TEEN TECH CLUB

This year the Teen Tech Club will be exploring all types of internet technology. We'll start with social networking (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr), blogging and RSS feeds in the first 3 modules. Podcasting and Vlogs, ebooks and ereaders and some productivity tools like dropbox and evernote will be explored. All of the instructional modules will be posted to this blog. Teens will need to comment on their activities and those who complete the program during this school year will receive a prize!

A formal Teen Tech Club meeting will be held at a time to be determined by the group. Other work can be done on your own time or during the afternoons at the library. Please remember to reserve the Mary Humpton room if you want to work together on a module.

Teens will also update this blog with interesting techie information. It may be based on their modules or something else. Stayed tuned!

Sometimes you don't need the library...

Awful Library Books

Cool blog with books I secretly look for at random book sales. Most of these are worth 50 cents just for the discussion they bring up at get-togethers at the house.

Library Desk Made of Books

Check this out!!! I wonder if Tina would be interested in a new desk.
"Books are reused to create this enormous piece of library furniture at TU Delft architecture bibliotheek. Because the books are stacked rather than dismantled, this desk is true to its origins as well as its function."

Here's a link with more pics

What would Levar Burton think?

This version of the reading rainbow theme slowed down really creeps me out. What do you think?

Facebook

Facebook: "ago"

National Library Week April 11-17

The NYLA Public Awareness Committee would like to remind everyone that National Library Week is April 11-17. ALA has prepared a toolkit with press releases, PSA messages, website buttons and activity suggestions. Please use this opportunity to share how "Communities Thrive @ your library." PSA messages are easy to download and it a takes just a few minutes to add local information to the press release template. Check with your local radio stations and media outlets to see how they prefer delivery.

Don't delay! Check out National Library Week suggestions on the ALA website http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/pio/natlibraryweek/nlw.cfm#promotionaltools and build awareness for all that your library has to offer.

Library Christmas Idea!

How would you like to own a miniature library? The Etsy seller Black Spot Books offers a custom necklace of antique and leather books. It's pretty neat, but darned expensive too. A nice alternative may be going to the Newfield Library and checking out some books for free to read around the fire. Take a break from the crazy holiday shopping scene.

Thanksgiving Dinner Guests

From Schmoop.com, here is a list of Top Twenty Thanksgiving Guests from Literature and History...

Food, friends, naps, and good conversation. What could be better than that? Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks with the people we love. We at Shmoop have decided to invite our best friends to our Turkey Day feast - we're grateful for them, after all.

Now, we just have to figure out who is going to sit next to whom:


Top Five Best Dinner Guest Pairings

These dinner guests will get along like - you know - peas and carrots, ice cream and pie, Aunt Nene's green jello and marshmallows (how the heck does she get those marshmallows to float, anyway?)...


1. Scout Finch and Huck Finn:
Watch a childhood crush develop as Scout and Huck share exploits, plan adventures, and show each other their slingshots. When nobody's looking, they'll steal the silverware, find treasures in the hole of a neighbor's tree, and meet up with Jim on the river.


2. Holden Caulfield and Hamlet:
These two sensitive, maladjusted young men should have enough in common to keep them talking the whole night. Both privileged? Check. Both lovesick? Check! Both despise liars and phonies? Check! Both going to tackle the world's hypocrisy head-on? Checkmate!... Whenever they can get around to it, anyway.


3. Grendel and Luna Lovegood:
Letting Grendel into the room is a fast way to kill a good dinner party, so don't seat him next to anyone faint-of-heart or vegetarian. The un-fazeable Luna Lovegood will make Grendel feel right at home by asking him all about mythical monsters and swapping tales of run-ins with humankind. And if Luna's magic wand can't keep Grendel in check, maybe her radish earrings will.


4. Porphyria's Lover and Madame DeFarge:
Porphyria's Lover is a passionate, poetic, thinky-feely kind of guy who likes long walks on the beach and staying up all night to admire the corpse of a strangled girlfriend. None of your other guests will want to get near him, so throw him in a corner and use Madame DeFarge as a buffer zone. Her attitude? Bring it!


