ALA: A Conference Report with Five Footnotes

1.  Introduction

Until last week, I had never been to a major library conference1.  However, I’ve been to plenty of small conferences, and I imagined ALA to just be a scaled-up version of one of these:  interesting but slightly irrelevant.  A nice break from the usual routine.  I was prepared to be served severely overcooked green beans on more than one occasion.

What I found was nothing like that - the amount of things to do and see was overwhelming.  What follows is an attempt to synthesize several days in one of the most input-heavy environments I’ve ever found myself in.

2.  Las Vegas

I love to travel.  However, at the risk of overgeneralizing, there is no major city on planet Earth that I would rather visit less than Las Vegas.  If you made a shopping mall into a city, it would be Las Vegas.  If you designed a city for maximum wastefulness, it would be Las Vegas.  If you did your level best to create an experience that was so over-the-top, so overstimulating, and yet completely devoid of any redeeming culture, like the world’s loudest party that you aren’t allowed to leave, it would be Las Vegas.  Las Vegas is a cultural Potemkin village.  The whole city smells like cheap perfume and old pennies.

Or at least, that’s the Las Vegas that presents itself to the tourist.  I’m sure there are many parts of Las Vegas, somewhere between the gargantuan casinos and the foreclosure-riddled suburbs, that are quite nice.  You just can’t get to them on the monorail.

In a way though, it’s the most honest town in the United States.  It’s not trading on a pretense, it tells you exactly what you’re going to get:  a dirty city that revolves around poorly spent money2.

3.  Sessions

This being my first ALA, I was very much looking forward to the conference sessions.  I was eager to hear what the rest of the country was up to and to steal it for my library.  A brief summary follows of each session I attended.

PLAmetrics User Group - We have recently purchased a subscription to this product, and I thought it might be a good idea if I figured out how to use it.  I was right!  This is a very powerful (and cheap) tool that gives us access to a lot of great data.  For example, I was quickly and easily able to create a search that showed me every library in the United States that had an annual circulation number within 10% of my own, and then compare the group across multiple categories like population, budget, FTE, or basically any other statistic I could think of.  For a manager responsible for allocating resources and justifying expenditures and the like, data like this is solid gold because it allows you to demonstrate your successes.  Fun fact:  e-book circulation was .44/capita nationwide in 2012.  CD/DVD circ was 3.07/capita, which sounds high but is down from 5.07/capita in 2010.  Still, people are still checking out six times as many CD/DVDs as they are e-books (or they were in 2012 anyway).  NOTE TO PRESENTERS:  only Dennis Franz is allowed to wear ties with short sleeves.

Intellectual Freedom Workshop - This was an extremely interesting session.  Did you know that the Library Bill of Rights turned 75 this year?  Or that people trying to ban The Grapes of Wrath was the inspiration to start the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 1967?  Or that less than 20% of challenges to library materials are ever reported to the OIF?  I didn’t know any of these things!  The presenter also asked if we as librarians would never say “this book sucks” to a patron, why do we let patrons write reviews of things on our catalogs?  Does it affect the choices a person makes if they see reviews in the social catalog?  Well hopefully, I guess, because otherwise it would be pointless to include them.  But is allowing anyone with a library card to pass public judgment a positive or negative thing?  Food for thought.  Also at one point a bird got loose in the room somehow and it became increasingly difficult to concentrate3.

3D Printers and Library Policies - Since we are scaling up our MakerSpace area at Central, I thought it might be a good idea to see if there are any best practices out there we could adopt into our policy.  Short answer:  not yet.  There are not a lot of libraries who have 3D printers, and there are even fewer that have bothered to write a policy about them.  Most policies are tied to the general Acceptable Use policies for Internet and/or public computing, and generally restrict things like time, place, and manner of use to ensure equitable access.  Chicago Public Library, apparently, has no policy whatsoever.  In Ottawa, they have tied use of the 3D printer to their code of conduct.  One point that is generally not addressed in library policies is copyright and intellectual property rights.  What obligations does a library have, for example, to protect patents that could be violated through use of a 3D printer?  If someone accesses “trade secrets” and prints out a prototype of a product that violates the patent/copyright/intellectual property of something that’s already on the market, what kind of liability does the library have?  All of these are open questions that are not addressed by any body of law, because the law has not caught up to the technology.  Chattanooga, which has four 3D printers, charges for consumables and also differentiates between printers for kids and adults.  Kids have a 40 minute time limit, but if that’s not enough they are eligible to use the adult machine (the designations aren’t restrictive, just intended to maximize access).  ALA hopes to have a working model policy by Midwinter this year.

