The following review is from Library Journal on Rex Libris Volume 1. I, Librarian:
Welcome to the Middleton Public Library, where the patrons are not always human, the telluric energy of the local ley point brings fictional characters to life, and the librarians are always heavily armed. Long-lived Head Librarian Rex Libris, whose first library job was at Alexandria, is a member of the Ordo Bibliotheca, which throughout history has protected human knowledge from menaces both natural and supernatural. His colleagues include the ancient witch Circe, the megalomaniacal talking bird Simonides, and newcomer Hypatia, already bored with circ desk work and yearning for action. Here, Rex travels to Benzine V, planet of sentient snowmen, to retrieve an overdue copy of the Principia Mathematica from the Supreme Warlord Vaglox. Rather than play it straight, Turner complicates this inventive romp by turning it into a comic-within-a-comic, complete with discussions between Rex and his publisher on storytelling. Turner's black-and-white artwork here is more realism-based than his highly abstract work in Nil: A Land Beyond Belief (LJ 9/15/04) but still quite angular and cartoony. Rex is already an icon for librarians on the order of Buffy's Giles or Read or Die's Yomiko Readman, but the lay public will enjoy his adventures as well; recommended for mid-teens and up.—S.R.

http://tinyurl.com/2y6guo

Sounds like an excellent RPG to me!

The Valentines Day kids craft for the library this year will be friendship bracelets with bead messages like "Be Mine" and "Be My Valentines" and "Happy Valentines"!

Fun, fun, fun.

We have hemp string for the bracelets..I wish the beads were equally eco. I think they are the ones made from recycled plastic but I'm not sure.

All year long I've been involved in an online reading exercise for fun called "The 50 book challenge!" The goal is to encourage reading and to challenge readers to expand their literary tastes into areas that they might not normally explore. They have to read 50 books in a year and the blog site encourages readers to share little blurbs and opinions about the books they've read.

The year is almost over and of course the deadline is fast approaching. I am reading at a furious pace to finish the remaining few books before the years end!!!

My own selection criteria for books was this:
-Must not be a graphic fiction of fewer than 300 pages.
-Must be appropriate for ages 10+.
-Must be a work of some length (150+ pages regular text).

Here is the list of some of books I read this year:
1-So You Want to be a Wizard by Diane Duane.
2-Dragon Prince by Vicki Blum. (Silver birch nominee)
3-The Bonemender by Holly Bennett. (White pine nominee)
5-Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf.
6-Pathways to Bliss Joseph Campbell.
8-Evolutionary Witchcraft. T. Thorn Coyle.
9-Winter Rose Patricia A McKillip.
10-Kiss of Shadows Laurell K. Hamilton.
11-River of Gods Ian Macdonald.
12-Creative Storytelling: Choosing, Inventing, & Sharing Tales for Children by Jack Maguire.
13-Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson.
15-Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.
16-Fearless Loving by Rhonda Britten.
19-Introduction to Buddhism by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.
20-The Complete Concrete Paul Chadwick.
21-How to Solve Our Human Problems by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.
22-Loving What is by Byron Katie.
23-Mazes & Labyrinths: Their History & Development by W.H. Matthews.
24-In the Mood by Paul R. Robbins.
25-Library: An Unquiet history. Matthew Battles.
26-Tropic of Cancer by Arthur Miller.
27-How to Mend Your Broken Heart by Paul Mckenna Ph.D and Hugh Willbourn Ph.D.
28-Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven stages of Power and Healing by Caroline Myss Ph.D.
29-Book Crush by Nancy Pearl.
30-Coping with Romantic Breakup by Allen J. Ottens Ph.D.
31-Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rose of Raunch culture by Ariel Levy.
32-The Four Agreements: A practical guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz.
33-No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. by Margaret Mason.
34-Talking to Fairies: What they are, where to find them and how they can help! by Sheila Jeffries.
36-The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman.
37-Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, consciousness and creativity. by David Lynch.
38-Thieves world: Book One by Robert Aspirin and Lynn Abbey.
39-Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker.
40-Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress by Shelley Mezzanoble.
41-Thieves world: Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn edited by Robert Aspirin and Lynn Abbey.
42-Healing with the Chakra Energy System by John Cross.
44-Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton.
45-The Sign of the Shapeshifter by Dale Donovan and Linda Johns.
46-The Warrior's Daughter by Holly Bennett. (White Pine nominee)

I think I'm going to do it again in the coming year ;) (If I survive!!)

