The Civil Librarian

The 2010/2011 Annual Report

2012-01-06T10:07:00.001-08:00

Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library, where I'm lucky to serve as the City Librarian, released our FY 10/11 Annual Report yesterday. It's a beautiful promotional piece that gives an overview of many of the most exciting things that happened at SSJCPL last fiscal year.

I'm especially pleased to have incorporated the use of QR codes in the report so that the reader can very easily access video content about the Library on their mobile device while they read the articles in the report. My hope is that, by embedding in the print report links that take the viewer instantly to our videos, the stories we're telling in the report will be that much more powerful.

Besides sharing our Annual Report, I want to take this opportunity to mention how none of the wonderful things described in our report could have been achieved if not for the truly wonderful and dedicated SSJCPL staff who serve customers throughout San Joaquin County. Thanks as well to the Library & Literacy Foundation for San Joaquin County as well as all of the Friends of the Library groups that work so hard to support the Library!

CPD23 Thing #3 - My Personal Brand

2011-07-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering what CPD23 means, just follow the link!

Today, we're thinking about our personal brand. Do I even have a personal brand? This isn't something about which I've given a great deal of thought. True, the tagline for my blog reads, "Libraries, Management, and Technology" so I guess, in retrospect, this was my brand statement when I started my blog. Those three topics are still certainly my primary topics of discussion on this blog, so I'm glad for the consistency.

However, those three words aren't truly a brand in and of themselves. The Mashable article Personal Branding 101 illustrates that a personal brand is more than just your interests or how you perceive yourself. That's only one half of the equation. Literally only half of the equation. In the article, the following equation is shown to represent your personal brand:

Your self-impression = How people perceive you

if the two sides of the equation are equal. So, in order to know if you've discovered your true personal brand, you have to have a good understanding of yourself, a good understanding of how others perceive you and have a good bit of overlap between the two.

That second half can be a lot more difficult to discover than the first. One way to figure out how others see you is through the vanity search. I have a pretty common name. When I google 'Chris Freeman', I don't find anything that refers to me until the 26th hit. I'm not an architect, a realtor, neither of the bad musicians on MySpace, an actor, attorney, nor dentist. And I'm certainly not the founder of the Science and Technology Policy Research Center at the University of Sussex.

But, if I google 'Chris Freeman librarian', which is a reasonable guess at how others might try to find me on the web, the entire first page of hits point at me. If you try this search, the first things you'll find are:

This blog
My LinkedIn profile
My Twitter profile
My Mendely profile (a hybrid social networking and scholarly document sharing site that I haven't used in a couple of years)
My Blogger profile

So, it looks like anyone searching for me is going to find information about me that projects a largely professional image. On the entire first page of links, only my Twitter profile would give any kind of peek at all into who I am on a more personal note. I'm OK with that. I use both Facebook and Twitter for professional and for personal interactions. For me, I think this is a good thing because I'm careful not to say anything to embarrass myself in either of those networks; however, someone who wanted to know more about me personally would see that I have a friendly personality and that I do have other interests beyond work.

In further trying to guess at how others might see my brand, I can look at the statistics for readership of this blog. Aside from the home page, my four most popular posts all have to do with technology (either eBook use or QR code implementations):

Knowing which of my posts are most popular likely tells me two things. First, those topics on which others see me as being credible and, second, topics for further writing on my part if I want to enhance the chances that I'll draw in readers.

Still, I'm really only guessing if I accept at face value that my G cred tells the whole story about how others perceive me. As Jo Alcock says in the post for Thing #3, it requires a bit of bravery to actually ask others to tell you their impressions. The question Jo asks specifically is: what does my blog say to you about my personal brand? I'm game: if anyone wants to answer that question, it would be fun to hear back from you.

CPD23 Thing #2

2011-07-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

I'm just a tad behind as I post my thoughts on Thing #2 of the 23 Things for Professional Development program in which I'm taking part. Most folks are on Thing #3 but I'm confident I can catch up! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm participating in this program simply as a means of getting myself motivated to write on a regular basis once more. I've participated (and even helped plan and implement) a 23 Things program before so much of the content won't be new to me. However, I think the framework of the program will keep me focused and, coming back to some of the same topics a couple of years later ought to provide a different perspective compared to how I was viewing things back then.

Thing #2 asked that participants read blog posts by some other participants, leave some comments on their posts, and then come back here to write a little about what I read. The Delicious page set up to list all of the participants was helpful in that I could quickly pick and choose those blogs I wanted to visit. Because I work in public libraries in the US, that was where I placed my focus when reading other blogs. However, this program is definitely international with lots of participants in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia (not to mention some non-English speaking countries).

Reading a little about librarianship in other countries proved interesting. At Laura's Dark Archive (it's not nearly as spooky as it sounds...), I learned that librarians in the UK who are in the process of earning their degrees have a requirement from CILIP (the UK equivalent of the ALA) that they participate in reflective writing. I love this idea! I have found that the simple act of writing about an experience not only helps to ingrain what I've learned from the experience but also reveals thoughts and feelings about the experience about which I was unaware I even had until I wrote them down.

It would be nice to see more of this kind of requirement in American library school work as a supplement to the more common research and reading synthesis type of assignments that are typical of these programs. Besides, if students are required to write reflectively on a regular basis, they may be more likely to maintain this practice as they move into their professional careers. This development could only be a benefit to all of us and our library users!

Another blog I found while undertaking this exercise was Bethany Grabow - Enthusiastic Librarian. Her site is more than just a blog; it's her online portfolio which I thought was well done. This kind of online presence, which can be easily found by potential employers, makes a job candidate more competitive, I believe. Before I've ever met the candidate, I can see that they are technologically savvy, I have the opportunity to see a little of what the person is like aside from their "candidate" persona, and I can even get a sense of how well the person communicates using the written word (which is a skill that is really, really important if one hopes to succeed professionally).

Going Mobile

2011-06-25T10:24:00.001-07:00

Blogger recently added mobile templates to its range of features. I activated the mobile template for my blog this morning. After taking a peek, I'd say that Blogger did a very nice job of putting together a clean and very mobile friendly version of my blog. You can check it out for yourself by scanning the QR:

I guess now that means I just need to actually start writing again....I admit to have allowed other priorities push me away from reflecting on my professional activities. This is a failure on my part that has been nagging at me more and more as time goes by.

In search of a kickstarter to get my writing back on a more regular schedule, I'm going to participate in a new version of Helene Blowers' now famous 23 Things. This latest version is called 23 Things for Professional Development. Take a look; even if you've already run through this program, a refresher might be fun. I know I'm looking forward to it as a great way to refresh myself in terms of my desire to put a greater focus on personal reflection of my professional activities.

The Library as a Publishing House?