Data Driven Marketing - Data!  Marketing!  The vast majority of librarians want to run fast and far from both of these words, and that is a huge mistake.  Telling people about the awesome things that we do is absolutely vital, and using data to do it is efficient and effective.  In this session I learned that it’s pretty rare for libraries to have marketing departments, so I feel pretty fortunate that we’ve got such a good one.  One panelist, from the Vancouver public library, noted that someone from her marketing department sat on every committee/team that was working on a strategic goal.  That way, the Marketing department could be sure that they were devoting resources to the things that had been identified as truly strategic.  I picked up a couple of other ideas and practices that I wouldn’t mind adopting in this session.  One is the consideration of the cost of acquiring a new customer.  In business terms, if it costs you more money to identify a customer and sell them a product than the profit you make on the sale, you need to start over.  As a librarian with an extremely soft spot for outreach, I could probably stand to keep this in mind more often.  Finally, a point about data.  One of the panelists, who has an accountant background, said that “a good accountant can make the same numbers look like a million dollar profit or a million dollar loss.”  In other words, you have to be careful the conclusions that you draw from numbers - they are not as cut and dry as they sometimes appear to be.

Evaluation Crash Course - Are you sensing a pattern here?  I was extremely drawn to the sessions that talked about data, evaluation, and how to use both of them to make sure that my library is doing as good of a job as I think it is (or proving it).  This session discussed best practices for down-and-dirty program evaluations.  For example, how to structure a survey or a focus group to make sure that you ask the right questions in the right way, and thereby get feedback that is both usable and useful.  In short, you need to ask narrow questions, set targets, and then communicate the results.  The presenters pointed out that the main resource you will be expending in any data-gathering process is time, and you should make sure that the data you gather is worth the massive amount of time you will spend gathering it.  They recommended only asking questions you truly needed to have answered, and to avoid collecting data for data’s sake.

4.  Mustache

At the risk of revealing my narcissism, I want to pause here for a moment and talk about my mustache.

Now, I knew when I grew this thing that it was fairly unique.  For some reason, mustaches have been relegated into a few equally gross categories, with which I am sure you are familiar:  The Ironic, The Sleazy, The Anachronistic, and The Not Very Good4.  I have done my best to grow a mustache that falls into none of these categories.  Mine is bold, serious, and firmly rooted in the present.  You can call me a hipster if you want (many have gone before you) but I am comfortable with the look I have created for myself.

It is also quite the conversation starter.  When I went to the Kentucky Derby a few months ago, I was stopped a couple dozen times by people who felt compelled to talk to me about my mustache.  I hesitate to use the word “compliment” because even though I am being completely unironic, the intentions of other human beings are notoriously difficult to truly divine.  How many of the seemingly endless parade of drunk bros in polo shirts and wraparound shades and backward Titleist hats were serious and how many were secretly laughing at me?  I don’t know.  Maybe they don’t even know.  For a certain type of person, Postmodernism has made it basically impossible to truly mean anything anymore and it’s a distinct possibility that they were just responding to some irresistible inner need to call attention to something different, and their reaction would be based on mine, or their friend’s, or the nearest pretty girl’s.  Or maybe they were just being nice.

I was in Las Vegas for four complete (non-travel) days, and every single one of them somebody wanted to talk about my mustache.  I had been off the plane for not even ten minutes when a dude walked up to me and said “I mustache you a question.”  I didn’t get it at first, so he repeated it.  One guy at the conference found me on two different days, and on the second day said to me “Hey man, I know I told you this yesterday, but that’s a great stache, those are great glasses, and you’re a really good looking guy.”  I was sitting by myself in the crowded food court of my hotel, grabbing a quick sandwich before I caught the bus, when a dude in a group of dudes walked in, pointed at me from across the room, and not-quite-shouted “my boy’s got a REAL MUSTACHE!”  I gave him a little wave.  There were others, but these were the creative ones.

A quick disclaimer before we get back to business:  I am not complaining about this.  I think it’s awesome.  I like it for the same reason I like birdwatching - you never know when something is going to flitter out of nowhere and alight on you for a second, then flitter away again.  It’s a random event that is almost always funny.

5.  Networking

This is the true point of going to ALA, in my opinion (aside from showing off one’s mustache to a brand new city).  ALA is basically an endless parade of people you’ve never met before who are doing things differently than you do them.  You should get to know as many of these people as possible, or at least take the opportunity to use their wisdom to sharpen a small portion of your own.  You should also take advantage of the exhibit hall to put as many vendors on the spot as possible.  In their natural environment (which is in your office, where you cannot escape) vendors are slick and wily, in the exhibit hall you can walk away from them at a moment’s notice and they know it.  They will hurry to get to the point and tell you how their product will solve your problems, because competition for your attention is high.  In this sense, they are not unlike the people on the Las Vegas Strip wearing t-shirts that say “ORGASM CLINIC” and who constantly try to hand you little cards with pictures of women on them (thank you Johnson County Taxpayers for sending me here!).

Baker and Taylor - On Friday night, I went out to dinner with a group of folks from B&T and other libraries who use their services.  Since I am basically brand new to the tech services world, it was really great to be able to talk to other folks who do things more or less like we do, and ask them questions that I am too embarrassed to ask Jason Barnes.  I met folks from Boston Public Library, Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, and Vancouver Public Library.  I discovered that our B&T tech services rep lives in Noblesville, IN, which is close enough to where I grew up that I remember being obliterated by their soccer team in high school.  I also had a long conversation with Joel Jones from the Kansas City Public Library about Brainfuse, a vendor we had both seen that day and how we could think about cooperative purchasing in the future.  Dinner was on the top floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, which overlooks the entire Las Vegas strip, and we had the distinguished company of not one but THREE bachelorette parties.

