Here is the third video created by Phil Bowermaster from the Mid-Atlantic Library Futures Conference.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR4nq_C7dNc]

This is the second in a series of three videos that Phil Bowermaster is creating from footage filmed at the Mid-Atlantic Futures Conference.  Listen to comments from Salvador Avila, Tina Keresztury, Leslie Burger and Nancy Dowd.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzbu6VP8Vrw]

The Mid-Atlantic Library Futures Conference was a spectacular success. More than 360 of your colleagues attended and were fascinated by Ray Kurzweil’s vision of the future.  Mary Catherine Bateson spoke about our extended life expectancy and the role libraries can play in providing resources to our aging population.

 One of the people who attended this event, Phil Bowermaster, is a futurist based in Denver, Colorado.  The planning committee used questions that Phil developed to promote discussion at the “World Cafe.”  One of the questions was “If you live to be 100, what will be the biggest difference between the world you were born into and the world you leave?”  Phil fully participated in our conference and helped to facilitate discussion.  The following is a video he developed.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc6o2QHbmjM]

Conference materials will be posted on the PALINET website shortly.

Left to right:  Connie Paul, Norma Blake, Susan H. Gulick, Maria Norton, Joe Da Rold, Ingrid Bruck. Special thanks to Fred Pachman, Director of the Altschul Medical Library at Monmouth Medical center for the photo.

Librarians from all over the state were invited to share their favorite New Jersey reads at the NJLA conference session “Location! Location! Location,� held on April 18, 2007. This presentation was sponsored by the History and Preservation Section and the Reader’s Advisory Roundtable. I was proud to be one of the librarians selected to participate. Joining me were: Maria Norton, Morristown and Morris Township Public Library; Joe Da Rold, Plainfield Public Library; Connie Paul, Executive Director, CJRLC; Ingrid Bruck, Long Branch Public Library; Susan H. Gulick, Morristown and Morris Township Public Library. The book I chose to share was: The Lost Legends of New Jersey by Frederick Reiken.

Written in 2000, The Lost Legends of New Jersey is Reiken’s second book after The Odd Sea, which was a Hackney Literary Award-winner for first fiction. Reiken is a New Jersey native who now lives in Massachusetts and teaches graduate students writing at Emerson College.

This is a coming of age novel set in Livingston and the Jersey shore from 1979 to 1983. It mentions actual places, towns and streets of New Jersey – a real suburban Jersey experience – even in going to a real diner. The story revolves around love and loss in the suburbs.

Anthony Rubin is a young Jewish teen surrounded by people looking for love. His father can’t connect to his cold, emotionally unstable wife and has an affair with Anthony’s best friend’s mother. The friend’s mother had given up her first love to marry into money. After the affair, Anthony’s best friend drifts away from him. Anthony, who is shy with girls, is tutored by Alex Brody, an older girl and hockey manager, with whom he loses his virginity. Juliette, his neighbor, is the daughter of a minor Mafioso. Juliette’s mother committed suicide, and her father is beaten twice by loan sharks. Juliette has a sadistic boyfriend, a crass football star, with whom she has gotten a bad reputation. Juliette becomes Anthony’s secret lover and best friend. Anthony, in the end, is able to rise above his circumstances, but Juliette doesn’t escape her problems.

Everyone in the book is caught between commitment and confusion. They are longing for connections. Anthony learns that loving someone can mean having to bear the pain of separation, as when his mother leaves home to live in Florida and also when an anorexic boy with whom Anthony bonds slips away and when Juliette leaves. The sweetest story line is about Anthony’s grandfather who remarries in his 80’s when he finds his b’shert (Yiddish for love of one’s life.)

The characters are compelling, and there is good character development. The book’s style switches from first person, to action-packed flashbacks told from the points of view of Anthony’s father, mother and his neighbor. The voices are really authentic. The book contrasts this stark realism with fantasy, showing that magic can be found in ordinary places.

The Lost Legends of New Jersey merges myth and the mundane. There is a misty graveyard of dead musical instruments which Anthony and his friends come upon when lost in the Meadowlands. Anthony and his sister Danielle ride bikes, magically flying through the deserted streets of Livingston in the middle of the night. Anthony and Juliette are the star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliette.

Some might object to the general promiscuity of the teens in the book as well as to the violence of a suicide, the slow death of anorexia, beatings and the trashing of a house by teens during a party. Still, The Lost Legends of New Jersey is a memorable book that belongs in popular fiction collections.