2011-06-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

SSJCPL is going to subscribe to OverDrive beginning in July. If you are reading my blog, I probably don't have to explain to you what OverDrive is, right? Public services staff at SSJCPL have been telling me about our customers' desire for eBooks since I arrived here and it's exciting to be on the cusp of launching a service that I know is popular with library customers elsewhere.

The obvious need to provide eBooks and downloadable audio is not all that an OverDrive subscription offers, though. One of the features of the OverDrive subscription about which I'm quite excited is the "storage space" OverDrive provides the Library for providing whatever content we'd like to upload.

I think one exciting and unexpected use of this would be to solicit local writers to "publish" their works here. Whether we're making available eBook versions of the contest entries we get from teens at our poetry contests, the work of a local aspiring author, or even the writings from amateur historians about our region of the state, all of these would be of interest to others. It's super easy to convert word processor documents to PDFs and it's almost as easy to convert PDFs to the ePub format. Since ePub works on all major eReaders, this would be an easy way for local writers to get their work to potentially a good sized local audience!

Another thought I've had for making good use of the storage space we'll have available is to let local bands use our site as a method for allowing their fans to download their recordings. Sure, libraries aren't traditionally in the music distribution business but we do lend music on CD and connecting with local musicians in this way is another good step toward the evolution of public libraries not just as book depositories but as centers of creative community interaction. Can you think of any other innovative uses?

Google's Ngram

2011-01-30T14:55:00.000-08:00

Interested in tracing the historical usage of a given word or phrase? Maybe you'd like to compare the usage of two synonyms over time? How about visualizing historical technological developments? Google's Ngram Viewer lets you do exactly these kinds of things by searching for your terms in within the pages of "10% of all books ever published" (i.e. the books Google has scanned). You can even specify the date range of your search.

I don't know that this new application from Google will ever have any particular relevance to libraries but it is fun to play with. Here's a graph showing the use of the phrase "public library" over the past several centuries. How about that trend starting around 1980?

Testing RockMelt

2010-11-20T08:34:00.000-08:00

I received an invite (thanks, Matt!) to try out a new browser called RockMelt. Built on Chromium, the open source browser on which Google Chrome is built, the RockMelt browser tries to find a niche in the market through a focus on social media integration. If you're comfortable in doing so, Facebook and Twitter accounts can be managed entirely (and quite comfortably) from within the browser regardless of the actual site you're actually visiting at any given time.

The social media integration does seem to work really well; as I'm writing this, I just shared a quick back and forth via Twitter with a friend without ever leaving the page I'm on. RockMelt manages the integration of Facebook and Twitter using something their developers call "edges". It's an appropriate name as icons (with counters displaying unread updates in close to real time) sit on the right "edge" of the browser. If you click on the icon, a pop-up list showing your Twitter or FB stream appears (this can be "torn off" and moved anywhere in your browser you'd like) from which you can have conversations with friends.

The right "edge" also includes an icon that will identify for you all of the active RSS feeds on the page you're visiting, giving you the choice to subscribe to the feeds right there. This is a cool feature but it isn't working perfectly for me at this early stage; the browser is identifying the feeds for some pages I visit but not others (this could, also, be an issue with the individual sites, I suppose). When it does work, though, it works well. A feed subscription pop-up just like that with the social media "edges" lets me read feeds without navigating from the site I'm visiting.

The "edge" on the left side of the browser includes more social media integration. In the upper left is your own FB profile pic. Click on it and you can post directly to FB or twitter here. Also, as default setting (I haven't begun to explore what kind of customization exists), this edge shows your FB friends along with their availability for chat using the same colored dots that FB employs.

One more social media feature is the "Share" button at the top of the browser. It's pretty nifty. If I want to share the page I'm looking at, I can do so either via FB or Twitter. Furthermore, I can do so as a public post or via those platforms' direct messaging features. I can also include a comment if I'd like and can even include a thumbnail a la FB.

Oh, and it's a browser, too. I almost forgot. The search functionality works well from the search box at the upper left. After entering your search terms, you again have the opportunity to view the results in a pop-up menu without leaving the page you're on. From the results list, you can either navigate directly to the link you'd like or you can easily open a link in a new tab, if you prefer.

I found it took me a few days of getting used to Chrome so I'll forgo judgment on RockMelt but at first glance, it seems promising. If you want to read a bit more, check out the New York Times' RockMelt user manual or a nice summary from Practical eCommerce.

Emily Lloyd's The Social Physical Library

2010-10-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

This morning, I came across this little gem in my feed reader:

The Social Physical Library by Emily Lloyd of Shelf-Check fame. Emily writes:

What if (in addition to these events) there were neat, social, community-building opportunities for patrons to engage inwhenever they happened to step foot in the library? That didn't require planning on the library's part, or remembering on the patrons' part? That were targeted to their own individual interests? That fostered connections between them and their neighbors? That made stopping by the library just to see what's up in the building worthwhile, as opposed to only using the digital branch? That helped people to learn and to better use our resources and our spaces?

She describes a big screen display in the lobby of the library where users could post statuses (stati?) about what they're doing at the library in case anyone else is interested and wants to join in. I'm not sure what social network would make this work best (maybe just the Library's FB fan page?) but I really like the idea. Don't forget to read the whole post at the link above!

Show Us Your Library Card!

2010-09-22T08:18:00.000-07:00

Just in case you didn't know, September is Library Card Sign-up month. Public libraries across the country are promoting the value of a library card to everyone in their community. The American Library Association has published a great list of 52 Ways to Use Your Library Card and there is a fun Flickr group where library geeks around the world can post photos of their library cards!

Here are the cards I use:

SPIT Take Two

2010-09-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

This morning, SSJCPL's Strategic Plan Implementation Team (SPIT for short) came together for their second planning session. Using PLA's Implementing for Results text as a guide, the group started in on the exercises laid out in chapter one of that book.

If you take a few moments to view the meeting notes that have been posted to the SPIT wiki, you'll see that it was an interesting session to say the least. When I first read through the notes, I admit to being just a little surprised at what can be perceived as negativity. When I asked a couple folks from the team about this, they reminded me that the questions under discussion were designed to evoke potential negative reactions to the strategic planning and implementation process. Whew!

However, while I felt a little relieved upon hearing this, that doesn't change the fact that many of the feelings included in the comments aren't still floating around out there in our branches and other departments. I found today's comments very useful not just in the context of our planning process but also as a reminder that, when I feel like I'm doing everything I can to be inclusive of staff concerns in my work, I really need to try twice as hard.

This really isn't surprising. In every organization where I've worked, the first complaint that "the front line" has with management is "poor communication". What is the answer to this all to common problem? I sure don't know, myself. What have you seen in your organization as a particularly effective means of communication between management and staff?

