The Interpretation of a Murder (Sep. 5).

To search for pre-publication titles, either from the electronic catalog in the library or from the catalog search here on the website, type "PRE" into the search box and click on "Call Number." That will bring up a list of all of the books that are ready for pre-publication holds. (It's not everything we have on order... but, eventually, it will be.) If you see the book you want, just ask the circ staff to place a hold for you. If not, submit a request to purchase and we'll get it in the system as quickly as we can. - updated 8/19/06)

I'm really excited about prepub holds. It's something that patrons expect from cutting-edge libraries, and it's just one more way to make it as easy as possible for you to get the books you want, when you want them.

Just one more wild adventure or summer project before back-to-school...

2006-08-15T19:36:06Z

I've not been updating this blog as regularly as I planned to; I'm going to try to change that. Look for new materials early each week, reviews and announcements for bestsellers and coming-soon items midweek, and exciting online resources toward the end of each week.

Our new books this week seem to fall into three categories. We've got adventures - Pirateology; new fantasy from Terry Goodkind, and Anne and Todd McCaffrey; C.L. Rawlins' sensuous collection of Western poetry, In Gravity State Park; Sandra Cisneros' contemporary classic Caramelo; and a wonderfully fun-looking book that I'd never heard of, The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker Buddhist Shepherd by Mary Rose O'Reilley. The new Dune prequel, Hunters of Dune, has shipped from the bookseller and should be on the shelf on its release date of August 22.

We've also got a batch of building books in, just in time for one last project during warm weather. Fences for Pasture & Garden and Watering Systems for Lawn & Garden are excellent small-project books, while Build it Right! : What to Look For in Your New Home, The Real Goods Independent Builder, and Building a Multi-Use Barn for Garage, Animals,Workshop, Studio might be just the thing to start planning a more ambitious project for next year.

And we've got How to Remember Everything: Memory Shortcuts to Help You Study Smarter in both the 6th-8th and 9th-12th grade editions. On their way from the bookseller and hopefully here within a few days are The Smart Girl's Guide to Starting Middle School and MySpace Unraveled: What It Is and How to Use It Safely. And we're rapidly backfilling a bunch of classroom-favorite children's series, including Junie B. Jones (we now have the first 16 Junie books, and will have the remaining titles in late September). Look for more series titles as book shipments arrive over the next few weeks!

Also new, from the NYT Bestseller List:

Judge and Jury by James Patterson
Sandcastles by Luanne Rice (in Large Print)
Killer Dreams by Iris Johansen
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Coronado, the new short stories collection by Dennis LeHane
Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsa Zuniga
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson

Online resources for Colorado financial information

2006-07-27T21:09:09Z

In the course of updating the vertical file, I discovered that some state fiscal documents that have been printed in the past are now available online as .pdf documents. We'll keep the 2004 editions of the Colorado Comprehensive Annual Report and the Colorado Economic Development Data Book on file, but more recent editions can be found at:

Colorado Economic Development Data Book

and

Colorado Comprehensive Annual Report. Copies of this annual report are available back to 1995.

A variety of other State Controller's Office Reports are also available.

Through the Office of Economic Development, you can also sign up for a variety of newsletters, including Inside Colorado Tourism and Colorado Business Opportunities.

New CD games!

2006-07-12T18:28:13Z

If you're bored with the selection of JumpStart and Magic School Bus CDs for the kids' computers, or if they're just a little too young for you, check this out: a donation from John Mall High School has expanded our games and educational software selection!

New titles include:

Math Blaster Algebra (middle school level)
Writing Blaster (grade 1-3)
Word Blaster (grade 4-7)
Ultimate Speed Reader (middle school to adult)
Student Writing and Research Center (middle school/high school)
Writing Tutor (middle school/high school)
GeoSafari History (middle school)
GeoSafari Geography(middle school)
JumpStart Adventures 5th Grade
Amazon Trail II (middle school)
Sim City (all ages)
Wings Saigon to Persian Gulf: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft and Aviation From 1975 to 1996 (middle school to adult)
Invention Studio (upper elementary to middle school)

You can find software on the turn-shelf with CD audiobooks, and it's for in-building use only.

Summer Reading - Week 3

2006-07-03T18:16:46Z

What makes us feel like little kids again? Carousels, circuses, parades, carnivals, amusement parks - those wonderful traditional summer fun events that may travel to us, or that we might travel to.

