RPL's Current Crop of Top Tunes of 2007

Remember when Minnesota Public Radio wasn't the hippest place for the young kids of today to listen to music? No disrespect to musicians on A Prairie Home Companion, the classical music service, the Jazz Image (okay, Leigh Kammen tended to go on a bit, but he's retired now), or other fine standard-bearing MPR programs, but come on.

That all changed in a Public Radio Seismic Shift better known as the introduction of alternative-music-only station The Current.

So why are we promoting MPR on the RPL blog? Good question. Or perhaps the better question is: Got Current artists? The answer is Yes.

Many of you may already know that The Current has published their list of the top 89 albums of 2007 and we're happy to report that many of the titles on the list are owned by our library. Need to get your fix of Wilco, Spoon, the White Stripes, and more? We Got 'em.

You can search for music CDs in the library's online catalog by album title (say, Icky Thump) or performing artist (use "author")(say, White Stripes). Music CDs can be checked out for 14 days (7 days if there are reserves waiting).

If you don't see your favorite album or artist represented in our library collection and think other library users would be interested in it too, you can make a recommendation for purchase by entering your library card number and pin number at this link (you do need to have library card in good standing to make recommendations). You can recommend 12 titles per 12-month period. Any comments about your favorite CDs of 2007? Feel free to post comments below!

Notes from the Big Blue NonFiction Wall: January

It's so very, very cold again and a great time to make sure that you have some very, very good books to keep your mind engaged while we wait for the Earth to get a move on into that warm, sunny Spring-ward tilt that we love so much. Time to take a brief tour of the newest of the new non-fiction gracing the mighty Big Blue NonFiction wall on the second floor of the Rochester Public Library.

Speaking of the Earth, let's start with something a little Cosmic. America In Space: Nasa's First Fifty Years (with a forward by Neil Armstrong - the astronaut, not the biker dude who used to date Sheryl Crow) is a spectacular coffee table book that deals with everything NASA from the pre-Explorer days to the Moon to the Space Shuttle and beyond. There are some truly spectacular images of Earth, spacecraft, and the men and women who boldly went where most of us are unlikely to go. There's even a picture of Richard Nixon laughing (page 195, if you don't believe me)! Whether you remember those heady times of the Space Race with the Soviet Union or you're saying to yourself "What was this 'Soviet Union'?", this book will amaze and delight.

Switching gears from the Heavens to the not-so-funny, but sometimes-funny pages comes the book Art Spiegelman: Conversations edited by Joseph Witek. For those who may not be in the know, Mr. Spiegelman is the acclaimed artist/writer of the graphic novel Maus: A Survivors Tale which tells the story of his father's experience in the Holocaust and won a Special Pulitzer Prize in 1992. It was one of the first works that showed that the medium of comics could be used to tell serious stories and made Spiegelman one of the famous literary cartoonists in the world (admittedly, a small group). This new book is a collection of conversations with Speigelman (hence the catch & accurate title of the book) spans thirty years and serves as a primer on this history and development of comics as a serious art form. Spiegelman is a very smart, funny and candid artist and it is interesting to catch his words at so many different junctures of his career in one place.

For those of you who thought secret Presidential taping was the sole purview of one Richard Milhous Nixon, think again. LBJ was a secret taper par excellence, and some recently released transcripts of his 1964 recordings prove it. Get an insider's view through this amazing collection of phone conversation collected in The Presidential Recordings, Lyndon B. Johnson. Don't worry, once you finish the first one, there are still two other new volumes that we've recently received at the library. Editors David Schreve, Robert David Johnson put the conversations in historical context and give quite the insight into one of this country's more turbulent decades. Secret taping done right.