ICMA Public Library Initiative

2010-09-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

How many of us in library land are aware of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and its Public Library Initiative? I have to admit that I was not. ICMA's view of public libraries is that, in addition to circulating books, we:

"provide communities with Internet connectivity, career services, immigration assistance, economic development, teen services, childhood literacy, public safety, and other important services."

Nice! So often do librarians complain that their parent governments not understand the scope of services that we provide in our communities that it is refreshing to see an organization dedicated to local government recognizing the broad range of services we actually provide on a daily basis! Furthermore, ICMA states that a strong relationship between the Library and government administrators is key to maximizing the potential of public libraries. I'm not sure how I missed this wonderful and unexpected perspective but I have to say I'm thrilled.

The Public Libraries Initiative site has some nice features. There is a bibliography (on the Public Library Initiative homepage) that serves as a public library advocacy clearinghouse with links to many of the recent reports and articles that highlight the various ways in which public libraries are assets to the local community. (As an aside, it's amusing to see how many different newspaper articles feature virtually the same image of a person at the end of a shelf range browsing the collection!)

By visiting the sites "Libraries" topic page, you can find even more information. You can network with other librarians and public managers interested in the need for fostering strong relationships between both groups, ask questions and respond to those of others, and read a series of white papers on topics including strategic planning, libraries and e-government, libraries and broadband, and libraries' role in workforce development.

The SPIT

2010-08-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

Exciting stuff is happening at Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library! One of the things I’m most excited about is the formation of our Strategic Plan Implementation Team (yes, I failed to recognize the obvious acronym this title creates but, trust me, it was brought to my attention)! Thus, the SPIT, a really great group of staff, are going to develop a plan of action to implement our strategic plan.

As commonly happens with strategic plans, SSJCPL spent a good amount of time and effort to create a strategic plan and, when the Director who led the planning process left the organization, then just stuck the plan on the shelf. The reasons for this happening at SSJCPL are in no way an indictment of the existing staff, all of whom are eager to have a thoughtful document that can aid in our decision-making and resource allocation dilemmas.

More than anything, the plan was abandoned for two reasons. First, the departure of the previous Director left the Library without a day-to-day operations manager for several months and, more importantly, the plan is seen by staff as a product of an administration that did not have the best interest of staff at heart. Thus, for many, the plan, such as it is, lacked credibility in the eyes of many staff members.

As I contemplated how best to bring some focus and direction to our Library, this lack of credibility in our strategic plan is something I recognized and understood. Part of me leaned toward starting at the beginning and preparing a new plan altogether. I feared, though, that to do so would cause many in the organization to develop a “here we go again” mindset about the process. With that in mind, I decided the best route would be to use the existing plan but to make certain that its implementation was developed and executed entirely by the staff themselves.

Using that approach, we are lucky because our finished strategic plan really isn’t finished at all, comparatively speaking. What we have, essentially, are three goals that were selected from those presented as possibilities in the Planning for Results book. So, while we have a skeleton of a plan, the staff really will have the opportunity to flesh out what we have and to make it our own. This, I hope, will allow for the majority of staff to believe in and take pride in our plan once it is complete.

The SPIT has had our first meeting, what I called our pre-kickoff meeting. Why did I call it this? Because I only wanted our first meeting to be an opportunity for the assembled group to have the chance to brainstorm what we all hope to achieve with this plan, what obstacles we’re likely to encounter along the way, and what we all envision success relative to this project to look like. It was a very fun and revealing discussion!

And even though the work group, for purposes of efficiency, only numbers eight people, I feel very strongly that all staff need to feel welcome to participate in the project. To that end, I created a wiki where notes from each and every meeting will be posted immediately following each meeting. Staff across the county can then visit the wiki, see exactly what we talked about, what decisions were made, and then provide their own feedback directly on the wiki.

If you're at all interested in our progress (whether a member of the SSJCPL team or otherwise) please visit the wiki and review the notes from the pre-kickoff meeting (the link is on the left side of the page). If you do so, you'll see two things I heard loud and clear at the meeting. First, staff are very proud of their organization and really, really want to provide quality library service to our communities and, second, that, as happy and enthusiastic a bunch of folks that they are, there still exists a good amount of residue from the last Director. Here's to reestablishing SSJCPL as one of California's premier public libraries!

P.S. I apologize for the ads on the wiki but it is a free site, after all!

Practical Open Source Applications for Libraries

2010-08-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

I came across this excellent presentation by Nicole Engard in my feed reader and wanted to pass it along. Nicole has put together a really comprehensive collection of OS programs here. Several of which, I will have to examine more closely as I can see a lot of potential utility in my own work.

Practical Open Source Software for Libraries (part 2)

Some of the programs that look especially interesting to me are the project management, reference statistics tracking, and web development software. If you wand a little background about open source libraries in general, take a look at Nicole's "Part 1" of this presentation:

Practical Open Source Software for Libraries (part 1)

View more presentations from Nicole C. Engard.

The 7 Links Challenge

2010-07-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

Today, I was supposed to post my Day 4 for the fifth round of Library Day in the Life. However, I was out of the office both yesterday and today so that would be a fairly uninteresting post. Instead, I'm going to take the 7 Links Challenge issued by Darren Rowse at Problogger a couple of weeks back. Here goes:

1. Your first post: I started my blog with a post that explained my thought process concerning how I actually arrived at the blog's name. What's So Civil About Librarianship? I hadn't read this in quite a while and it's fun to see where my mind was at two and a half years ago. From the standpoint of my thinking in this post, not a lot has changed for me.

2. A post you enjoyed writing the most: While I was at PLA 2008 in Minneapolis, I attended a couple of sessions back to back that really resonated with me. Afterward, I went right back to my hotel room and banged out a post titled Libraries DO Build Communities. I suppose part of what attracted me to taking the 7 Links Challenge was the opportunity to revisit my thoughts from a while back. This post is a great reminder to me that I am not fully implementing at SSJCPL something for which I have a strong belief. Time to re-prioritize a little...

3. A post which had a great discussion: Generally, there isn't a lot of commenting going on related to my blog posts but, in digging back into my earlier writings at The Civil Librarian, I came across a post, The "Customer" IS Always Right!, that I'd forgotten about that seems very relevant to what is happening in my professional life right now: the difference between for-profit businesses and public institutions in terms of desired outcomes. This debate has generated a great deal of debate in San Joaquin County of late (for obvious reasons to anyone who pays attention to my FB and Twitter presences). If you aren't aware of what's happening in San Joaquin County relevant to his issue, you can read my Media Round-up.