Bibliocmmons reception - Again, this was a great place to meet people who use a product that we use and compare notes.  I met folks from Seattle, Fort Vancouver, and Brooklyn Public Libraries, as well as several people from Bibliocommons.  The children’s librarian from Brooklyn, whose name I failed to record, runs the branch on Cortelyou Road, which is about a five minute walk from where I used to live in Brooklyn on East 16th Street.  I asked her if she remembered my favorite shop in the neighborhood, which was called GIANT BAGEL (emphasis theirs) and whose Russian proprietor won my heart forever when I discovered that although he was selling my roommate stale donuts, he would always tell Lyndsey and me which ones were the good ones.  It made me feel like a true member of the neighborhood.  Sadly, my new friend had no idea what I was talking about.  Wither GIANT BAGEL?  I wandered off not knowing.

D-Tech  -  Perhaps you have heard, we are purchasing a very large piece of machinery to install in the western Shawnee area for people to check out books.  We are purchasing this machine from a company called D-Tech, and I was very interested to meet the people with whom I have been talking on the phone and exchanging emails for months.  They did not disappoint.  They (for some reason) booked an Elvis impersonator to hang around their booth and make people feel weird.  Mission accomplished!  Well done, everybody.

Indiana University Alumni Reception - On Sunday night I met an old mentor of mine, Sara Laughlin, the director of the Monroe County Public Library in Bloomington, IN.  We caught up for a bit and she filled me in on a bit of the old Bloomington gossip (THERE ARE PARKING METERS DOWNTOWN NOW YOU GUYS) and also on the Bloomfield gossip (their new library director, a position I once held, sounds like a great fit).  After a bit, we went upstairs to the IU reception and I got to meet the new Dean of the School of Informatics and Computing, which recently combined with the School of Library and Information Science to become the School of Informatics and Computing (there are no typos in that sentence).  He was a very nice guy.

Central Heads Lunch - On Monday, I had lunch with a group of administrators (not all of them were heads of a central branch) from all over the country - Queens, Brooklyn, San Antonio, Houston, Cincinatti, Des Moines, Santa Clara, and Kansas City, if my notes are complete.  It was a super interesting conversation, although it centered on a lot of “urban” problems that we don’t experience a lot of.  Some takeaways though:  San Antonio has partnered with their Parks department to install an on-site playground as part of an “exercise your body, exercise your mind” type of initiative.  They have experienced a sharp increase in circ at this branch.  Queens is working on getting a full-on pre-K program up and running in their system, completely run by the library.  They will hire teachers, not outsource.  It’s part of a mandate by the Education Department of the City (or whatever) and they recommend taking pre-K into account when planning for new construction.  Brooklyn and Queens have begun issuing government IDs, and San Antonio has begun issuing birth certificates.  Urban libraries sound crazier, and I kind of miss it.

6.  The World Cup

Sprinkled across my entire conference trip was the World Cup.  I love the World Cup.  I love the high stakes, I love the competition, I love the intrigue, and I love soccer5.  I was afraid that because ALA and the World Cup lined up so cleanly that I would have to miss a significant portion of one or the other.  Not so!  In between the two main conference halls happened to be a food court with (rough estimation) a hundred televisions.  I was also pleasantly surprised at how many fellow conference goers were not only interested in the matches, but vocally so.  There were several games, like Mexico/Holland, where the entire food court was packed, and when Sneijder fired his laser shot in the final minutes to send the game into overtime, the place practically erupted.  Even during sessions, I could hear people whispering score updates back and forth.  I love the World Cup!

7.  Conclusions

ALA was a very educational, informative, constructive, exhausting experience.  I hope I never have to go back to Las Vegas.

Footnotes

1.  Or a major American library conference, anyway.  When I was in Helsinki I went to an international conference where they had headphones you wore to listen to live translations of the speakers, who were people from various Departments and Ministries and things.  At one point I was on a library tour and I realized that everyone was speaking English specifically for my benefit as I was the only member of the group that didn’t speak either Finnish, Swedish, or Russian.  Because I only spoke English, they assumed I was from “Bulgaria or somewhere” as one attendee put it.

2.  I am, of course, exaggerating here for comedic effect.  Every human being I met was extremely nice and very helpful.  They have also decided, apparently as a city, that the universal parting phrase should be “good luck,” which I think is great, if unintentionally fatalistic.

3.  It was also hard to concentrate because these poor presenters kept saying unintentionally hilarious things.  At one point they put up a slide advertising a movie about intellectual freedom, and they were noting the discounted ticket prices for library school students, which they abbreviated in their PowerPoint like this:  “$10 FOR STUDS.”  They also kept putting up the Intellectual Freedom Round Table acronym, which is IFRT.  This is funny to me because I have a friend who as a child would enter the initials FRT whenever he would set a high score on a video game, which was HILARIOUS because FRT looks kind of like the word “fart.”

