My First Story Time Presentation
I presented my first story time today on the theme of "Up and Down". Pamela counted the crowd and she said there were 95 people there - and probably more with people coming and leaving during the presentation. The presentation lasted 35 minutes. Here's the outline:
Up and Down Story Time:
Fingerplay - I've Got Ten Fingers
Song and Sign Language - The More We Get Together
1st Story - The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens
2nd Story - Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen
Song and Movement - The Grand Old Duke of York
3rd Story - My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohmann
4th Story - Silly Sally by Audrey Wood
The presentation was a great success. When we sang "The Grand Old Duke of York" the crowd started singing another verse I had never heard of but I just went along with it. We sang it three times - each time faster. When I read Going on a Bear Hunt the crowd voluntarily started a call and response with the repetitive part "Can't go over it, Can't go under it" etc. It was a blast! Children came up and thanked me and parents thanked me too. One grandparent said I was "radiant and jubilant". A few technical things I need to work on are projecting from my diaphragm instead of using my throat - my throat was really soar by the end of the presentation. Practice holding the book so everyone can see it. And feeling comfortable letting children know they need to sit down. I sort of blocked out all of the crying and wiggling kids. I think as I get more comfortable with presenting I can be more present and manage the crowd better.
Reader's Advisory - Developmentally Disabled
An older woman came in looking for books for her developmentally disabled 21-year old grand-daughter. She said she wanted picture books with not many words but that weren't too babyish. She said she was looking for subjects that were familiar to her grand daughter, for example she has a dog; she likes to ride her bike; she likes roller skating, bowling and gardening; and she had visited Norway on an airplane. Initially I started to search for subjects on the computer but then I just went to the stacks to browse with the woman. We went to the non-fiction section and got a book on bicycles, airplanes, and Norway. Then we went to the picture book section and got a story about dogs, (Circle Dogs by Kevin Henkes) and picture book about gardens (I thought it was Rainbow Garden, but now I can't find the title in the catalog!)
Folktales on CD
A woman needed some stories on CD for a car trip. She said her sister had checked something out that was about an hour long and had several stories on it. I asked if it was something like a storyteller telling a series of Irish folktales or something. She said that sounded right. We found folktales on CD in the catalog (folk tale*, folktale*, folklore) but nothing at the library. We did find several CD/book kits and and book on CD (Looking for Bobowicz by Daniel Pinkwater, the sequal to the Hoboken Chicken Emergency).
And that's the end of my Directed Field Work at the Seattle Public Library's Ballard Branch! Thank you Pamela LaBorde for all of your excellent mentoring!!!
Thursday, August 16, 2007
August 14th
Booktalking to Teens
I asked Ballard's teen librarian for examples of non-fiction she might take to schools to booktalk for teens. She said she looks for books with captivating pictures/photos. For example there's a book called Demolition that shows the demolition of huge buildings like the Kingdome. She might booktalk it like "Have you ever wanted to be a builder or an architect? Well, there are some people that blow up buildings for a living." Her style of booktalking is to muse about why she thinks the book is interesting. She tells just enough to whet their appetite - she doesn't recite the plot or try to convince them they'll love it. With teens it's more effective to be low-key and let them decide what they're interested in. Her booktalks are about 30 seconds in length. With non-fiction she especially wants to promote the idea of browsing. Kids are so used to searching the internet. She wants to introduce them to the idea of searching books. A book is a place where alot of information is collected together - a web page is only one page:)
Other non-fiction titles for teen booktalks:
Generation T : 108 ways to transform a T-shirt by Megan Nicolay.
How to survive a robot uprising : tips on defending yourself against the coming rebellion by Daniel H. Wilson.
Graffiti world : street art from five continents by Nicholas Ganz ; edited by Tristan Manco
Let them talk...
She sees that in a classroom the teens are talked to all day. The first thing she does is asks the teens for ideas about good books to read. Her philosophy is that she's not the authority on the newest and greatest. Kids have thousands of ideas of good books. That's not to say she doesn't bring in books. She'll hold up a book and ask "Has anybody read this?" If somebody raises their hand she lets them talk about it! Sharing books is a cultural thing. We get the best book recommendations from talking to each other. She wants to get them thinking about books and talking about books with each other. It's a social opportunity to model booktalking to each other. Alot of great discussions are started with booktalking. It's not about the librarian - it's about the teen readers. She'll write down the names of kids and the books they like.
