Librarian on the edge

A double barreled detective story

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 09:45:00 -0700

"I was young then. Younger than I will ever be again by a thousand years." Mark Twain

Everyone knows that young Samuel Clemens hit the road at age 17 to see all of those cities that he had read about. When he got to New York, he found lodging at a boarding house on Duane Street. All of the conventional wisdom was that the actual location was lost in the sludge of time and we’ll never know. I had pondered this gap a lot because my last full-time job was in Tribeca, and my office was one block away from Duane Street. I really wanted to know where, specifically, he went at night and complained about the food. But we can’t find out. Or can we?

Recently, I saw a posting about the New York Public Library digitizing a large collection of NYC city directories. As luck would have it, there were the standard city directories with names alphabetically listed along with address and occupation. There were also a few business directories from the exact time frame that Clemens was in that “abominable place.” The latter had listings by category, one of which was “Boarding Houses.” There were hundreds of them listed, but only 15 or so were on Duane Street. This list was expanded somewhat by using other directories found at the Digital Public Library of America.

Okay, that seemed to be as far as I could take this. Then I took another look at Twain’s letters and got more. First off, they describe Twain’s lodgings on Duane Street “Near Broadway.” One boarding house at 54 Duane was about two blocks from Broadway. Another at 98 Duane was just around the corner from Broadway. Then I saw in a letter to Pamela in October 1853 that he spent his free time at the Printers’ Library just under a quarter mile away at 3 Chambers Street. Most boarding houses that I didn’t just mention are much further away - more like a half mile, so we can safely rule them out. The one at 54 Duane is a tenth of a mile - about a block and a half. The one at 98 was seemingly a perfect match. This one was run by a French immigrant named Antoine Maniort. At first, I was ready to put my money on this location. In his letters, he also mentioned that his place of work was a bit more than a mile away. That's the only thing that doesn't match up, because the actual distance from 98 Duane to his print shop was about three quarters of a mile, which may have seemed longer due to the number of street changes. Young Sam mentions his lunch walk just across Broadway which was a death-defying feat even back then, but he doesn't mention crossing Broadway on his way to and from work. That adds weight to a boarding house just East of Broadway at 82, run by F. Heinemann and Henry Riemann. On the other hand, the book of Mark Twain's letters claims that he lived just west of Broadway, and I would love to find out the substantiation for that claim. One other choice face that I uncovered was that Duane Street and Chambers Streets both ran further east than they do today. They intersect at the point that seems to be the location of the Printers Library, which is, today the location of the New York City Police Headquarters. You can't soon forget the sign "Welcome to the New York City Police Department."

Today there are three subscription libraries in New York that have been in continuous operation since at least 1820, and the oldest was founded in the 1750s. I visited all of them gathering research for my current book (pause for shameless plug – Fifty Specialty Libraries of New York City, see sig file below). I’d wondered if the Printers Library was an early iteration of one of these, but I was told it was not. Then a new book about Twain's early life identified the second library as an early location of the General Society of Mechanics, north of his lodging on Broadway and well within walking range. I later found out the the printers library had evaporated a few decades after Twain’s time there.

Now that a door has possibly been opened, there is much that can be done. I see that the New York Historical Society has a folder on 98 Duane with architectural renderings and possibly more. I have made a visit to the Historical Society (a wonderful resource!), but spent my first visit reading every book I could about TriBeca. The Municipal Library probably has more to offer about this. Duane was an interesting place at that time – I saw several things in the Internet Archive (archive

.org) that implied that the street was known to have a thriving trade in prostitution - in particular, the boardinghouse at 72 Duane, run by Jane Williams, was singled out as a notorious house. No doubt young Sam found this very interesting, but all we have is letters he wrote to his family, so we'll never know for sure about that. The map above was accessed from the Digital Public Library of America from the New York Public Library Digital Collection.

I will keep poking around on this, and look forward to hearing if anybody else comes up with something. I'd like to give the Digital Public Library of America a huge shout out for making this incredibly useful information available. As someone who has worked in bringing up digitized information I'm thrilled to be part of an example that this information can have real consequences.

This got my juices flowing enough that I will start a new project to highlight life on Duane Street in 1853. Using the directories, I can find out what other businesses were on this short street. The stores weren't all that different from modern times, although there were four shops selling brass goods and one selling copper. Two establishments are listed as "Eating." If you think of a traditional restaurant you would be wrong. The book "Ten Restaurants that changed America" describes these early eateries as basically filling stations for humans. Guests sat down, wolfed down their food in minutes and never looked at others at the table. I will add pictures of Duane Street today, concentrating on the older buildings. I've just begun the map project, so you can check it out as it progresses at Duane street then and now

Why this fuss about this time and place? This was Sam's first view of New York City, and it planted seeds that sprouted the rest of his life. He spent years living in Greenwich Village later in his life. To the extent that any one city could claim him, I think New York has a strong case. I'm also intrigued that you never heard of him going back to his old street, even though he spent considerable time living and visiting New York. Something happened here that was deliberately cloaked in mystery. As an old man, he mentioned this time in his autobiography, but he just rehashed sentences from his letters home. As the map is built, I can already picture young Sam on his way to work, passing at least 8 ironworks, so he more likely smelled molten metal than coffee on his way down. The work goes on. Past the iron section in Lower Duane just before Chambers Street, you see a series of Doctor's offices. Three of them advertised in the Herald Tribune on October 12, 1853. The vague wording and assurances of confidentiality make it sound like they specialize in diseases that there patients want to keep under wraps.

Recently I spent a morning walking the length of Duane Street - pictures I took can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/terryballard/albums/72157672729345094 . The second and third pictures show buildings that were constructed at or near 1853, showing that this section of Duane West of Broadway was more affluent and less likely to house the young printers' assistant. Given the fact that the street was shortened, I was curious to know if the street numbers in 1853 matched those of today, and I recently found out that 140 Duane is that same building that existed using that number in 1853. I went to the NYC archive on Chamber Street at the end of that walk and was able to see some photos of Duane Street from about 1920. This section is now entirely new buildings so this image probably gives you a much better idea of the street in young Clemens' time.

Is there a book in this? Several people think so including one tremendously successful author and one editor. This was going to be just one section of a book about finding useful historical information on the Internet. Then I was persuaded by said famous author to go for it and write a book about Twain's early life that will solve a long-term mystery. How could I say no? The book will be a three part harmony of straightforward history of Duane Street and Manhattan in the time of Sam's first visit. The second part will be a novelistic recreation of young Sam's life in that period. The third will be essays of my visits to places that Twain visited or lived in (there are many of these). I might even slip in a dialog of Twain speaking from his eternal reward. Each of my previous books took a year to write, but this one promises to be twice or thrice that. I guarantee that this will be the last book I ever attempt to write. At age 72, I'm well aware that I'd better get cooking.

Example

It was 10:30 PM, and Sam Ballard walked the halls of his modest East Phoenix home. The news was over, and he just needed to check the front and back doors before going to sleep. He would be waking up at 5 to put on his uniform and drive the 35 miles to Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix’s west valley. On his way back to the bedroom, he opened the door where his two sons were sleeping, and did a double take. On the near bed there was a light coming from the blanket - was there a fire?

He threw off the cover and found his son reading a large book with a flashlight. It was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Terry explained that he was at the part where Tom and Becky were lost in the cave with Injun Joe. Terry could not wait until the next day to find out what happened. Sam confiscated the flashlight and put the covers back over his son.

This was the first full sized book that the 10 year old read. A year before, his dad had bought a new WebCor tape recorder and recorded the chapter where Tom Sawyer fed his medicine to the cat and all hell broke loose. He knew it would be his first “real” book someday.

He did not know that he would rediscover Mark Twain as an adult, or that he would consciously or unconsciously follow Twain around the country and much of the world. As an adult, he should have followed the conventional wisdom that Huckleberry Finn was Twain's best book. Instead, he gravitated to the more pessimistic works like "The Mysterious Stranger." Right now young Terry was concerned about keeping Becky safe from that evil Injun Joe. Eventually he went to sleep and dreamed about caves with hidden dangers in the darkness.

Nixon is alive! (In our library's catalog, that is)

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 07:41:00 -0700

Try talking about authority control to any cataloger, they will quickly change the subject to something more pleasant, like the Mets' chances of turning things around this season or the enlightened state of political discourse these days. My position as special projects librarian gives me the power to find things wrong in the catalog and, if possible fix them. I knew that things had been left undone in the realm of birth and death information, but even I was surprised to see Nixon alive in our catalog. I started taking a good look at the situation and found that even John Lennon was alive and well here. Some famous authors were born in the 1890s and had not death dates, so this meant that either there was a problem or they were 130 years old.