And finally, the book we've all been waiting to have written ever since cavemen started acting rudely at the Dawn of Time (see the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey for details) : Look, Speak, & Behave For Men by Jamie Yasko-Mangum. This book contains "expert advice on Image, Etiquette, and Effective Communication for the Professional" in a mere 212 pages. If effective, it could be Pulitzer time for Ms. Yasko-Mangum. Bringing together the four elements that make a man a man (Positive Self-Esteem, Polished Appearance, Speaking Intelligently, and Behaving With Pride), this book gives tips for the modern professional man (although not much of it seems to apply to professional wrestlers) in a concise, readable little book. A book hardly bigger than a PDA (and potentially more valuable) could be sitting there for you if you visit the Big Blue NonFiction wall in time. Also available (but probably less necessary) Look, Speak, & Behave For Women.

Until next month, remember to visit the Big Blue NonFiction wall because you'll never know what you might find.

Directory Assistance or Ancestry in the City

When a singer has an incredibly good voice, people will sometimes say that they could "sing the phone book" and it would be good. The underlying thought is that phone books are an inherently boring read and only Ol' Blue Eyes (or insert your crooner-of-choice here) could make it interesting.

Poppycock! Even if you are cursed with something less than a Golden Throat, be assured that you could still sing the words from our collection of Rochester City Directories and put a song in the heart of local historians.

Lets talk about phone books for a minute. Okay, when they're not new any more and start piling up in your garage, they aren't all that exciting. But like John Travolta, if they hang around long enough through a period of pointless direct-to-video offerings, the fickle public once again embraces their charms.

Enter Rochester City Directories. We've got them here at the library going back as far as 1911. What good are they? Well, first off, a City Directory is a little bit more than a phone book. Way back when, in addition to your phone number (and some of the earliest ones aren't particularly chock full of phone numbers as the "telephone technology" hadn't quite caught on yet), City Directories listed the people who lived in the town and also listed their occupations (even if your occupation was "high school student"). If you're interested in local history or family genealogy, your Spider Sense should be fully a-tingle. These books are treasure troves of historical information!

Want to know who lived in your house in years gone by? You can look up any property by its street address and find out who owned (and quite possibly who lived) in it. You can also see what the businesses of the day were.

You want a list of farmers in Olmsted County in 1923 (and, really, who doesn't?), check out the directory. You can see which churches, businesses, and politicians were around at that time.

Lots of this information is not available from any other source (sorry Google, you don't have EVERYTHING yet). Another reason to visit your good ol' Rochester Public Library. Because of their historical significance (and their irreplaceable nature), we do keep our City Directories archived in the Magazine Room (far back left corner of the 2nd floor as you're coming up the stairs or elevator). You can read them while you're here (and we have one of those photocopy machines if you find something good.) The upside is that they are never checked out, so they will be here when you visit.

A whole Historical Rochester awaits!

A Periodic check of Library Periodicals

With all of these recent blog entries spent talking about our online resources, the RPL Reference Blog mailbag has been filled with comments about the actual paper resources in the library. The ones you can read without a computer.

One reader asks: What about the magazines? I hear you have over 600 magazines and newspapers, can that possibly be true? And if so, can you read them in the warm, glorious sunshine on the second floor and take in a beautiful view of the city at the same time at no extra cost?

Yes, my friend, to all of your questions. Looking out at the six vast pillars of magazine spin racks, the mighty plexiglass newspaper stands (pictured above or beside depending on your browser resolution) and the scores of magazines scattered in the appropriate sections on the first floor and on the bookmobile we have over 600 periodicals (which is a boring library word for "something that is published on a regular basis", i.e. newspapers and magazines).

Now you're thinking to yourself: I can't possibly read that many of your "periodicals" every month. No one is asking you to. But if you want to, they're there for you.

By the same token, just because you live in the country doesn't mean that you'll want to read every issue of Country Journal, Country Living, Country's Best Log Homes (hello, Mr. Lincoln), but we have them here. Also, city-dwellers, be aware that you are also free to look at these periodicals without fear of library staff checking to see if you do, indeed, live in the country. Ah, freedom is wonderful!

We've got magazines on Hobbies (Coin World, Doll Reader, Model Airplane News, Rubber Stamper, Wood), magazines on Fashion (Brides, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Seventeen, Vanity Fair), magazines on Art (American Artist, Art & Antiques, Ceramics Monthly, Dance Magazine), and jillions* more.