Only 4 books to go!! Wish me luck!!!!

[scoffed from sexxylibrarians]



http://www.archive.org/details/Libraria1947

[cross posted everywhere]
My Online news feed aggregator is acting weird. Before you say the obvious yes I have done the following:

I have made sure all links are valid.

I have reloaded and marked all Feeds as "Read".

Most mainstream feeds are working swell and Library link of the Day, Librarian Avengers, Booklust, the LitBlog Co-op are all fine. Hmmmm.

All my LJ feeds seem to be behaving weirdly so does Beatrix, ArtsJournal and a couple smaller blogs.

I am using Pageflakes and their internal RSS reader. It's a bit slower but versatile and visual. It's also easier to use and I can make it pretty and pink :)

Is Pageflakes being flakey for anyone else?

Anyone have any advice?

[cross-posted in library_grrls and elsewhere]
I'm such a geek.
Do any of my computing or library geek friends know of a simple Dewey/LC table that I can down load and keep handy for use with a Palm OS?

I have an old Palm that I have repurposed as a e-book reader and hopefully now a portable Dewey table (it shouldn't take much space if it's a simple text+ based file).

I don't need it to catalogue or identify MARC details (like some of the programs available) just a simple Dewey/LC table structure down to say the 10's is fine.

I know a simple database could do this. I just don't have time to build it.

I'm back at Havenwood for another school year and a new class of Preschool students.

Here are the books and stories I plan on telling and the songs.

Max Found Two Sticks by Brian Pinkney. http://tinyurl.com/ywxbrq

This one I did at the branch this summer for the drop-in storytime and I performed it with drums and shakers. It was a big hit.

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems. http://tinyurl.com/2d8s95

This is an interactive story in where I like to role-play the pigeon who is pleasding, begging, crying and whining to drive the bus after the bus driver leaves. The children shout "NO!" everytime the pigeon asks. His pleas get more and more desperate and humorous. Mo Willems is a genius and one of my favs.

Fantastic Daisy Articoke by Quentin Blake. http://tinyurl.com/26lxme

A silly rhyming story.

Song: Still undecided...

All Aboard the Dinotrain! by Deb Lund. http://tinyurl.com/yqyddb

Also a funny rhyming tale with a characterful train crew.

Song: I am H.A.P.P.Y.

The classic closing song I usually do.

I chose Chick Lit, next time will do "Deepest Africa" novels about Africa.

( 101 Book diplay ideas I hav compiled over the years: )

Many of these are from my own head, my fellow co-worker's ideas or come from Reader's Advisory websites of Nancy Pearl's recommendations for genre fiction.

( Afternoon )

Phew!!!

For those dying to know what I do here is a sample day at work.

( The Morning )

Yay!! I just arranged scheduled all my Havenwood storytimes from October til January.

Here is a link farm to a bunch of articles on gaming on libraries (now considered a Hot topic!) http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/a-quick-guide-to-gaming-in-libraries/

So it looks that coming March break I will be super busy!

Tuesday the 11th of March I will be doing my Pirate Adventure (the one where kids look for treasure and clues among the stacks) workshop for South Common Branch.

Wednesday March 12th is an illustrated storytime (like the one I didn't get to do at KG _grumble

and the Thursday the 13th will be my Graphic Fiction for teens workshop at Central branch...busy, busy!

My holds copy of Nancy Pearl's Book Crush just came in Yay!!!! Time to commit it to memory.

My Library is home to the Burnhamthorpe Library Theatre. http://www.mississaugatheatre.ca/burnhamthorpe.htm

During the year and especually now during the busy season they put on quite a few small community theatre and small theatre company shows. Most of the actors are students or budding young talents.