One of her objectives for school visits is to "Get their library cards right with the world." For example she'll hand out slips for fresh starts that will waive their fines. She wants them to be able to come to the library without library card problems.
Teen Programming
Every community has different needs. Respond to your community. For example, in Ballard there are few requests for homework help so they don't have a HH program. But Ballard's Teen Librarian does school visits. At Douglas-Truth the HH program is hugely popular but she doesn't get much response when she offers other types of programming. At the Central Library, Jennifer Bisson's huge programs draw huge crowds but she doesn't have as much demand for school visits. Each librarian has their own style and their own strengths.
Business Prospecting - Reference Resource of the Day
A man came to desk who said he needed to call companies during the day. He needed something with lists of companies and their presidents, etc. I took him to a Company Directory called "Inside Prospects: Business to Business Prospecting Directory" which includes the names of company owners, the number of employees, and addresses, etc. He was also wondering if there was a directory online he could use. Reference USA has a business interface where you can do customized searches with just the name of the company, etc.
Reader's Advisory - Mice and Fairies
A young girl came in looking for picture books featuring mice. (Mice- fiction, mouse-fiction) She had read Time stops for no mouse : a Hermux Tantamoq adventure by Michael Hoeye and just loved it. It turned out she had a 7th grade reading level but she just liked to read picture books for fun. We didn't have a lot of mice picture books checked in so she said she also liked fairies. We found the classic Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie on the shelf (Tinkerbell is a fairy!). She also mentioned that she liked to draw the pictures she found in picture books. We found The Care and Feeding of Sprites by Tony DeTerlizzi (also author of the Spiderwick Chronicles) which was a picture book with the sprites but with more text than a younger readers picture book.
Alligator Pajama Storytime
1st book - The Fantastic Mr. Wani by Kanako Usui
2nd book - Mrs. Chicken and the Hungry Crocodile by Won-Ldy Paye & Margaret H. Lippert
Felt Board Story - Counting Crocodiles
3rd book - A Girl and Her Gator by Sean Bryan
4th book - I'd Really Like to Eat a Child by Sylviane Donnio
Activity - Alligator cut out: fold a piece of green construction paper in half long-ways. trace the outline of an alligator on the fold, plus a line for the mouth and three angled lines on its back. Cut out the lines. Fold back the cuts on its back to make scales. Voila! Your very own alligator! Supply markers to make extra decoration on gator.
The secret to Pamela's crafty ideas: Her kids attended a Montessori (?) school where she was very involved as an assistant. Also, her first position as a children's librarian had a craft for kids EVERY DAY after school. She got a lot of practice! Now she is always looking for ideas for easy, do-able crafts on a limited budget.
Extra books to check out:
An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lionni
Snip Snap What's That? by Mara Bergman
See You Later Alligator by Laura McGee Kvasnosky
Guji Guji by Chih-Yuan Chen
What Time Mr. Crocodile? by Judy Sierra
Counting Crocodiles by Judy Sierra
Gator by Randy Cecil
Alligator Boy by Cynthia Rylant and Diane Goode
Clarabella's Teeth by An Vrombant
There's a Crocodile Under My Bed! by Ingrid and Dieter Schubert
I asked Ballard's teen librarian for examples of non-fiction she might take to schools to booktalk for teens. She said she looks for books with captivating pictures/photos. For example there's a book called Demolition that shows the demolition of huge buildings like the Kingdome. She might booktalk it like "Have you ever wanted to be a builder or an architect? Well, there are some people that blow up buildings for a living." Her style of booktalking is to muse about why she thinks the book is interesting. She tells just enough to whet their appetite - she doesn't recite the plot or try to convince them they'll love it. With teens it's more effective to be low-key and let them decide what they're interested in. Her booktalks are about 30 seconds in length. With non-fiction she especially wants to promote the idea of browsing. Kids are so used to searching the internet. She wants to introduce them to the idea of searching books. A book is a place where alot of information is collected together - a web page is only one page:)
Other non-fiction titles for teen booktalks:
Generation T : 108 ways to transform a T-shirt by Megan Nicolay.
How to survive a robot uprising : tips on defending yourself against the coming rebellion by Daniel H. Wilson.