In addition to two copies of our local newspaper, the Rochester Post-Bulletin, we get several newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, the Des Moines Register, Investors Business Daily, Minneapolis StarTribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more. That's an awful lot of crossword puzzles under one roof (please don't fill in the crossword puzzles, at least not in pen).

But wait, there's more. Along with our American 'periodicals', we have several foreign language newspapers and magazines including Paris Match (French), Haboon (Somali), Zhuan Ji Wen Xue (Chinese), and Bunte (German).

You can check the listings of magazines the library owns by general category by clicking on the type:

• Adult magazines


• Young Adult magazines


• Children's magazines

Whatever kind of periodical you crave, you're bound to find something of interest here. Grab a cup of coffee (with a covered lid, of course, for approved library use) and set up in the magazine area on the second floor and peruse your favorite newspapers and magazines in your favorite library.



* in this case one jillion = about a hundred (this note added to keep our lawyers happy)

The Crafty, Ingenious World of Subscription Databases, Part Six: EBSCO MegaFILE

After the film "Supersize Me", a lot of people may be thinking twice about ordering up to the largest item on the menu, but you may want to reconsider that with the EBSCO MegaFILE. The MegaFILE is one big heaping helping of publication gold that contains no unhealthy trans fats (when used properly).

What is the MegaFILE? Admittedly, the name is a bit vague, but if you're doing research for a school paper, it may be your very best friend (sorry, Fido, back to you when the grades have been posted). If you look up "teachers" on Wikipedia, you will see them defined as "those people who don't accept Wikipedia as a source on school papers." MegaFILE to the rescue.

The MegaFILE gives you access to thousands of newspaper, magazine, and academic journal articles and allows you to read (and print) them from your computer.

All of the resources available in the treasure trove that is the MegaFILE are from paper publications that exist in real space, not just in cyberspace. In many cases, you can even print out either the full text of these articles (HTML Full text) or even a reproduction of the actual pages from the publication (PDF). Just make sure that the default "full text" box is checked and you'll be able read the articles.

Want to e-mail the articles to yourself? Can do.

Hate writing official citations for your articles? (And, really, who doesn't?) Let the MegaFILE do it for you. Once you have selected your article, and are set to e-mail it to yourself, go to the right side of the page and select "Citation Format" and select APA, ALA, Chicago or MLA formats and the citation will be delivered to you in email format.

Need to limit your search to scholarly journals? How about magazine articles only? Check and check.

Need to find an article in a particular publication? You can search within a particular publication (or look to see what coverage the library has for it) in a simple publication search.

Can you select a topic and be alerted in your RSS reader when a new article is printed on you topic? Well, we would hardly ask that question if the answer was anything but a huge affirmative, would we?

Can you access this database at three in the morning the night before your paper is due? We're not advising you to wait that long, but you can do it. You can access MegaFILE from any internet connection as long as you have a Rochester Public Library card in good standing (i.e. keeping your overdue fees under $10.00 and making sure to keep your user privilege current).

Probably the biggest drawback to the MegaFILE, is that it cannot write your paper for you. Perhaps in the next update.

November New Non-Fiction Notes

Fall (which has been beautiful and amazingly temperate this year) will quickly be changing to that other season (the one with all the snow), and that means it's time for a quick slice of new non-fiction books for indoor reading at your RPL reference blog.

Let's start with some of that jazz: John Coltrane jazz to be specific. The new book Coltrane - the story of a sound by Ben Ratliff follows the career and art of legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane from his beginnings with Miles Davis in the 1950's to his more, shall we say, "experimental" recordings up to the time of his death. Hold on though, that's just the first half. The second half talks about the influence of Coltrane as a musical and spiritual figure in popular (and sometimes not-as-popular-as-it-should-be-because-of-the-word-"jazz") culture. Stop down and pick up some Coltrane CDs downstairs, too, and they will certainly become some of your favorite things.