4. A post on someone else's blog that you wished you'd written: Hmm. I read a lot of great stuff but nothing jumped out at me so I spent some time browsing through some of the most well-known library-related blogs (and read a lot of new, interesting things while I was at it). The piece that had the biggest impact on me was The Usable Library as linked to at Jessamyn West's always useful librarian.net. I don't even know if you can call The Usable Library a blog post. It's more just a website with a few very salient but easy to forget concepts about making your library as usable as possible to our customers. I'm definitely going to print out the awesome poster and stick it on my the wall of my office on Monday!

5. A post with a title that you are proud of: Where Personal Meets Professional: A Public Management Framework was written at a time where I was feeling particularly reflective about my work. Written not even a year ago, I feel pretty well removed after re-reading it. In fact, it is interesting to me that this post is the kind of thing I need to be actively thinking about even more in my current position.

6. A post that you wish more people had read: I don't really know how many people actually read 12 Seconds Book Reviews! but, as I browse through my past writings, I enjoyed the idea behind this brief post. I still love the idea of a library using 12 Seconds as a tool to tweet out more interesting news concerning what we have available for our customers. SSJCPL is just now really embracing social media as a means of engaging our customers; I think I'll have to talk to Heather and Rena about adding this to our repertoire. And maybe I'll bring back the beard, too ;)

7. Your most-visited post ever: Aside from hits directly to www.civillibrarian.com, Put the Book In Their Hands (however we can) has received far and away the most hits of any post on my blog. This was a result of the post being featured in an issue of American Libraries Direct several weeks back. The interesting thing to me was that I had no idea the post would be included in AL Direct and I still don't know who read it and decided to include it. Regardless, I think the ideas I proposed in the post are viable for public libraries. In fact, in working at the circulation desk earlier this week, I tried to put the notion into play; I had a teenager who needed either Brave New World or Jane Eyre that day (has that ever happened in a library before?).We had neither title on the shelf and the customer didn't think his mom would drive him down the road to the nearest branch where the titles were available. Both of these titles are available for free online and I saw that the customer was holding a phone so I suggested this route to him but, alas, it wasn't a web-accessible phone. As the ubiquity of smartphones grows, though, I'm going to keep this idea in mind.

More in the Life of a Librarian - Day 3, Round 5

2010-07-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

Wednesday was a story of extremes for me. Lots of frustration (small level stuff but frustrating nonetheless) and lots of excitement and gratitude. I'll skip all the email, phone, meeting stuff because that is pretty well documented elsewhere and something all of us do in our work anyway.

My frustration started with something that ought to have been very simple. As I mentioned in a previous post, I've agreed to take on webmaster responsibilities for SSJCPL and, to that end, I had an FTP client installed on my computer on Monday. Yesterday morning provided my first opportunity to update some information on our site (a local educational organization asked to be listed on the page that details the various community services in the region). Easy right? I opened the client and quickly found the appropriate document that I needed to edit. I downloaded it and opened it in notepad, made the necessary edits, viewed the document in a browser window to make sure everything looked right, and then hit the upload button. And hit the upload button again. And again. And...well, you get the picture. I just kept getting error messages. Either "client is locked by another user" or "HTTP/1.1 501 not implemented".

I talked to IT who directed me to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article concerning this error message and followed the suggested troubleshooting steps. No luck. I saw another IT guy walk past my office and flagged him down. He couldn't figure it out, either. So, after what felt like having wasted a bunch of time, I just gave up for the time being. Have to get this fixed soon, though!

That was the frustration. The excitement came later in the day when I headed over to LDA Partners (a great architectural firm) for a first meeting to discuss interior layout for a new branch library! SSJCPL has not opened a new library in a long time (I'm guessing 15 years) so this is really exciting. This new branch specifically will be built by the City of Lathrop just south of Stockton but we will continue to manage the library operations there (just as we do in the current Lathrop branch located in a tiny storefront facility). I and the supervising librarian that manages all of our County branches met with the LDA folks and had a really great conversation. They seem very willing to listen to our suggestions and very willing address our concerns.

The new branch is, at this very early stage of the game, scheduled to open sometime in the Fall of 2011. It should be a great facility for that community as the library will actually be inside a larger building that includes a teen recreation center and a computer lab (that I think the library will manage). All of this will be built in a new park that will have a skatepark, open space, and maybe an ampitheatre of some sort when all phases of development are complete.

The gratitude I mentioned earlier stemmed from my final appointment of the day: the monthly Stockton Friends of the Library meeting. This is just a fabulous group of library supporters; they are very productive in their fundraising, they are very generous in their appropriations to the library (how often does someone say, "I'll just write you a check for $30,000 right now, if you want"?) and they simply have a good time in their meetings, too. What's not to love, right?

More in the Life of a Librarian - Day 2, Round 5

2010-07-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

Day 2, Round 5 was a little less hectic than my Day 1. I start work most days at 7:30am so it's pretty quiet around here and I began by winnowing out the in-box (both the virtual and physical ones) as I continue to catch up after a little time away. Just having a little coffee and oatmeal, prioritizing with whom I need to correspond, and scanning the feed reader and Tweetdeck is a good way to rev up for the day.

My first meeting yesterday was "Admin Council" as we call it. It works like this, the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library was, until last year, a department of the City of Stockton. After the previous director left, however, the Library was rolled into a new Community Services department along with Recreation, Golf, the Arts Commission and Art in Public Places. So, in addition to serving as the City Librarian, I'm also Deputy Director of the Community Services department. The Admin Council meeting is the coming together of the folks who manage each of the aforementioned programs. It's interesting to me because I get to learn some about what goes on in the provision of City services with which I've never been involved before.

As soon as that meeting ended, I hustled over to the main Library's Reference/Circ group meeting that had already started. I love sitting in with these functional group meetings to hear what their day-to-day issues are. Plus, someone usually brings some tasty baked goods. Amy let me down yesterday but Amin brought some homemade samosas that were pretty awesome!

I next occupied myself with an assignment that had come out of the Admin Council meeting. Stockton has a new City Manager who came on three weeks ago and has, apparently, asked for overviews of everyone's current projects. I sat down to fire off a three minute email to my boss with the Library info and ended up writing a couple thousand words, I think! At least I've got plenty going on. I did, though, hear someone yesterday mention "putting something on the backburner". My initial thought was that I don't think I have any backburners; everything seems to be bubbling up on high heat right now (in a fun and exciting way, mind you!).

Another good chunk of time yesterday was spent between email and face-to-face conversations with one of our great IT folks, Bret, and one of the Library's superstars, Susan. We're basically working through two issues right now that are proving just a little sticky. Our very recent implementation of telephone notifications has a few bugs to work out and we're significantly changing how we handle fine and fees and the associated account blocking process.

