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.

This month the Library added a new online tool for our patrons – Optimal Resume (available through our Reference Databases page). As the name suggests, Optimal Resume assists you in creating a resume and cover letter but it has many other features that make it a comprehensive aid to job seekers. Every day, library staff help people using our computers make resumes and search for work. We’ve been looking for something that would make it easier for job seekers and Optimal Resume is the best product we’ve seen. It’s used in many college and university career centers and we’re happy to be able to offer it to DeKalb County residents.

To use Optimal Resume, you will need to first set up your account through the library’s website. If you’re accessing the website at home, you will need your library card number and PIN. You only have to go through the Library’s website the first time. Once you’ve set up your account, you can login directly to our Optimal Resume website.

Once you login, you’re taken to the Document Center. The resume and letter sections have lots of professionally written sample resumes and lots of online help (like a link that suggests appropriate “action verbs”). Optimal Resume takes you section by section through the resume process and formats the document for you. You can work with their examples, start your resume from scratch or upload an existing resume. You can customize your resume for different job openings and store all the versions online in your Optimal Resume account. No more keeping your resume as an email attachment or on your flash drive (we have a lot of flash drives in our lost-and-found drawers.)

Beyond creating resumes and letters, Optimal Resume will help you create your own website. You can post your resume, create an online portfolio and more. Your website can be public or password protected. I used several of the sample documents to create a resume and application letter for the imaginary Jane X. Sample. You can see her personal website at http://dekalblibrary.confidentialresume.com/Jane_X_Sample/.

If you have access to a webcam, you can use Optimal Resume to record yourself during a practice interview. A video “coach” offers advice on good ways to answer some of the usual interview questions. It’s a great way to rehearse for a real world interview.

The Libray is offering classes to help you get started with Optimal Resume and staff will be also be available to assist you with the site during any of our “Open Labs for Job Seekers”. Come in and try it out at any of our libraries or at any time from your home computer.

I remember when I was a little boy I was so disappointed to find out that most adult books didn’t have pictures. What fun is a book without pictures? I was outraged. Today, still, I think pictures are a great way to enhance the reading experience. Luckily, I’ve found many others who agree with me. Some of them are visual artists who have been inspired by literature or literary figures. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to highlight two blogs that show off a wide range of literary inspired art.

Picture Book Report

I love this blog. It’s a project where many different visual artists have agreed to re-illustrate the classics. Each artist chooses one book to work from, and each week we get new artwork illustrating key scenes from that book. Some of the books chosen so far have been Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, A Wrinkle in Time, Geek Love, and many others. The visual styles vary greatly from artist to artist. For me, it’s really illuminating to see someone else’s conception of a well loved classic.

Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time!!!

Yes, it’s a silly name for a blog. I’m not sure what the story behind the name is, but it’s a fun website where different artists draw or paint portraits of their favorite literary authors or characters. There must be over a hundred artists participating, and they’ve drawn everyone from H.P. Lovecraft and Kurt Vonnegut to Willy Wonka and Ignatius J. Reilly.

As you might remember from my podcasting blog post from a few months ago, I’m a huge fan of podcasts!  Recently I’ve also become a huge fan of short stories.  I don’t know why they are not more popular.  Think about it: people have less time than ever,  they are constantly on the move, and with so much to read and do, who has time to finish a tome like this one or this other one.  What a better format than a 20 page short story that you can read at the bus stop?  Better yet, a 20 minute short story you can listen to while working out?  I think the combination of podcasts and short stories is up there in the list of genius combinations with rice and beans, Romeo and Juliet, and jeans and t-shirts.  So without further ado, here are some of my favorite free short story podcasts:

Miette’s Bedtime Story Podcast

Miette reads both classic and contemporary short stories in her soothing English accent.  This is one of my favorite podcasts, and true to its name, I’ve fallen asleep many times while listening (though sometimes the stories gives me weird dreams).  The best part about this podcast is that all the stories are handpicked by Miette herself, who has unpredictably quirky but excellent taste.

The New Yorker Fiction Podcast

Every month in this podcast they ask one short story writer to pick and read any story from The New Yorker archives that has influenced them or that they just really enjoy.  Afterwards, the writer talks about the story with fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.  It’s interesting to see what stories different writers pick.  For instance, I thought it was surprising that George Saunders chose Isaac Babel’s short story “You Must Know Everything,”  (which was one of my favorite stories in this whole series, and introduced me to a great writer).

