On an unusually snowy March night I ventured out to take Laurie Foley’s free workshop called “Blogging- Who, What, Where & How?” at the brand new Toco Hill-Avis G. Williams library. The audience was small due to the weather and mostly women. (Two-thirds of bloggers are men.) We all wanted to know the same thing — how do I start a blog and more importantly how do I get readers?

Laurie Foley is an award-winning blogger and business coach.  She presented us with the history of blogging. Did you know that 133,000,000 blogs have been indexed since 2002 but ninety-five percent are abandoned within four months? 72% are hobbyists, 15% are part-times, 9% are self employed and 4% are professionals.  A great professional blog is Huffington Post and a good local one to check out (besides DCPLive) is Decatur Metro.

Then she recommended some good books: The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott; Wordpress for Dummies, 2nd Edition by Lisa Sabin-Wilson and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (you can find all of these titles at DCPL).  Then she wowed us with the fact that 900,000 blog entries are posted every twenty-four hours. I must say I feel a little daunted but determined.

If you missed this class, don’t worry.  Every month the Library has many other computer classes which you can check out in our events calendar.

I don’t understand how my shelves at the library can be in perfect Dewey Decimal and Alpha order but my house is an unorganized mess.

I’ve read the best of the best—Peter Walsh’s How to Organize Just About Everything at 501 pages.  It covers just about every organizing situation from planning a wedding to organizing a filing system. I got a workout just carrying it around but due to its extra large size, I never lost it under a pile of clutter.

Walsh also wrote Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Big?. It explores the connection between being overweight and clutter. He recommends ways to clean out your house and your refrigerator.

I skimmed “Organizing solutions for people with attention deficit disorder : tips and tools to help you take charge of your life and get organized.” This would be good with a prescription for Ritalin.

I took the fun test in Organizing for your brain type: finding your own solution to managing time, paper and stuff by Lanna Nakone. Her system was foolproof except in my case.

And I own Organizing from the Inside Out: the foolproof system for organizing your home, your office and your life by Julie Morgenstern.

All in all, I’ve tried and grudgingly accepted that I am one of the few, the not proud, the disorganized. But there is a bright side. I took an informal poll of my co-workers and most of them have great looking shelves but messy homes. It’s a good thing you can only come to the library instead of our homes, right?

Happy new year, and welcome to 2010!  In addition to making resolutions that I’m unlikely to keep, there is another new year’s tradition I’ve been observing the past few years; creating and updating a reading list.

Working in libraries, something I hear regularly from patrons is that they have trouble recalling whether or not they have read a certain title.  This problem is particularly common with patrons who enjoy reading the output of prolific authors such as James Patterson or Nora Roberts (for instance, Nora Roberts has just short of 200 published full-length works under her belt). I advise these patrons to do what I do, and start a list of works read, perhaps with a brief summary and review of the book so that they can recall not only having read the book, but whether they enjoyed it or not (if you are really motivated, you might even include information such as genre, author’s gender, and any other variables you might like to keep track of and compare later). This process is rewarding not only in the sense that it acts to bolster your memory of books completed, but also in the way it gives you a tangible view of the amount of reading you have accomplished throughout the year. I typically set a goal for myself of 52 books per year (that is, one book completed per week, on average), an objective I have yet to achieve but enjoy striving for. Once you have collected more than one year’s worth of data, you can begin manipulating the numbers to get a very detailed picture of your reading habits and proclivities.

For an example of the sort of information that can be generated from such a list, take a gander at the breakdown from the reading list of Jessamyn West of Librarian.net. Just at a glance, we can see that she read more at the beginning of the year than at the end, that she read slightly more fiction than non-fiction, that the majority of books she read were produced by male authors, and that, for the most part, she enjoys the books she picks (if you are interested in following Jessamyn as she logs and reviews her book conquests, visit her booklist here). The more information you include when recording the completed book in your log, the more data you will have to work with when doing future analysis of your reading patterns.