I made a review file of the existing authority records in our system - more than 17,000 turned up, so on the face of it, this was too big a problem to ever tackle. Sending the records out to a vendor for authority control work was, I was told, not an option. Then I broke the problem down a bit and talked myself back in to handling it. Of those 17 thousand records, most of them are for authors who have long since left us such as Balzac, Twain, Shakespeare, the Brontes and Mencken, so I started going for the recent departures. Wikipedia has a handy year by year guide listing important deaths. An Argentinian sports announcer would not be found in our catalog but authors like Doris Lessing and politicians like Margaret Thatcher would be. Once identified, I found I could, in most cases, do the corrections for each departee in five minutes or less.

Working my way back to 1990, I found about a hundred important authors and statesmen who needed improved records in our system. One day soon I will make a list and display the names along with birth and death dates for the use of others interested in a summer project.

The world has changed since the whole concept of authority control came along. In the old days (I started my library career in 1966, so I know a thing of two about that), the library had books and journals, and they could keep their files in order using 3 X 5 cards. Now, in our library, more than 70% of the books are ebooks, and the records for them arrive in massive marc loads - hopefully the vitals for the authors match what we have, but there is no guarantee.

In very large libraries, this can guarantee a mess. I checked a number of A+ libraries and statewise union catalogs and found extreme disorder in some of them. One of them had half of the records for Doris Lessing showing the correct dates, and half gave her credit for still being alive. That's not the only problem. Some prominent figures do not have birth OR death dates. Ronald Reagan, the messianic figure of the Republican Party did not have any years listed in most of the catalogs I checked. Same with Kurt Vonnegut, who would be amused by being unstuck in time. "And so it goes."

I soon found out that the Gipper and Vonnegut were not just missing their dates in our catalogs - this was true in library catalogs across the nation. It seemed like a bit of a mystery, but I got one important clue just before I left for the week. The Library of Congress, the authority of all authorities did not show birth and death dates for these two men in their catalog. Looking further, I found Hunter Thompson, Maia Angelou, Harper Lee and Flannery O'Connor among the missing date honorees. Why?

Well, thanks to Kate James at the Library of Congress, we now know why. Birth and death dates are created to eliminate confusion when there may be confusion due to two people having the same name. The example she gave was John Ritter - the name of a, 18th century printer, and, of course the name of a modern actor. When he first started appearing in the catalog his birth date was known, so they added it to his authority record. When he died, they filled in that date. If he had not been given a birth date at first, his death date would have forever gone unnoted. Ronald Reagan first appeared when he made an audio recording in his days as a second tier actor, so they did not bother with birth dates for him, especially given that there were no other Ronald Reagans of note. Once he became president, it became impractical to go back and add dates - not only for the Library of Congress itself, but for the many libraries that align their work to that of the LOC. In other words, the decision of the judges is final. As for Vonnegut, they correctly determined that this name would remain rather unique, so dates were unnecessary. Same with Harper Lee and Maia Angelou, although you have to wonder why dates were added to the record for Sojourner Truth.

I went ahead and added birth and death dates to dignitaries like Richard Feynman or Robertson Davies. Once again it seemed like this was a very manageable project, but more surprises came my way. I found a very rich vein of authors who were born in the mid to late 19th century, with birth dates but not death dates. Either these people are 130 years old now, or the information is incomplete. I'd just go back to LC and get death dates. It turned out that the LOC catalog also was missing these death dates. In most cases I could get the dates from a source like Wikipedia. However, it appears that to do this right, it will take me the entire time between now and New Years. Just to satisfy my curiosity about how widespread this problem is, I checked one of my previous employers, because I know that they had a complete authority job done within the last ten years. It turns out that the company that did the authority work just took their data from Library of Congress, so that library has 130 year old authors as well.

Dates are not the only way to distinguish between similar names. Catalogers at LC also have the option of adding middle names to keep the parties straight. Next month I will celebrate my 50th anniversary of working in libraries, so it is a pleasure to learn something about the field that had completely escaped me before now.

Here is a list of dignitaries likely found in any library catalog with death dates after 2000:

Ali, Muhammad, 1942-2016.
Angelou, Maya, 1928-2014.
Bergman, Ingmar, 1918-2007.
Bradbury, Ray, 1920-2012.
Buchwald, Art, 1925-2007.
Buckley, William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008.
Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 1908-2004.
Clarke, Arthur Charles, 1917-2008.
Cronkite, Walter, 1916-2009.
Cuomo, Mario Matthew, 1932-2015.
Doctorow, E. L., 1931-2015.
Ephron, Nora, 1941-2012.
Farmer, Philip Jos, 1918-2009.
Ferraro, Geraldine, 1935-2011.
Fowles, John, 1926-2005.
Gorey, Edward, 1925-2000.
Haig, Alexander Meigs, 1924-2010.
Heyerdahl, Thor, 1914-2002.
John Paul II, Pope, 1920-2005.
Kael, Pauline, 1919-2001.
Kerr, Jean, 1922-2003.
Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, 1926-2004.
Lee, Harper, 1926-2016.
Lem, Stanisaw, 1921-2006.
L'Engle, Madeleine, 1918-2007.
Lessing, Doris May, 1919-2013.
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 1908-2009.
Lindgren, Astrid, 1907-2002.
Mailer, Norman, 1923-2007.
Makeba, Miriam, 1932-2008.
Mandelbrot, Benoit B, 1924-2010.
McNamara, Robert S., 1916-2009.
Miller, Arthur, 1915-2005.
Moynihan, Daniel P. (Daniel Patrick), 1927-2003.
Nozick, Robert, 1938-2002.
Rampal, Jean Pierre, 1922-2000.
Reagan, Ronald, 1911-2004.
Rohmer, Eric, 1920-2010.
Sacks, Oliver W, 1933-2015.
Sagan, Francoise, 1935-2004.
Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David), 1919-2010
Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, 1917-2007.
Sheldon, Sidney, 1917-2007.
Spark, Muriel, 1918-2006.
Terkel, Studs, 1912-2008.
Thatcher, Margaret, 1925-2013.
Updike, John, 1932-2009.
Vonnegut, Kurt, 1922-2007
Weinberger, Caspar W, 1917-2006.
Wiesel, Elie, 1928-2016.
Zinn, Howard, 1922-2010.

Reagan was just the tip of the iceberg for authors that had no date information in their official records. Here is my list of 50 or so authors who (to the best of my knowledge) had no dates associated with their lives:

Adams, Douglas, 1952-2001.
Amis, Kingsley, 1922-1995.
Angelou, Maya, 1928-2014.
Arendt, Hannah, 1906-1975.
Auchincloss, Louis, 1917-2010.
Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989.
Behan, Brendan, 1923-1964.
Bellow, Saul, 1915-2005.
Bourjaily, Vance Nye, 1922-2010.
Brown, Dee Alexander, 1908-2002.
Calisher, Hortense, 1911-2009.
Calvino, Italo, 1923-1985.
Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 1908-2004.
Cheever, John, 1912-1982.
Cousins, Norman, 1912-1990.
Davies, Robertson, 1913-1995.
De Regniers, Beatrice Schenk, 1914-2000.
Dickey, James, 1923-1997.
Durant, Ariel, 1898-1981.
Durrell, Lawrence, 1912-1990.
Dyer, Wayne W, 1940-2015.
Eco, Umberto, 1932-2016.
Fallaci, Oriana, 1929-2006.
Fellini, Federico, 1920-1993.
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, 1919-
Feynman, Richard Phillips, 1918-1988.
Foote, Shelby, 1916-2005.
Frankl, Viktor Emil, 1905-1997.
Ginsberg, Allen, 1926-1997.
Graham, Sheilah, 1904-1988.
Herriot, James, 1916-1995.
Hurston, Zora Neale, 1891-1960.
Inge, William, 1913-1973.
Ionesco, Eugne, 1909-1984.
Kroeber, Theodora, 1897-1979.
Leary, Timothy Francis, 1920-1996.
Lee, Harper, 1926-2016.
LeShan, Eda J, 1922-2002.
Levi, Primo, 1919-1987.
Malamud, Bernard, 1914-1986.
Mandelbrot, Benoit B, 1924-2010.
Mowat, Farley, 1921-2014.
Norton, Mary, 1903-1992.
O'Connor, Flannery, 1925-1964.
Paley, Grace, 1922-2007.
Peter, Laurence J, 1919-1990.
Plath, Sylvia, 1932-1963.
Pohl, Frederik, 1919-2013.
Rand, Ayn, 1905-1982.
Renault, Mary, 1905-1983.
Silverstein, Shel, 1930-1999.
Sorensen, Theodore C, 1928-2010.
Spark, Muriel, 1918-2006.
Susann, Jacqueline, 1918-1974.
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 1881-1955.
Toynbee, Philip, 1916-1981.
Trapp, Maria Augusta, 1905-1987.
Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim, 1912-1989.
Turabian, Kate L, 1893-1987.
Van der Post, Laurens, 1906-1996.
West, Jessamyn, 1902-1984.
Wilson, August, 1945-2005.
Winsor, Kathleen, 1919-2003.
Zemach, Harve, 1933-1974.