And now to the funnier side of life, illustrated (in great 1980's detail), in the book Spy - The Funny Years by Kurt Andersen, Graydon Carter, and George Kalogerakis - a look at the great days of the late-lamented humor magazine. Think of the Daily Show or the Colbert Report in glossy magazine format (or, perhaps more accurately, think of the books that those shows have produced). And really, when you get down to it, is there any decade more ripe for making fun of than the eighties? This book will make you laugh more than Bill Cosby trying to tell you that "New Coke" is better than "Classic Coke". According to the back cover blurb Donald Trump describes Spy as "a piece of garbage". And he ought to know. Enjoy!

While it would be great to spend the entire afternoon telling you about every single one of the new non-fiction titles on the Great Blue Nonfiction Wall, we're just going to mention one more, The Other Side of War: Women's Stories of Hope and Survival by Zainab Salbi which "takes readers into the heart of Afghanistan, Bosnia, Columbia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Sudan to hear the stories of women who daily reclaim the lives of their families and communities from the ashes of conflict." A truly moving book well worth reading.

For these new titles and more, you owe it to yourself to visit the Great Blue Nonfiction Wall before you need to get out the shovel.

The More-Than-Moderately Swell-egant World of Subscription Databases, Part Five: Auto Repair Reference Center

When your car breaks down and you don't happen to have that fifteen pound repair manual in your trunk and the library just checked out the last copy of the very book you needed, you're out of luck, right?

Perhaps, in the pre-database age, but not anymore. Now it's Auto Repair Reference Center to the rescue. It's even less expensive than AAA (although you will pay for your own towing).

This resource for the mechanically inclined allows you to search by year, manufacturer, and model (and even by engine type - which is more than some of us will ever figure out about our cars) to get repair guides - many of which even have pictures (or "diagrams" for those aforementioned mechanically inclined).

Once you find the car you're looking for, you have a list of detailed repair procedures, to help you with repair, replacement or just general upkeep of your car.

Thousands of cars and trucks are at your electronic fingertips, and you can even print out the pages whether you're here at the library or logged in from home.

The repair information is also searchable by keyword - which translates to you can put in whatever part of the car you want information about and it will search through the entire contents of the repair information and give you only the bits that relate to your search.

And the best part - there are no dark, oily fingerprints on all the good pages.

Spectacular World of Subscription Databases, Part Four: Groliers Encyclopedia Online (a.k.a. Grolier Online Passport)

And you thought that if an encyclopedia salesperson didn't knock on your door you were done with encyclopedias for the rest of your days. Well, no. Instead of heading downstairs to that mold-infested, semi-complete set of 1964 encyclopedias* to get the information you need, you can log onto the Grolier Online Passport (speedy to use, even in this age of security precautions) and get not only encyclopedia information, not only atlas information, but also a dictionary that talks to you (okay, it pronounces the word, but it's all good!)

First the search box on the Grolier Online Passport page makes it easy, quick, and quite frankly a bit magical to search all these fine resources at once.

Let's take a closer look at what's in the magic box. For starters you get access to five different encyclopedic resources: Encyclopedia Americana, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, The New Book of Knowledge, Lands and Peoples and America the Beautiful. But wait, there's more....

On the dictionary front, you get five different American Heritage dictionaries: Dictionary of the English Language, Student Dictionary, Children's Dictionary, Spanish to English Dictionary and (just to be fair) the English to Spanish Dictionary. That's a lot of dictionary-ing (a word not in any of these dictionaries, I checked.)

But what about an online atlas? Glad you asked. The atlas features geopolitical maps (of course), thematic maps (on such topics as agriculture, population, plate tectonics, religion and more), and the always handy global distances (which allows you to find the distance between different cities in the world.) Of course there's more (like the exploration routes of the circumnavigators, but that's just too much for one blog entry.)

What else do you want, lesson plans for educators? Got 'em. Featured news stories and an international news desk. But of course.