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The holiday gift season has arrived. If you’re like me, you’re always on the lookout for a great gift idea for the kids. Knowing that books make wonderful, lasting gifts, I set out this year to find the perfect knock-your-socks-off, WOW factor book…something that would make even the most jaded ten year old smile.

My search didn’t take long because I soon stumbled upon the brand new 2010 Guinness Book of World Records. Kids LOVE this book! They repeatedly ask for it at my library, and once they sit down and start turning the pages, you hear them shrieking “ohhh’s” and “ahhh’s” as they feast upon the delights within.

Each year the folks at Guinness World Records publish an updated volume full of weird and freaky facts, photographs and information. Over 4 million copies are sold annually and total sales exceed 124 million, since first published in 1955. Each volume dazzles the eye and boggles the mind. It is a real crowd-pleaser, especially among the pre-teen set. The 2010 version has 287 pages of facts, figures and photographs, enough to keep young minds busy for hours, learning about records set around the globe.

Bound in a shiny, colorful cover, the 2010 edition is billed as the “Book of The Decade.” There are Actual Size offerings (which kids love) such as the “largest known land gastropod” (the African Giant Snail), a huge beast of a slug, weighing in at two pounds and measuring 15½ inches long.

For aspiring record setters, the 2010 edition has step-by-step information on how to go about identifying and breaking a record. One of my favorites is featured on page 62, which shows a photo of the man with the longest recorded ear hair. Visit page 125 to see a picture of the world’s heaviest lemon! It weighs almost 12 pounds. Awesome!

This holiday season, why not make yourself the most popular uncle or aunt in your family. Give the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records to your favorite niece or nephew. They will remember you forever. (They might even name their first-born child after you.) Visit your local DCPL library to take a sneak peek before you buy.

We usually recommend a book to someone because we like the story or the setting or because it’s funny, etc. The other night a patron recommended an audiobook to me because the reader was really good.  Ed Sala’s reading of James Lee Burke’s White Doves at Morning was so compelling that this gentleman had come to the library to find more. The Library includes the name of audiobook readers in the catalog, making it easy to search for a favorite performer:

From the catalog page, select Sound/Video. From the first search box, select Audiobook Word(s) from the menu. In the second search box, enter the performer’s name.

AudioFile, a magazine devoted to audiobooks, has a Golden Voices list if you’re interested in finding more recommended readers or you might like one of Stephen King’s 10 favorite audiobooks.  I personally recommend Flo Gibson’s reading of Persuasion by Jane Austen.  On the page, Austen is amusing to me; but read aloud she is truly funny, with a wicked sense of humor and great timing.  Have you got a favorite audiobook reader?

When I ran across Vanessa Farquharson’s book, Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days, I was intrigued.  While I don’t think I’ll be unplugging my fridge anytime soon (is that even possible in this heat?), selling my car (sorry, Jnai!), or looking for love (my husband wouldn’t approve), I am interested in living a greener life without going insane (or appearing that way).

I have tried to make small changes at home to be more green.  My husband and I haven’t done anything too drastic–although our families think our recent decision to cloth diaper our twins is a little extreme–but we’ve made minor adjustments here and there that (we hope) will reduce our carbon footprint and maybe save a polar bear or two from extinction.  We changed all our lightbulbs to compact flourescent bulbs, swapped to cloth napkins for everyday, replaced paper towels in the kitchen with dishrags and towels, and put a bucket in the shower to catch the water as it heats (which we then use to water our garden).  We also recycle and compost when we can.  But do we really have to stop eating at restaurants that use styrofoam take-out containers or stop using antiperspirants?

Although afraid of losing her cool hipster status and being mistaken for a hippie, or worse yet, a blogger, Ms. Farquharson took the plunge and began a daily blog about her changes in an effort to provide a humorous real-life view on the effect that living green might have on a regular everyday person.  All the while bearing a tiny, imaginary Al Gore on her shoulder,  she makes changes both small and large:  ”Switch to recycled paper towels,” “Lower the temperature on my water heater,” or “Sell my car.”  Some changes are a little more unusual (or just plain odd), such as “Skip gown at doctor’s office” or “Drip-dry dishes in dishwasher rack above houseplants.”