Graffiti world : street art from five continents by Nicholas Ganz ; edited by Tristan Manco
Let them talk...
She sees that in a classroom the teens are talked to all day. The first thing she does is asks the teens for ideas about good books to read. Her philosophy is that she's not the authority on the newest and greatest. Kids have thousands of ideas of good books. That's not to say she doesn't bring in books. She'll hold up a book and ask "Has anybody read this?" If somebody raises their hand she lets them talk about it! Sharing books is a cultural thing. We get the best book recommendations from talking to each other. She wants to get them thinking about books and talking about books with each other. It's a social opportunity to model booktalking to each other. Alot of great discussions are started with booktalking. It's not about the librarian - it's about the teen readers. She'll write down the names of kids and the books they like.
One of her objectives for school visits is to "Get their library cards right with the world." For example she'll hand out slips for fresh starts that will waive their fines. She wants them to be able to come to the library without library card problems.
Teen Programming
Every community has different needs. Respond to your community. For example, in Ballard there are few requests for homework help so they don't have a HH program. But Ballard's Teen Librarian does school visits. At Douglas-Truth the HH program is hugely popular but she doesn't get much response when she offers other types of programming. At the Central Library, Jennifer Bisson's huge programs draw huge crowds but she doesn't have as much demand for school visits. Each librarian has their own style and their own strengths.
Business Prospecting - Reference Resource of the Day
A man came to desk who said he needed to call companies during the day. He needed something with lists of companies and their presidents, etc. I took him to a Company Directory called "Inside Prospects: Business to Business Prospecting Directory" which includes the names of company owners, the number of employees, and addresses, etc. He was also wondering if there was a directory online he could use. Reference USA has a business interface where you can do customized searches with just the name of the company, etc.
Reader's Advisory - Mice and Fairies
A young girl came in looking for picture books featuring mice. (Mice- fiction, mouse-fiction) She had read Time stops for no mouse : a Hermux Tantamoq adventure by Michael Hoeye and just loved it. It turned out she had a 7th grade reading level but she just liked to read picture books for fun. We didn't have a lot of mice picture books checked in so she said she also liked fairies. We found the classic Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie on the shelf (Tinkerbell is a fairy!). She also mentioned that she liked to draw the pictures she found in picture books. We found The Care and Feeding of Sprites by Tony DeTerlizzi (also author of the Spiderwick Chronicles) which was a picture book with the sprites but with more text than a younger readers picture book.
Alligator Pajama Storytime
1st book - The Fantastic Mr. Wani by Kanako Usui
2nd book - Mrs. Chicken and the Hungry Crocodile by Won-Ldy Paye & Margaret H. Lippert
Felt Board Story - Counting Crocodiles
3rd book - A Girl and Her Gator by Sean Bryan
4th book - I'd Really Like to Eat a Child by Sylviane Donnio
Activity - Alligator cut out: fold a piece of green construction paper in half long-ways. trace the outline of an alligator on the fold, plus a line for the mouth and three angled lines on its back. Cut out the lines. Fold back the cuts on its back to make scales. Voila! Your very own alligator! Supply markers to make extra decoration on gator.
The secret to Pamela's crafty ideas: Her kids attended a Montessori (?) school where she was very involved as an assistant. Also, her first position as a children's librarian had a craft for kids EVERY DAY after school. She got a lot of practice! Now she is always looking for ideas for easy, do-able crafts on a limited budget.
Extra books to check out:
An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lionni
Snip Snap What's That? by Mara Bergman
See You Later Alligator by Laura McGee Kvasnosky
Guji Guji by Chih-Yuan Chen
What Time Mr. Crocodile? by Judy Sierra
Counting Crocodiles by Judy Sierra
Gator by Randy Cecil
Alligator Boy by Cynthia Rylant and Diane Goode
Clarabella's Teeth by An Vrombant
There's a Crocodile Under My Bed! by Ingrid and Dieter Schubert
August 8th
Nancy Stewart Live!