I have been thinking a lot about our advocacy efforts and how we can make them more effective. I know that when librarians get together, we tend to use the language with which we are most comfortable. That’s why a typical conversation between librarians will be filled with shorthand. “Have you tried the federated searching yet?� “How many databases does it search at one time?� “Did you ILL the book for that patron?�

If we want to convince members of our community and our elected officials of our value, we need to make a concerted effort to speak a common language. The article below, written by Janet Steiner, Director of the Tompkins County (NY) Public Library, successfully translates library jargon into language that is simple yet persuasive.

This article was originally published in The Ithaca Journal on March 26, 2007. It is reprinted with permission from The Ithaca Journal. Permission was also granted by the author.

Library is more than just ‘resources’
Janet Steiner / Guest Column
Our library profession, like other professions, frequently uses jargon as a shorthand way of talking about ourselves. Jargon is not user-friendly. It suggests that there is an in group (us) and out group (you). It’s hard work to transcribe jargon into plain English and so we often continue using our favorite words like “databasesâ€? and “resources,â€? and wonder why no one understands what we are talking about.
Our new favorite phrase is “federated searching,� and someone cleverer than I will have to take the time to explain what it is and why you might like to actually do a federated search.
My least favorite word associated with libraries is “resources.â€? My second least favorite word is “databases,â€? and we’ll tackle that one next month.
But resources? Too vague, too broad, too meaningless. Our library has many resources, but until we move from the general to the specific, no one really cares.
So what can I tell you about the breadth and depth of our library, its riches, its value, its products and services that you might not know about?
Our library has a collection of books that are free to any person to borrow. But books come in many flavors — books to make you laugh, books to help you plan your wedding, books about famous people, books about politics, books about how to fix your car.
But more than books, our library collects stories. Sometimes the story is printed in a book format, and sometimes the story is listened to in an audio format, and sometimes the story is told through film. Stories are mankind’s way of preserving our history and giving meaning to our lives. Some of the most powerful books in our library are labeled fiction, and some of the most popular bestsellers whose popularity will soon fade are labeled inspirational.
But you knew that libraries have books, didn’t you? And videos and DVDs and magazines, newspapers, music CDs and books on CD. But did you know that our library has software to help people learn English? Or a place for the visually impaired that can scan documents, enlarge text documents and read everything on the screen so that someone can actually navigate the Web without being able to see it?
Perhaps you didn’t know about the large collection of local newspapers on microfilm, dating back to the 1820s, that are used daily by genealogists and those researching local history topics — and that the microfilm can be digitally scanned and stored on your flash drive?
We’re sure you know the library has offered public Internet access since 1995, with more than 75,000 sessions used during 2006. But perhaps you missed the fact that we have high speed wireless throughout the building. Or that the Ezra Cornell Reading Room is one of the quietest places in Tompkins County, great for reading, researching or just thinking.
And maybe you didn’t know that we keep a newspaper business clipping file on local businesses and commerce. And the library often acts as a repository for local or state agencies that need to place documents in public places prior to public hearings. These resources (oops!) are cataloged and made available within 24 hours of receipt, since the public needs timely access to them.
Perhaps the most important resource of all is the knowledge and skill of our staff who know how to find information effectively and expediently. While most of us have come to depend upon Google as a primary source of information, our professional librarians are unparalleled when it comes to determining the best and most accurate sources of information.
To give you just a flavor of what we can do, here are some of the reference questions and information inquires that we answered last month:
* Home tanning and leather working
* Organic farming and nutritional aspects
* Baby and toddler development
* Talent agents in Orlando and Naples, Fla.
* Stock trading summary 2004
* African-American dance troupes
* How to build a ceramic kiln
* Grandiflora rose characteristics
* Building a computer
* Travel agencies run by major department stores
* Vietnamese phrasebook
* A patron wished to fax to South America
* 18th century Jewish European life
* Rectocele and Cystocele medical information
* Caregiving guides for people who have lost someone to suicide
* How to start a magazine
* Migration of early man
* History of gay/lesbian movement - 1950s and 1960s
* Nurses in the civil war
* Barrel race training
* How to donate a car to charity
* How to make a pet snake eat
* Locations of several military academies
* Foreign social customs and etiquette
* Working for presidential candidates
* Peruvian photographers
* Hyperspectral imagery
* Korean and Japanese dining rooms and/or home décor
* Parenting a child with cerebral palsy
Our library contains a wealth of information, with talented people available to help you navigate all of it. Maybe that’s the best definition of our library resources. We invite you to come visit us in person or visit our Web site at http://www.tcpl.org/.
Janet Steiner is the director of the Tompkins County (NY) Public Library.