5. Alice and The Walrus:
Who has a better resume for spending an evening with The Walrus? Alice has extensive singing-walrus experience from traveling through the Looking-Glass, and with her mind so radically opened by her adventures in Wonderland, she'll be the only guest who has any idea what "cu-cu-cachoo" means.


Top Five Worst Dinner Guest Pairings

Only the brave host would seat these duos together. If the mashed potatoes start flying, don't say that we didn't warn you...


1. Edgar Allan Poe and Ulysses S. Grant:
Nothing is more embarrassing than watching friends and family getting blitzed at a dinner party. Poe liked his absinthe and Grant was a reported alcoholic, so if you want to give your other guests a fighting chance at the wine, make sure to stick these two at opposite ends of the table.


2. Jay Gatsby and The Giver:
Letting these two get on a roll is bound to make everyone depressed. Everything was better in the good old days, they'll tell you: the men had more hopeful futures, the women were more loving - heck, even the colors were brighter!


3. J. Alfred Prufrock and Teddy Roosevelt:
Blankets don't get much wetter than J. Alfred Prufrock, so be careful not to seat him next to a carouser like Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy was so famously high-energy that when he invited a foreign ambassador to join him for a day of sports, the ambassador is said to have collapsed from exhaustion.


4. Hedda Gabler and The Misfit:
Sometimes, having too much in common can be a bad thing. Hedda Gabler is bored, manipulative housewife who breaks up relationships, destroys careers, and encourages people to commit suicide for entertainment. Similarly, The Misfit is an escaped convict who murders an entire family along the roadside because he wants to do something mean before the police catch him. The last thing these two need, aside from cutlery, is an evening picking each other's brains.


5. Emily Dickinson and Boo Radley:
The only thing worse than a conversation gone wrong is no conversation at all. These two notorious recluses might not be the liveliest guests at the table. But, who knows, maybe they would hit it off after passing soap carvings and crumpled-up poems to each other under the table.

PSA from Seinfeld

Here's a good exchange from Seinfeld on the importance of returning books to your local library. Remember, a librarian never forgets!

Top Ten Lists are Upon Us

It's mid November and you know what that means....Top Ten Lists starting showing up everywhere you look. This one is from the American Library Association.

Teens Top Ten
The top 10 results from ALA teens are in. Do your teens agree?
 Paper Towns by John Green (Penguin/Dutton)
 Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
 The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)
 City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare (Simon & Schuster/Margaret K. McElderry)
 Identical by Ellen Hopkins (Simon & Schuster/Margaret K. McElderry)
 The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
 Wake by Lisa McMann (Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse)
 Untamed by P.C. and Kristin Cast (St. Martin’s Griffin )
 The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (Disney-Hyperion)
 Graceling by Kristin Cashore (Harcourt/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
[from yalsa-bk]

Flat Stanley

Growing up in Niagara Falls, NY, my parents owned a summer cottage on Lake Erie 45 minutes over the border in Ontario. There were tons of things to do outside on beautiful summer weekends. Lawn jarts (illegal in the U.S.), volleyball, horse shoes etc...but sometimes it rained. And when it did, we'd be stuck inside with only puzzles and books to occupy our time. I was too nervous to read Jaws, what with the water only a football field away, so instead I became obsessed with Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley is an odd children's book about a boy who has a poster fall and flatten him. From there he goes on a series of adventures. The book was an integral part of my childhood.

Imagine my surprise when I started seeing little cardboard Flat Stanley's popping up all over the internet and the world. The book must resonate with others as well, because the Flat Stanley Project is in full swing.

http://www.flatstanleyproject.com/

There, you can find cutouts of the scamp along with the likes of Barack Obama, Clay Aiken and even the Blue Man Group. It's a fun grassroots thing built out of a simple children's book. Next time you take a vacation, make sure to pack a Flat Stanley with you.

Vote and Eat Baked Goods

Don't forget the Annual Election Day Bake Sale is today, November 3rd. Stop in the library for a goodie on your way to the polls. At the last one, I got the most wonderful Finnish bread.

Book Sale Thoughts

As the massive Ithaca Friends of the Library book sale enters its final glorious weekend, I'd like to remind readers that the Newfield Public Library does its own book sale in our historic basement twice a year. It gets bigger every extravegenza but we're still waiting for our first overnight campers tenting out for first dibs on the delectable page turners. Kudo's to the wonderful Karin Eisenberg for putting these together. We hope to see you at the next one in early 2010!