Also, this Library, like many, has a large amount of uncollected debt (disclaimer: anyone who works in a public library knows that these large numbers aren't "real" but mostly represent the value of replacing materials that were never returned 1o, 15, 20 years ago). And, while another project going on right now between myself and the City's Finance, Auditor's, and IT departments is the development of a process for determining what debt is uncollectible so that it may be removed from the books, the other piece of that larger puzzle is improving the way we collect current fines and fees.

Working with Bret and Susan (because they're the ones with the technical know-how), I've decided to implement a fine and fee policy that, at first blush, sounds more conservative than one which I would normally endorse. We're going to try blocking any customer account that carries a fine or fee older than 30 days. Bret and Susan have determined that our ILS can do this by running a couple of reports back to back. My belief is that this will greatly increase the amount of fine and fee payments we receive though I'm absolutely going to monitor the effect this policy might have on overall circulation; I can imagine a scenario, driven by basic economic theory, that results in the "higher cost" of the Library leading to a decline in usage. Like any new policy or procedure, it's just something that will merit evaluation after a period of time. We have, also, just implemented the capacity for our users to pay fines and fees using debit and credit cards so we are doing our best to make paying fines as easy as possible.

I spent the last chunk of my day yesterday working at the main library's circulation desk. I was just passing by and noticed a long line of customers. I'm not quite proficient with Sirsi yet but I jumped in and, before long, felt like I had most of the common processes down well enough. This was a great reminder for me about why I started working in libraries in the first place. Working face-to-face with the customers is a blast and yesterday was no exception (even the part where the two circulation veterans working with me kept laughing at my ineptitude...). It's gratifying to see how often new customers walk through the door for their first library card and how many people just love borrowing from us what we have to offer. Circ desk duty is definitely something I need to do more of; no better way to understand the effects of policy changes than to witness first hand what happens at the point of service!

More in the Life of a Librarian - Day 1, Round 5

2010-07-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

Great to be back in the "Library Day in the Life" game! The way this event has taken off is testament to the innovative thinking of Bobbi Newman (aka Librarian by Day). I'm sure at least some of the intent of the idea back when Bobbi conceived of it was to demonstrate the diversity of work that librarianship and LDIF has certainly delivered.

Quickly, before I regale the reader with my own exciting events of yesterday's day in my library life, if you are new to this program, head over to Twitter and search for the hashtag #libday5. Instant streams of library-work snippets to last all day long.

Well, I am the City Librarian for the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library and yesterday was my first day back after a week away from the office. Clearly, then, a good part of my day was spent digging out from a week's worth of accumulated e-mail. OK, almost a week's worth (I'm a compulsive e-mail reader even when not at work so I had maintained some modicum of up-to-dateness even while away). After the email purge, I checked my phone messages and made some follow-up calls regarding a worker's comp issue and a collection agency issue.

Next up, I reviewed this year's e-rate disbursement and did a little research to see what kind of restrictions I have on how that money can be spent (I've never dealt directly with e-rate before). Looks like the restrictions are very few and SSJCPL just might be joining up with the Link + lending group here in California and Nevada. Adding 9 million titles to what our users already

have available sure would be nice!

Another part of my job is preparing staff reports for the City Council concerning actions I want to take in the library with significant fiscal impacts. My first four months on the job were pretty much consumed by budget preparation but now that we're into July, I'm getting ready to undertake all kinds of projects. To that end, yesterday I began drafting four different staff reports. I suppose I'm feeling a little ambitious but my goal is that, come twelve months from now:

SSJCPL will have brand new, reliable, and flexible self-checks (in sufficient numbers) at all locations
we'll be borrowing through Link +
we'll be very well on our way to completing an ILS migration (I'm looking at Evergreen - just want to see what version 2.0 looks like come October), and, lastly
we'll be full bore into an RFID conversion.

I also proofed a draft of our annual report that our wonderful publicist Heather is putting together. Here are a couple shots at what she's working on:

Later in the day, our Tech Services guru Susan and I met with a couple of folks from the City's IT department to work through some issues surrounding our newly launched telephone notification service. We also talked about some the same things library folks everywhere are talking about: how to redistribute staff responsibilities in light of new budget constraints. SSJCPL is unlucky in that we don't have 100% dedicated, in-house IT folks but we are very lucky in that those IT people who are assigned to the Library do fabulous work and are as excited about improving services as I am.

On both IT and "redistribution of staff responsibilities" fronts, the last thing I did yesterday was install an FTP client on my computer. Yep; because our IT staff honestly is swamped, I somehow found myself volunteering to serve as the Library's webmaster in addition to being the City Librarian. It ought to be interesting juggling everything going on here but I've done web work before so at least I don't have to learn anything new (except HTML 5...)!

Media Round-up

2010-07-15T16:16:00.000-07:00

Many people both in my area and out of it have recently become aware of the fact that my employer, the City of Stockton, and as well as San Joaquin County (the two agencies representing the lion's share of revenue that funds operations at the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library) have issued a joint RFP soliciting proposals for the possible outsourcing of the management of SSJCPL.

Simply to provide a brief one-stop collection about some of what has appeared in the local and national press about this issue, I provide the following links:

From today's Library Journal.
From yesterday's American Libraries
From Tuesday's Tracy Press
From Monday's KCRA news
From the 6/27 edition of the Manteca Bulletin
From the 7/16 edition of the Tracy Press
From the 7/18 edition of the Stockton Record New!

If you have an opinion about this issue, I'd love to hear!

The Future is Finally Here!

2010-07-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, I do understand that the title of this post doesn't immediately make sense. What I'm referring to is the excitement I'm feeling about the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library, where I'm lucky enough to serve as the City Librarian. I've been on the job now for four months and, in that very brief period of time, the Library has gone through some changes that have proven fairly traumatic for many of us here.

Stockton, like most cities, is experiencing serious fiscal challenges. How has this affected the Library? We've had to close a branch that had served its community for a century. That's traumatic. We thought we were going to have to close another branch, the busiest in the entire system, but we avoided that calamity (thanks to the City Council and a great many very vocal library lovers) at the last minute. That caused untold stress among staff and the community. We lost staff due to lay-offs. Not nearly as many as we originally anticipated but the loss of even one person is tragic. Lay-offs affect everyone; not just those who actually lose their jobs. All of this adds up to a lot of stress for a team of employees who have lived in stress and uncertainty for several years due to uncertain management techniques (from a now-departed Director) and the negative press that naturally accompanies that.

The combined effects of a staff that had come to feel some measure of distrust (and are only now beginning to relax after a year of competent management) and a severe budget crunch that has reduced hours at our branches by a third over the past two years has fairly stymied any forward momentum. SSJCPL has simply not been able to effectively assess what we do, how we do it, and how we might reorient our services to most effectively provide meaningful services to our communities.