Children's singer Nancy Stewart performed a program called "The Backyard Boogie" today. She is amazing!!!. Every song was interactive whether we were jumping up and down or singing along or volunteering to go up front to help her out. At one point she had all the kids on their back with their feet in the air (because they were walking on the ceiling like a house fly!). She had control over the audience the whole time! And her props and backdrops were so creative! The backdrop was a piece of fabric with a huge tree on it. It was interactive with little birds, flowers, and ladybugs hidden all over. Bird houses were made from pint sized milk cartons. One song was about insects. She had a easel with a piece of black cardboard with velcro on it. She constructed an insect with all the parts: 2 wings, 2 antenna, 6 legs, and 3 part head/thorax/abdomen! Another song was about counting the spots on ladybugs and she had made six cardboard ladybug costumes with straps that fit over the children shoulders like a backpack. Again, she is AMAZING!!!
Manga for Middle Readers
Kids often come in looking for Pokemon or Yugio! manga comic books. They are always checked out, so what do you recommend for them? The tough thing about this is that young adult manga isn't always age appropriate for younger readers. A couple options that are cataloged as YA but may be appropriate for middler readers are Naruto and anything from Studio Ghibli such as Nausica or Spirited Away.
Don't judge a patron by their looks :)
A man in his early 20s or late teens came into the library. He had tatoos on his neck and he said he just moved to town with his mom from Florida. I have to admit I was surprised when he asked where the poetry section was. I walked him over to the 811s I asked him what kind of poetry he was interested in. He said he wasn't sure so I just started looking at the titles and named off some genres: religious poetry? war poetry? He took the religious poetry and said he was also interested in love poetry. I said love poetry would be a little harder to find because there are so many different kinds of love poetry. We went to the catalog to look for some titles. We found some classic and some contemporary love poetry.
Books on Children of Alcoholics
A woman came in and she was interested in books about children of alcoholics. She wanted the books for herself - but not books about adult children of alcoholics. There are a lot of books about preventing teen alcoholism, children's books about having an alcoholic parent, and government documents about children of alcoholics. We finally found what we needed with the subject heading "children of alcoholics" with a restriction of "not Juvenile". One promising title was "Parenting One Day at a Time"
Someone Took My Computer!
The public library is popular for it's free internet use. When it's busy patrons often have to reserve a computer to secure the next one available. Well, a woman came up to the desk and started explaining how she has problems printing. She was anxious about her print job coming out right so she flipped her keyboard upside down to indicate she was using her computer while she verified whether or not her print job went through. By the time she returned someone had taken her computer spot. So I said, it sounds like you're talking about two different things; your print job and someone taking your computer. After making sure she got her print job OK, I said, "so you really want to know a good way to indicate that a computer is in use if you step away." We suggested that she post a note on it that says "Computer in Use".
Children's singer Nancy Stewart performed a program called "The Backyard Boogie" today. She is amazing!!!. Every song was interactive whether we were jumping up and down or singing along or volunteering to go up front to help her out. At one point she had all the kids on their back with their feet in the air (because they were walking on the ceiling like a house fly!). She had control over the audience the whole time! And her props and backdrops were so creative! The backdrop was a piece of fabric with a huge tree on it. It was interactive with little birds, flowers, and ladybugs hidden all over. Bird houses were made from pint sized milk cartons. One song was about insects. She had a easel with a piece of black cardboard with velcro on it. She constructed an insect with all the parts: 2 wings, 2 antenna, 6 legs, and 3 part head/thorax/abdomen! Another song was about counting the spots on ladybugs and she had made six cardboard ladybug costumes with straps that fit over the children shoulders like a backpack. Again, she is AMAZING!!!
Manga for Middle Readers
Kids often come in looking for Pokemon or Yugio! manga comic books. They are always checked out, so what do you recommend for them? The tough thing about this is that young adult manga isn't always age appropriate for younger readers. A couple options that are cataloged as YA but may be appropriate for middler readers are Naruto and anything from Studio Ghibli such as Nausica or Spirited Away.
Don't judge a patron by their looks :)
A man in his early 20s or late teens came into the library. He had tatoos on his neck and he said he just moved to town with his mom from Florida. I have to admit I was surprised when he asked where the poetry section was. I walked him over to the 811s I asked him what kind of poetry he was interested in. He said he wasn't sure so I just started looking at the titles and named off some genres: religious poetry? war poetry? He took the religious poetry and said he was also interested in love poetry. I said love poetry would be a little harder to find because there are so many different kinds of love poetry. We went to the catalog to look for some titles. We found some classic and some contemporary love poetry.