This is a great resource for K-12 students starting to scratch the surface (and sometimes even get beneath the surface) of their paper topics. If you are of a certain age, you can jump right to the Grolier Online Kids page and search the resource in another great, age-appropriate interface. Kids, just think about all this authoritative information without the shaky URLs from your unverifiable sources on the Internet. It's so book-like (yet not-so-book-like), you'll love it.

Set your course for adventure with the Grolier Online Passport!


*Incidentally, even though your heart is in the right place, please don't donate this encyclopedia to the library, thank you.

The Scrumpdillyious World of Online Databases, Part Three: Foundation Center Directory Online

Isaac Asimov fans, calm down - way down. This has nothing to do with that Foundation. Breathe. Breathe. Okay, we can go on.

The Rochester Public Library is a "Cooperating Collection" of the Foundation Center. What does that mean for you? It means that you, the aspiring do-gooder can find ways to get hooked up with grantmakers who share your do-goodingness and have set up grants to help fund all that good.

The online version of the Foundation Directory allows you to search for grantmakers by name, state, city, fields of interest, types of support, geographical focus, officers/trustees/donors or by type of grantmaker. Or any combination thereof. It's easier than it sounds.

In a nutshell, the Foundation Directory allows you to comb through the vast sea of grantmakers and find one (or more) that would suit your goal and get contact information to apply for those funds.

You can also do extensive searches within a particular company, for a particular grant, or search the entire text of IRS 990 forms for grantmaking organizations (if you don't happen to be washing your hair that night).

Now with something this wonderful, you would think you'd have to be here in the library to use it. No, my friend, this is another one you can use online from home in your bunny slippers with a hot cup of joe and the weather outside being frightful.

Stay tuned for Part 4.....

Fantastical World of Subscription Databases, Part Two: Books In Print

What do I want to read next? Library readers have been asking that since the days of scrolls in the Alexandrian library. And while the launch of "Scrolls in Print" never made the history books as a particularly great innovation, Books in Print (BIP) deserves a place in the Readers' Hall of Fame.

If addition to the obvious (letting you know which books are in print), BIP lets you browse fiction by subject, award, or author. You can even type in a year and get the best sellers for that year.

BIP can give you information about particular books such as whether they are available in audio format(s), listings of when a book has been mentioned in the media, author bios and more.

The special children's area allows you to search for books by favorite series', picture books, recurring characters in children's works, and children's award winners.

One of the funkiest features of BIP is the Fiction Connection's "Aquabrowser". For those folks who like to "think visual", the Aquabrower creates a map of topics once you pick a category such as genre, setting, character, location, and timeframe. The map looks a little like a cluster of cocktail toothpicks, each with a different keyword on it. If you click on a toothpick keyword, your map will re-form and gives you a different set of related keywords. Meanwhile, on the other side of your browser window, you get a list of books related to your topic and if you find one you like, you can hit the "find similar" button and get even more books that are similar to the one you already love.

Lastly, (okay not lastly, but we can't get into every detail in a short blog entry), you can set up a "My Favorites" account that will allow you to save lists of your favorite books, build customized searches, and get alerts when books that meet your criteria are released.

See you next time for another one of our Merely Marvelous databases......

The Magical World of Subscription Databases, Part One: Reference USA

Okay, this is the first part of a loooooooooooong series talking about our wonderful online resources. How wonderful are they? Let me count the ways. Or better yet, let's just get started with one....

Reference USA might not have the snappiest name in the known universe - you can hardly argue with that - but it is a really great resource.

What can you do with Ref USA (as the cool kids call it)? What can't you do with it? You want to look up residential addresses all over the country? Done. You've only got a phone number and you want to see what person or business it belongs to, you can look that up, too. You want to know how many employees a company has, what the executive names and titles are, the type of business they do, what their sales volume is, what year they were established, generate a list of businesses of a certain type in a certain region, you've got that and much, much more.