PRI: Selected Shorts Podcast

This podcast gets professional actors to read short stories in front of  a studio audience.  Each episode follows a theme for an hour, and usually contains 3 or 4 short stories.  The performances are top-notch and really draw you in.

It’s T-minus 10 hours before this blog post is due to appear on the Library’s website and I’ll be the first to admit that I’m panicking a little bit. My muse had been M.I.A until just now as I’m hammering out this idea.

This post was originally gonna be about New Year’s Resolutions (i.e “So how are you guys doing with your resolutions? I’m doing horribly! Go to the Library. Done.”). But that idea got boring so I decided to maybe post about not having anything good to wear in my closet and to perhaps recommend one of the Library’s style books (namely How To Have Style by Isaac Mizrahi). That idea didn’t really go anywhere either but I did remember one of my favorite ideas from the Mizrahi book.  Mizrahi suggests that before buying a whole new wardrobe, one good thing to do is to get some inspiration.

Inspiration is a good thing…and that brings us closer to the point of this blog post.  Mizrahi’s idea is to create an inspiration board–a large corkboard upon which to post photos and images of things that inspire you and can perhaps inspire your  personal style. I’ve written a list of the people/images that would fill my corkboard should I ever get around to creating one: dandelions, Ugly Betty, Eric Carle illustrations and libraries.  Then I started thinking of how great it would be if I could create a virtual corkboard filled with video clips and images that I like.

From there I did a Google search and found this video about an online corkboard of sorts called Spaaze.com. Now I’m sure, considering how tech savvy DCPL patrons are, this may not be news to many people. But in case it is, take a look at this clip:

I find this pretty fascinating and I look forward to tooling around with it. It’s also nice to know how to pronounce its name (for the past few hours I couldn’t decide if it was pronounced spas or spazz).

My blog posts tend to be fairly random–just whatever’s on my mind at the moment. Right now that happens to be Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquakes that have ravaged the country.

For the past week or so I, like so many others, have been glued to the television and to the internet for any updates on the aftermath, relief efforts and ways to donate to the cause.  As heartbreaking as images and accounts of the tragedy have been, the outpouring of love and support has also been uplifting, encouraging and heartwarming.  Still, there’s always more that can be done, more that can be given.

My favorite thing about the holiday season is the beautiful seasonal songs: sacred hymns, traditional carols and even holiday pop classics. Now that Christmas time has passed most radio stations will be returning to their regular tunes. But there is one more holiday classic I look forward to hearing: the New Year’s standard “Auld Lang Syne”.

This song is widely regarded as the work of Scottish poet Robert Burns, even though several of the lyrics can also be attributed to other writers of similarly-titled works (such as “Old Long Syne”, a 1711 ballad by James Watson). Legend has it that Burns wrote a letter to a friend in which he spoke lovingly of the Scottish phrase “auld lang syne” and of an old folk song that “thrilled through [his]soul”. It is in this letter that he compiled and composed what would live on to become an enduring and well-loved holiday classic.

One of the things that fascinates me most about “Auld Lang Syne” is that, even though it has become a traditional New Year’s song throughout the world, it is still a widely misunderstood tune. There seems to be something missing in translation as holiday revelers warble the title, which roughly translates to “old long since” (and I mean that’s a rough, literal translation…or so I hear) and stumble over the lyrics.  But a simple internet search has been more than enough to uncover many wonderful things about “Auld Lang Syne” that I never knew, including full Scottish lyrics, a few nice translations of the song, and this gorgeous rendition of the song as performed by Mairi Campbell and Dave Francis.

As the song says, upon further reflection, should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind, perhaps we should take the time to kindly and fondly remember them. Over a pint perhaps at the pub? That’s neither here nor there, really. But this song does blossom into a moving, loving and heartfelt ballad…and strikes me as the perfect way to usher in a new year.

We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet for auld lang syne…

Recently, award winning author Neil Gaiman hosted a segment on the National Public Radio program Morning Edition during which he talked about the past and future of the audiobook format. Among the subjects he addressed were whether authors should narrate their own audiobooks (appropriate for some, while others “should never be allowed in front of a microphone”), the various challenges of the recording process (including audiobook performers whose “loud stomach noises” are equal in volume to their voices), and the difference between audiobooks and traditional books.