ALA 2016 in Orlando

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 10:06:00 -0700

I racked my brain to find a clever title, but didn't have the heart after seeing what happened in Orlando days before the conference. I lived through 911 in New York City and remember that an entire metropolis was traumatized after that for months. I was bracing for something similar in Florida, but generally found that life in the happiest place on earth went rolling right along. We started using Uber to avoid a crippling cost of taxis from downtown to Disney parks, and they talked about many things, but not that. Orlando in general is an interesting place. I could go all sociology on you and expound about this is a trillion dollar monument to man's need to be amused, but....wait, Donald Duck just went by!

We arrived on the 23rd and got to the conference center before we even went to the hotel, so we could get out of our travel clothes and go off to Epcot. The hotel supposedly had a shuttle that took you there, but it wasn't waiting for us, and after 5 days, we never did see the supposed bus. Marriott Residence Inn Convention Center needs to take a good look at this. Alternatively, we took our first Uber ride and soon became fans. We had a marvelous meal at the German restaurant on Epcot's lake and went back ready to take on the convention.

Before that, we had to take on Disney's Animal Kingdom, which is the only part of the complex

that I had never seen. I will admit that I was not thrilled about going, and I liked it worlds better than I had imagined I would The talk by Michael Eric Dyson was a wonderful and rousing beginning to the conference, We slipped out early so we could get a good spot for the exhibits opening, otherwise known as the "Grabathon." Donna was off like a shot for that first hour, but I had a hard time finding book bags or suitable galleys for Donna's summer reading club. By the time I reconnected with Donna, she had already introduced us to the people manning the Elsevier booth and made sure that my new title was on display.

The next morning was the first of the author presentation breakfasts. We were happy to note that the authors spent more time on their books and less time on their love for librarians. All of the presentations were good but the standout was Shola Richards, talking about his book "Making work work: The positivity solution for any work environment." His story of bullying in the corporate work environment was extremely compelling. He told of working in places with jobs so toxic that they sucked the life out of your soul. Looking around the room, lots of us had been there. There was also a lunch session with authors sponsored by Random House. Lisa Black was possibly the most memorable, as she uses her working knowledge as a forensic analyst to enhance her mystery novels.

That evening we attended another Random House event (with unusually good food and drink) and heard presentations from the five authors shown here - Brit Bennett, Meg Rosoff, Nathan Hill, Jim Shepard, and Billy Collins. Jim Shepards' book sounded intriguing enough that I may end my ban on reading books about the holocaust - usually I won't touch anything with Nazis or 9-11.

Picking five libraries out of the fifty

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 07:35:00 -0700

My excellent publisher, Elsevier, has a daily science blog, and I was asked to contribute a piece in support of my new book. Since I couldn't cover every library, I was asked to choose only five to give an enticing sample. It was hard, but I did it. You can see the results at https://www.elsevier.com/connect/there-is-a-library-for-that-5-nyc-libraries-with-unique-specialties . Now my main job is to get the title into bookstores, Experience has shown that when a librarian holds the book in their hands, they often want to buy it. Time to hit the mean streets of New York once again on a new mission.

Author, Author

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 4 Apr 2016 14:50:00 -0700

When I wrote my last book I wrote a blog titled One Year of My Life. Now I am in the position of publicizing my new book after another year of my life was taken over. My wife once asked me "Why do you do this to yourself?" It sort of reminds me of the Mark Twain story about a man who was about to be hanged. When they asked for last words he said "If it weren't for the honor of the thing I'd just as soon have missed this occasion."

An honor it is. To get a book contract in these times of turmoil in the publishing industry is huge. From the time I first thought of this, it took me two years to get that contract and then six months to write it and more months of editing. It is that last part that is the main difference between working with a publisher and self publishing.

So now my crazy adventure of visiting fifty libraries in the five boroughs of New York City is a reality. It is available on Amazon and B&N in paper and electronic editions. My previous book netted five glowing reviews, most of which had good things to say about my off beat writing style. That style directed to a book that is sort of a library directory is not always well-received. Two people looked at chapters and asked me if an editor had seen this. On the other hand, a few librarians I know bought copies and love the thing.

Library journal has been great about publicizing this project. News editor Lisa Peet spent a half hour with me on the phone and the resulting article was so accurate that I knew she must have recorded me. You can see it at http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2016/02/books-media/terry-ballard-on-the-making-of-fifty-specialty-libraries-of-new-york-city-from-botany-to-magic .

I'm hoping it will do well enough that I can create an expanded second edition that will include sixty libraries instead of fifty. Beyond that I may or may not do one final book called A Good Walk Spoiled, about the wonderful world of misinformation on the internet. Misquotes, crazy Facebook postings about the moon turning green, and Kennedy Assassination buffs will be merrily included. We'll see if my health holds out long enough to do this.

Information repository hits home

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Wed, 6 Jan 2016 06:38:00 -0800

When I was working on the brief biography for my latest book, I checked my facts by going into Google Scholar and found that I had authored at least 70 articles in the field of library science (and a total of one article in Grateful Dead studies, but we'll leave that one alone). This is what it is like to author that many articles - some were so long ago that I'd literally forgotten that I'd written them until Google jogged my memory. You rarely get any feedback on an article except for one thing - citations. Citations are the ultimate prize in scholarly writing - somebody else mentioned my work in their article. The year 2015 was the third highest in citation count according to Google Scholar, with 9 counted. Back in the 1990s I was astonished and gratified to see that I had been mentioned in a number of articles by Fred Kilgour, founder of OCLC and one of my guiding lights in this line of work.

As I am quietly winding up my 50 year career in library science, it is gratifying to see that things I wrote are still in play, but I didn't expect anything further. Then my current dean, Ana Fontoura, asked me to start looking into institutional repositories. These are online services that enable colleges to collect and disseminate scholarly writing done by their faculty and students. As far as I could tell, the service of choice was Digital Commons. Dean Fontoura envisioned a new hire who would coordinate the repository among many other things. We eventually hired Lusiella Fazzino, who has directed an energetic program of digital preservation.

The real challenge in starting up the repository was getting the rights to make the articles available online free of charge. Surprisingly, a number of publishers were fairly agreeable. I signed on as a test case, or scholarly guinea pig, and we were able to get about half of my output up in the repository. During Christmas break, I got an email report showing that users the world over have already started downloading my materials, including the entire edition of "Innopac: A reference guide to the system," which had been published by Information Today in 1995. They gave me a control panel page to see things like a map of where the activity took place. You can see the selections at digitalcommons.cnr.edu/authors.html Since I wrote this initially, Lucy has added a new, fancier page of links to my work at http://works.bepress.com/terry-ballard/

As I count down the months to my 50th anniversary of working in libraries I will look forward to those monthly reports proving that my work is alive and well, and feeling very blessed.

A tale of two places

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 9 Nov 2015 18:26:00 -0800

The other night I got free tickets to an advance screening of the film "Brooklyn" through a local Irish meetup group. I'd heard really good buzz about this, so I took the trouble to take the subway into Manhattan after work and up to 86th Street. Ticketholders were already lined up by the theater at 5:30 for the 7 pm showing, so I fell in as well. They let us in by six,, and I spent an hour staring at a screen poster for Brooklyn, which showed the star looking towards the audience with the Manhattan skyline in the background (Curiously, the Chrysler Building was to the left of the Empire State Building). Finally the film started to an utterly packed house. The action takes place around 1951. A young woman in

Wexford has been provided with passage and a job in New York because she has not found herself in Ireland. In a telling early scene, she goes to a church dance and is ignored by the lads while her more glamorous best friend is besieged with offers for a dance. The look on her face before she leaves the hall speaks volumes. After a rough sea voyage, she begins to adapt to life in Brooklyn, but is subject to crippling homesickness in addition to her general timidity. Things improve when she begins taking night classes in accounting, and she meets a nice Italian plumber at a dance, and ever so slowly they fall in love. The scenes of her meeting the boy's family are particularly hilarious, as a young brother blurts out that they all hate the Irish. Then things shift as a family tragedy takes her back to Ireland to help out for a week,

and the former timid wallflower has become such an accomplished and confident young lady that there is a concerted effort to get her back for keeps. No description I can write can prepare you for how well lead actress Saoirse Ronan does here. If she does not win the Oscar I'll be convinced that it is rigged. As the film ended there was heartfelt applause mixed with the sound of audience members crying. I wouldn't admit to any such thing myself, of course. I will say that Brooklyn is the best film I've seen this decade.