This is also a really great tool for people looking to start a new business in an area (scout out the competition, see if there is a dire need for your company in a particular area), marketers (target companies that would be interested in your particular type of widget), and job seekers (search locally or nationally to look for the particular types of companies - big, small, particular industries - that you're looking for).

While we don't have time to go into all the functions of Ref USA, suffice to say that you can make all kinds of company searches from the most general (i.e. every ball bearing manufacturer in the USA) to very narrow, pinpoint surgical searches (all ball bearing manufacturers in the metro area of Kalamazoo, Michigan with more than 100 employees, a sales volume of more than $500,000, established since 1988, that own more than 10 computers, and much more.

This is one of the databases that you can access both at the library and online from outside the library as long as you have library card in good standing (and you know who your are).

Tune in next time for The Fantastical World of Subscription Databases part 2: featuring...??? Well, you'll just have to tune in.

The New Lowdown on the Adult Internet Stations

No, you haven't gotten taller, the internet stations have just come down to earth. Over the past few weeks you may have noticed that some of the internet computers on the second floor have been on tables rather than their individual stations. That was their temporary resting place while we took the stations for a quick trip to through the saw to trim them down a notch or two for your comfort and convenience.


Profound? Important? Noteworthy? Well, yes. Quite a few of you have expressed your preference for the handful of lower-down internet terminals that we had before, so we have made them all just as comfy. In addition to being more comfortable, this will make our internet stations more accessible to all.



So those of you who used to bring in oxygen tanks to make breathing at the high altitudes of our internet stations possible can leave the tanks at home and surf easier on the web at the library.

Morningstar Online arrives at the Library!

The answer is yes. Yes, we have online access to Morningstar's online service. Yes, you can access it from the library. Yes, you can access it from home. Yes, we think it's really cool, too. (And, yes, we're still getting the paper version, too.)

Now all of you savvy investors can increase your savvy by indulging your mutual love of mutual funds much more quickly and efficiently by using the Morningstar online service.

Why are you still reading this? You should be visiting our online business resources page here and clicking on the Morninstar link so you can look through everything that Morningstar has to offer.

What can you do online? You can identify stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs that meet your needs. Morningstar's data reports cover more than 20,000 stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs. Use the "Portfolio X-ray" option that allows you to input two or more stocks and/or mutual funds to see how they work together as a portfolio and print your results.

You can't possibly still be reading this.

Yes, we look forward to hearing what you think and hope you will enjoy using this and all of our other online services.

Databases for the Home, the Collector and the Investor! Also, RSS

Those of you who walk down the digital halls of library information (i.e. look at our online databases on a regular basis) have probably noticed a few fresh faces among the usual suspects.

We are currently in the midst of a one-month trial subscription to the Home Improvement Reference Center. We have also got a one-year trial subscription to the scrappy Prices for Antiques database. Let us know what you think of these two.

However the really big news (sorry Tim Allen) is that we will soon be getting access to Morningstar online. Investors, warm up your computers. In addition to online access to mutual fund information, Morningstar online will give you information on individual stocks. And, as if that wasn't enough, you will be able to access Morningstar from both inside and outside the library.


Once the paperwork clears and all of the correct signatures are in place, you can bet you'll hear about it here first!


Attention Library Newsletter devotees - RSS is here!

Most philosophers and scholars agree that among the greatest joys of life are great food, great companionship, and getting the Rochester Public Library newsletter before anyone else does. We have thousands of books to help you with the first two, but now we also have an RSS feed set up to help you with the latter.

RSS feeds make it easy to keep up-to-date with the latest news and information on the web, and getting our newsletter has never been simpler. Either point your browswer to this page (and have it sniff out our RSS address (a simple XML file, for those of you in the know) or put this web address into your feed reader(http://www.rochesterpubliclibrary.org/rssfeed/rss_home.html)

It couldn't be simpler. Saving trees, saving time and most of all, making sure you get your digital mitts on a copy of our compelling and informative missive.


Let us know if there is anything else that you think we should offer as an RSS feed.

Senior Techies Summer Computer Practice Starts this month!