4.  A truly solid mustache, unlike a beard, cannot be faked well.  If your beard is patchy or thin, you can power through and grow something that will eventually improve the way you look (or at least be, in economic terms, revenue neutral).  A mustache, however, does not follow the same rules.  If it isn’t going to happen, it isn’t going to happen, and there is no amount of time you can invest in it to make it happen.  Cut your losses and shave it, no one will think less of you.

5.  I freely admit to being a selective fan though; I couldn’t name you a single player on Sporting KC (except Graham Zusi, who I learned a week or so ago when everyone in the bar I was in began to shout his name all at once, like this:  “ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS”).  Global soccer is so much more interesting than club soccer, in the same way that just because I love A Moveable Feast means I want to read every subpar knockoff that comes down the pike.  Who’s got time for that?

It's been something like six weeks since my last blog post.  I'm going to go ahead and call it a summer vacation, because otherwise I'd have to call it what it is, which is laziness.

I feel as though I owe my readers a thorough accounting of the things I've read in the children's and YA genres since my last post, so here is a brief list of all the books I've read in the last couple months that fall into those categories:  none.

Maybe you are surprised?  Maybe you considered me a more diligent worker?  I share your outrage.  There is no excuse, unless you consider Skyrim to be an excuse (and if you don't then I have serious doubts about your understanding of the modern human condition).

Anyway, I've been reading, just not stuff that I'm supposed to be blogging about.  But nuts to that, I'm going to blog about it anyway.

I'm currently reading On the Run in Siberia which is the non-fiction account of a Danish anthropologist who somehow got it into his head that it would be a good idea to set up a fur company to rival the giant Russian fur cartel, which is exploitative of the environment, the native hunters, and basically everything it's possible to exploit.  If you have been paying any attention to the news out of Russia, you can probably guess how it went.  I'm on record as being fascinated by Russia, so maybe I'm biased, but I think this book is a pretty fascinating glimpse into how business gets done in other parts of the world.

Before that, I read God's Middle Finger which is the (surprise) non-fiction account of a journalist's trip through the Sierra Madre in Mexico, which is basically a place to which law and order have still yet to arrive.  The place is riddled with outlaws and bandits, and not the romantic Wild West types.  These are drugged up hayseeds with nothing to lose but their sense of machismo.

I'm just now realizing that for the last six weeks I've essentially been reading books about life outside the bounds of modern government.  Perhaps this is some kind of unconscious crie de coeur?  Probably not.  Both of these books are rather terrifying.

"Bomb" by Steve Sheinkin

I'm on the record as being a big fan of non-fiction, so I tried to not let that bias my opinion of Bomb: The Race To Build - And Steal - The World's Most Dangerous Weapon.  So from a completely neutral point of view, without any personal taste entering into my judgment, I'm going to go ahead and say that Bomb is super rad and everybody will like it.

Ok, maybe not everybody.  Just everybody who is into action, adventure, suspense, science, history, spies, or explosions.

When non-fiction is good, it's electrifying.  It makes the reader want to go back to the shelf and grab every book on the same topic.  And unlike fiction (in my experience anyway) once you've read a good piece of non-fiction on a subject you're willing to read stuff on the same subject that might not be quite as well-written or magnetic, just as long as you can somehow manage to get more information into your brain about whatever it is you've become interested in.

Which is exactly my personal goal as a librarian.  To create the self-motivation in others to read more and learn more.  I think Bomb does that.  The writing is tight and digestible, but still meaty enough to be educational.  The narrative is succinct and easy to follow, but it doesn't dumb its subject down.  Steve Sheinkin used to be a textbook writer and it shows (in a good way); his prose is well-crafted to not outshine his subject.

Sheinkin also does a great job of coming at the subject from multiple points of view, and of not hovering too long over a particular aspect of the narrative and thus causing the pace to slow.  Everything moves at a fairly steady clip.

However, in spite of all the things I just said about the subject matter and the writing style, Bomb is probably a bit lengthy to be used as a tool for engaging reluctant readers.  Certain individual chapters (like the one about the Norwegian mission to sneak into a Nazi research facility and blow it up) could be used to that effect, though.  As a whole, I think this book could be used to open young adults up to non-fiction if they're already reading, and it definitely could be recommended to kids who are already into non-fiction who are just looking for a new topic to explore.

"Clementine" by Sara Pennypacker

I liked this book before I even saw it, because anyone with the real-life name of Pennypacker has to be awesome, otherwise he or she would have crumbled under its awesome weight.

Clementine is a fictional first-person narrative told by the precocious titular character, a spunky little third-grader who can never seem to pay attention to the right things.  She's the archetypal "problem child" character with good intentions and curiosities that always seem to be landing her in trouble with her parents and teachers.  When Clementine finds her classmate, neighbor, and good friend Margaret crying in the bathroom at school because of a bad haircut she gave herself, she responds by personally "improving" Margaret's haircut with rounded art scissors and permanent marker.  Margaret's mother, who is neat and tidy and who Clementine thinks looks like she just stepped out of a magazine, is not very happy with this.  This begins a chain of events, well-meant-but-poorly-thought-out decisions, and typically ignorant adult reactions that have Clementine thinking that her parents are planning to get rid of her.