One more time out of the gate

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Wed, 3 Dec 2014 05:42:00 -0800

I just got a contract from Chandos/Elsevier to write my third book - Fifty specialty libraries in New York City: From botany to magic. It has been a long struggle to get a publisher for this - funny becase I consider this to be, by far, the best idea I've ever had for a book. From now until May I will be spending days in the city visiting some of the lesser-known and independent libraries in my city. There are libraries serving the Spanish, French, German, Russian and Italian populations. There is a library dedicated to the works of Carl G. Jung. The American Kennel Club runs a library with everything ever written about dogs. Some of the libraries have been in continuous operation for centuries. More about the book can be found at http://anislandoftreasures.blogspot.com/

Always a lucky winner - or, Fear and reading in Las Vegas

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Thu, 3 Jul 2014 09:02:00 -0700

Up at 4 am for a flight to LA on Virgin America which had the cheapest flights unfortunately. Unfortunately because we had a long layover at LAX's ultra-dreadful Terminal 3 before going on to Vegas, or as I call it, Slot Machine National Park. . TSA torture went reasonably fast and we waited to go in the posh international wing. It was my turn by far to get the middle seat. Didn't look like there was much to see out the window anyway. Virgin is like a flying music store, including frere Wi-Fi. Going over the wi-fi worked on Facebook but not on Gmail. Going back none of it worked. The free music section had all genres pretty well covered, with the exception of folk music. The best way to fly over the Midwest is listening to the Grateful Dead.

The flight across the country was notable because the flight attendants came through with beverage service at the beginning of the flight and then you went for five hours on your own. On the other hand, the flight from

LAX to Vegas included free beer or wine. Usually the desert east of Palm Springs is pretty dull, but they have now built a row of tall solar collectors which look quite impressive. Donna insisted on taking the airport shuttle BECAUSE it stops everywhere on the way to downtown. We stayed one night at the Four Queens out of sentiment because that's where we were on our first trip there 40 years ago. It was a ten minute walk to our buffet of choice at the Main Street Terminal hotel. By any standard, it was an excellent value at $25 for the two of us and quite good food.

That night, we walked through the Fremont Experience. The street has been turned into a covered pedestrian mall, and at night it is home to an hourly sound and light spectacular. Between shows you have a number of choices for entertainment - a smooth jazz sax player, Elvis and dancing girls. It was sensory overload, which seems to be the whole point of Las Vegas. An hour of that was about right. We were concerned that our room on the 9th floor would be noisy from the mayhem below, but it was not.

Early the next morning we had an excellent if somewhat pricy breakfast at the Golden Gate Hotel.

Donna with an old friend

Afterwards, I tried my luck at the supposedly looser downtown slots and lost $10 in the blink of an eye. Then we went to the Mob Museum - the old downtown post office, which has been converted to three stories of salute to the gangsters. We needed to check out, so we got through this in 90 minutes although we could have easily stayed longer. The most important phrase was one we already knew from our Arizona days - "Vegas was better when the Mob was running it."

Next we took an expensive cab ride to our hotel across the street from the Convention Center. I knew it would be close, but the walk to the exhibits hall wasn't more than 6 minutes in the searing, unrelenting Vegas heat. We both grew up in Phoenix so we knew about heat. Then I

Vegas from the World's Tallest Ferris Wheel

remembered that we dealt with it by going from air conditioned house to air conditioned car in the summer months. We got our five day monorail passes activated and set out to see a bit of the strip. Remember those cheap prices downtown? Prices on the strip range from "Worse than New York" to out-and-out highway robbery. If you don't like those prices, you have nowhere else to turn. First order of business was a ride on the World's Tallest Ferris Wheel. Managed to catch them at a slow time and got right on.

On Friday, we walked over to the convention center early, but not as early as the 200 people in front of us. We're becoming a more diverse group - I saw librarians with dragon tattoos, librarians with day-glo purple Mohawks, the usual female librarians with haircuts made fashionable by PeeWee Herman, and Biker Librarians. We were starting to get the idea that holding the convention here was a popular option. Sadly, ALA decided to tighten up on the "Exhibits-only" badges. Used to be that you could pay them an extra 50 bucks and upgrade one of the days to catch auditorium speakers. This time it would have cost me $100, and the badge even said "Saturday-Monday only." It turned out that his was not enforced on Friday night, but it did add tension.

Leonardo

Exhibition Hall opened promptly at 5:30, minus the usual speechifying. As the throng swarmed in we were met with vendors who gave us a rousing ovation. The good karma was flowing. Donna's mission was to bring back 40 book bags for her adult summer reading club, and we knocked off a good chunk of that on the first night. We spent an hour there, and then dropped our bags and took the monorail to the Venetan for our first party by a major publisher.

Waiting to cut the Bat Cake

They had taken over the Leonardo exhibit, throwing a party that also saluted the 75th anniversary of Batman. We were wise to show up right on time because it got mobbed and they ran out of wine. We waited for the artists to cut the cake, and finally gave up - shouldn't eat cake anyway.

Author of The Social Network

Saturday started with a late (8:30) breakfast sponsored by the publishers and arranged by the estimable Becca Worthington. Been to lots of her events, but this was the best ever. Donna and I often exchange eye-rolling when authors spend all or most of their time on the podium extolling their love for librarians. Enough - tell us about the book you wrote already.
This time, all six authors kept the library love to a manageable minimum and did tell us about their books. Most were first time authors. All had written books that sounded great. The last one was Ben Mezrich who is the wildly successful author of The Social Network.

With George Knott

After breakfast I made a quick run to the Elsevier booth to meet George Knott, the editor from Oxford who worked with me on Google This. We had an energetic and wide-ranging talk about the state of my book and the possibility of a second edition. It also turned out that he is atypically British in that he is indifferent to football but loves cricket. Note to self - try again to understand cricket.

The Innovative lunch was an enormous event, thanks to the fact that they have bought up several ILS vendors, so their customer base is enormous. I have some concerns about how this will impact customers who have been with Millennium or Sierra for a long time. We'll see how this plays out.

Saturday was party night, starting with Capstone Press, a K12-oriented publisher that had just won a major award. They were on the top floor of the Marriott with outstanding views. Then a party at Margaritaville, where we enjoyed drinks that we knew from past experience cost 10 bucks a pop. Then we ambled across the street to Caesar's Palace for a reception hosted by a major database provider. Finding the party room was hard. Finding the door out was harder. For some reason, casinos just don't want you to leave.

Paul Rusesabagina

For years now we have been regular guests of the excellent Alexander Street Press at their ALA annual breakfasts. It started for us with Daniel Ellsberg at the Anaheim ALA six or seven years ago. This year they had Paul Rusesabagina, the man whose life was featured in the film Hotel Rwanda. His tale of genocide was utterly gripping, to say the least. Have not seen the movie, but it is now in our Netflix queue.

After breakfast I went to the exhibits floor again to do some serious catching up with my agenda. I had been asked by colleagues to see demonstrations of III's EBSCO Duet in Encore and Proquest's new e-reader. I got out my cell phone and took videos of both things so I could do more than just tell about what I had seen. I happened across a booth in the international section called the Irish Newspaper Archive. I run a webpage called Irish History Digitized (http://www.greathunger.org) and I'm always on the lookout for free material to add. Theirs is all subscription now, but that may change. Ended up having a spirited talk with the two brothers who run this operation - one of them knew my name from the pictures of Ireland I've put up over the years. Made my morning!

No parties Sunday night, but just as well because we had tickets to the Cirque de Soleil production of "Love," a salute to the Beatles. Even in the upper seats this is an outstanding production. Standout numbers included "Lucy in the sky" and "Lady Madonna." The rolling skating acrobatics in "Help" were beyond all reckoning.

On Monday we began to wrap things up. Donna and I both went to book presentations. That left us three hours in the afternoon to visit the Luxor. We took the monorail to MGM Grand and then walked over to take a second tram to the Luxor. Had an excellent lunch and headed back to MGM to monorail home and get ready for a blowout dinner with Donna's East Meadow colleagues. When we got there we learned that the monorail was down for maintenance for at least an hour. We trudged back to the front to catch a cab, only to find out that cabs are not found in front, so we started walking up the strip to the next hotel. Never could get a cab, and the 111 degree heat was killing us, so we decided to patch things together best we could and just go to the restaurant. I bought a new shirt and Donna bought a comb. The dinner at Giada was excellent beyond all reckoning, so we were back in fine spirits after a three hour foodie experience. Our legs were shot, so we just took a taxi back to the hotel.