There are five historic wooden carousels operating in Colorado. Sunset Magazine has a very brief article listing all five:

- Elitch Gardens
- Lakeside Amusement Park
- Cheyenne Mountain Zoo
- Kit Carson County
- Pueblo City Park

Two of these carousels are in or near zoos, another beloved family tradition. And besides the permanent facilities like zoos, amusement parks, museums and libraries and neighborhood parks and playgrounds, there are almost too many seasonal festivals to count - fifty-seven in the sumer months alone. From the Colorado State Fair to local and specialized small festivals like our own Black Diamond Days and Celtic Music Festival, there's something going on almost every weekend of the year.

Of course, it's not all fun and games - or is it? Being creeped out by clowns and dark, idle amusement park rides can be part of the fun, or it can be genuinely scary. Maybe that's why so many authors, from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King to Michael Crichton, have used these festive backdrops to explore dark themes. So our suggested reading list for this week ranges from the light and fanciful to the dark and horrific:

The Bartholomew Fair Murders / Leonard Tourney PBK MYS Tou – cozy mystery
The Beet Fields: Memoirs of a Sixteenth Summer / Gary Paulsen
YAF Pau – coming of age stories, carnival workers
Buffalo Girls / Larry McMurtry
WES Mcm – fiction, Wild West shows
The Circus in Winter / Cathy Day
NEW F Day –fiction, circus workers
A Corner of the Universe / Ann Martin
YAF Mar- coming of age stories, disabilities
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness, and the Fair that Changed America / Erik Larson
AC 364.15 Lar – Chicago World’s Fair 1893, true crime
Don’t Stop the Carnival / Herman Wouk
NEW F Wou – fiction, Carnivale
Fat Tuesday / Sandra Brown
PBK F Bro – mystery, Mardi Gras
The Five People You Meet in Heaven / Mitch Albom F Alb – carnival workers, inspirational
The Funhouse / Dean Koontz
PBK F Koo – carnival workers, horror
The Heartsong of Charging Elk / James Welch
F Wel – fiction, Wild West shows
Josser: the Secret Life of a Circus Girl / Nell Stroud NEW 791.3092 Str – circus workers
Jurassic Park / Michael Crichton
F Cri – amusement parks, technothriller
The Latino Holiday Book: From Cinco de Mayo to Dia De Los Muertos, the Celebrations and Traditions / Valerie Menard
394.26 Men - festivals
Learning to Fly / Sam Keen
791.3 Kee – circus performers
Masters of Illusion: a Novel of the Connecticut Circus Fire / Mary-Ann Tirone Smith
LPF Smi – fiction, circus workers
New Orleans Mourning / Julie Smith
MYS Smi – mystery, Mardi Gras
Nothing to Lose / Alexandra Flynn
YAF Fly – coming of age stories, carnival workers
Rio Grande Fall / Rudolfo Anaya
MYS Ana – mystery, local festivals
Seduction by Design / Sandra Brown
F Bro – romance, amusement parks
Something Wicked This Way Comes / Ray Bradbury FAN Bra – carnival workers, horror
A Son of the Circus / John Irving
F Irv – fiction, circus workers
Under the Big Top: a Season with the Circus / Bruce Feiler
791.3 Fei – circus workers
Utopia: A Novel / Lincoln Child
F Chi – amusement parks, technothriller
The Way to Bright Star / Dee Brown
PBK WES Bro – fiction, Wild West shows

Summer Reading - Week 2

2006-06-26T18:00:46Z

Tunnels and bridges, skyscrapers, canals and dams, and roadways - the human impact on land can be huge, awe-inspiring, and disturbing. Throughout Colorado's history, our mountains and deserts have inspired and challenged engineers and developers - and environmentalists. Colorado is home to some of the most ambitious projects in American history... from the famous (Royal Gorge , the higest suspension bridge in the world) to the obscure (the 50+ square mile Transportation Technology Center, the largest railroad research and development site in the U.S.), from the ultrasecret (Cheyenne Mountain) to the notorious (Rocky Flats).

The Center for Land Use Interpretation has an interesting list of civil engineering projects in Colorado and elsewhere. What exactly is "civil engineering"? Wikipedia has a concise and well-written definition.

