Mantor Monday

Friday book post: Feed

I've been holding off raving about this book, because our copy has been in processing. But it's the weekend before Hallowe'en, and the book has zombies.

(The book is entirely tangential to Hallowe'en: these are science zombies, not magic zombies. But still. Zombies.)

In 2014, two scientific breakthroughs combined to create an infection that - once triggered - causes people to rise from the dead. The Rising, as it's called, changed the face of the world forever.

This book, by Mira Grant (also known as Seanan McGuire, author of the excellent Toby Daye urban fantasy series, musician, and author of other upcoming awesome stuff), is about what happens 20 years after the Rising.

It's about growing up in a world where any contact with possibly infected mammals - people, wildlife, anything larger than a smallish golden retriever - means blood tests, and a wide variety of security precautions. About a world where news - going out into the world - is complicated, and a vast network of bloggers combine to create connections and keep the largely housebound population entertained and informed. You have Irwins who poke zombies with sticks to give everyone a thrill, Newsies who write factual objective journalism, and Fictionals who deal with the scary spaces of the world through stories and poetry. And it's about three young adults getting the gig to travel with a major political campaign.

This book, the first in the trilogy, is about the politics of that political campaign, about family, about principle. And about surviving. (The second book, Deadline is out, and the final book in the trilogy will come out next year. Deadline ends with a serious cliff-hanger, so if you don't like that sort of thing, read Feed now, and wait for the last one to hit print.)

Grant sums it up this way: "The Newsflesh Trilogy is a story about blogging, politics, medical science, espionage, betrayal, the ties that bind, the ties that don't, how George Romero accidentally saved the world, and, of course, zombies. It's thoughtful horror, and horrific science fiction, and I'm very fond of it."

I am not usually a huge zombie fan - but the story and the characters drew me in immediately. (It helps that while there's violence of the 'fighting for survival' kind, it's mostly not immensely gory, and only when it actually advances the story.)

As soon as it's processed, you'll be able to find it on our Discoveries shelf, in the Browsing Room.

When is a bookcase like Willy Wonka's elevator?

When it's designed by Chrome for Google Books, that's when - a bookcase that moves up, down, and sideways with just a click and a flick.

The designers at Chrome were presented with a challenge: what would a bookcase designed to hold a vast collection of ebooks look like? How could they make it both functional and fun?

The answer is a virtual spinning tower of bookshelves, a seemingly infinite helix containing 3D models of over 10,000 (and growing) titles. Set up more for browsing than searching, books are divided into 28 subjects. Click on the box at the top of the shelf to browse subjects, and when you choose, the shelves swoop to that section. Click on the shelves to spin them, or move up and down the tower of shelves. When you click on a title to select it, the book jumps off the shelf. click again, and the book opens to reveal a synopsis and a "Get this book" button, which takes you to the Google Books interface . (There is a category for free books, if that's what you're looking for, but all others are for sale.)

The developers say this WebGL bookcase works best with the Chrome browser (which I use) and a fast computer, so I had no trouble playing with it. Give it a try here. Here's a little intro video that shows how it works:

Happy browsing!

Thoughts about ebooks

Ebooks really are the topic of the year: more and more thought about both the immediate practical issues and the larger issues are coming up in the blogosphere.

One of the major conferences for libraries and technology (Internet Librarian) just finished, and one of the attendees, Bobbi Newman, just posted a great round-up of links that came up in discussion. You can check them all out at her blog.

I'm really glad to see an increasing depth in the conversation, not just "More ebooks, yay!". I'm particularly glad that more and more people are digging into issues of ...

• licensing
• privacy
• digital rights management (how you can share books, both with others, and simply within your own household)
• and the implications for people who, for whatever reason, cannot or do not wish to buy.

A special shout-out here to author Seanan McGuire's post "Across the digital divide: let's talk about poverty" from last month, which is a powerful call to the benefit of physical, tradeable, shareable books (something that is currently true only in very limited ways with ebooks, if you want to read anything written at all recently.) It's got some fascinating bits in comments, too.

It's not that ebooks are bad - they're not.  I (like most people who read) am in general favor of more ways to read more awesome stuff.  (And I do read a number of titles in ebook version these days, rather than print.)

But they're not perfect, either.

And the things that are problematic about them (privacy, licensing, and access issues in particular) are going to continue to be complicated until readers, authors, and publishers can push through and sort some of those issues out, in a way that makes them truly accessible and effective for everyone. Until then, being informed about the issues is a great place to start - and those links on Bobbi's page are some of the best explanations out there on what you should know, and why you might care.

A Review of Facebook Timeline

I just enabled Timeline on my Facebook profile. (How did I get the invite? My web-fu paid off once again, and because I care about my readers, I'll share my trick with you: click here. NOTE: It took longer for the invite to come on my profile than described in the linked article. Days longer. Just be patient. Also note that this just gets you in on the developer release. The general public won't be able to view your timeline until it's available to everyone. For now, just other developers can see it. But if you become a developer by following that link, then you can view other people's timelines. Get it?)

So what is Timeline? It's Facebook's new approach to personal profiles, aiming to present the whole of a person, from birth on. It presents all your activity in an easily accessed chronological format, ranging from events to status updates to pictures to . . . everything else. It lets you retroactively put in events--I tried entering where I moved when, and it all worked flawlessly. You can associate pictures with events, too.

Some people have said this is all too creepy and invasive, and I suppose I can see that--although it doesn't bother me. Only you have access to all the information on your timeline, and you can hide anything you want hidden. Actually, it's a good reminder that what you put on Facebook stops really being yours the moment you put it there. Facebook keeps a copy, and it's got a long memory. The moral of the story (in my opinion) isn't to start getting torches and pitchforks and coming after Facebook--it's to be careful about what you post there in the first place.