One of the things I've had to learn about reading kids' books is that you can't get irritated if they are trite or hackneyed (which the plot of Clementine definitely is).  They aren't written for adults, obviously, they're written for kids who haven't had enough time to become familiar with dozens of literary versions of the creative, quirky kid who marches to the beat of her own drum.  So you have to put that out of your mind.  Then, when it creeps slowly back in, you have to put it out of your mind again.  And again and again, if necessary.

If you can keep that in mind, you'll like Clementine.  And, more importantly, kids will definitely like Clementine.  Pennypacker has given her a narrative voice that perfectly captures how little sense the world makes when you're young.  The behavior of adults is mystifying, consequences for well-intended actions seem wildly inappropriate, aesthetics of judgement seem subjective at best.  Adults are just plain weird.

There are also really great illustrations:

In summation, Clementine is great if you're not looking for any kind of plot tension at all.  It's a funny book with sympathetic characters that is enjoyable to read, and you can polish it off in a half hour if you really sit down and try.

New project!

Recently a local artist and 1/3 of the Bread! KC project Sean Starowitz suggested to me the idea of setting up a little lending library in a laundromat where he does some super amazing public art projects.  In other words, he basically out-librarianed me.  This could not stand!  Obviously I would take the project on, and I would try to make it as cool as it could possibly be.

I immediately went to my personal stock of books (still in boxes nearly a year after I moved into my apartment) and tried to stack them up by theme.  My beautiful and talented wife Lyndsey came home while I was in the middle of this, sitting in the middle of the room with books all over the place like they had all just got dumped in there by several dozen wheelbarrows, sized up the situation, and said, "Look at all the books about the ocean!  You should do something with that."

BOOM:

So the idea is that these books are just out there in the community, to be taken and (hopefully) brought back, and participants can send their thoughts, reflections, images, poems, or whatever else to a project email address and they'll get posted on a project blog.  We'll hopefully be putting up other collections in other spaces as we go.

Also, big thanks to Mary Olive Thompson, who runs the Outreach program at Kansas City Public Library for giving me some children's and YA books from their awesome Books to Go program to add to this collection and round it out.

Here are the books, along with the little blurbs that I wrote up to go on bookmarks (example below) that will go inside each book and hopefully give prospective readers an idea of why the book in their hands is worth reading.  If you're interested in following the project, the blog entries (if anyone submits any) will appear at cityshelves.blogspot.com.  And if you want to borrow a book yourself, come to the Walnut Place Laundromat tonight at 7 (or any time thereafter).

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne (fiction) - Perhaps the most well-known fictional exploration of the sea and its mysteries, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea tells the story of Captain Nemo, a man without a country and haunted by his past, who has taken to the sea in his fantastical submarine Nautilus to exact his revenge on the civilization that wronged him.  The crew travels to exotic locations, fights monsters of the deep, and has other adventures that have been captivating imaginative minds for quite a long while.  This Illustrated Classic edition has been “adapted for young readers.”

The Bounty, by Caroline Alexander  (non-fiction) - Fletcher Christian decided that he had had enough of Captain William Bligh’s unbending discipline, so one bright day in April 1789 he set him adrift.  Christian and his crew returned to edenic Tahiti, while Bligh and eighteen crew members loyal to him faced the open Pacific with only a quadrant and a pocketwatch to find their way home.  Fleeing cannibals, desperate for food and water, Bligh managed, almost a year later, to make it back to England to report the crime.  The aptly named HMS Pandora set off in pursuit of the mutineers, but its fate too was cursed.  Bligh’s original goal, which all this drama and suffering was apparently worth risking, was the cultivation and importation of the breadfruit plant to England.

Over the Edge of the World, by Laurence Bergreen (non-fiction) - Ferdinand Magellan set out in 1519 with five ships, 260 sailors, and two goals.  To sail completely around the world, and to conquer in the name of Spain.  Three years later the Magellan and nearly his entire crew were dead, and most of the survivors who made it home were too weak to stand or even speak, but they had done it.  Over the Edge of the World combines research with contemporary accounts to form a portrait of a singular, but often maniacal individual who drove his crew to the ends of the earth and paid the ultimate price for it.

Near Death on the High Seas, edited by Cecil Kuhne (non-fiction) - Human beings have by no means lost their taste for adventure since the age of the explorers.  There are still those who venture out, alone, into the blue yonder, ready to face whatever trials have been set for them.  Whether they are sailing from South America to the Pacific Islands on a raft made of balsa wood, purposefully racing in the world’s most dangerous and unpredictable waters, or risking their lives to save a fellow sailor, the stories that these people tell when they come home (if they do) are what put fire into the heart of the next generation.

The Odyssey, by Homer (fiction) - Ten years after the ten-year Trojan War, Odysseus is cursed by the  sea god Poseidon himself after he blinds his son, the Cyclops.  What follows is Odysseus’s struggle to return home to his wife and son, and to take back his home from the hundred-odd Suitors who have moved into his house in an attempt to convince his wife to marry one of them.  In a satisfyingly mythic fashion, Odysseus overcomes numerous obstacles (although not a single one of his crew of sailors manages to survive) to return home and reclaim his life.

Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand (non-fiction) - Louis Zamperini was a track star, running the 5000 meter race in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.  Although he didn’t medal, his 56-second final lap was fast enough to draw the attention of Adolf Hitler, who shook his hand after the race.  When World War II broke out, Zamperini joined a bomber crew and was sent to the Pacific.  His plane crashed, killing everyone but Zamperini and two others, who survived on the open ocean for 47 days only to wash up into the hands of the Japanese military who promptly locked them up in a camp designated for non-POWs, where they were mercilessly tortured.  This is not only a story of survival, but also of redemption and forgiveness (and will soon be made into a movie directed by Angelina Jolie).

Seaworthy, by T.R. Pearson (non-fiction) - William Willis was a true badass and/or crackpot.  Born in Germany, he came to America as a 15-year-old deckboy where he jumped ship.  He roamed America for a few years before finding himself in New York and educating himself at the public library.  His landlady had a brother who was imprisoned for murder on Devil’s Island, so he did what any decent tenant would do and successfully broke him out of jail using a plan that involved him putting on actual leper’s clothes as a disguise.  When he was in his 60s, he decided to build a raft and sail it across the Pacific with a parrot and a cat for crewmates, because hey why not.  Surprisingly, he was successful, but even more surprisingly he decided to do it again, and then do the Atlantic because, again, why not.  As the book jacket states, when his hernia got too painful to bear he did what any thinking human being would do and hung himself upside down from his mast.

Tales of Land and Sea, by Joseph Conrad (fiction) - No one evokes the excitement, the fear, the danger of the unknown like Joseph Conrad.  His classic Heart of Darkness provided the inspiration and tone for Apocalypse Now, and was inspired by Conrad’s own experiences as a gunrunner in Africa.  His shorter fiction is tighter and more accessible, but still maintains that sense of wonderment and creeping horror.  The stories collected here are often autobiographical; Conrad lived a fascinating life.  He was born in Poland, joined the French Merchant Marine to avoid getting drafted into the Russian Army. He didn’t learn English until he was in his middle-teens, yet went on to be one of the most famous writers in that language.  If you’re looking for a toehold in this giant book, try Youth, a story about five sailors sharing a drink and telling the story of a shipwreck.

Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum (non-fiction) - Joshua Slocum was the first human being to sail around the world completely alone.  This tale isn’t one of deprivation and hardship, as Slocum stopped often at ports,  but what’s great about this book is the author’s keenly observant eye and dry New England wit.  He’s got the sharp narrative voice of a natural writer and relates his tale with the same tone you might expect if you were sitting across from him with a beer in your hand.  It’s not often that adventurers of Slocum’s caliber happen to also have a gift for writing and are able to relate their own stories with such ease.  Reading this book is like hearing the tale at fireside firsthand.

The Adventures of Ulysses, by Bernard Evslin (fiction) - This is The Odyssey rewritten for a younger audience.  All of the monsters, adventure, and epic journeys but with writing that’s a bit less stuffy.

The Voyage of the Frog by Gary Paulsen (fiction) - Gary Paulsen is the king of young adventure writing.  Paulsen is a bona fide badass in real life; he’s completed the Iditarod dog race, which fewer people have done than have climbed Mount Everest.  The Voyage of the Frog is about a 14-year-old who puts out to sea before he feels ready in order to fulfill his recently deceased uncle’s wishes to have his ashes scattered out of sight of shore.  Suddenly the winds are high, the sea is rough, and a storm comes up...

The Chronicles of Narnia:  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis (fiction) - Please forgive this book its ridiculous cover, which is an apparent attempt to appeal to Kids These Days.  C.S. Lewis is a fantasy legend, and in Dawn Treader he moves beyond the typical hero-villain dichotomy to explore the three-dimensional personalities of his protagonists.  They are tempted, they sometimes succumb, and they must prove themselves to be worthy of the word Hero.  It’s the increasingly rare fantasy novel that doesn’t focus on hack-and-slash or crazy, convoluted wars, but rather turns inward and discusses human nature.  All of this, of course, while still providing the reader with dragons, adventure, and fun stuff too.

The Great Wide Sea by M.H. Herlong (fiction) - Ben’s mom just died, and now his dad is insisting that he and his brothers accompany him on a sailing trip.  The close quarters and grief are driving everyone crazy.  They’re just starting to make progress when suddenly Ben’s dad disappears from the boat, leaving the brothers to fend for themselves in the face of an oncoming storm.  Fast-moving and high-paced, this book delivers the goods while also exploring the grieving process and the dynamics between brothers and fathers.

Island Series, vols. 1 and 2 by Gordon Korman (fiction) - Six kids are on the ocean as part of a team-building exercise when their boat sinks from under them and they are abandoned by the adult in charge (how rude).  After a week adrift on the wreckage they finally wash ashore, but their troubles are just beginning.  The kids have to deal with hunger, wild boar, smugglers, fevers, and a host of other problems.  This series is like Lost minus all the terrible, plot hole-riddled sci-fi.

