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Since Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast last fall, First Book has been working to help local schools, community programs and families rebuild their lost libraries.

Now, thanks to our friends at Random House, we have the resources to rebuild tens of thousands of home and classroom libraries: over one million brand-new, high-quality kid’s books.

We just need to get the word out.

Help us by sharing this blog post with anyone you know who works with children in need, and tell them to sign up with First Book today.

Recognizing the wide-ranging impact of this storm on many aspects of children’s lives, schools and programs do not have to have been physically damaged by the storm to apply for books. Any school or program that was affected by the storm or serves children in need in one of the 13 affected states is encouraged to sign up to receive books.

NOTE: The books are available to schools and programs in the 13 states designated by FEMA as being affected by Hurricane Sandy: Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, DC.

The post One Million Books Available Now for Schools and Programs in States Affected by Hurricane Sandy appeared first on First Book Blog.

On 14 December 2012, Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother before driving from his home to Sandy Hook Elementary School and opening fire on students and staff. Twenty children and six adults were murdered before the gunman committed suicide. Many Oxford University Press authors felt compelled to share their expertise to offer comfort, explanations, and understanding. Here’s a round-up of their recent articles on the tragedy.

UCLA Professor Emeritus Rochelle Caplan on the significant reduction in public mental health care in the United States.

Pediatric psychologist Brenda Bursch offers helpful approaches for parents to explain the tragedy to their children.

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry J. Reid Meloy on warning behaviors that precede mass violence.

Professor of Criminology Kathleen M. Heide on the parricide element of Adam Lanza’s actions.

Associate Professor of Government Elvin Lim on the different political perspectives on the massacre, essential to understanding across party lines and taking non-partisan action on the issue of gun control.

School psychologist Eric Rossen advocates for stronger mental health services in schools.

Professor of Psychiatry Donald W. Black on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of antisocial behavior.

School psychologist Robert Hull offers some advice and resources to help traumatized children.

The post Oxford authors on Sandy Hook appeared first on OUPblog.

As first-responders are working to provide these families with electricity, water, and other critical resources, First Book—in partnership with our local volunteers and partners—is raising funds to restock school and home libraries. After distributing more than 5 million books in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we know new books can be valuable lifelines for those whose worlds have been turned upside down.

Your help will ensure that children in need will have new books — stories at bedtime, the chance to be transported to another world, and the opportunity to return to normalcy.

Every $2.50 you contribute will provide a new book to a child affected by the storm.

Your impact will also be DOUBLED as each gift of $2.50 will be matched by an additional book from First Book’s publishing partners.

Today at 11:45am, after a gourmet breakfast of chicken and cheese and a nice long walk at her favorite wood, Sandy went to sleep in my arms.

Ever since last October, when she attacked the other dog and then bit my neighbor’s daughter, I’ve known she’s been on borrowed time. Then last week she tried to bite me, twice. Given that I’m the Alpha Dog in this house, I knew that I was going to have to make an extremely difficult decision that was going to break my heart and those of my kids. With her becoming more and more unpredictable, I just couldn’t afford the risk of keeping her around.

It’s been horrendous here for the last week. Son was angry with me at first, “How can you kill her?!” – but I kept asking him how he would feel if she attacked and seriously injured one of his little cousins. My daughter has been dealing with her grief in keeping with her personality – creatively.

On Monday night, after I’d told them we’d have to do this for certain, she came into my room having painted this amazing portrait:



As the vet reminded me, Sandy had a wonderful life since we adopted her. In fact, if we hadn’t adopted her, she probably would have died from the enormous bladder stone that had to be removed by surgery the day after we picked her up from Adopt A Dog. I console myself that if I hadn’t been a clued up dog-owner who noticed that she seemed to be having problems peeing and took her to the vet the following morning, she would have died in serious pain from kidney failure, instead of peacefully in my arms with her tail wagging while she licked Mary Poppins’ fingers, after having had 4 ½ years of being spoiled and loved.

So Sandy, I hope you are running free in Dog Heaven with Oscar, our border collie. We love you and will miss you terribly.

I came to the stunning realization that I may not hate the OPAC after all.

I read Peter's post at Library Garden about the OPAC, and saw my response was more about the content of the OPAC, not the OPAC itself. And then I saw this OPAC Survey that asked questions about what your OPAC has and doesn't have, what you would want in an OPAC and not want.

And I realized... I may not hate the OPAC after all. That my issues are with the content of the records in the OPAC.

It's like this: imagine if I kept saying "I hate TV" and was thinking about game shows or other programs, and all the "I hate TV" posts were about high definition TV, better clickers, TiVo, and new ways to adjust the volume so that the background music isn't louder than the dialogue.

In other words -- all the solutions were about the actual television set. When what I'd really been saying is "these shows that are on TV, they aren't good, they could be better." And the question is more about the quality of the TV shows being shown. A new clicker doesn't change that the TV shows are the same old, same old.

So that's what I want: not a better techie OPAC (tho dude, that would be cool!) but better content in existing OPACs.

Better cataloging; more terms being used that are user friendly; more information about items (how sad is a book whose record is solely "women--fiction"). I realized that the OPACs I like are the ones that via tagging and comments allow users (staff and patrons) to work around existing cataloging. Seriously, why should we wait for users to tag entries "manga" instead of "graphic novels -- Japanese"?

And I'm not saying getting rid of Dewey or LOC; in part because I think a core group of defined words and subjects is important. If anything, I'm saying we should have more catalogers, and catalogers who know how patrons think. But these can be used better than they are being used now; and can be combined with more customer-friendly tags and full descriptions of text. The content of the record should be such that when an average user puts in a search, they find what they are looking for because the item has been catalogued (and tagged etc.). In other words, they find what they want because the content is there to be found.