For those who haven't marked their calendars, this June is the month it all begins. Starting on Friday, June 8th from 9:30am to 11:30am in Meeting Room B (on the second floor), the first session of Senior Techies Computer Practice will be running. There are three more scheduled sessions on June 22, July 6, and July 20 at the same place and time. For those of you keeping track, that's every other Friday.

We provide the computers, Internet access, a scanner, a digital camera and a librarian to answer your basic computer questions, and you just drop in and practice your computer skills.

Since so many people have been asking for some kind of follow-up to the four Senior Techie classes that we offer at the Public Library, we thought we would try these practice sessions this summer and give you the chance to show us that you think this would be a valuable service for the library to provide. If they are well-attended we will consider offering them on a regular basis.

Even though these Computer Practice sessions were created with the intention of being a practice session following the Senior Techie classes, you don't need to have taken any of the classes in order to participate. They are recommended for Seniors 55+.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Rochester Newspaper microfilm + Digital scanner = P-B PDFs PDQ

While the founders of Rochester weren't around for the signing of the Declaration of Independence (and it's a good thing that none of the Founding Fathers had a heart attack, because expert heart surgeons in 1776 weren't too, well, existing then), the history of our beloved city does go back quite a long way. And we've got miles of Rochester newspaper microfilm to prove it.

How far back you say? Well you can read for yourself the microfilm of Rochester Post Bulletin beginning in 1859, just shy of 150 years ago. For you kids, the internet was considerably slower than dialup at that time.

Okay, so libraries have had microfilm and microfilm readers since time immemorial, what's the big deal about a digital scanner? One word: PDF. Okay, let's throw in another word: adjusting image quality. And a last one for good measure: e-mail.

So where does that leave our math (other than a shaky definition of "another word")? You can make digital copies of the articles you're looking for and share them via e-mail just like digital photos. You can also do some adjustment of image quality before you save your image. That article about your great, great, great Aunt Pearl can make the rounds in one press of a button instead of dozens of envelopes and photocopies.

That's the beauty of the digital age.

Come in and give it a try.

All of the Senior Techies were winners in this class!

After spending lots of time in the judging booth looking at all the pictures we took at the senior techies introduction to digital camera class, we have to say that everybody won the first annual (or perhaps semi-annual) Senior Techies photo class. A few photos are posted here for prosperity.

We had overflow attendance and lots of people got the chance to learn about shooting digital photos. We spent a little time with the scanner getting ready for next week's more extensive scanner class.

The Senior Techies classes are aimed at teaching beginning computer skills to those senior citizens who may not be as familiar with computers as their grandchildren are.

Senior Techies topics range from computer basics to setting up an e-mail account to next week's class on e-mailing photographs. See our events calendar for details of upcoming classes.

This June and July we are also trying out a new program called "Senior Techies- Computer Practice" which will be an open lab with computers, a scanner, and digital cameras where seniors can drop by and practice thin they have learned in the previous classes and ask any questions that may have come up in the interim. The continuing interest in the classes has been a source of great pride for us here in the library. As long as seniors keep signing up for the classes, we're committed to adding them to our schedule.

Google: Threat or Menace? or If Librarians Ran Google....

It's fair to say that librarians have a funny relationship with Google.

Is it:

a) the single greatest living searching tool the world over
b) a plot to put librarians on the unemployment line
c) something librarians and library users need to think about
d) a great place to invest our retirement nest egg

This is, of course, the kind of question that you can't answer in 0.05 seconds on a search engine. Even without using Google, you know the answer is c, possibly d & a, and most definitely (probably) not b.

Librarians use Google quite a bit. There, it feels good to say that. It's a great place to go for certain kinds of quick information (phone numbers, addresses, Twins scores) or to begin a search (especially if you have no idea where to start looking). But, it's not everything. Despite what you've read, not everything is available on the web. Even with your credit card. And even when something is available, Google may not be able to find it.

If you're looking for newspaper or magazine articles that are more than a few days old, good luck. Either you pay by the article, or, more likely, they aren't available online at all. However, we have access to hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles (both electronic and print) and can generally get things we don't have.