A children's theatre company also does some shows as well here called Cow over the Moon productions. http://cowovermoon.ca/web/news/index.php

The theatre has 201 seats and is also used for large community and ethnic events which are relivant to this local community.

I took drama throughout high school up to the OAC level (they still had OAC when I was in school). I enjoy theatre quite a bit. Yet I have only ever seen one show here even though I work here daily. The shows are cheap as can be most of the time and I believe in community support for this sorta thing. I think I will try to catch a couple more this year.

Just a 411 on a bit more of where I work.

[cross posted everywhere]
Burnhampthorpe Library Games Night. Thursday August 30th!
We hold it between 6 and 8 ish.

We are at:
Burnhamthorpe Public Library
1350 Burnhamthorpe Rd E (corner of Dixie and Burnhamthorpe Roads)
Mississauga ON L4Y 3V9
905-615-4635

We have tons of games available and will have roughly the same selection every month. It's a bit of a way for people in downtown T.O. but those in the West end can take the Route 26 from Islington (it takes about 20 minutes). I run Games Night myself but will switch off with others here at the branch occasionally. We are looking for interested volunteers who can host once a month.

I am an experienced gamer who wants to bring gamers new and old together for a night of fun at the library to attract people and make the library a fun and exciting place to gather again!

Last month we had a record breaking 15 players.

Ages vary there are usualy a few adults or teens and in rare cases they are the majority. The young people seem to be growing in numbers so get ready for bedlam!

An alphebetical listing of games:
-Alhambra (with optional Gates of Alhambra expansion)
-Apples to Apples
-Chess and Checkers
-CSI: The Boardgame
-Decks of Cards
-Fluxx
-The Hobbit (The version by Fantasy Flight)
-FlipQuest
-Lord of the Rings-The Confrontation
-Lord of the Rings (This version also by Fantasy Flight)
-Lord of the Rings Risk
-Monopoly-Star Wars
-Munchkin 1,2 and 3
-Risk
-Risk 2210
-Scrabble
-Settlers of Catan
-Sword & Skull
-Super Scrabble
-Talisman (3rd edition)
-Trivial pursuit
-Zombies (1,2 and 3 expansions)

If you have young ones to look after or coming with you we have a few games they can play as well like:
-Calling all Care bears
-Candyland
-Guess Who?
-Harry Potter Trivia Game
-Trivial Pursuit for Kids (Nickelodeon edition)

If you have a request for a game I may own it. Post it here and I will bring it along. Bring your games along as well.

CCG Update: We have a few Yu-Gi-Oh! fans looking for games and I have had a suggestion that we could start Magic the Gathering games if we get enough interest. I have a whack of cards I can keep on hand.

Just Added!~ We now have a copy of Spank the Monkey available this is a really fun card game for up to 4 players.

Games Nights are the last Thursday of every month.

[cross posted elsewhere]
Anyone have any experience with e-book readers and specifically e-book readers which enable larger text so I'm not squinting like mad to read the text? Also that aren't the size of a freakin' textbook? Any suggestions? brands or stories of woe or weel?

Today Mr. J and I made an outline for a norse runes workshop where kids make a rune tablet on a block of wood with either a) Their Name in Ruic alphabet or b) a combination of Power runes!

My sample came out rockin'! Tomorrow at 2pm and part of the Lost worlds summer program! For kids Ages 6+

[cross posted everywhere]
A friendly neighbourhood reminder.

Tonight!

Burnhampthorpe Library Games Night. July 26th!
We hold it between 6 and 8 ish (8:30 is a firm stop time).

We are at:
Burnhamthorpe Public Library
1350 Burnhamthorpe Rd E (corner of Dixie and Burnhamthorpe Roads)
Mississauga ON L4Y 3V9
905-615-4635

You probably know the drill already. We get together we play games. There are many games to play but you can also bring some long if you wish. CCG's are exceptable as well.