Our flight back to LA was at a reasonable time - just before ten. They made us happy with another round of free wine. Tried the fish place at terminal three, and it wasn't all that bad. The flight was a half hour late, and they had to take a weird route, so we were an hour late getting back to JFK. Home sweet home. All in all, a great conference.

The reviews are in

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 04:34:00 -0800

Not sure what happened here, but more than a year after my book was published, there was a sudden flood of supportive and insightful reviews. More information is at the official book page at googlethis.com.

“The author presents conversations with social media innovators to show how learning from their experiences can create success for your institution’s library. “
Library HiTech News

“One other useful aspect of Ballard's book is that it suggests resources from social media sites that librarians can share with patrons. Did you know...
The Library of Congress, New York Public Library, and the National Library of Ireland share their photo archives on Flickr?
The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) provides a richer source of information about films than your library catalog (and that you can link to it in your MARC records)?”
Shawn Behrends, State Data Coordinator, South Dakota State Library

“...A very useful and insightful study of the ways in which social media can be used in enterprising libraries. This work is highly recommended.”
Online Information Review 37,1

"I saw possibilities for my own library in the case study examples and was able to follow the well-written descriptions of how to implement enhancements (e.g., creating a customized Google search box). Most importantly, in Ballard’s cheerful, collegial, and tenacious approach to figuring out how to make a new tool work for his patrons, I found a model for approaching any social media tool, whether familiar or new to me."
Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries, Volume 10, Issue 4, 2013

"Terry Ballard...takes readers on an inspirational social media ride in “Google this.... A timely and well-written book, it is recommended for academic, public and special libraries."
Melissa Aho, MA, MLIS, MS, Public Services Quarterly, Vol. 9, #2.

Another review with a similar tone is about to be published in the UK, written by a technology professor in Athens. I hope that this will strengthen my case for a second edition!

ALA 2013

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:48:00 -0700

Got back from Chicago where we had a highly packed 4 days. Took an early flight out of JFK and made it

to the Navy Pier for an early lunch. Donna had always wanted to gt a ride on the four masted schooner, but the timing was never right. This time it was. The good ship Windy was an absolute delight, even though there was precious little wind that day. Eventually the captain found enough wind to give us ten minutes of the full sail experience. On the main deck, Pirate Rick filled the voyage with stories of looting and plundering.

There is one feature of Chicago that is not negotiable - breakfast at Lou Mitchell's, which prides itself on being the very first stop on Route 66. The guidebooks will tell you that the place is hopelessly packed on weekend mornings, but we'd never had any trouble on work days. Unless that happened to be the Friday of a Stanley Cup victory parade. The streets were absolutely swamped with red shirts, and we barely got in to Lou's, but it was worth the trouble. Their spinach and feta omelette is legendary.

Afterwards, the only sensible thing to do was get out of town. Donna suggested taking the green line to Oak
Park and visiting the Frank Lloyd Wright house and studio. Seemed like a good plan. The web page said it was a ten minute walk from the station. That might be ten minutes for an Olympic athlete, but not for two older librarians, one of whom was nursing a sprained ankle. Their actual open time was later than what they put on the web page, but it meant that we were there when they opened up, and places on the tour were disappearing fast. They noticed Donna's cast, and made arrangements for her to have a chair to sit in the whole tour. Highlights include the giant closet where Wright's wife hid when she heard her mother-in-law arriving, and the giant playroom which doubled as a theater for amateur productions. His library room was turret shaped and surprisingly small. The awesome stained glass was everywhere. Afterwards, I wanted to buy everything in the gift shop, but we settled for refrigerator magnets. The cab out front wouldn't take us to the train station, but fortunately, we ran across Rick and his Rickshaw and got a ride back to the station that included considerable Wright lore.

By lunch time, the parade was over but the celebrants had filled every seat at every restaurant. We finally got lunch at a Mexican place on Ontario street. Then it was on to our first struggle with the shuttle bus to take us out to McCormick. There is no denying that the convention center is in an inconvenient location, but they've come up with a new trick - a private road for buses only running parallel to the railroad tracks, saving considerable travel time. The wait for the exhibits to open took its toll on my back, but eventually we were in the throng that raced in to grab galleys and book bags. The Innovative booth was surprising in that I didn't recognize a single person there. Only thing familiar was the See's candy. (When I got back to work I called the help desk at 11:10 and, for the first time in 23 years, got a recorded message).

Later we headed west of the Loop for a publisher's party at the Carnivale restaurant. The place was wildly popular - walkins were told that they'd have to wait 45 minutes for a table. The party was on two floors, and each table was loaded with food and galleys. After an hour we checked out the downstairs part which seemed to have a slightly older crowd. It seemed like time to go, but I remarked to Donna that we weren't going until we ran across Loriene. No sooner had I finished the sentence than we saw her standing at the bar.
I told her that I had just added a picture to her Wikipedia page - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loriene_Roy . We refer to Loriene as the 'People's President.' I've been in this line of work for almost 50 years, and it had never occurred to me that I would be on a first name basis with an ex ALA president.

Saturday morning began with an early breakfast listening to a table full of fiction authors. This program was put together by the estimable Becca Worthington. All of the authors were interesting, and they all talked about their books in addition to their undying love for librarians. Later we had a mixup with the location of Gale's space luncheon, but we were still able to hear most of the presentation by Valerie Neal, director of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean came up afterwards for a quick ad hoc talk to the group.

Back at the exhibit hall, I got a pretty good place in line for Alan Bean by showing up a half hour early. Bean knows how much it means for someone to shake hands with a man who has walked on the moon, so the hand goes out before he chats or signs reproductions of his paintings. He was the fourth man to walk on the moon, and the second most senior surviving moonwalker, after the deaths of Armstrong and Conrad. A nicer man you could never imagine meeting. Afterwards, we caught the shuttle to rest up for the East Meadow Public Library dinner which was a block from our hotel at Lawry's. Lawry's is one of the ultimate meat and potato spots in Chicago. What they mainly serve is prime rib - dished out from a giant cart. Served with Yorkshire pudding, mashed potato and creamed spinach. Wonderful.

On Sunday I mainly did the exhibit hall. I'd just learned that my publisher, Chandos of Oxfordshire, had ended their partnership with ALA Editions and gone to Ingram. I walked over to Ingram and introduced myself. They'd already added Chandos titles to their display, but I didn't see my book. Just from a brief conversation I figured out that they will be less involved in promoting the book than ALA had been. I chatted with my main contact at ALA and said sincerely that I was sorry about how things turned out.

One more bit of business came from Donna, who missed the old days sitting in front of the Sheraton when

she could just watch the river go by. We took the shuttle there and had a nice quiet hour doing exactly that. Then we walked down to the Marketplace restaurant for our final sendoff dinner.

After one last walk through the exhibits I met Donna who asked to go to a program featuring Oliver Stone. I'll throw in a disclaimer here that I have a very bad opinion of Stone. Here's this guy talking to me about historic truth when his movie JFK had a scene of LBJ plotting to assassinate the president in conspiracy with Pentagon officials. There is not a shred of historical evidence outside the Loonisphere to cover that one. Anyway, it was an interesting program, and I learned a thing or two. Somebody pointed out that this could not be "Untold" history when they got every bit of their information from existing books.
Next morning we followed advice from a local who'd talked to us the day before. Go to the Macy's at the WaterTower and check out the combined food court. We lined up to get a ticket that gets punched anywhere you see food that you like. We both had awesome lunches and didn't spend much more than normal for a fine lunch. Then it was off to the airport and home. Great conference.

You know the face

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 8 Jul 2013 13:08:00 -0700

A few weeks ago I started a project to collect and disseminate YouTube postings of famous authors who are no longer with us. To be chosen for this list, it helps to be an iconic author who spent precious little time on television. The germ of inspiration came from Edward Gorey who sounds nothing like what you'd expect. In the past week I've added Shaw, Freud, Jung, Dorothy Parker, Einstein and John Updike. You can see this at http://terryballard.org/authorsonyoutube.html. While there is a recording of James Joyce reading from Finnegan's Wake, I had a terrible time finding a single recording of Robert Heinlein. Go figure.

Now you see it.....

