I’m not an alien, nor do I work for hulu, but that doesn’t mean I can’t sing it’s praises here. Hulu is a good resource that you may want to share with our customers questions about TV shows and movies. Now that it’s getting more name recognition thanks to Denis Leary and Alec Baldwin’s “because we’re aliens and that’s how we roll” schtick they’ll likely have heard it and know what you’re talking about.
Note to self, “whoohoo, I used schtick in a sentence!”
Why share hulu with customers? Library customers are constantly clamoring for television shows and movies on DVD. Naturally, the library will never be able to accomodate every customer’s wish, though we try. So the next time a customer asks for a film or DVD through a SINC, be sure to suggest hulu as a stopgap resource while they’re waiting for their suggestion to be reviewed.
Here’s a taste of what is available on hulu
Movies (19 pages of choices)
Anastasia — animated
Cliffhanger
His Girl Friday
Television (42 pages of choices)
24
Arrested Development
House
Lots of older television shows are available–these are very popular with our customers.
ALF
Flipper
Hill Street Blues
So help the aliens at hulu turn our friends and customers brains to cottage cheese–remember if we help them, they’ll take us last.
in reading the article, i happily ticked off the ‘yes’ box for all the things that we do at Sno-Isle: purchase romances, catalogue them, use reviews from Romantic Times and other professional journals, monitor blogs, and respond to patron requests. the solo ‘no’ was using RomanceSells for collection development (much of it is ads). the comments to the blog post are interesting as well. i can’t imagine a library system these days not doing all the above.
btw, i put in an order for Thomas’ “Not Quite a Husband” today so look for it in CARL in the next couple of weeks.
We all want our collections to look great, be up to date, and of interest to our communities, but sometimes collection maintenance can be difficult because we don’t have enough visual cues to help us know the difference between purge and review. That’s where Awful Library Books, a blog by two Michigan public librarians Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner steps in to save the day!
Awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com is a collection of the worst library holdings. The items featured here are so old, obsolete, awful or just plain stupid that we are horrified that people might be actually checking these items out and depending on the information.
This blog contains actual library holdings. No specific libraries or librarians are named to protect the guilty. Check your shelves, it could be you.
So what does a truly awful library book look like?Imagine you were a young person assigned or told by a friend to read Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl, and when your hold copy arrived you came to the library to find this!
From Awful Library Books: RIP Anne Frank
Yuck!
IMHO, anyone working with collections in a public library should consider making Awful Library Books a daily stop on their blogroll. You can help Mary and Holly keep their blog fresh by sending photos of awful library books. Here’s more information about how you can help. And remember Mary and Holly won’t reveal the library name the item came from.
the summer reading lists are being rolled out, slowly but surely. USA Today was the first one out the door with their flashy preview calendar, followed by the I-take-myself-very-seriously-with-a-booklist-to-prove-it from New York magazine. not to be outdone, NPR followed suit by parroting the sentiment that summer reading doesn’t have to be just “brainless beach reads,” as if there is anything wrong with that. puh-lease.
As publishers, bookbuyers, & librarians, gather again in New York for Book Expo America, the publicity machines are gearing up for the new titles to debut next Fall. Return to the Hundred Acre Wood a new Winnie the Pooh story by David Benedictus is due out October 5th.
The new story by Benedictus will be published with the approval of both the Milne and Shepherd estates. Benedictus adapted and produced the audio book versions of the adventures of a bear with very little brain.
the only place safe from the LOTL publicity machine
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock recently it is pretty much impossible to be unaware that Will Ferrell has a new film coming out soon, a remake of the 1974-1977 television series, Land of the Lost. It’s pretty much a given that the Ferrell remake is going to rake in some serious money–last year’s mediocre Stepbrothers made over a $100 million dollars, and LOTL looks to be better–judging from the trailer which features a hilarious cameo by Matt Lauer.
For the sake of argument let’s assume that the library is going to purchase the movie, my question to you is, should the library order LOTL the TV series?
Before you answer though… I never watched this show when it was on. Instead I was doing all the things that teenage boys do on Saturday mornings. If my own sons are any indication, I was probably asleep so if it was on before noon it didn’t exist for me. The point is that I don’t have any memory of LOTL to draw upon. I did watch 2 episodes of LOTL this weekend out of curiosity during the LOTL marathon on the Sci-Fi channel and it didn’t impress me. But others more eloquent than I, think that LOTL is a wonderful show.
Just as a point of information, LOTL the tv series costs $44.99 through our vendor and were I to order it I’d probably add 8 copies.
Apparently when Col. Timothy Korpa blasts off next month for the Space Station he’ll be taking along his copy of Echo and the Bunnymen’s CD Ocean Rain to rock the space walk. Wired magazine has a nice post about their 5 picks for a space walk. It’s a new spin on the old desert island discs question, ‘what 5 albums would you take along if you were stranded on a desert island?’
Here’s my 5 tunes for rockin’ the spacewalk. I’m sure you can do better.
Space-Age bachelor pad music — Esquivel
Major Tom — David Bowie
Brand New Cadillac – Clash – just for the amazing bass line
Troubleshooter Alyssa Locke protects an old friend who is running for public office, a job that is complicated by family demands and the reemergence of the “Dentist” serial killer.
A Princess of Landover
Brooks, Terry
A first entry in the popular series in more than a decade finds headstrong fifteen-year-old Mistaya kicked out of her prestigious boarding school and assigned by Ben to reopen the kingdom’s abandoned library, a task she avoids before discovering a magical plot against Landover. By the best-selling author of the Shannara series.
The Lost Symbol
Brown, Dan
Da Vinci protagonist Robert Langdon is back, smack in the middle of another historico-religious thriller-with events compressed into 12 hours. Need I say more? I can’t anyway; this book is embargoed. A five-million-copy first printing.
Smash Cut
Brown, Sandra
Hired by a woman who believes that the accidental shooting of her Atlanta businessman friend was actually orchestrated by the victim’s depraved nephew, famed defense lawyer Derek Mitchell comes to realize that the nephew is a psychotic movie buff who enjoys acting out favorite violent film plots.
Fire and Ice
Jance, Judith A.
The best-selling author of such works as Damage Control and Justice Denied presents a latest high-stakes thriller featuring the collaborative efforts of Beau and Brady.
Blindman’s Bluff
Kellerman, Faye
In a latest work by the best-selling author of The Mercedes Coffin, the stalwart investigative team of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus tackles a case that has unsettling repercussions for their own lives.
Rhino Ranch
McMurtry, Larry
In this novel of love and regret, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove bids a final farewell to his beloved character, Duane Moore, and the rapidly changing town of Thalia, Texas.
This week the 2009 Homeland Security Science & Technology Stakeholders Conference brought together Science Fiction writers and Homeland Security people.
The conference is to bring people who think outside of the box to look for ways to break old habits of thought.
“We’re stuck in a paradigm of databases,” [Harry] McDavid [chief information officer for Homeland Security's Office of Operations Coordination & Planning] said … “How do we jump out of our infrastructure and start conceptualizing those threats? That’s very cool.”
Science fiction writers look at the possibilities of the future:
Would the space program have flourished so quickly without a generation of engineers and scientists that grew up reading Robert Heinlein? Has anything been invented that somebody didn’t first imagine and put in a story?
I’ve always enjoyed reading Science Fiction for the great stories, who knew that they could also help plan for our nation’s future?
So the next time a customer asks for a film or DVD through a SINC, be sure to suggest hulu as a stopgap resource while they’re waiting for their suggestion to be reviewed.