Some of the most dramatic engineering feats in the state are also some of the most popular tourist sites - the Royal Gorge bridge; the many railroads, including the recently launched Rio Grande Scenic Railroad; the mines and mining towns that fed a century of gold, silver, coal, and other industries.

Some suggestions to help you get started:

Blackout / John Nance F Nan - technothriller
Cadillac Desert / Marc Reisner 333.91 Rei - civil engineering, water rights
The Control of Nature / John McPhee 304.2 Mcp - general engineering, essays
Dead Aim / Iris Johansen F Joh / thriller, disaster
The Door Into Summer / Robert Heinlein PBK SCI Hei - time travel, revenge
Flight: My Life in Mission Control / Chris Kraft 629.4 Kra - spaceflight history, autobiography, aerospace engineering
Earth / David Brin PBK SCI Bri - near future, technological innovation
The First Men in the Moon / H. G. Wells PBK SCI Wel - classic literature, space travel
Have Spacesuit, Will Travel / Robert Heinlein PBK SCI Hei - adventure, young adult
Heechee Rendezvous / Frederick Pohl PBK SCI Poh - alien technologies, adventure
The Hunt for Zero Point / Nick Cook 629.13 Coo - military technology, research
Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology / James Chiles 363.1 Chi - disasters
Lindbergh / A. Scott Berg 629.13 Ber - biography, aerospace engineering
Moving Mars / Greg Bear SCI Bea - technological innovation
Orbit / John Nance F Nan NEW F Nan - technothriller
Our Story: 77 Hours that Tested our Friendship and our Faith / Jeff Goodall and the Quecreek Miners 622.8 Goo - mining, survival stories, inspirational
Prey / Michael Crichton F Cri and AC Cri - technothriller
A River out of Eden / John Hockenberry F Hoc / ecological debates, dam building
Road to Riches: The Great Railroad Race to Aspen / Cathy Clamp WES Cla - railroads, Western stories
Rocket Boys (audiobook) / Homer Hickam AC 629.1 Hic - autobiography, aerospace engineering
Skyhook / John Nance F Nan F Nan - technothriller
Stormbreaker / Anthony Horowitz YAF Hor Bk. 1 - technothriller, young adult
The Terrible Hours / Peter Maas 910 Maa and AC 910 Maa - survival stories, military technology, shipwrecks
They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine / Harold Evans 609.2 Eva - history of invention
Thread of the Silkworm / Iris Chang 629.1 Cha - biography, aerospace engineering

juniorcataloger @ 2006-06-16T12:21:00

2006-06-16T18:27:29Z

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MOVIE???

"Grizzly Man" was added to our collection on June 8th. On June 16th, someone opened the case to check it out and found the disc missing.

Money not spent on DVD security cases can be spent on adding more DVD's to the collection. To that end, we rely on you, our patrons, to make sure that materials you take home are properly checked out and that cased materials (DVDs, VHS movies, and audiobooks) contain all of the media when you return them.

We would like the movie back so that all of our patrons can enjoy it. No questions asked.

As always, we thank you for taking care of media materials!

Summer Reading Week 1

2006-06-14T19:26:40Z

Because one of the best parts of traveling is discovering new and wonderful food and drink, we're kicking off our travel-themed program with a cuisine theme. Read any book with a cooking, restaurant, or other food-related theme, or answer the trivia question:

What is the name of a Colorado winery in the Palisades?

You might find information to help answer this question in the Vertical File, which is located in the large black file cabinet next to the Colorado Collection. The Vertical File contains a wide variety of materials that are updated too frequently to catalog, small items, quick facts, and other useful materials. Find everything from the name and address of your local state legislator to American Diabetes Association health factsheets to FAFSA applications to tourism brochures.

To find out more about vineyards, wine tasting events, winemaking, and other related topics, take a look at the links below:

The Colorado Wine Board has an excellent collection of information, including printable maps of wineries, a historic timeline of the wine industry in Colorado, a comprehensive list of wineries, and tips and recipes for grape growing and cooking with wine.

The Colorado Winefest, from September 14 to 17 in and around Grand Junction, is The Event for wine lovers in Colorado. Find out about the event, the wineries, and the sponsors.

There's a pretty technical but interesting discussion about the quality of Colorado wines on Stephen Reiss' Aspen-based wine blog.