Books on Children of Alcoholics
A woman came in and she was interested in books about children of alcoholics. She wanted the books for herself - but not books about adult children of alcoholics. There are a lot of books about preventing teen alcoholism, children's books about having an alcoholic parent, and government documents about children of alcoholics. We finally found what we needed with the subject heading "children of alcoholics" with a restriction of "not Juvenile". One promising title was "Parenting One Day at a Time"
Someone Took My Computer!
The public library is popular for it's free internet use. When it's busy patrons often have to reserve a computer to secure the next one available. Well, a woman came up to the desk and started explaining how she has problems printing. She was anxious about her print job coming out right so she flipped her keyboard upside down to indicate she was using her computer while she verified whether or not her print job went through. By the time she returned someone had taken her computer spot. So I said, it sounds like you're talking about two different things; your print job and someone taking your computer. After making sure she got her print job OK, I said, "so you really want to know a good way to indicate that a computer is in use if you step away." We suggested that she post a note on it that says "Computer in Use".
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
August 7th
Storytime Hints-
Tell the story slowly – show the whole audience the pictures. Storytime is different from a read-aloud to one or two children. When you read-aloud the child can see the book because they are right there. At storytime there are children to the right and the left and way in the back that need to see the pictures.
There will be vocabulary in the stories that they don’t know. For example in “Silly Sally” there is a Loon. In the Great Fuzz Frenzy there is a fiasco. Ask the audience “Do you know what a fiasco is?” Wait for an answer (or no answer) and then say what it is. “It means trouble, or a big mess.”
I’m looking for…
A boy came up to the desk looking for a book his teacher had read to him in class. He thought the title was “Someone Was Watching” He described the plot, at which point I started to panic, because there are very few books I know by plot. I asked him what grade he was in. He was in third grade, so I limited the search to children’s books and did a general keyword search for “someone was watching”. I didn’t find the book. It was found by limiting the search to children’s books and doing a keyword search for just the word “watching”.
A woman was looking for any illustrated copy of Rumpelstiltskin so she could get ideas to make felt pieces for a storyboard. When I spelled it Rumplestiltskin I only got one hit. I knew something was wrong. I respelled it Rumpelstiltskin and got over 30 hits. I put five different illustrated editions on hold for her.
Very Young Advanced Reader
A mother came in looking for Harry Potter read-alikes for her daughter. She was looking for a list of Harry Potter read-alikes she had heard was available at the library. Well, the list was a little out of date, so we went to Google and entered “If you liked Harry Potter…” and came up with a bajillion hits. Here’s the twist. The mother said, “Would it help to narrow down the options if you knew her age? She’s six.” Well, suggesting books for a six-year old who just read Harry Potter is different than suggesting books for a twelve-year old who just read Harry Potter.
Multnomah County Library http://www.multcolib.org/ has a list of Harry Potter read-alikes organized into categories for Middle Readers and Older Readers. http://www.multcolib.org/kids/booklists/harrypotter.html
In the future I might ask how old the daughter is in the beginning, and if she is very young, ask if the mother is looking for a book to read aloud with her daughter, or something the daughter would read by herself. With a read-aloud you can suggest titles with higher vocabulary and maturity level.
For the daughter I could suggest:
Half Magic by Edward Eager
Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins
For a read-aloud (or an older child) I could suggest
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy, or
Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy
The main objective when suggesting read-alikes is to give the person ideas. A parent will have their own criteria, from which they can choose.
My Apartment is Turning Condo…
With the condo boom in Seattle, there are many questions about renter’s rights in the event that an apartment should turn condo. A man came in looking for landlord/tenant rights for Seattle. My first instinct was to point him toward a landlord/tenants rights book. He was interested in a pamphlet just for Seattle. Our pamphlet was out of date and it was in-library use only. He had been to the Ballard Neighborhood Service Center and they referred him to the Seattle Tenants’ Union. Other resources were:
Where To Turn Plus 2007 – a directory of social services put out by the King County Crisis Clinic, which includes a section on landlord/tenant resources
2-1-1 Community Information Hotline http://www.crisisclinic.org/211KC.html
DPD – City of Seattle, Department of Planning and Development http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/ (formerly known as DCLU – Department of Design, Construction, and Land Use)
NW Justice Project’s website http://www.nwjustice.org/ – to look for real estate law
King County Law Library http://www.kcll.org/ - phone number
Also, because this is a hot topic, another avenue for resources might be current newspaper articles on the subject.
