Book Publishing

Ok I have some free time now that 23 Things is over and I am working on trying to publish my books. I currently have at least three and although I sent my best to a friend at Simon and Shulster, I have not heard anything in over two months so I am moving on. The two main books I am trying to create are 11 x 8.5" (a standard landscape). One of the biggest things that BUGS me about all of these is the 20 page minimum! I only need 14 pages!!!
I first looked at Lulu because my Dad recommended it. I like the services that they offer and the reason ability of their prices, but their software needs some tweaking. Everytime I load a word file it warps my text and it cannot seem to upload my PDF files from iPhoto (because of size differences). I did try Lulu studio as that is their book creation software but not only do they have VERY few themes (and no travel theme!) but they also have very limited layouts and very few with text. So although I keep coming back here because I hope to upload from another program, it is not my first choice right now. I did manage to convert my iPhoto book to lulu using a trial copy of Adobe inDesign, but it took a couple of hours and some compromises in the layout and size of the pages. But now I can get pretty much the same book MUCH cheaper and in paperback or e-book format. As for their selling service they have the unique option of allowing people to buy your book OR DOWNLOAD an e-book, which is nice. I can also get the books for a very REASONABLE price (almost exact book at lulu $6.30/ea for 25 copies, or about $18.00/ea at blurb).
I downloaded Booksmart Blurb and I really like that one and made and advertised a complete book BUT they have so few themes and very few theme background options that unless I keep using the same theme over and over I am stuck. I also cannot import files from anywhere else, they MUST be made in their software which is a drawback. I would choose this as my first choice IF they got more themes OR allowed you to upload from other sources.
I looked at Snapfish Photobooks and theirs look great if you only want a photo book but they have a lot of themes but only one travel theme, then you can't even put text on the cover of the book! The layouts are lowsy once you get into it and it is hard to navgate their page to begin with. Snapfish is out.
I also tried out MyPublisher and this is attractive because they offer me a discount because I am a costco member. I really like how there are many options for the travel theme alone. (I guess by now you can tell themes are important to me.) However they offer you no ability to print or save in any format except a MyPublisher file. MyPublisher is out.
I tried Kodak and they are actually one of the worst surprisingly enough. Very very few layout and theme options. Very expensive not the program for me.
Shutterfly is one that my mom has used and liked but only for basic photobooks. They have some of the best themes and layouts of all the programs but they are still very expensive and I cannot export the file in any manner to re-upload to Lulu for cheaper printing. So this option probably will not work for me unless I want to make the book and then screen capture the pages into inDesign. It is an option but I am going to keep looking.
Picaboo looks REALLY good but I have a MAC and until I can find some free time on a Windows Machine with all my files I will have to put this one to the side.

Last 23 things post

This is the last of my 23 things posts. I have gone through them all. I enjoyed them and learned a little, however my feedback would be that perhaps this program is getting a little dated. I had already learned about most of these 'things' and thankfully I had Bridget's session just at the right time to enhance this project for me and make it more dynamic. However without that I would have been disappointed in this program, and since Bridget really is not part of 23 things I worry that other people would be disappointed. I did like the format where I got to do it all at my own pace and how I wanted. The discovery exercises were reasonable and helped me learn. My only wish now is that there was a second round to move on to and keep learning. Where are the next 23 things? I also was talking to some of my teachers and they are very envious of my 10 Act 48 hours for something so cool. Is there a way to promote and offer the program to teachers in its current format or with just a few changes? Could we even profit off of this collaboration? (Either monetarily or just through exposure for libraries.)
I was also shocked to learn that I like to Blog after all. I may be using this or a different blog in the near future just to communicate with parents and students, but then I worry about what administrative permissions I need. Currently I am supposed to pass everything that I disseminate to parents and students past my principal, but this is not something that I could constantly pass by her, nor would I want to. How do other school librarians address this issue?
Thank you.