Are you thinking about trying your hand at making your own wine? My favorite almost-local brewing supply stores are Old West Homebrew in Colorado Springs and The Brew Hut in Aurora. Beer At Home, another Denver-area brewing store, has links to more brewers' supply stores around the state.

There's more to the Grand Juction/Palisades/Glenwood Springs area than vineyards, though. The Western Colorado Museum has a great history of Palisade. Western Style Magazine has a nice community profile on Palisade, as well as on Grand Junction and Glenwood Springs. And the Palisade Chamber of Commerce has links to vineyards, orchards, hotels, and restaurants in the area.

Finally, some reading suggestions to help you get started:

Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child / Noel Riley Fitch 641.5 Fit
Blackberry Wine / Joanne Harris F Har
The Callahan Chronicles / Spider Robinson SCI Rob
Catering to Nobody / Diane Mott Davidson MYS Dav
Dark Tort / Diane Mott Davidson MYS Dav
(and other Goldy Bear novels)
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder / Joanne Fluke MYS Flu and AC Flu
Cherry Cheesecake Murder / Joanne Fluke MYS Flu and AC Flu
(and other Hannah Swenson novels)
Chocolat / Joanne Harris F Har
Colorado: A Liquid History and Tavern Guide to the Highest State / Thomas J. Noel CC 647.95788 Noe
Don’t Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America / Morgan Spurlock 614.593 Spu
Five Quarters of the Orange / Joanne Harris F Har
French Women Don’t Get Fat / Mirielle Giuliano 613.2 Giu
Fried Chicken: An American Story / John T. Edge 641.6 Edg
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café / Fannie Flagg F Fla
The Guide to Colorado Wineries / Alta and Brad Smith CC 641.2 Smi
Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen / Julie Powell 641.5 Pow
Keeping the Moon / Sarah Dessen YAF Des
Much Depends on Dinner: the extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos, of an ordinary meal / Margaret Visser 394.1 Vis
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals / Michael Pollan NEW 394.5 Pol
Secrets of the Tsil Café / Thomas Fox Averil F Ave
Sideways / Rex Pickett LPF Pic
Six Thousand Years of Bread / Heinrich Jacob 909 Jac
The Summer of My Greek Taverna / Tom Stone 913.8 Sto
Like Water for Chocolate / Laura Esquivel F Esq and AC Esq
A Year in the World / Frances Mayes NEW 914.04 May

Are you hungry yet?

Adult Summer Reading

2006-06-13T00:10:17Z

Adult Summer Reading is here!

Reading logs will be available this Wednesday, June 14, and everyone who signs up will get a small thank-you gift. Summer reading is a great opportunity to come out and find out what's hot on the new shelf, share your favorite books and delve into a new genre, keep up-to-date on the Middle School building project and other new and exciting changes around the library, and earn free books and great travel-themed prizes.

It's simple - "travel" to ten different destinations around Colorado between now and August 19. Each week a display and suggested reading list will be available to help you get a jump-start on themed reading. I've tried to make these reading lists as inclusive a spread as possible - a little mystery, a little Western, a little sci-fi, a little Young Adult, a couple of classic works, a couple of nonfiction items.

Of course, we love for you to check out and read our books, but you definitely don't have to! Dive into your home collections, make interlibrary loan and purchase requests. Visit other libraries and tell us what great things they're doing for summer programming. And check back here - because throughout the program I'll be posting book reviews, interesting links, and clues to solve trivia questions for trivia destinations and earn extra prizes.

Join us for our first Summer Reading book chat on between 7 and 8 Wednesday, June 21. And always feel free to stop in or call any time with questions.

Lost and found

2006-06-01T21:54:53Z

A Wal-Mart gift card with a movie tie-in image was found in the library today. If it's yours, come to the circ desk and tell us what the movie is to get it back.

All the new books...

2006-05-17T21:41:28Z

According to the computer, we have added 96 new items to the collection in the past week. 96!

Some of those aren't "new" - like the Polk Directories (the wonderful phone books with the reverse-lookup tables by phone number and street addresses. Do you know who owned your house in 1964?) They have been on the shelf for a long time, but not in the catalogue. You can find them at CC 910.25 Pol.