The great news is that this is all about to change. The budget cycle is behind us and the Library is gearing up to undertake a lot of exciting activities and projects that will result in greater focus on what we do and greater efficiency in how we do it.

First and foremost, we will, very shortly, embark on the development of an plan for implementing our recently completed strategic plan. Library staff did a great job of creating a plan that reflects an understanding of our communities' library needs; now we'll translate our recognition of those needs into actionable steps. Ours won't be a strategic plan that collects dust!

Another milestone event for SSJCPL coming over the horizon is a complete website redesign. Our current online presence is serviceable but nothing more. Along with the process of redesigning our website so that it is more useful to our "virtual branch" visitors, SSJCPL is also making great strides in integrating the use of social media as a way for engaging with fans of the Library even while they aren't inside our buildings. (Hint: check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube!)

Three more tremendously exciting changes at SSJCPL are a result of the staff reorganization that we undertook at the start of our brand new fiscal year. First, we now have a dedicated Youth Services Coordinator that will work toward developing consistently excellent system-wide services to two of our most important demographics: emerging and teen readers. Second, I'm thrilled that we now have a library trainer! Any public library that intends to embrace the mantra of continual improvement must start with staff. How can any library expect to improve its services if it doesn't make an investment in providing opportunities for staff to continually learn and evolve? Third, as of July 1, 11 of our 12 library locations are now open every single Saturday!

SSJCPL is also undergoing less transformational changes this year that, nonetheless, will have an extremely positive effect on the way we do business. With all of our hard-working staff serving ever more library visitors, we will deploy in the coming months self-check machines that are truly functional: reliable and providing the same range of activities that a library user can conduct in a face to face transaction. One of the most important of these transactions is the ability to pay for fines and fees using a credit or debit card. Another new service we will be rolling out (beginning in just a week or so at our first two locations) will be the ability for our customers to use credit and debit cards at our circulation desks.

From a slightly longer term perspective, SSJPCL is actively investigating the potential benefits (both operationally and fiscally) of migrating to an open source ILS (the software we use to manage collection and customer records) and converting from traditional barcode inventory management technology to radio frequency identification (RFID). The former would not sacrifice functionality but could save SSJCPL tens of thousands of dollars each and every year. The latter transforms check-out and check-in processes (not to mention regular collection inventory activities), greatly enhancing the speed and ease of customer transactions whether at the circulation desk or at our self-checks.

Overall, this is a very exciting time to be at SSJCPL. The staff who work here are extraordinarily dedicated to serving the communities in this region; being on the cusp of so much positive change along with them is a great privilege for me!

SSJCPL On the Cutting Edge

2010-06-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

Well, certainly on the cutting edge in 1994! Take a look at the promotional video some creative library folks at SSJCPL put together 16 years ago in order to get out the word about the services the Library has to offer. The video is a hoot for many reasons. SSJCPL has long been considered a great library and, from today's perspective, those services that were great back then seem just a little quaint today. Also, many of the people in this video are still working hard to provide outstanding service to the community today; seeing them in their 1994 persona is fun!

Each clip takes a few seconds to start so be patient:

And part two:

The thing is, while these videos provide some good laughs, the spirit that led folks at SSJCPL to create a video promoting their services (presumably for local access cable?) 16 years ago, when such ideas weren't in wide practice across the library community, tells you something about this Library. I'm lucky to be the newest member of a group that has a long tradition of innovation and dedication to customer service!

Today, we've joined all of the contemporary versions of communication that parallel the 1994 incarnation of 2.whatever. You can follow SSJCPL on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (we're on Yelp, too) by looking for our username: SSJCPL on all channels!

100 Years and Counting!

2010-06-16T15:12:00.000-07:00

In just a little under two hours, a celebration will begin in Stockton's Martin Luther King, Jr. Plaza to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the partnership between the City of Stockton and San Joaquin County allowing for unified public library services throughout our region. I have the honor of saying a few words on this occasion about the past and the future of our library. Here are my prepared comments for those of you who just wish you could be present but cant...:

What has been the legacy of the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library over the past 100 years? For as long as the libraries throughout this county have been serving our visitors, our libraries have served as a snapshot of our communities. Whether it’s the Troke Library or Ripon, the Thornton Library or Chavez, the people who walk through our doors on a daily basis, to the tune of more than a million visitors each year, come for reasons that are their own.

Some come to the library for a sense of community. They come to meet with others and to enjoy the variety of opportunities present at the library to learn, to pass the time, and to enjoy the community experience.

Some come to the library to satisfy the human need for a good story. We are a place of stories. The library is the place that children have come for more than a century in this country to develop and share a love of reading with their friends and family.

Some come to the library to because of what we have to offer to those who can’t afford luxuries such as books or movies or access to the Internet. They come because libraries are the one place in the community where we all are equals, where we all can share with equality the offerings of our collections.

The future of the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library, I believe, will not be so dramatically different than the Library that has been so beloved by the residents of this community for the past century. Whether you want your library to be a meeting place or a reading place, we will satisfy your need.

Without a doubt, the container may change but the content remains. While our children will grow up to bring their children to story time, they may also grow to think of the library as the place they can freely download all of their reading needs, fiction or fact, right on to the cell phone they go nowhere without.

While the method of interaction may change, the meeting will remain. Our children will continue to know the library as a physical location where they can attend cultural and community building events but they will also know us as a presence online where they can interact with one another through the technologies that develop allowing robust interactions across distances.

My vision of the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library is one in which the residents of this county feel, to a person, that they cannot live without their library and that the people working for the library do everything we can on a daily basis to engender that love of libraries in our community.

The CL Newsletter Edition

2010-06-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

Today's installment of the The Civil Librarian will be in newsletter format! Just a few quick blurbs about some things of interest going on in my world.

The Civil Librarian in AL Direct!

First, a piece I posted on my blog on May 19, "Put the Book in Their Hands (however we can)" was included in that same day's issue of AL Direct, the American Library Association's electronic newsletter. That's pretty cool! It is funny, though, because on May 20, I noticed way more traffic to my blog than I'd ever had before but I wasn't able to figure out where it was coming from because the showing up in my analytics package pointed back to some encrypted page. I just stumbled across my name in AL Direct last night while surfing around.

After writing that post, in which I suggested that libraries ought to familiarize ourselves more fully with the e-reader capability of smartphones as well as with the vast "collection" of freely available ebook titles on the web, I did some more thinking on the subject. I'm convinced that this approach would be an enhancement to the services we already provide our users but this isn't something that we can just pile on top of everything we already do.

In order to make the concept of library staff as purveyors of free, online ebooks in addition to the physical titles we own in our collections, staff need training. And we need to implement service models that encourage absolutely as many customers as possible to do for themselves in the library what they can (using self-check stations that allow for every possible transaction to be carried out there). This is important because the kind of service I'm envisioning down the road relative to face to face "reference" transactions are those that are more complex, take more time, and require a greater degree of technological facility on the part of staff than we currently expect.