Where the Wild Things Are

This book meant so much to me as a child growing up. It helped me let my imagination run wild. As excited as I am to see the film, be sure to remember the book is always better and popcorn is much cheaper popped in your microwave. Head on to the library and see what the fuss is about. Here's an article about the story:


This article originally appeared in SLJ's Extra Helping.
By Kent Turner -- School Library Journal, 10/15/2009

Filmmaker Spike Jonze takes the delicate story line of Maurice Sendak’s picture book Where the Wild Things Are (Harper & Row, 1963) and keeps it simple, never losing focus of the lonely and angry Max (Max Records), the boy at the center of this classic tale. But while the id-loaded book focused on the power of the imagination, among other things, the film centers more on the friendship between Max and the unruly Wild Things.

Max first appears like a feral animal, in his ubiquitous wolf costume (it looks exactly like it does in the book), running around on all fours, roughhousing with his dog. Scolded by his mother for biting her, among other out-of-control infractions, he runs out of the house, jumps into a sailboat, sails across an ocean, and discovers an island. There, crouching in the wooded darkness, he spies on a family of six giant creatures, including the two-horned, nine-foot-tall Carol (James Gandolfini) ripping to shreds his wooden hut. He’s an immediate kindred spirit who matches Max mood swing for mood swing, and the beasts allow the boy into their circle, only if he promises he can keep out the sadness. They thereby appoint him King of the Wild Things.

Jonze and his coadaptor, novelist Dave Eggers, have added personalities to the lumbering, snotty-nosed beasts (all voiced by name actors)—one is sarcastic and suspicious, another timid and overlooked. Although the lair of Wild Things less resembles Sendak’s jungle settings and more a desolate lunarscape, the creatures—created by the puppetry of the Jim Henson Creature Workshop—all could have sprung to life from the pages.

Jonze and Eggers stretch the story to an inch of its life and do away with conflict for most of the film, until the creatures realize that Max isn’t really the magic king he said he would be. The film’s sentimentality, especially when Max leaves the Wild Things to return home, is arguably the film’s biggest departure from the book’s straightforward, fast-paced narrative.

Without a smirk, the film stands out from the many pop-culture-laden, wisecracking studio franchises. Most likely for baby boomers, it will conjure both memories of the book as well as the ’70s kids show H.R. Pufnstuf—though for the digital age.

Reading Vs. Reputation

Here's an uplifting story from NPR about a boy in Arkansas in the 50's who developed a unique relationship with his local librarian...

The Future of Audio Books

With the release of seminal Australian musician/author Nick Cave's new book, The Death of Bunny Munro, we've seen the format of the audio book pushed to new levels. It features the author reading the book itself, with a full soundtrack in the background. There's a full 3-D listening experience, with real world sound effects bringing the narrative to life. It comes with videos of the author reading from the novel as well. There's even an Iphone App for the audio book! It's a groundbreaking experiment meant to be listened to with headphones to truly pull the words out of the pages and into your surroundings.

Did you know the Newfield Public Library offers tons and tons of audio books for download? You can rent an mp3 player from the library or download from the comfort of your living room. As someone with a long commute to work, audio books and pod casts have saved my life. Try it out...you'll love it.

Banned Book Week

From the ALA's website:

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections. Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society.


So come on down to the Newfield Public Library and celebrate our First Amendment rights by reading some of these formerly taboo page-turners.

Swine Flu Resources

Littletree Orchards is in full swing, everywhere you look the leaves are changing to fiery reds, oranges and yellows...Autumn has made its way into Newfield. Along with it, there are more and more cases of the dreaded swine flu popping up around the county. Here are is a link from the New York State Library Education Department with some resources to battle the pandemic:

http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/libdev/h1n1/resource.pdf

Welcome

Welcome to Newfield Public Library's new blog. This site will work in conjuction with our main page to keep our patrons abreast of all sorts of happenings in our library, New York State, and book-related ephemera. We've included links to other libraries in the Finger Lakes region and a library link of the day on the right side of the page as well. Thanks for checking us out!