In retrospect I would have asked him at the beginning if he were a landlord or a tenant.
False leads…
A woman came up and asked for the book “Hannah and Her Sisters”. She thought is was written by the same author as the book she was holding. I looked up Hannah and Her Sisters in the catalog and only came up with a movie and a movie soundtrack. I looked up the author and only found two books. I asked her to show me where Hannah and Her Sisters was referred to in the book she was holding. It turned out that a reviewer had compared the book she was holding to a cross between the two movies Four Weddings and a Funeral and Hannah and Her Sisters. It had nothing to do with a book nor the author!
July 31st
What kind of…
A man came in looking for information about diesel engines. Before we went off on a wild chase we asked “What kind of diesel engines?” He was looking for marine diesel engines!
A woman came in and said she was looking for a map. A map of what? The United States!
I saw it on Good Morning America…
An elderly woman came in with some information written down on a piece of paper. She said she was watching Good Morning America on July 27th and saw a show about home care items for seniors. She had written down abcnews.com. I looked up Good Morning America on abcnews.com but could find nothing about “home care items” on July 27th.
We spent quite a bit of time trying to navigate the abcnews.com archives but got nothing. The woman gave us her home phone number and we said we would call her when we found an answer. She said that she would like to know where to get the home care items and how much they would be to purchase. Before she left I asked her if she found the home care items, which items she would be interested in. She said she was interested in something to make it easier to twist her door knob.
In retrospect I would have asked these probing questions earlier. I thought she was just interested in a print out of the abcnews.com article. I could have asked her, “If we found the list you were looking for, what would you like to do with it?”
Once we got off the trail of looking for abcnews.com we started looking for keywords online. We looked at the AARP in their health section and found “assisted care devices”. We looked online for assisted care devices and found the keywords “adaptive living aids” on a website called www.ameds.com. We looked in the phone book for local resources for “home health care supplies stores”. We called one of them to ask if they sold things like the doorknob adaptor. We looked up “adapted equipment” online. We thought to look for items to assist with arthritis or visual impairment. We called the Mayor’s Office for Senior Citizens
It seems like the more information the patron gives you, the harder it is to remember to ask clarifying questions. There is always an essential piece of information missing!
July 24th
Children’s Musicians:
Ella Jenkins: well-known national artist
Nancy Stewart: local artist
Keeping Statistics
The Young Adult Librarian at Ballard has kept a paper and pencil graph of YA circulation statistics for the past six years. She keeps them for the year-end totals and also month-by-month totals so she can see busy trends during different times of the year. The graph is a visual indicator of how YA circulation statistics have gone up. She puts an asterix next to anomalies to explain any large dip or large increase. For example, a dip might reflect the library being closed for two weeks that month. Conversely, a larger than normal increase may reflect when a neighboring library closed, so her library experienced more traffic. Circulation statistics went up the year that non-fiction books began to be cataloged as YA. The horizontal axis has the date. The vertical axis has circulation numbers by the thousand.
I need a study guide…
A woman came in looking for study guides for a test. When I asked her what kind of study guide she said she didn’t know. She had just enrolled for classes at a local community college and needed to study for placement tests in Math and English. She wanted to know if we had any study guides for placement tests. I didn’t understand what kind of test she was taking and so I didn’t understand what kind of study guide she needed. At first I thought she wanted an SAT test book or something like that. The key to her answer lay in the need to study for “Placement tests in math and English”. She was enrolling in North Seattle Community College. We went to the NSCC website, clicked on “Enroll” which took us to “Placement Tests”. In the FAQ for placement tests we found “Is there a study guide for the English Placement Test?” which took us to a COMPASS Review Study Guide. We put a COMPASS Review book on hold for her. She also took home an SAT study book and a Math Review book from the 378.1662 section.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
July 22nd
Music
The Music Librarian, Bob, from the Central Library was substituting at Ballard today and I learned a lot of great tips for searching for music. A patron overheard him talking about how the only sheet music store in Seattle had closed. She was a member of the Music Teacher's Association and she wanted to know where the nearest music store was. It's in Tacoma - the Ted Brown Music Store.