So what do I think of Timeline?

I love it. I could easily see myself spending a lot of time putting up pictures and labeling them with the approximate date and place. It takes the concept of a family photo album and brings it to the modern day. When I think about how kids born post-Facebook will basically have all this information already available to them--how they can create it as they live their lives . . . that's sort of mind blowing.

Also mind blowing? The fact that I just joined Facebook on July 30, 2007. In just a little over 4 years, Facebook has ingrained itself into popular culture and consciousness to the point that it feels like it's always been here.

I really like the ability to see all my status updates and postings and friend adds that I've ever done. It's easy as all get out to see what I was doing three years ago today. Very interesting (and this feature is private--it's only available to each user on an individual basis--people can't go to my Facebook page and use it. Only I can. Supposedly.)

In the end, it's a great way to organize what was up to now just a running list of events in a person's life. I think it's exciting, and I hope it gets more widely adopted. I'd love to be able to browse through my friends' lives more easily--or at least through the events they don't mind me browsing.

What say you?

All Hallow's Read

Neil Gaiman, prolific blogger, Tweeter, and author of a whole bunch of really good books, had a great idea. Hey, he said - just tossing this great idea out there to his readers -how about if we all gave people scary books this year for Halloween? We could call it All Hallow's Read. And then, like a shambling zombie on a search for braaaaaaaiiiiiiiins, Neil's idea sort of took on a life of it's own as people re-Tweeted it and blog-posted it, and generally agreed that this was a fine idea indeed.

Now, simmer down, Neil is not advocating the total replacement of candy with books. Would All Hallow's Read have become instantly popular enough to have it's very own website, if it meant abstaining from candy corn? I think not. And it's a nice little website, too, with free downloads of bookmarks and book tags, and suggested scary books for all ages. It even has a printable version of Poe's The Raven that folds into a mini-book, perfect for spooky gifting.

And if you're in the mood for more spooky fun, visit our good friends over at Devaney, Doak and Garret Booksellers (193 Broadway, Farmington, Maine) on Friday, October 28th. They are hosting the 19th annual Late Afternoon of Terror.

Bring your favorite spine-shivery tale to read aloud or perform - or just come to watch and listen...if you dare. The fun starts at 6:00pm.

Resource Wednesday: Mobile EBSCO

A quick question: Today's resource is a mobile app for the EBSCO database products.

We're looking at how much interest there is in other kinds of mobile apps, including whether it's worth investigating, say, a mobile catalog interface for our catalog. Our current stats show that most people don't use mobile devices to look at our catalog or webpages. If you'd be interested in something like this, drop us a note (in the comments or on our Facebook wall) letting us know what kind of device(s) you use, and what you'd find especially useful.

Let's set the scene: So, you're walking down the street, and you get an urge to look up that article for your research paper. You pull out your smart phone (or your iPad, or whatever other portable device) and head straight to the EBSCO databases, and settle down to read.


Sound unlikely? Actually, it's quite easy. EBSCO, one of the big database providers (and from whom we get a wide range of databases) has a nicely designed mobile app that does just that. Once you set it up and authenticate your account, you can do searches in most of the databases EBSCO provides to UMF wherever you are.

[Here's a secret: part of me thinks that looking stuff up in databases from my phone is sort of silly, even though I love my phone for all sorts of other information seeking geekiness. But part of me thinks it's incredibly awesome to be living in the future.]

What does it look like? Let me show you some shots from the iPhone version. (Since I only have the iPhone, I haven't had a chance to look at other versions, but this should give you an idea. If anyone with other devices - Android smartphones, or whatever, feel free to let me know, and I'd be glad to post a followup.)

initial screen: EBSCO mobile iPhone app

Once you install the application (more about that below), this is the first screen you'll see. From here, you can see recent searches, access saved searches or articles, and get help.

The settings tool will let you select specific databases to search (that's up above what you can see in this image), and adjust some other preferences, like searching for full text articles, peer reviewed articles, or limiting the publication date. You don't have as many choices as you do using a web browser, but you have quite a few.

Try a search: Here, I've tried a search on "mountain lion". You can see there's a number of different results (over 3,000!), and I can sort by relevance or date.
 

 See that Refine button in the top left? If I touch that, I'll get a bunch of options to refine my search. I can limit it to specific subject headings (as shown below) or journals. Touch Ok and I've got a limited set of results.

Reading: If I click into a particular article, I'll either see whatever information is available about it. If that's an abstract, I'll see the abstract and a button to see if full text is available. If a PDF is available, I have a few more options - I can view the text of the article, download the PDF, or email the abstract (or PDF, if I've already loaded it) to myself.
 

So, how do you get this tool? First of all, you need to have a device it'll work on. Supported devices include

• iPhone
• iPad
• iPod touch
• BlackBerry
• Android Smartphones
• Windows Smartphones
• Dell Axim
• Palm
• Pocket PC

Wander over to the EBSCO mobile access page, and click on the button for your device.

 

It will bring up a window on screen giving you additional information. For non-Apple products, it will direct you to a FAQ page with instructions. 

For iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches, it will direct you to click the link at the bottom of any of the EBSCO database pages. If you click that link, you'll be prompted for an email address. EBSCO will then send an email with a link (for Apple products) to the app store, followed by an authentication link. Copy and paste that into the browser on your device, and it'll set you up with all the same access you'd have had from a computer on campus. Pretty slick! 

Try it out, and let us know how it goes!