If you’d like to follow Ms. Farquharson’s continuing journey on the road to being green, check out her blog Green as a Thistle.  Interested in finding out your own carbon footprint and your impact on the environment?  Go to the EPA’s Household Emissions Calculator or The Nature Conservancy’s Carbon Footprint Calculator and get a personalized estimate.  Then maybe you, too, will decide to carry a totebag and give up on pajamas…

For those who like to debate Heather’s eternal question: book vs. movie,  2009 is a really interesting year for movie adaptations. Already we’ve gotten the long awaited Watchmen movie and Coraline was great in 3D. My Sister’s Keeper, from the Jodi Picoult novel, comes out next week and it looks like you’ll need a box of tissues to get through it. Next month brings us the long-awaited Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, from a film series that I think has done an especially good job of interpreting  J. K. Rowling’s books. Later this year we’ll get Julie and Julia, which was a blog and then a book about a woman living in a tiny New York City apartment deciding to cook every one of the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Audrey Niffenegger’s heartbreaking The Time Traveler’s Wife comes to screens this fall (definitely read the book first) and don’t forget the next installment from the Stephenie Meyer vampire books, New Moon, set to come out in November. The kids get Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, based on a book about a town where it rains breakfast, lunch and dinner. The pictures in the book are hilarious and I want to see pancakes and syrup actually falling from the sky.

I’m most intrigued by the movie version of  Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak’s brief and mysterious picture book.  I wouldn’t have thought it could be done; but Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, the creative minds behind the adaptation, are compelling artists themselves and I look forward to seeing their interpretation of Sendak’s work. The trailer is beautiful.

Request these titles from the library and you’ll be ready to start your own book vs. movie debate club.

You can find comics in your newspaper — if you have a magnifying glass and if there’s still a paper published in your town. If not, you’ll have to  follow the paper and the comics to your computer. The companies that syndicated the comics to the papers have websites. Comics.com, United Feature Syndicate’s site, is the most generous, giving you 6 months of your favorite strip for free online and you can go all the way back to 1950 for Peanuts and to 1979 for Dilbert.  King Features, home of Baby Blues and Mutts, puts just 4 days online for free and lets you subscribe to the archives for an annual fee. Gocomics gives you a few days of one of my favorites, Calvin and Hobbes.

But Calvin’s Duplicator isn’t quite the same online. Where can you go to find comics printed on good old-fashioned paper? Next time you’re in the library, stroll on over to the books labeled 741.5973. That’s where you’ll find comic strip collections at the library. Calvinball players, unite!

Summer is in full swing and many of us are planning fun and creative ways to enjoy the season. Whether one is embarking on the vacation of a lifetime, plotting a relaxing, economical “staycation” (check out Amanda’s blog post for great ideas on the subject) or planning to Be Creative @ the Library with the little ones (DCPL plug: check!) summer is the perfect time to allow one’s imagination to run wild.

My creative outlet of choice is writing (big surprise!) and I’ve just picked up a wonderful little book on the subject called The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. It’s a slender read–111 pages that go by in a flash–full of passages on the thrills and challenges of following one’s muse. The Writing Life touches various aspects of the writer’s task such as finding inspiration, the physical work of writing and even what it feels like when an idea goes awry or doesn’t develop in the way that one hopes.  This is a book about writing but I think it can apply to any endeavor of one’s creativity or passion. So follow your hearts, be creative and, if you’ve got some time, pick up this enjoyable, bestselling book at the Library.

Every Memorial Day I have to get past my cranky attitude about being all adult now and not getting a 10-week summer vacation.  Please tell me I’m not the only one who longs to sleep late, go barefoot and spend all day at the pool. If you’ve got the grown-up summertime blues like me, relive vacations of the past with the 2nd Annual Summer Reading for Adults program. Have fun and win prizes like a VIP pass to the Decatur Book Festival. Pick up a folder at any DCPL location or sign up online, then sit back with a good book and have a “popsicle” with a couple of olives. It may not be vacation reading, but it’s still summer and it stays light for a long time after work.