Anyone who has used Google to find genealogy information or try to find quality information about obscure topics (or wade through lots of bad information to find quality information on not-so-obscure topics) knows how hard it can be. And if you're looking for information about, say, nursing homes, there are plenty of sketchy-looking sites willing to sell you information, but you can't be assured of getting what you pay for. People who have a vested interest in selling you products do their very best to make sure their names come up first when you search.

Ah, there's the rub. Or at least a rub. As of this writing, a Google search of the word "failure" directs you to President Bush's page on the White House web site. No matter where your personal politics may be, that's not great information. When pranksters or salespeople are successful at rigging Google, you don't win.

And let's not talk about the sponsored links. (Hint: Librarians don't have sponsored links.)

If librarians ran Google, you can bet that there would be a whole lot more informative asterisks* alerting users to the credibility level of the information.

That's where librarians shine. In addition to having access to a lot of information that search engines can't find, we're web experts and have a sense of who has good, bad or slanted information. Or, if we can't determine that, at least we can help you find out who is providing information. Search engines can't do that. Google often uses a popularity test, not a sniff test.

And there's the matter of searching. There are good ways to use Google, and there are, well, severely less good ways to search with Google. We know some pretty good ways.

The Google logarithms are many things (ingenious, complicated, propriatary) but they are not tenacious. Librarians are tenacious like the Hanson brothers in Slapshot (but with far less blood). It bothers us if we can't find the information right away, and we keep looking. I can guarantee that Google won't think of one last creative, non-intuitive place to look and come up with an information goldmine. We keep digging until there's no dirt left to dig in.

That's what librarians do, and if we could get Google to think and act that way, we may have to consider letting it have an honorary membership in the American Library Association.



*like this one letting you know librarians are credible

First Annual Senior Techie Photo Competition!

You read it here first. Later this month, one lucky attendee for the Senior Techie Introduction to the Digital Camera class, held Wednesday, April 18th from 9:30 -11:30am will find their digital masterwork posted for all the world to see on this very blog! As of this posting there are still some openings to the class, you can sign up here.

Now before people start thinking this is a thinly veiled attempt to get some people (perhaps the relatives of the eventual winner) to visit this page, let me confirm that is exactly our intention. And if every attendee of the class takes the sort of world-class photos we're expecting them to, there could be multiple viewings of this blog, er, winners.

Our popular Senior Techie classes cover everything from basic computer skills to e-mail to using a scanner to the exciting aforementioned digital camera photo taking. Check out our events page for more details.

NEW! Senior Techies Computer Practice

We will also be holding a new Senior Techies program called "Senior Techies - Computer Practice" that will allow Seniors to just "drop in" and practice on library computers under the supervision of a staff librarian. Computer Practice will be held on alternate Fridays in June and July (June 8, 22 and July 6, 20). If there is interest in this program, we will consider making it a an ongoing program.

Only slightly more than a week left to prepare.....

Not Billboards, Bill-exciteds!

It's sad that this sort of pun passed muster, but there you go. You may have seen the library billboards around Rochester these past few weeks, trying to get out the word that we have resources here that you may not be familiar with.

You can take practice tests for the ACT, SAT and other tests with our Learn A Test resource, find car repair specs and diagrams at the Auto Repair Reference Center, do genealogy research on Ancestry Plus Genealogy Search*, research full-text articles from newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals and more through EBSCO, not to mention the biographies available from the Biography Resource Center (okay, they were just mentioned) and Spanish language resources such as Informe, Netlibrary online books, and many, many more. Click here to go directly to the list of electronic resources.

Almost all of these resources are available online 24/7 if you have a Rochester Public Library card in good standing. Go ahead and make the books jealous, just this once, and connect yourself to some of our somewhat underheralded electronic resources.

*Please note that Ancestry is only available for use while you're the library, but you're going to have some questions for Greg or Susan anyway, so it's worth the trip in.