And some of them aren't "new", but they're new to us - thank you to all of the wonderful people who have brought in donations recently! Besides local donations, we have also recieved a bunch of items for the Colorado Collection through the aLibris Donate-A-Book program, which they have been promoting really heavily in the last few weeks. Some of them include:

Coal Resources of the Trinidad Coal Field in Huerfano and Las Animas Counties, Colorado by Ross B Johnson
Biographical sketches : Colonel John M. Francisco, Hiram Vasquez, Henry Daigre by Raymond Wilson
Christmas in the Old West: A Historical Scrapbook by Sam Travers
Cycling Colorado's Mountain Passes by Kurt Magsamen
People of the Red Earth : American Indians of Colorado by Sally Crum
At the End of the Santa Fe Trail, the 19th-century pioneer memoir of Sister Blandina Segale.

But a lot of these books are new releases. Hot new bestsellers from Mary Higgins Clark, Harlan Coben, Anne Tyler, Julia Alvarez, Steve Berry, Amanda Quick, and others are here, with more new releases coming in the next few weeks as the summer reading season heats up. The best new nonfiction is also here, including:

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan
In Cold Blood : a True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences by Truman Capote (of course this is not new, but it's getting a lot of new attention since the movie)
Clemente : the Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss
Mayflower : a Story of Courage, Community and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
American theocracy : The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century by Kevin Phillips

And the book that everyone is talking about, A Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz. George Rede of the Oregonian, who wrote the original news piece for that paper, writes a touching and deeply personal review.

Terri Jentz's story of survival defies the imagination. Even more incredible than her recovery is the turn of events that saw the victim hunt down her alleged attacker. And what's downright inspiring is the upbeat approach she has taken to her mended life. When we met before her reading at Powell's, she shook my hand and, smiling, thanked me for the flowers she'd received nearly three decades earlier.

"I sent you flowers?"

"Oh, yes. You don't remember? I still have the card that came with them."

Lots and lots and lots of new stuff. Come check it out!

Magazines

2006-05-09T00:07:49Z

Occasionally, people come up to the circulation desk and ask if they can check out magazines. The answer -

Absolutely! In fact, the only way that we know a particular magazine is being read is that it has checkouts.

Our circulation system doesn't record who has checked out materials in the past; it just keeps a number tally. At the end of a subscription cycle, we take a look at those numbers and decide whether or not the magazine is popular enough to renew for another year.

If we're paying over $100 a year for People, and it never checks out, should we keep it? Most likely - it's one of a core of essential, popular periodicals. And we know, from putting magazines away at the end of the day, that it's getting read. But we don't actually know whether it's getting read once in a while, or quite a lot. With some of the more specialized magazines (Backpacker, Men's Health, Popular Photography) we just don't know at all.

The bottom line: the absolute best way to encourage us to keep your favorite magazines in stock is to check them out. Even if you just come into the library to read them, please feel free to check them out when you come in and leave them to be checked back in when you leave.

Of course, telling us is also great. We really, really love when you tell us what you'd like to see. John handles all of the magazine purchasing and is the person to talk to if something you used to enjoy has disappeared, or if you'd like to see something we don't have. Monica and I are also available for any questions about magazines or any other materials in the collection (or materials that should be in the collection).

New from Cañon City

2006-05-03T20:56:08Z

Last week, Monica, Will, Consuelo, and Geraldine headed up to Cañon City for the Southeast Area Librarians training conference. They brought back some great stuff, in a wide variety of reading levels and subject areas. Some (but not all) of the new books include:

Horses of myth by Hausman, Gerald: stories from the Sahara, the American West, Central Asia, Tahiti, and Armenia.
Casey at the bat: a gorgeous contemporary graphic-novel style rendering of E.L. Thayer's classic poem.
Beyond the great mountains : a visual poem about China : Written and illustrated by Ed Young, with lovely images and elegantly simple text.
Fritz's fish: a very sweet story of a little boy who really wants a pet, by German author Geraldine Elschner.
The Old African: a lushly illustrated version of the Julius Lester classic.
Armed gunmen, true facts, and other ridiculous nonsense: a compiled compendium of repetitive redundancies by Richard Kallan: exactly what it says.
Pumpkin : a super food for all 12 months of the year by DeeDee Stovel: just luscious.
Tab Hunter confidential : the making of a movie star by Tab Hunter: juicy and meticulously detailed memoir from the golden era of Hollywood.
My Jim : a novel by Nancy Rawles: a powerful and vivid retelling of Huckleberry Finn, from the perspective of Jim's wife Sadie.