Finding a Musical Recording
Tips: Using General Keyword search, put in performer or song title or Opus #. Limit to All Music Recordings (then you will get CDs, cassettes, and LPs). If a song has a common word in the title like "love", make sure you ask for a modifier like "squid" :)
Mozart recordings have a "K" number. The "K" stands for Kochel (with an umlot over the "o"). Kochel cataloged all of Mozarts works in chronological order. There have been some works discovered after Kochel's cataloging but that's more than I need to know...
Similarly,
Bach's works have a "BWV" #
Hayden's works have a "HOB" #
These numbers are another way to look up recordings.
One challenge when looking up music is that there are various spellings of common words in other languages like Italian or German, especially when looking up operas or symphonies. Examples of common words would be "concerto" or "symphony". In these cases, try to enter words that would be similar in both languages like "Figaro- Mozart" Sometimes, you'll just have to do the search twice in two different languages.
You can always call the Arts, Recreation, and Literature (ARL) Department at the Central Library for help. In fact, if someone is looking for sheet music, they have a entire collection that is not in the catalog. From the 1930s to the 1950s, KOMO radio had an orchestra. When they disbanded in the 1950s they donated all of their sheet music to the library. So Seattle Public Library has a rich collection of sheet music that may not be found in the common collections of music from the 1920s to the 1950s. BUT, it's not cataloged. The patron would have to come to the Central Library to browse.
Allmusic.com
Allmusic.com is like IMDb for music. It gives descriptions of classical pieces, reviews of popular music, lists of performances, discographies, biographies, and more. If you go into the Jazz section it will list all the genres of jazz. If you put in Johann Sebastian Bach it will list all of his works, all the recordings of his works, and whether or not they are in print!
Historical Sheet Music: Online Resources
1. Music for the Nation; Library of Congress - from 1875
2. Historic American Sheet Music; Duke University - from 1920
3. Lester S. Levy Collection - from 1923 to 1960s
Sheet music from 1923 and earlier is free of copyright. The first two sites you can download the sheet music. The Lester Levy collection will only give citations.
Encyclopedias
A patron came up and said she would like to know how gasoline is made. All of the computers were in use and I was waiting for one to be freed up. The patron asked if the Encyclopedia would have an answer! Of course! Before the internet I would have instinctively gone to the encyclopedia! So we went over to World Book Encyclopedia and started with "O" for oil refinery. That referred us to "P" for petroleum which had an entry on how gasoline is made. She was OK with that, but if she had wanted more we could have taken key words out of the encyclopedia entry to find books on the same subject. Or, if a computer had been available I could have used the online databases to find an online encyclopedia :)
Spanish? or French?
A patron had just watched the movie "Around the World in 80 Days" and wanted to know the translation of the character named "Passepartout". She thought it was a Spanish word. Bob went to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and looked up the movie. Then he went to the cast of characters. Passepartout looked like a french word, so he went to the French/English dictionary and found the meaning: "For all occasions" The twist with this search is that if we had gone with the patron's guess that it was a Spanish word, we would never have found it!
Reluctant Reader's Advisory
A mother came up with her two sons and asked if we had any of R.L. Stine's Rotten School series. She said that they had really got her one son reading the previous summer. It turned out that he had read all of the ones we had in the collection. Other titles that were popular with her son were the Baseball Card Adventure series by Dan Gutman(Babe and Me, etc.); Sideways Stories from Wayside School series by Louis Sachar; Travis & Freddy's Adventures in Vegas by Henry Johnson; and non-fiction books about Dragons. This boy liked to listen to books on tape.
American Girls
Another mother came up to the desk with her daughter. She was looking for Addy's Surprise by Connie Porter in the American Girls Collection. This girl was hard to recommend books for because she had read everything we suggested and one that she hadn't read, her mother had deemed inappropriate for her daughter. The book the mother objected to was The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich, but she wasn't clear why she objected to it. Other books the girl had read were: Little House on the Prairie, Gail Carson Levine's Princess books, and Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy and Tacy books. The mother and daughter finally were happy with Because of Winn Dixie.
Another reader's advisory: Greek gods - fiction for kids.
Roman Mysteries series by Caroline Lawrence
The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan
This was hard to look for. I kept on coming up with books in the 398s instead of just fiction.
The Music Librarian, Bob, from the Central Library was substituting at Ballard today and I learned a lot of great tips for searching for music. A patron overheard him talking about how the only sheet music store in Seattle had closed. She was a member of the Music Teacher's Association and she wanted to know where the nearest music store was. It's in Tacoma - the Ted Brown Music Store.