"People" by Blexbolex, and others

Before I get started on the excellent, ever-growing list of recommendations that have been made to me for this blog, I thought I would clear out a few that I've had sitting on my nightstand for the last few weeks.  If they seem like they might be somewhat unrelated to each other it's because they are completely unrelated to each other.  This particular group of books was assembled for me by one of our helpful children's librarians during a lap around their branch, picking things up.

First up is People by Blexbolex.  This book was, according to Wikipedia, named 2008's "Best Book Design of the World" at the Leipzig Book Fair, which is a very high (if awkwardly phrased) honor.  It's certainly a very cool book.  Each page has one illustration and one label, which is complemented by the illustration and label on the facing page.  Like so:

The relationships between the illustrations are very subtle, not at all like the typical pairs of opposites that you would usually expect from a children's book.  The pairs reward deeper, more imaginative thinking by the reader.  What then, is the relationship between an astronaut and a dreamer?  Or between a conductor and a tyrant?

The book is also, for a picture book, quite long, which I think is a good thing.  It rewards the reader who goes back over and over looking for new things.  In other words, it's simple but it has depth, which is extremely tough to pull off.

Next up are a pair of books by Shaun Tan called Tales from Outer Suburbia and Lost & Found.  The former is a Young Adult book, the latter is aimed at children.  I wasn't really wild about either, but I can't quite put my finger on why.  They are both richly illustrated, and the style of illustration is varied.  The stories are very creative as well.

from Lost & Found

from Tales of Outer Suburbia

I guess if I had to put forward a reason for why I didn't love them, it would be because they read like they are written for kids, which is not how I think children's books should be written.  Does that make sense?  It doesn't read like an adult talking to someone whom they consider a peer, but rather it reads like an adult being whimsical-on-purpose, which drives me very crazy.  I don't want to give the impression that these are bad books (quite the opposite, these are very good books), but something in the tone made me not want to read on.  Check them out for yourself though, you might not be as persnickety as I am.

Finally, we have What the World Eats by Faith D'Aluisio and with photos by Peter Menzel.  This book is fascinating.  Basically, it profiles families from all over the world and their eating habits.  There is a family from suburban Paris, farmers from Guatemala, villagers from Mali, and so on and so on.  Each family has a portrait taken with all the food they would eat in a typical week, along with a list of the prices for each item in the photo.  Most entries come with recipes from that family and/or region.  There is a brief essay for each family that talks about daily routines, how and why they choose the food they do, and other interesting aspects of their lifestyle.  Interspersed throughout are charts that compare things like literacy rates, fertility rates, access to clean water, and other information country by country.

The Madsens of Cap Hope, Greenland

The Natomos of Kouakourou, Mali

The Ukitas of Kodaira City, Japan

To put it simply, this book is awesome.  It will be engaging for children, illuminating for adults, and you'll even walk away with a recipe or two.  If you're into food, or world culture, or just awesome colorful photography, check out What the World Eats as soon as you can.

I promise I will get back to the original formula for this blog VERY SOON.  I'm sure it says something about my mental fortitude that it took me only about like six months to get completely away from the read-review-recommend format that I set up for this blog, and start just talking about whatever I'm reading or have laying around my house/office.

That's it!  Go read!

Middle of the Map Forum

Last week I went to the Middle of the Map Forum, and I highly encourage anyone who has the opportunity to go next year.  It was packed with excellent speakers, active and engaged panel discussions, and just smart people in general.  And they're all from Kansas City!  Which makes it extra cool and useful.  The topics of the panels were wide-ranging, from education to business to health to social media.  In my opinion, that diversity of thought helped keep the conference fresh from start to finish.  It also made it easier to fit discussion topics into the broader context of reality, instead of just whatever silo they were coming out of.

The Forum started off with talks by John McDonald, founder of Boulevard Brewery, and Adam Jones, the hippie millionaire who runs Foundation Architectural Reclamation and owns half of the West Bottoms.  John and Adam are both graduates of the Kansas City Art Institute and are old friends (they call each other Jonesy and Johnny Mac), and it was extremely interesting to hear them describe how they've watched Kansas City grow over the last couple of decades.  They both seem like extremely nice, personable, socially conscious, genuine dudes, which made it even more interesting when Adam Jones was asked for his general advice on life and he responded immediately and forcefully that you should "take no prisoners."  John McDonald seconded that notion, and followed up by saying that "sometimes you just gotta rip it off."  For me, it drove home the idea that you can be a nice guy, you can have a vision and a positive attitude, but you still need to have that force of will to get things done.  You have to be willing to go all out to get your way.  If you're only willing to go halfway, then you should expect to succeed halfway.  Oh, and Adam Jones had heard about our demolition derby car project!  That was cool.

