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Boosted by enthusiastic reader recommendations and strong online sales, the popular teen novel Maggie Vaults Over the Moon continues to soar as a best-seller at Watermark Books & Cafe, the region’s No. 1 bookstore. Listed among works by world-class writers … Continue reading →

Not that I am encouraging you to attend events other than OURS, but Roy just sent out a note about an event for Library software developers and other interested parties at ALA Midwinter. Come to the blog salon and then head over there:

OCLC Developer¹s Network Meet and Greet
Sunday, January 13, 6:00 ­ 8:00 pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Grand Ballroom, Salon I Join this informal get-together to learn about the OCLC Developer¹s Network.
Meet your colleagues and learn about OCLC Grid Services and our collaboration environment.

Tell them what you want or where OCLC is going wrong. Roy says they can take it.

Hey everyone. Shame on me for not having brilliant things to say today. I would love to make some political projections, seeing the results in Iowa and anticipating my own involvement in New Hampshire.

But I will refrain from getting too political. Alane and I were contemplating (yes, I know. I miss her, too) what a cool thing it is, that neither gender nor race seemingly has much to do with this election. It's a seriously cool thing--since the image of Jesse Jackson and Geraldine Ferraro still permeate my "I grew up in the '80s" consciousness.

But I am not going to talk politics with you now. We can if you like, in a mere 9 days:
OCLC Blog Salon
ALA Midwinter 2008
Philadelphia, PA
Sunday, January 13
5:30 - 8 pm, Loews Commonwealth, A1.

Wha Hoo and happy Friday!

As always...thoughts brought to you from the OCLC Blog Salon 2007, in revelers' own words:


First post of the night. Stay tuned. (tinfoil+raccoon)
Beer is better on the West coast. (eclectic librarian)


Great party, all - next time save the name tags so you have a big old list of all the bloggers who came and drank your beer (Erica, the un-cool librarian - http://www.uncoollibrarian.blogspot.com/)

How about I just save this and then it will not lock? Everyone else, save after adding, Thanks. The room is bigger and we are still packed in and do you want to know why? Bloggers are awesome. Tonight, I have talked about kids, merging a reference desk and circ desk, managing ALA programs, and people's lives. Where else can I do that (with drinks?) - Cheers and thanks OCLC, Michelle Boule (Jane)

Thanks for one L of a party! (LisforLibrary.wordpress.com)

OCLC Rocks! Thanks for making my first ALA conference a great one!

i<3>
Thanks all! A great time, as always! (photos coming soon, or on Flickr...)

Hey bloggers. The blog salon is queued up and almost ready to start.
We have a BIGGER ROOM this year, so expect to have a bit more breathing and elbow room this year. The veggies are coming in, the pretzels and chips are ready and the beverages are abundant.

The Blog Salon is in the Grand Hyatt Hotel, 1st floor in room 176. Otherwise known as the Congressional Suite! Come hang out for a blog salon congress!

If you're headed to Denver next week, you're in luck!

Al Gore opens the general session on Sunday, and Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) closes it on Wednesday. (Watch the Al Gore video from TED on SLA's site for a warm-up.) Lots of great sessions and conversations planned for in between those presentations too, I am sure.
The marketing and advertising division has events going on through Wednesday, as well. Check them out--it makes me wish I was going.

Speaking of conference events, make sure you've got the Blog Salon at Annual on your dance card for DC! Remember, it's at the Congressional Suite at the Grand Hyatt on Sunday, June 24, 2007 , right after Robert F. Kennedy (5:45pm - 8pm).

With all these political names appearing at library conferences of late--at least in the US, you'd think there was a movement afoot to align the profession with some powerful forces for national change...same movement going on globally?

Although it feels to me like mere weeks since our last Blog Salon, it is time to tell you about the next one. If you came to the ALA Midwinter Salon in Seattle, you can't forget it was very crowded, noisy and hot--all signs of a ripping good party, but not great for comfort.

So, we are holding this Blog Salon in a larger room, that isn't beside the bedroom of one of our conference managers who won't, then, be kept awake by carousing bloggers into the wee hours. We've chosen a time right after Leslie Burger's President's Program featuring Robert F. Kennedy which means you should be able to cross the street to the Grand Hyatt hotel, attend the Salon and still go for dinner afterwards.

Where: Congressional Suite at the Grand Hyatt
When: Sunday, June 24, 2007 , 5:45pm - 8pm
Who: Libraryland bloggers, pals of libraryland bloggers, bloggers-to-be
Why: Because it's such an interesting group of people
What: light snacks and adult beverages

See you there!

PS. I know this conflicts with the GLBTRT Social and I apologize to those wanting to attend this and the Blog Salon...maybe start with us and go on to the Social?

Just finished reading “Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini. The story opens in Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion in ’78. Amir is a middle-class Afghani boy, about thirteen, and his closest friend is a servant boy, Hassan, a Hazara—a minority ethnic group descended from Asian Mongols--who works in Amir’s household. Amir and his dad are Pashtuns, a majority ethnic group in Afghanistan, and are Sunni, a dominant Islamic sect. Hassan and his dad are Shia, a despised minority sect of Islam, and so Hassan suffers a double burden in the boys’ daily contacts with other Afghani boys. Though Hassan is devoted to Amir, and risks dangers when defending Amir against other boys, Amir remains almost indifferent to him.

In one episode, an Afghani boy rapes Hassan for defending Amir, who cowardly watches from hiding. Our sympathies for Amir take a further plunge when Amir later frames Hassan for stealing his watch. He’s jealous of his own father’s affections for Hassan, and hoped to drive him away from the household. When the Russians invade Afghanistan, Amir and his dad flee to America. There Amir matures as a better person, aspiring to be a writer, and meets a young Afghani woman and marries her. He regrets many of the weaknesses he’d shown in his boyhood, and when news comes after the Russians are driven out of Afghanistan, that the victorious Taliban have slain Hassan along with many other Shia, Amir returns to try and rescue Hassan’s surviving eleven-yr. old son.

In Afghanistan, he learns that Hasan was actually his illegitimate half-brother. In the dangerous search for Hassan’s son, he encounters the same man who once abused Hassan has now bought Hassan's son from an orphanage, and is abusing the boy. A horrible plot twist. In some desperate actions, and after suffering brutal injuries, Amir rescues Sohrab and flees with him back to America. There, Sohrab is a lonely, almost mute boy from his experiences, but Amir and his wife adopt him, and wait patiently for him to heal.

The plot skirts close to having too many coincidences, and takes some brutal turns, but it held a lot of suspense and gave the sense of a very different world. I spent four years in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, Pashtun country, and traveled to Kabul and other places in Afghanistan. That was '68-'72. The story was an unsettling but riveting revisit to that country.