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Sat, 4 May 2013 18:55:00 -0700

From about 2002 until the time I left in 2009, I created a program of digitization at the Bernhard Library of Quinnipiac University. First we did Connecticut history titles, and then public domain titles from the Great Hunger Room collection of materials about the Irish Famine. Quinnipiac even sent me to Ireland four times to work on a partnership with the Kerry County Library in Tralee to digitize original pages from the keepers of the workhouses. It was a huge project and dozens of books were digitized and made available to the world. Judging by the statistics that we gathered, this collection did its job and opened up this material to thousands of people around the world,

After I left in 2009, I began to notice changes in their Famine portal. They kept an incomplete set of the Killarney workhouse books but took out the Kenmare pages altogether. They stopped mentioning the virtual titles in the sub page about the collection. Finally, they took the books off of the university webpages altogether.

The crown jewel of this work was a book of 400 pages of photographs from late 19th century Ireland. You still find a mention of this in their catalog, but link to it and you get a dead link page. Gone. What did this solve? Did the IT people need more disk space to add more stuff about the Men's Hockey team? It all still mystifies me, and I'm likely to never find out because nobody at the library will talk to me about this.

It boils down to two things. I could get mad or I could do something. Fortunately, the Internet Archive anticipated things like this and solved it by keeping copies of everything available free on the web, knowing that later on things will disappear due to technical mistakes or office politics. I am in the process of creating links to every book we scanned, starting, of course with Finerty. I managed to secure copies of the missing Kenmare files and the Killarney pages that Quinnipiac lost.

The new web page I've created at greathunger.org will have that and a whole lot more. I'm trying to make it a go to place for the cream of the crop of Irish history on the web. Recently, Trinity College put the entire Book of Kells up on the web. Project Gutenberg has outstanding illustrated etexts on Irish history. The Clare County library has transcribed minute book records in several of their towns.

Today I got permission from Tommy O'Connor, Kerry County Librarian to publish the missing Kenmare material, so that should be up within the next few days. Enjoy!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Wed, 5 Dec 2012 09:56:00 -0800

My retirement as such only lasted 3 months and one week. Starting next week, I will be working for the College of New Rochelle as a half-time special projects librarian. When they first wrote me about the need for this position, the job responsibilities include all of the things that I do best, including digitization, so it was an easy decision. Looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and making a difference from now until May. Next week when I have my new email account, I'll write Holly Murphy from III and let her know that I'll be working on a third new install of Encore. It will be fun.

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 12:36:00 -0700

Three weeks ago, I ended a 46 year run of working in libraries. Retirement was inspired by reaching full retirement age of 66, and not wanting to make the three hour a day commute to the city for another winter.
As of this point, I am extremely happy. I am volunteering once a week at Rescue Ink's no-kill dog and cat facility in Long Beach, NY. Most of the work there involves cleaning up after kitties, but they also allow me to take close-ups of the cats waiting for adoption. I am playing bridge with human beings instead of a dreadful program on the iPod. I sleep until seven. I am getting my 600 cds copied on to the Amazon Cloud. Thanks to the fact that I was putting every allowable penny into my pension fund, my take home pay is actually going up by a clean thousand dollars. I have more to to promote my current book (Google this! - find out about it at http://www.googlethisforlibraries.com), and have a proposal for a third book under consideration at a nearby publishing house. It's all good, but my wife warns me that I'll tire of just having fun all the time. I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. To the Phoenix Public Library (1966-1990), Adelphi University (1990 to 1995), New York University Law (1995-1997), Quinnipiac University (1997-2009) and New York Law School (2009-2012), so long and thanks for all the fish!

The Write Stuff

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Thu, 7 Jun 2012 07:22:00 -0700

It's been about 50 years since I put a couple of disastrously awful poems in the North Phoenix High School literary magazine. During my years as a science fiction fan and after college I discovered the world of fanzines. Around 1969 my friend Ken St. Andre headed off for the south seas for fun and adventure and left me a box of his papers, just in case. I came across a story he'd written about him and his friend going back in time and having adventures with Conan the Barbarian. I added a bit of material, changed the name of the friend to me, and sent it off to a fanzine, where it was enthusiastically accepted. Ken came back to Arizona, due to a shortage of funds, and for the next few years we wrote a half dozen or so more Terry & Ken adventures (Or Ken & Terry adventures as he called them). They were popular enough that we created a homemade book called "Blundering Blades" and printed 60 of so copies. That should have been the end of it for all time. The other day, I searched and found a posting from somebody who had bought a copy a few years back and loved it. He even compared it to the Bill & Ted movies that I like a lot.

A couple of years after that, I got my first check as a writer when I sold a few humorous articles to the Arizona Republic's Sunday supplement. At that point, I realized that even though I could write well enough, I didn't really have anything to say. I spent the next 15 years in a plan - reading books on every subject and all important authors: Hemingway, Stendahl, Zola, Montaigne, Dostoyevsky, and so on. I read books about quantum physics because I didn't understand it. Then in my early 40's I got my calling to write. I was finishing library school and looking for a way to stand out from the crowd. I started writing articles about library automation and found that there are many journals in the field starving for good material because librarians as a group are not enthusiastic authors. Over the next two decades, I wrote some 50 articles including two that won awards. In the mid 1990s I got a book contract from Information Today to write "INNOPAC: A reference guide to the system." It did well, even though the audience was pretty much limited to libraries that had purchased Innovative Interfaces.

In 2011 I was starting to develop a new concept of writing a book about the 40 or so specialty libraries open to the public in Manhattan. I got an email from Chandos Publishing in Oxfordshire and landed a contract for "Google This!" With two books to my credit, I technically met the requirements for membership in the Author's Guild (Two real books - not Amazon quickies or publication on demand). After days of deliberation, I was informed early this week that my application had been accepted. Author's Guild is the real thing - members include Judy Blume, Stephen King and Elmore Leonard.

This week I went to BookExpo America which is the major trade show for the publishing industry. This is usually loaded with celebrity authors and famous people who have talked into a tape recorder. Free books are beyond ubiquitous. Donna went for signed copies like a woman possessed. Bob waited 45 minutes to get an autograph from Rachel Ray. I was the first in line for a book about the first 50 years of the Mets. I found a publisher that does regional books and chatter up my project of libraries in NYC. At the end all three of us got to chat with Spencer Quinn, our current favorite mystery writer. It's always fun and exciting to see that the book business is alive and well.

So there you have it - from Schlocky fanzine writing to the Author's Guild. You never know.

One year of my life

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:30:00 -0700

Last April I got a contract with Chandos Publishing of Oxfordshire to write a book called "Google this: Putting Google and other social media sites to work for your library." The contract gave me until November 30 (Mark Twain's birthday!), which seemed like a reasonable time to produce a 200 page book. I laid out a plan for 13 chapters and got to work. Early in the work, I found out that really important people were responding well to the concept. There was a lot of excitement at this, but the biggest thrill came when I spoke to the people at Google who asked if I was planning a trip to California. I hadn't been, but I certainly was willing and eager to do so. The day we spent at the Googleplex was the epicenter of this book.

As the months progressed, the editors at Chandos were a dream to work with. I turned in the main body of the book on December 2, and spend a rather tense month waiting to hear what they thought. Then early in January, I got the word that they were very happy with the concept of the book and how I expressed myself in general.
The key thing here is that there are a number of books on the subject of libraries and social media, but this book may be the first to shout out "This stuff is really cool!" Along the way, I told my story of how library automation had progressed from the stone age of 1966 to the revolution we have now. In other words, it is a personal book about library automation.

As I had envisioned originally, I found dozens of librarians who had done great things with social media and got their stories. Whenever possible, I added cookbook-like instructions for crating things like IGoogle gadgets or captioning videos in YouTube. Being a longtime quote collector, I was able to find an apt quote for every chapter beginning. In the end, I see this as the capstone of a career that has gone on for nearly 50 years.

After January, there were months of working with the copy editor who provided much-needed order to the proceedings. I was able to persuade Dan Gookin, author of many dozens of "For Dummies" books to wrote the foreword. Marilyn Johnson and Loriene Roy wrote blurbs for the back of the book. I could not possibly feel more blessed.

More information about the book and the publisher can be found at googlethisforlibraries.com

AALL Righty Then

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 07:49:00 -0700

We got in to Philadelphia Friday afternoon, so we would be rested, registered and ready to go for the Innovative meeting at 8 AM Saturday. First, after checking in to the Lowe's Hotel, which was mostly wonderful, we had to go out one more time and visit one of Donna's childhood friends who lives just outside of the city. Her directions called for a five minute ride on 76, and then a couple minutes drive after that. Fortunately, Donna noticed that there was a huge accident that had completely shut down 76. I tried to get out of it, but Donna has faith that there is no drive I can't accomplish, so with directions from the hotel valet, we were off for a half hour adventure of following a series of local streets. After 97 more traffic lights, we rolled into Betsy's beautiful neighborhood and had a wonderful talk enhanced by plates of good Chinese food.