The first panel was on Emerging Education and featured a variety of people who work with education in some way.  This included a variety of folks, including "traditional" educators like a principal and a superintendent, but also the President of KCAI, the head of a non-profit called MindDrive, and a practicing artist/community activist.  The discussion in this panel revolved around a lot of the things that public librarians think about:  how to use education to break the poverty/crime cycle, how to inspire youths to want to learn, and how to provide opportunities for these kids beyond the normal.  The panel also discussed how to create awareness of some of the circumstances faced by some urban youth, and how some kids who grow up in affluent areas have no idea what is going on just a few miles from them.  One specific takeaway that was mentioned that I thought was really cool was a suggestion by Linda Buchner of MindDrive that mentoring be written into the job descriptions of some educators and related professionals (librarians?) to provide the one-on-one time that kids are not getting enough of.

Following that panel was solo speaker Jeff Cintimano of Microsoft, on whom I somehow managed to take not a single note.  If memory serves, his talk was mostly about different pieces of hardware and software that Microsoft is either currently selling or will be selling soon.  Mostly what I remember is that he had a hard time with his presentation software while at the same time trying to talk up different software, which I thought was the kind of thing that only happened on TV.

After lunch was a talk by Dr. Stephen Kingsmore of Children's Mercy Hospital.  Dr. Kingsmore is an excellent example of how it's not always a brand new idea that is needed to effect a large, positive change.  Sometimes it's taking an idea that is already out there and figuring out how to speed it up, make it more efficient, make it cheaper, or just plain do it better.  Dr. Kingsmore has somehow (he explained it but I failed to follow it) managed to speed up greatly the process of mapping the genome of individual human beings.  This means that when infants are born, they can be screened for genetic disorders before they begin to exhibit symptoms.  This is important for a number of reasons, among them that when infants begin to exhibit symptoms certain diseases can already be very far along, so it is critical to move that diagnosis as close to birth as possible.  Did you know genetic disorders affect 1 child in 20?  They are shockingly (to me) common.

The final discussion panel on Thursday was on Innovative Business.  Panel members included entrepreneurs, seasoned businesspeople, and the guy from Sly James's office who is in charge of Google Fiber.  One of the first points that the panel made was that "economic development" is no longer synonymous with "real estate." A city has to ask itself what is needed for innovation, and in 2013 it is not new buildings or even necessarily tax breaks (that came from the mayor's rep, lest you believe it's some tech hippie talking).  In other words, "community is the new currency."  The panel agreed that you need to create an energetic environment to which people are attracted.  Adam Arredondo (creator of Local Ruckus and also KC Startup Villiage) pointed out how he recently met three entrepreneurs in their early 20s who had relocated from Boston to KC, which is exactly opposite the traditional pattern of internal immigration in the US.  I found this discussion incredibly interesting, since creating community and an energetic environment is one of the things we as librarians strive to do every day.  The fact that other people are realizing that that's important says to me that libraries are perfectly positioned to play a large role in this new environment.

All that was on Thursday!  It was a really interesting and fruitful day.  I had planned to have a similar experience on Friday, but on my way to the conference life intervened in the form of a fender bender on 39th St.  That plus thinking I had a meeting at Central at 12 when it was really at 1 conspired to limit my attendance on Friday to one speaker and one panel.

The speaker I got to see on Friday was Sandy Kemper, brother of KCPL director Crosby Kemper and all-around badass.  That dude has biceps that look like bowling balls.  He also started a company called C2FO that sells something I don't understand but makes millions and millions of dollars.  He's also been involved with education companies and mentoring.  Oh, and he started this thing called The Collectors Fund which is basically his way of taking the risk out of art collection so that rich people will do it more, and thus increase their support for the arts.  Or, as he puts it, allowing "things that are uniquely created to be heterogeneously consumed."  Sandy Kemper may or may not be Batman.

One audience member asked Sandy what exactly education companies sell.  He thought for a minute.  "Confidence," he replied.  The questioner considered this for a second and then asked, "how much does that cost?"

One of the major themes in Sandy's talk was the willingness to take risks.  He pointed out that when he would try to start business when he was younger, with his equally young (and equally rich, he points out) friends, most of them refused to be associated with risk because it meant they could possibly have to be associated with failure.  This, he says, is why people go from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. If you're not willing to take risks, you'll never realize big gains.  You'll only see what you have slowly erode.

The final panel that I saw was called Curating Responsibility, which (you should be picking up on a theme here) was made up of a diverse range of artists and administrators who talked about how to successfully engage the community using new and traditional methods.  Or, in other words, how to "connect the outside to the inside."  I was particularly attracted to points that Judy Koke,  Director of Education and Interpretive Programs at the Nelson made.  She talked about how she wanted people to be able to use the Nelson differently than they have in the past, to get beyond the things they have done to death for the last 80 years.  She said that it's important to be able to "fail spectacularly" and have it be OK, which I completely agree with.

There is so much more that I would like to write about this conference, but I'm not going to.  Other awesome projects that were discussed were Rad School, Bread! KC, the MoBank Poet, TEDxYouth, Oddly Correct, and a hundred other things.  It was exactly what a conference should be:  a thought-provoking series of discussions interspersed with opportunities to do some extremely targeted networking.  I highly recommend it.