Finding a Musical Recording
Tips: Using General Keyword search, put in performer or song title or Opus #. Limit to All Music Recordings (then you will get CDs, cassettes, and LPs). If a song has a common word in the title like "love", make sure you ask for a modifier like "squid" :)
Mozart recordings have a "K" number. The "K" stands for Kochel (with an umlot over the "o"). Kochel cataloged all of Mozarts works in chronological order. There have been some works discovered after Kochel's cataloging but that's more than I need to know...
Similarly,
Bach's works have a "BWV" #
Hayden's works have a "HOB" #
These numbers are another way to look up recordings.
One challenge when looking up music is that there are various spellings of common words in other languages like Italian or German, especially when looking up operas or symphonies. Examples of common words would be "concerto" or "symphony". In these cases, try to enter words that would be similar in both languages like "Figaro- Mozart" Sometimes, you'll just have to do the search twice in two different languages.
You can always call the Arts, Recreation, and Literature (ARL) Department at the Central Library for help. In fact, if someone is looking for sheet music, they have a entire collection that is not in the catalog. From the 1930s to the 1950s, KOMO radio had an orchestra. When they disbanded in the 1950s they donated all of their sheet music to the library. So Seattle Public Library has a rich collection of sheet music that may not be found in the common collections of music from the 1920s to the 1950s. BUT, it's not cataloged. The patron would have to come to the Central Library to browse.
Allmusic.com
Allmusic.com is like IMDb for music. It gives descriptions of classical pieces, reviews of popular music, lists of performances, discographies, biographies, and more. If you go into the Jazz section it will list all the genres of jazz. If you put in Johann Sebastian Bach it will list all of his works, all the recordings of his works, and whether or not they are in print!
Historical Sheet Music: Online Resources
1. Music for the Nation; Library of Congress - from 1875
2. Historic American Sheet Music; Duke University - from 1920
3. Lester S. Levy Collection - from 1923 to 1960s
Sheet music from 1923 and earlier is free of copyright. The first two sites you can download the sheet music. The Lester Levy collection will only give citations.
Encyclopedias
A patron came up and said she would like to know how gasoline is made. All of the computers were in use and I was waiting for one to be freed up. The patron asked if the Encyclopedia would have an answer! Of course! Before the internet I would have instinctively gone to the encyclopedia! So we went over to World Book Encyclopedia and started with "O" for oil refinery. That referred us to "P" for petroleum which had an entry on how gasoline is made. She was OK with that, but if she had wanted more we could have taken key words out of the encyclopedia entry to find books on the same subject. Or, if a computer had been available I could have used the online databases to find an online encyclopedia :)
Spanish? or French?
A patron had just watched the movie "Around the World in 80 Days" and wanted to know the translation of the character named "Passepartout". She thought it was a Spanish word. Bob went to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and looked up the movie. Then he went to the cast of characters. Passepartout looked like a french word, so he went to the French/English dictionary and found the meaning: "For all occasions" The twist with this search is that if we had gone with the patron's guess that it was a Spanish word, we would never have found it!
Reluctant Reader's Advisory
A mother came up with her two sons and asked if we had any of R.L. Stine's Rotten School series. She said that they had really got her one son reading the previous summer. It turned out that he had read all of the ones we had in the collection. Other titles that were popular with her son were the Baseball Card Adventure series by Dan Gutman(Babe and Me, etc.); Sideways Stories from Wayside School series by Louis Sachar; Travis & Freddy's Adventures in Vegas by Henry Johnson; and non-fiction books about Dragons. This boy liked to listen to books on tape.
American Girls
Another mother came up to the desk with her daughter. She was looking for Addy's Surprise by Connie Porter in the American Girls Collection. This girl was hard to recommend books for because she had read everything we suggested and one that she hadn't read, her mother had deemed inappropriate for her daughter. The book the mother objected to was The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich, but she wasn't clear why she objected to it. Other books the girl had read were: Little House on the Prairie, Gail Carson Levine's Princess books, and Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy and Tacy books. The mother and daughter finally were happy with Because of Winn Dixie.
Another reader's advisory: Greek gods - fiction for kids.
Roman Mysteries series by Caroline Lawrence
The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan
This was hard to look for. I kept on coming up with books in the 398s instead of just fiction.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)