For the reasons I've just outlined, I'm excited that, due to some restructuring at Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library (forced upon us by fiscal crises), our library will have a dedicated staff trainer come July! I think this is an example of some really good news coming out of difficult situations. SSJCPL is under tremendous stress right now due to all the budgetary concerns but we're going to come out of this positioned to provide even better service than we already do while, at the same time, demonstrating our commitment to the ongoing education of the staff. And, we'll also be implementing self-check stations across the county (and in sufficient numbers) that allow for the scope of transactions required to free up staff for those more complex and meaningful interactions with customers.

Possible SSJCPL Privatization?

This morning's Manteca Bulletin details the ongoing issue of potential privatization of our library. It's very encourage to see a councilmember described as "having no stomach for privatization"; here's to hoping that other influential folks feel the same. The other noteworthy part of the article is the expressed interest on the part of the Manteca government in reviving the regional library advisory board. Manteca isn't the first body to suggest this lately and I concur that such accountability and transparency on the part of the Library could only be a positive for our system as we move forward.

Google Forms!

Yes, I know that Google Forms are not new. But, admittedly, they're new to me. I have not played around much with Google Docs in general but, last weekend, as I was putting together an HTML form to collect statistics from all the branch libraries in the system, I stumbled across Google Forms. My challenge (as a non-expert in web development) was how to dump the data I collected in a form into a spreadsheet that would allow for easy use later on. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Google Forms does exactly that in about as easy a manner as imaginable!

Take a look:

Just in case you have data collection needs and aren't aware of Google Forms, this program lets you very, very easily create a form with any number of different input types (radio button, check box, likert scale, free text, etc.) that, when completed by a user, dumps that data directly into a Google Docs spreadsheet. If you want, it's very easy then to export that data into Excel but the Google spreadsheet does plenty on its own, too.

SSJCPL has not done the best job of collecting statistics in the past and, clearly, a well-conceived and consistent approach to data collection can provide a great deal of valuable decision-making information. I'm excited by this small enhancement to our administrative processes as well as by the improvements to our library that this will bring!

Beyond Our Gates Forum

2010-05-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

Today I had the great opportunity serve as a panelist at a forum talking about arts and culture in the San Joaquin Valley. Stockton's University of the Pacific has hosted a series of Beyond Our Gates fora each of which presented a panel of speakers on a given topic. UoP is interested in hosting these conversations as a method of investigating new ways that the University can develop productive partnerships in the region and, thus far, has gathered a wealth of information.

I shared the stage today with folks from the Stockton Symphony, the Stockton Arts Commission, the Cultural Heritage Council of San Joaquin County, the local public television station, The San Joaquin Film Society, the Haggin Museum, and the Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Lodi. What a wealth of information was shared with the audience concerning our perspectives on the strengths of the region's art and culture assets as well as our thoughts on how we could partner with UoP to further develop the arts in our region.

Here are my comments from today's session:

"Nurturing the arts and culture begins with providing avenues for the enjoyment of the arts. One has to experience artistic pieces, regardless of media, in order to develop an appreciation for how such works can add value to our lives. With that in mind, residents of the San Joaquin County region have available to them a wealth of quality institutions toward that end. Symphony and museums, ballet and film, even opera, not to mention the venues right here at Pacific, the Conservatory of Music, Reynolds Gallery, and Long Theatre all combine to afford a wealth of opportunities to develop and deepen a love of fine and applied arts for the residents of our community.

Of course, it should be no surprise, among the list of culture-building organizations in San Joaquin County that I would mention, there is the region’s own public library system: the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library. Not only do libraries provide the most accessible venue for enjoying the art form that is the written word, libraries also provide an extraordinarily low cost method for parents to introduce their children to the world of art through books that depict the world’s greatest visual arts, CD’s of the worlds greatest music, and video of the world’s finest theater, cinema, musical, and dance pieces.

Through events that take place at the Library every day, children beginning in their infancy are introduced to skills and concepts that provide a meaningful foundation for both educational success and lifelong cultural appreciation. Learning about the concepts of books and reading, developing an ear for rhythm and a sense of physical movement coordinated to the sounds they hear, and an introduction to the art of handcrafting “art” of their own all provide children the mental toolbox to appreciate art as they grow.

Studies have indicated that the importance of an art-filled life is, without doubt, not only important to a sophisticated elite. People from all walks of life have been shown to rate highly having accessible an array of opportunities to both enjoy the work of artists and to create works of art on their own. This might mean viewing an organized exhibit of art or attending a concert. This also might mean having the resources available to instruct citizens in how to create their own art. Again, the public library fills both roles mentioned here very well.

Because this panel is comprised of a wealth of representatives from the region’s cultural institutions, I’ll limit my comments concerning how Pacific can partner with the region to build on our collective cultural strengths to possibilities for Pacific’s partnerships with the public library. One such example of which I’m sure the level of interest in the community would be high is that of a lecture series in local library branches presented by UoP faculty from a variety of disciplines concerning a topic of timely interest. For example, the issue of environmental disaster as approached through the lenses of experts in the fields of biology, economics and literature or film might be addressed. Certainly this kind of event already takes place on the campus at universities in many cities, but reaching out into arenas in which many of our community feel more comfortable may enable us to include an entirely new audience for our discussions.

Certainly, our library spaces can provide similar venues for the talented students of music and of the visual arts to introduce to those in our community who don’t frequent the Pacific campus to both the vast talent represented by these students and to the students themselves, thereby allowing the youngest in our community to meet “real artists” and to understand that anyone is capable of becoming an artist themselves."

Put the Book In Their Hands (however we can)

2010-05-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

I still find myself amazed sometimes about how much our lives have been affected by the Internet and the various ways to interact with the Internet that people have developed. This morning, I read the introduction to a novel I'm going to read and came across the mention of an old horror story I'd never heard of, "The Wendigo", by Algernon Blackwood.

(As an aside, I suppose that I, as a fan of horror, ought to have known about this story since my research shows that it is considered a masterpiece of the genre. I guess I have some catching up to do!)

My amazement was engendered by the fact that within minutes of first encountering the title of this story, I'd downloaded to my iPhone a complete version of the story completely for free using the Kindle for iPhone app. I'm still in my pajamas on a Saturday morning; that I can so quickly and easily acquire a story I want to read really is amazing considering what my options would have been even 15 years ago.

And there are some, I'm sure, who would question the pleasure of reading a story on an iPhone; I might have until last week when I read a good chunk of The Call of the Wild for Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library's Big Read. My first foray into reading on the iPhone changed that impression! The readability is great, even in bed with the lights off. The manipulation of the "text" is intuitive and simple. I think that this is very valid approach to reading.