The drive back was, comparatively, a snap.

I thought the Innovative meeting would be a two hour session like they have at ALA Midwinters, but it was a full morning event that went on in to the afternoon. The gavel of power was passed to the new ILUG president, and her first order of business was to adjourn. Then the new (well, sort of. It's been nearly a year) president of Innovative got up for a full hour to remind law librarians how much III loves them. The big news remains Sierra, and he noted that more than 50 early adopters had signed on to this package. Beta testing will begin in September. Then there were several particularly good user presentations. The first was on setting up print templates. The second was on selecting label printers. Then John McCullough came up and sang the praises of the all new improved Encore. First he talked about the advantages of Cobalt, which he claimed was the result of usability studies. They were told that users always ignored the third column because most web sites just put ads there. Then he praised the work that I had done in usage studies and mentioned a new study at an unnamed university. Then he showed off the Hein interface which really did look impressive and got a lot of positive response from the group.

After lunch I got ready for the Research and Publications Committee meeting at the Marriott. There were only about ten of us in the room because the outgoing committee members didn't show up. We did introductions and the new chair told us what the committee was all about and gave us the opportunity to sign up for this year's grant giving projects. It appears that most of the work gets done during the year because the committee was adjourned after about twenty minutes.

At five we showed up for the exhibits opening and awards ceremony,

thanks to my library director for graciously providing Donna with a ticket. There were only about a dozen awards being handed out, and most of these had their cheering squads ready to make a joyful noise. However, the sound system set new standards for poor quality, and Bill and I couldn't hear what was said, even though we were standing right at the stage. Eventually, we had our moment and posed for the official photographer and the unofficial videographer. We noted that Hein must be doing just fine because they are giving away a new car as opposed to the more customary IPad 2,

Sunday I got up very early to set up the poster. Ours was slightly bigger than the board, but I was able to straighten

it out alright. I wasn't expecting much in that hour, but was surprised with the number of people who came by and took careful notes. Paul was helpful in finding people he used to work with (there were a lot of them) and brought them by for a look. Plus, we have no idea how many people took a look at off hours. Overall, the response we got was well worth the trouble we went through in putting this together. Then I went to the general session to hear Dahlia Lithwick, an editor at Slate, who covers the Supreme Court. She told us that she was one of only two Supreme Court press passes from nontraditional media. She then went on to give the inside story on several cases involving free speech, including a major one on violent video games.

Next, I was off to the west side of the center to participate in the Cool Tools Cafe. If I was surprised at the response to DRAGNET at the poster session, I was just completely swamped here. The Cafe is based on the idea of speed dating - I show them DRAGNET, I show them the dashboard setting that make it work and I answer their questions, all in about an eight minute period, then I do it all over again for a new set of users. After an hour of that I was hoard, but a good kind of hoarse. Debbie Ginzberg was very happy with the way this played out, and told me that several people attended the event specifically to see DRAGNET. My sense that I had connected here was confirmed when we spotted this wonderful posting from Canadian Librarian Connie Crosby: http://www.slaw.ca/2011/07/25/new-york-law-schools-dragnet-focused-legal-search/

Then I went to a program on emerging technologies which turned out to be not really about the technology but about the political processes one goes through to bring forward technological innovations to a campus.

Finally, we went to the ALL-SIS reception. Thanks to Thomson Reuters for particularly good food and a free bar. After about a half hour of grazing outside, somebody clued us in that the awards ceremony was about to begin. Unlike the full AALL award on Saturday, this was simply an announcement. It was pretty funny that our award was announced just after Ping's, so the speaker said "And also from New York Law School."

The poster organizers had told us to show up Monday morning to stand by one more time, but after a half hour of zero visits and noticing that nobody else was manning their poster, I took one last look around the room. One electronic demo looked pretty impressive to me, and I'll hope to bring it up

at the Automation Committee. That was something called caselaw.com, which had a vast library of case information that could be searched by state. Once you have a search set on your topic, you can sort so that the cases that were most cited show up at the top. I

was told that this is free

to law schools so they can sell it to law firms.

I went by Reading Market for one last time, but most of the stalls were still closed,

so I got back to the hotel to pick up Donna and Yuji and walk over to 2nd street for lunch at

City Tavern, which has only been around since the 1770's. They specialize in authentic 18th century

cooking, so I had the venison and Donna got Salmagundi. The wait staff, in period costume of

course, was very quick to check on Yuji's water situation. Walking home from lunch, we stopped to

admire the cobblestones. We have them in New York, but these totally rock. Afterwards, a mainly

uneventful drive home. Great conference.

Tchoupitoulas Later

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 8 Jul 2011 08:51:00 -0700

My wife didn't get to go to ALA in New Orleans this year, so I figured I'd pass as well. Then we found out that my son was given

a grant by the Queensborough Public Library to make the trip. After arranging for a two queen bed hotel room in the Quarter, I

realized that I could tag along for the cost of

air fare, so I bought us the tickets. Bob is your classic white-knuckle traveller, so it's good that the flight was entirely uneventful. When we got to the Quarter shortly after 9, I knew the room had no chance of being ready, s

o we dumped the bags, ran a few errands, and finally walked

over to Pat O'Brien's to start the visit the normal way

- alligator bites and Hurricanes. Then we went to the river to take a cruise on the Natchez, the river's last actual paddlewheel steamship, which took us past the Battle of New Orleans site. We finished in style with a dinner at our hotel's restaurant, the Bombay Club. I had

drum fish, which is apparently common in New Orleans and unheard of in New York. I got in as much walking as I could. It's always a fun thing to see bands of librarians wearing sensible shoes, roaming the seedier streets of the Quarter, looking for information in all the wrong places.

Friday we met a group of librarians at Elizabeth's way out east in Bywater. The place couldn't be more funky

looking, but it was a big deal that only the real locals know about. The group was from Saint

Joseph Seminary College in Abita Springs. After some truly fabulous fried green tomatoes with boiled shrimp, I

was ready for anything. Later, we were in line for the opening stampede at 5:30, and got there early enough for good position. I had a list of a dozen or so "Hot galleys" that Donna had requested. Not a single one was found that night. I made my way to row 8 to introduce mysel

f to the people at Boopsie, the mobile app developer that we were negotiating with (now signed up with). Then I found the Innova

tive Interfaces booth

and said hello to Jerry Kline, who is the only multi-millionaire that I am on a first name basis with. The food looked disappointing, considering that this is the gastronomical capitol of the country, so I held out for the publisher-sponsored party later that evening. That didn't have much food either, but there was a really good Dixieland band. Other good news was that the party was across the street from my hotel. I should have gone to Bourbon street to get some late night snacks, but lacked the energy.

Saturday morning was spent getting ready for a 10:30 panel presentation on the future of the online catalog. Everyone else was doing such advanced stuff that I felt like comic

relief just talking about user behavior in classic catalogs compared to that in discovery platforms, but people always enjoy hearing about Google Analytics. Also, I got a number of questions, so I must have communicated on some level. You can see for yourself at libftp.nyls.edu/nola.ppt

Afterwards, I went back to the Quarter for lunch on Bourbon Street.

That evening,

Bob and I went to the Proquest Scholarship Bash. It was help at the WWII Museum (form

erly the D-Day Museum). They had an elaborate big band playing the greatest hits of the 1940s.

Sunday morning started with the Alexander Street Breakfast. We' gone to this for a number of years, and

it's always a must-do. This year's speaker was Stanley Nelson, a documentary film maker who had recently done a film called "Freedom Riders" for PBS, about the activists in the early 1960s who rode in busses to the South to test the restrictive racial laws such as separate toilet facilities. The ten minutes that he showed us was so effective that it generated a huge standing ovation from the 200 or so librarians in the room, and lots of tissue was being used.

You can check out a preview on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8CAKAXR-AM

After that, it was back to the convention center for the exhibits. At the Harper Collins booth, I noticed that my friend Ma

rilyn Johnson was signing copies of her wildly popular book "This book is overdue." I owned the MP3 version but not the book, so I hap

pily got in line, and then chatted for as long as I could without disrupting the line behind me. I got to know Marilyn through Facebook before the book was published. She described herself as an author writing a book about librarians pursuing digital projects. I thought this was someone who should know me, and it worked out well. Her inscription on the book was priceless.