The segment also includes brief interviews with author David Sedaris and audiobook performer Martin Jarvis. If you are interested in hearing more than the excerpts included in the piece, you can head over to Neil’s blog to listen to the full length interviews.

Of the four audiobooks authored by Gaiman available in the DCPL catalog, he has acted as his own narrator half of the time; both were books produced for younger readers (Coraline and The Graveyard Book). If you, like Neil, enjoy the sound of your own voice, you might enjoy doing some volunteer work for LibriVox, a website which provides free audiobooks from the public domain. Volunteers simply record themselves reading chapters of eligible books and then those recordings are uploaded and released online as free audiobooks (you can search their catalog of available titles here).

One final note: Gaiman will be in town speaking and then signing books at Agnes Scott College’s Presser Hall on December 14th. As the tickets were free, and of limited quantity, it is unlikely there are any available at this point, but I felt it worth mentioning nonetheless. Click here for more info.

A lot of seniors aren’t comfortable with their computers. They’d love to get email and photos from their families but struggle with the mouse and keyboard. They see the grandkids whizzing around on the screen and think it’s too late for them to learn the trick. Well, it’s never too late to learn something new. I often tell seniors in our computer classes to think back to when they were learning to write and had to figure out how to grip a pencil. Were they writing in cursive right off the bat? They just need to practice. A DeKalb County Public Library card gets you 2 hours of time on a library computer and our page for New Computer Users is a good place to start. From there I usually recommend the Palm Beach County Library System’s Mousercise. This website guides a beginning mouser all around the screen, then through the dreaded double-click, scroll bars, radio buttons and drop-down menus. The exercises aren’t timed and there are no ads or confusing links.

When Mousercise gets dull, what to do next? Any familiar game like Solitaire is a good choice. There are lots of places to play online and many computers have a version already installed. Knowing how to play the game makes it easier for seniors to understand where to move the cursor. WebSudoku offers several skill levels and a timer if you want to increase the challenge. A woman in one of our computer classes enjoyed playing Wheel of Fortune online. Other good choices for a beginning mouser: Bookworm, an addictive word search game with no timer so you don’t have to rush and Thisissand, an unusual website that lets you make sand art (click the gray box to get started). Once a senior gets used to the mouse, there’s no stopping them online. Next click, email or maybe – Facebook?

With the recently proposed $894 billion heath care legislation working its way through Congress (to date it has been passed by the House and is working its way through the Senate; for more information, go here to read a recent article detailing the progress of the legislation) and the national debate over universal health care, rising insurance costs, and the possibility of a public insurance option heating up, what is needed is high-quality, incisive, and in-depth reporting on the facts of the situation. Luckily for those interested in teasing out the true nature of the health care related problems facing the nation, journalists from both National Public Radio and the public radio program This American Life have worked jointly to produce several articles and programs examining many aspects of the health care debate, all of which are available for free online.

This American Life (which, as mentioned earlier, is a radio program and therefore is in audio format) has produced the following episodes on the topic of health care:

• More is Less is an examination of why it is that medical costs keep rising. One story looks at the doctors, one at the patients and one at the insurance industry.
• Someone else’s money is a deeper look inside the health insurance industry, including stories examining industry jargon, the origins of the employer health care system, and the inside scoop on drug coupons and how they affect drug prices.
• The third act of the episode Fine Print reports on a House subcommittee hearing addressing the insurance industry’s practice of rescission.
• Additionally the TAL website also features a page of links to other health care articles and information, which can be found here.

If you’d prefer to read your news rather than listen to it (though you can listen to these stories as well), take a look at the health care related content produced by NPR:

• How the Modern Patient Drives Up Health Care Costs is an explanation of rising health care costs focusing on the role of patients, in a similar vein to Act 2 of the TAL episode More is Less.
• How Drug Ads Changed Health Care discusses the shift in pharmaceutical marketing over the past 25 years from attempts to influence doctors to advertising campaigns targeting patients, and the consequences of that shift.

And finally, for those still eager for more coverage on this subject, check out a couple of titles available from the DCPL catalog:

• Health Care Half-Truths: Too Many Myths, Not Enough Reality
• Health Care Meltdown: Confronting the Myths And Fixing Our Failing System