So, is this just evidence from a librarian of the impending doom of libraries, then? I'd argue against that conclusion. If libraries focus on service provision rather than content delivery as a means for adapting to a very rapidly shifting environment, we can take advantage of the ease and comfort of reading a book on a smartphone to provide better service to our customers.

I'm certainly not suggesting or predicting that the delivery of physical books and other materials won't be a primary focus for libraries for many years to come. I believe that we'll be in this business for a long time yet. However, I know how disappointing it is for me to work with a customer who is looking for something to read only to find that we don't have what they're looking for. It's disappointing for the customer, too. And it still isn't very uncommon for less-than-frequent library users to turn down an offer of having an item sent from another branch even with the promise of obtaining the item in two or three days. It won't take many of these "no gratification" experiences before a potential lifelong library visitor discounts us as useless.

My thought is that, if staff can be trained to be comfortable and adept at the ins and outs of finding and downloading free reading material on smartphones, we have just increased the likelihood that we can have a successful experience with our customers. This, in turn, enhances the value of the library as resource for the community. Think about it, so many people already have smartphones and all research points to a near future when handheld, web-enabled mobile devices will be ubiquitous. I'm talking very near future! And there is a lot of great, free (and much for .99 cents or so) reading material available on the Internet. If we are able to include these resources among those we offer on the spot to our customers (the one's with smartphones, anyway), the chances are much greater that they'll keep coming back to us. Because the process of downloading an e-reader app and then something to read takes all of a minute or two, this seems a very viable concept. It's just incumbent on librarians to get this knowledge into the hands of the folks providing the front-line service.

And it's clear, too, that libraries need to plan seriously for providing the devices for e-reading, as well. This is certainly already happening but we're very early in our steps in this direction. It really makes sense though. Think of "the classics" that students everywhere have to read each and every year. Imagine how many copies of each of these a library will purchase over the years! I recently heard Jason Griffey suggest the idea of downloading a few hundred of these titles (almost every one is public domain and freely available!) on inexpensive e-readers. Circulate these devices instead of hoping a title is available on the shelf and save a lot of money over the long term.

I'm really only catching up myself in this arena. I certainly need to think a lot more about this, though, because both the reality of how people will want to access information and the long-term financial stability of public libraries are changing.

Just a Bit of "What I'm Reading"

2010-05-04T07:56:00.001-07:00

Probably the one aspect of being an executive in a public library that I looked forward to most yet the one I've failed thus far in making time for is a simple advocacy for reading. In my personal life, I just love reading and, as the City Librarian, it seems natural that I would be one of the most visible advocates for reading in the region where I work. I've allowed the more administrative responsibilities of my position to take up too much of my time, so I just wanted to write some about a few good books I've read recently that I think others would enjoy!

Revenge of the Witch (geared toward readers in elementary and middle school), Foundling (teen lit), and Her Fearful Symmetry (aimed at older readers) are all books I've enjoyed a great deal and all, in one way or another, feature themes of the fantastical and horror; two of my favorites! By the way, I'd have preferred to link the titles above to the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library catalog but, since Sirsi Symphony seems to not support the creation of persistent URL's (at least without inordinate trouble), I'm not able to. One more reason to look at open source...

For librarians who do reader's advisory work with younger readers, both The Last Apprentice and Foundling are great choices. Neither has yet really found a large audience so the chances are that your readers may not have already read these and they are both part of larger series (The Last Apprentice and Foundling or Monster Blood Tattoo respectively). So, for readers who discover these and find that they like them, there is a lot more to follow!

Revenge of the Witch is actually something I'm reading right now (and haven't yet finished!) so I'm probably not even supposed to recommend it yet. However, I'm really enjoying it thus far so I don't feel bad about my faux pas. It's the story of a twelve-year-old boy living in a rural part of what seems to be an alternate universe version of England or Ireland. As the seventh son of a seventh son, he is selected to be the apprentice to the local "Spook" whose trade involves managing the myriad boggarts, ghasts, and witches who inhabit the region, keeping all the rest of the County residents safe from harm. Sadly, though the work of a Spook is vital, those in the profession are usually shunned by those whom they serve. The story is fast moving, really a bit scary at times, and with good character development.

Foundling is the first book in what had been previously called the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy. Apparently, due to a failure to really take off in the U.S. in spite of its brilliance, the Australian author, D.M. Cornish, has taken the advice of his publishers who feel the series needs some "re-branding". The new cover art is much more "mature" and quite attractive, too. You'll notice that the blurb at the bottom of the cover equates Foundling with the Tolkien; it's clear from the cover art that that's a similarity the publishers want to push.

Marketing aside, I've read the entire trilogy and am at a loss as to why this series isn't more well known. Some of the best fantasy I've read in a long, long time, Cornish describes a world (the Half-Continent) of Dickensian England (with German overtones) where humans are constantly fighting to keep the world of monsters at bay. In fact, killing a monster is a high honor commemorated by tattooing oneself with the blood of your slain opponent (hence the original title of the series). This really is great stuff. The young orphan (or "foundling"), Rossamund, is entirely likeable and his closest "friend", the renowned monster killer the Brandon Rose is so memorable in her blend of fearsome appetite for the slaying of monsters, her legendary beauty, the rather disgusting biological demands that her profession makes of her, and her uncharacteristic sympathy for a poor orphan. This series is neither "only" an alternate universe fantasy-horror-adventure; Rossamund's sympathetic view of a world of monsters he feels "misunderstood" brands him as something of an outcast among his own kind while making a not always subtle statement about our propensity for demonizing our enemies.

Lastly, Her Fearful Symmetry, written by Audrey Niffenegger, was lovely. I first came across it in a bookstore (gasp!) where I judged the book by its cover (gasp!). As an aside, one of my favorite hobbies since getting an iPhone is to visit bookstores, find books I want to read, and, scanning the barcode with my phone which then links me directly to my library account, I request the titles from the library; I love it!

Anyway, that's how I first encountered Her Fearful Symmetry. It looks scary. The description sounded kind of scary. But when I read it, it wasn't scary. Sure, there is no denying that it's a ghost story. It's a story about a ghost who lives in her former London flat adjacent to Highgate Cemetary with her two, live, American nieces. Beautifully written with a cast of very engaging characters in a slow moving study of the nature of relationships (with parents, with siblings, with spouses, with lovers, with pets!) I found myself entirely loving this book even though it wasn't what it was portrayed to be. Until the final chapter or two, when this story suddenly bloomed into unexpected horror. How totally awesome! I wouldn't dare reveal the shock but I'm telling you I was shocked! Wonderful read!