Thursday, January 22, 2009

The Newbery Award deliberations are this week...


Shannon Hale

...and thanks to my daughter Rachel, I saw this post from Shannon Hale, author of the Honor book - not the final winner, mind you - Princess Academy.

What did the Newbery ever do for me?

(The Goose Girl was pretty amazing, too, by the way. She's got quite a series of these books in the fantasy/fairy tale/myth genre that I enjoyed this past year. And yes, we have her newest, the graphic novel Rapunzel's Revenge, available for checkout at the L.W. Nixon Library.)

--Micaela

Friday, January 16, 2009

Have a good holiday


....and catch up on your rest this weekend, like Eowyn here. The semester starts for real next Tuesday!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Libraries busy during down times, part 2

From an article in the Wall Street Journal:

"This isn't the first time library attendance has spiked in a downturn. The 1987 and 2001 recessions saw similar jumps, librarians say. But few people thought that libraries would again be in such favor after so much information flooded the Web.

One big draw: Most libraries have put in free computer and Wi-Fi service. And they've begun stocking DVDs and videogames. With the recession weighing on them, "people recognize what a great value the public library is," says Jim Rettig, president of the American Library Association in Chicago."

^

Meanwhile, we're preparing for budget reductions for FY2010 of 5% and I consider that fair, even as I know the need for resources will go up, compared with what some libraries in some states face.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The Governor's Budget


Welcome back, faculty. I attended the first few hours of the Faculty Development Day, hearing from Dr. Vietti and from Dr. Ellis, as well as other announcers during the 3 hour opening. There was, of course, lots of reference to the economy and what will happen here at Butler: less income, more students. Except, aha, more students may mean enough extra income to make up for lost income from the state. Except if the state cuts the per student support! Arrgh, what's a librarian to do?

Last night, January 12th, Governor Sebelius gave her State of the State Address. The full text can be found on the blog for Kansas Government Information, run by the librarians at the State Library of Kansas.

They've also provided links to her speech last night, but I don't see the Republican response. But they do have the Governor's budget.

The impact on the library has been some drop in the database selection. You'll note that "Theatre in Video" will be going away. After a year of purchasing this database, we found we'd only had 25 uses. I'd rather buy the DVDs and check them out. We're also dropping "Women and Social Movements". At one time, a course used it regularly, but that's changed, so we'll get past it, too.

Remember, to use the databases, you can easily get to the on the new Library tab in Pipeline. We'll be working on the website this spring to simplify access to the material on it as well. Just wish you could get to the library from the Butler homepage easily. But it's for recruitment, not use, they tell me. I use the alphabetic "L" to get there myself. You?

Friday, January 09, 2009

What I wish every college kid knew ahead of time...

Seven Huge Financial Mistakes I Made During My College Career

Posted: 04 Jan 2009 06:00 AM PST From The Simple Dollar, Trent writes:

"Over the last few weeks, I have been reflecting on how many members of my rather close extended family are either near high school graduation or are in college right now. They have so many great opportunities ahead of them in the next few years - and so many chances to botch things, too. Stephen, Brittany, Robert - these are some of the stupid things I did in college that I wound up regretting financially for years. In some ways, I’m still suffering the repercussions. Don’t do the same.
...

What did these mistakes add up to? When I left college, I had over $30,000 in student loan debt (unnecessary), two degrees (one of which I didn’t really use at all), several thousand in credit card debt (totally unnecessary), a subpar GPA (easily avoidable), and only a few good connections and friendships that lasted into post-college life (although the few I had turned out to be very good ones). In many ways, I’m still paying for those mistakes, many years after graduation.

Don’t let it happen to you."

Read it and learn...

Libraries busy during down times

The Public Library Renaissance
By Freakonomics

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Whohoo! Back from vacation, time to blog!

And here it is, the first worthy thing of note for the new year: a video trailer, but not for a movie... this one is for a book. Rachel says she's started seeing a few of them. Pretty slick, this Palimpsest. It's the newest novel from Catherynne M. Valente.

Of Course We Closed

Funny to read that last post and realize within a week we were in the process of closing, too. By March 13, Dr. Krull had it under consider...