Later I talked to Tim from Librarything. They have an interesting catalog interface that creates a virtual shelf, showing the book covers lined up. I had created something like this for Quinnipiac years ago, and I was happy to see that idea still in play. Main difference was that my virtual shelf titles were all full text electronic reference. You can still see it at http://learn.quinnipiac.edu/verso/versomain.html . That night we partied at the Louisiana State Museum cou

rtesy of Oxford Publishing. The barbecue beef

over grits was a standout. Afterwards, we made our way down St. Peter street to Preservation Hall. There was some mixup with the tickets so we had to go to the 9 pm show instead of the 8. Just gave us a good excuse to walk next door to Pat O'Briens for another round of Hurricanes and alligator bites. Afterwards, we enjoyed an hour with the Preservation band. It was pure fun, and one of the standout solos was from a very serious and intense drummer. Afterwards, they announced that his name was Jason Marsalis, the youngest brother in the dynasty.

Monday morning, we went to the same room at the Hilton for

breakfast courtesy of Proquest. The speaker was humorist Roy Blount, who had just written a new book about the joy of words. Afterwards, I got to chat with him for a second because we won a free autographed book. I told him he probably knew what Twain said was the difference between the right word and the almost right word. Being a fellow Twain buff, he knew of course that it was the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug. Our big sendoff from the Big Easy came with lunch at Antoines with a New YorkLaw School colleague. They had a price fix lunch with twenty five cent martinis. "Okay, what's the catch?" we asked. There was no catch. They were on the small side, but you could order as many as you pleased. It turned out that three was about right for me. Then it was one quick last round

of shopping and the cab ride to the airport. The flight home was fairly uneventful, but the pilot had an interesting route, flying up the river to Memphis, and past really cool cloud formations. All in all, it was a great conference.

An author one more time

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Wed, 4 May 2011 10:08:00 -0700

I just got a contract to write a book called "Google This: Putting Google Products and Other Social Media to Work for Libraries." The publisher is Chandos Publishing in Oxford, and they want the final work by November 30. There are two important things about that date. First, it is Mark Twain's birthday. Secondly, it isn't very far off. I have a dynamic calendar on my IGoogle page reminding me of the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds until I need to finish this. They seem to make quick work of editing, so I expect it to see print by Spring of 2012. I am starting to line up a slate of experts who will be interviewed for the project. Further information is found at www.terryballard.org/googlethis.html There will also be an electronic edition, and I consider that highly appropriate.

Farewell to the Chairman

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:24:00 -0700

Just heard from an old friend that my former colleague Vinnie Cappetta passed away last Friday. Vinnie taught in the Biomedical program at Quinnipiac for 40 years before retiring in 2005. That he was a brilliant and inspiring teacher was the least of it. What he was really famous for was a totally wild sense of humor. At the time of his retirement, I made a collection of Vinnie-isms. The most famous was the day that he ordered a student to remove his backwards baseball cap. "But why?" "Because it makes you look like a Pez dispenser." Another student asked for his recommendation to get into medical school. "If you want to see the inside of a medical school, donate your body to science." For at least 30 years he was the chairman of "The Breakfast Club," an informal gathering in the staff lounge. For at least six of those years I had the honor of being a part of that group an acting as a foil for the man at the opposite corner of the table. "Hey Marion the Librarian, what's new," I would hear more than a few times. Each day's meeting would include comments on the news, ribald jokes, and medical information that was more detailed than I sometimes needed. One day the science professors were having a dinner at a fancy restaurant, and Vinnie showed up early and went to the bar. The bartenders began freaking out when his colleagues filed in to the bar and, one by one, kissed his ring, When somebody that major retires, it is the protocol for a speech to be made by the Dean at the May retirement party. Dean Woods graciously let me make that speech on behalf of the Breakfast Club. Lots of laughter, along with President Lahey, famously hostile to the attitude that librarians are part of the university's intellectual life, glaring at me. He got his revenge a year later when he stripped librarians of faculty status three days after I had made full Professor (Vinnie's reaction to that is unprintable). I took home the potted plant from the table that day and we have kept it in our front bay window every since. This morning, Donna told me that the plant just made fresh blooms. There is extra laughter in Heaven these days.

DRAGNET Redux

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:04:00 -0700

Last week we were on the road in Savannah and staying at an outrageously fine B&B. After an afternoon of walking, I happened to check my Droid phone and look at what's happening at work. It turns out that DRAGNET, the Google Custom Search engine that we created last year has just won the AALL 2011 Law Library Publication Award, Nonprint Division. Knowing how competitive it is to get anything from AALL (I couldn't even get a presentation at the National convention), we were all a bit stunned. I had started DRAGNET in the spring, but it quickly became the work of every librarian in the building. Library Director Camille Broussard came up with the name, and I worked backwards to generate the acronym (Database Retrieval Access using Google's New Electronic Technology). Since we started work on the project we also added a DRAGNET search bar to the page I created that tracks 150 law journals with free online content. I won my first award (Computers in Libraries Article of the year 1992) near the beginning of my career, and I hadn't anticipated further recognition this late in the game, so I'm quite pleased.

On Steinbeck's Road

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 09:06:00 -0700

In one scenario of my life, I would have been retired by this week, taking my dream trip - a recreation of John Steinbeck's trip with Charley the poodle across America. I had already charted the journey in Google Maps (see http://goo.gl/maps/cnzb). Now I am here solving problems (and creating a few) for the Mendik Library, so the 50th anniversary launch of "Travels with Yuji" was put aside for all time. However, I got to do the next best thing - have a long talk with one of the people who did set out on that pilgrimage. Recently, I was contacted by John Woestendiek, a retired Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author. He has already started the western swing, getting as far as Arizona, but he wanted to leave from Sag Harbor on the exact anniversary. He suggested that we get together on the 22nd, and also asked if I knew the specific address of Steinbeck's house. I didn't but it's dangerous to throw a question like that at a librarian, so I had it within an hour.

On Wednesday he showed up at our house with his dog Ace, a giant mixed breed with a heart of gold. Ace and Yuji hit it off instantly. Donna stayed with the pups while John and I headed to Potter's in East Meadow for Irish food and brew. I asked him about the prize, and he said that he was a reporter in Philadelphia who had been given the task of writing about prisons and asylums. One prisoner he got to know was an 18 year old accused of murder in a robbery, serving a life sentence. John spent 6 months getting together enough information to force a retrial and, eventually, acquital. Later, he got a job driving all over America and reporting on what he saw.

John hopes to turn this into a book, and I have no doubt that he will succeed. Meantime, his first book is coming out later this fall - Dog, Inc., about the cloning of man's best friend. I read in his blog www.ohmidog.com that he made it to Sag Harbor, found the Steinbeck house, and paid his respects to Charley before heading off on the ferry. At dinner, I'd mentioned that he might meet another pilgrim on the ferry on the same mission. This actually happened.

That was the week that was

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 3 Sep 2010 11:01:00 -0700

When I was in library school in Arizona our main professor, Ed Miller, often told us "If you remember nothing else from this program remember that librarians are the bridge between people and the information they need." I've had the privilege in the 20 years since to use electronic tools to build a few of those bridges. For somebody cursed with creativity, you couldn't ask for a better career. Now as I am getting near the end of that career I find that I have just helped to create something that has had more impact than anything else I've done. Last Friday I began to send out a few announcements to lists of systems librarians and law librarians. The response has been overwhelming.

In the past week our tracking software (Statcounter) has shown thousands of hits for DRAGNET, our new federated search engine of recommended legal databases. Some places logged in for days at a time. A law firm in Kansas City made it their website of the week on their intranet. It's being looked at in the Department of Justice, the State Department and, most interestingly the Supreme Court. By Monday librarians were blogging about it, tweeting about it and retweeting. One librarian in Connecticut was just finishing a book manuscript about librarians who add content to the web and he delayed sending to add things about the DRAGNET project.

The most amazing part of all of this is that this got created using an interface that Google gives you - there is no coding or advanced technology on my end. I can't believe that nobody did this before, but apparently nobody did. I guess the moral of this story is that the internet is still young enough that one can be a pioneer if one works at it.

Treasures from the past

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 07:40:00 -0700

In the first library science class I took in 1968 at Arizona State University, I did a paper on William Morris and the Kelmscott Press. Morris was a writer and publisher, driven by the idea of making books into works of art. At the time, I had the extra privilege of being in a library where Kelmscott titles were on the open shelves. Years later, when I started working in digitization projects, I wanted to be the first person to add a Kelmscott title to the internet. Now it is clear that I won't get that honor. At least one Kelmscott title is up on the Internet Archive in full color. You can see it at www.archive.org/stream/amisamile00kelmuoft . This just proves the capability of the internet to deliver things that most people would otherwise not have a chance to see. The image is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.