E-Books

I will bet that most of you never knew that I once worked on the million book project. This cooperative project between Carnegie Mellon University and several other colleges throughout the city, state, nation and the rest of the world. You can learn more about the project here and search or browse the over 1.5 million book collection visit the site here. So not only do I know about digital books, I know the behind the scenes secrets.....For example: Do you know that the process to digitize a book includes scanning done in India and China and that when complete the book has been decimated and is no longer fit to be read without intense repair, and most digital projects do not concern themselves with this. Copyright is also another serious issue for all of the electronic book projects and although most of the books are ones that are no longer in copyright, there are also books that authors have relinquished copyright to or allowed limited use of. Although I did work for this project and had a memorable experience I cannot say that I agree with the million book project or Project Gutenberg. Before you go to defend the process and explain to me how worthwhile it is make sure that you have read “Double Fold” by Nicholson Baker to understand the process and impact of digitalization.
Currently one our greatest sumbling blocks is that we are not truely ensuring that our great works of literature and writtings, the ones that we want to be preserved are truely preserved. Just because it is here, online, now, does not mean that 100 years from now people will still be able to READ the book.
My other concerns have a more practical nature for those that do want to read online today. First of all, reading online is very hard and impractical and there are few who do this, so why are we rushing to put so many books online? What is the rationale behind this (and if it is preservation please see my first point, if it is to allow anyone to read them I want to know HOW!)? I can see the kindle and tools like this having some future uses for reading electronic books both through e-book merchants and free projects like Million Book and Gutenberg but currently the Kindle is way too expensive for this to be realistic and what really puzzles me is that popular e-book versions of new books are just as expensive as their paper counterparts! Aren't the publishers saving some great amount of money on the paper and binding? Can they not pass that along to the consumer? Right now there is no way it is worth it! I can get the paper versions just as easy.
Finally, my last practical concern is the fact that it is so hard to FIND e-books. Both the Million Book and Gutenberg interfaces are cluncky and hard to use and find books unless you are looking for a specific title and author (and good luck with that! I know a million books sounds like a lot but compared to the vast amount published it is just a drop in the bucket, and believe me....not everything digitized is WORTH finding and the most worthwhile have not been digitized!).
I can get behind the e-audio but only if we get a standard audio format that will work on my cd's, my i-pod, my computer and whatever device they come up with tomorrow. My searches through these databases and through my public library's e-audio collection have not proven this to be the case.
Bottom line, I will keep my paper books and prize my collection. It is worth it.

YouTube and Podcasts

These are both great sites with great purposes but I cannot see myself using them much. I listened to podcasts when I was in grad school and do you know what conclusion I came to? That they are just the non-fiction's world's answer to audio-books and you have to be a non-fiction person to appreciate them. As I am a fiction person 100% all I can say is that they are great for someone else. I also looked into youtube and teacher tube and think that these are great tools, just for other people. They only impact my life because my students love to click on them on google and for some reason they are NOT blocked by our filter so the kids like to find all the odd stuff or bad stuff and watch it. We have also found that it is a great way for them to show off doing dangerous stunts which I hate. I do have to admit that I have a few teachers who like it because they can sometimes find short clips to suplement their teaching, so I guess it has its uses.

Digital Bookshelves

I never thought of myself as a visual learner but now that I have explored library thing I am starting to discover that maybe I really am. I would LOVE to have a program that brings up VISUAL representations of my bookshelves, even if they are just the spines, and then I (or others if this is a widget that I can post on my website, wiki or blog) can click on and learn more about the book, both my thoughts and notes and a general record from amazon or LOC or any major database with plentiful book information. I would like this widget to allow people to DO THINGS with these books. Add their own comments, buy the book, ask to borrow the book, find it at their local library, etc. The list could go on and on. But alas, I cannot find something that does this so I looked at LibraryThing and a new one Bridget showed us called Goodreads.com.
LibraryThing is ok and it does a very basic job of what it set out to do and is a great tool for very small libraries and could be more beneficial to adults looking to share books. However I logged on and was overwhelmed with the junk on the site, the poor help information (I never really figured out how it worked and how to create a bookshelf, even though I searched and searched.) I added several books and took a look around but I just do not think it is the site for me. Why does everyone think it is so awesome?
Then I went to GoodReads and I really like that site. It is very user friendly, has several great apps, notifications, widgets and the one I like the most book giveaways. I also really like the fact that you can add books to bookshelves, and all books are marked by read, to be read or currently reading. Maybe it is the visual learner in me but that really makes a difference to me. I can even add a widget below to show you what is on my read shelf. I think this will be my weekend project to add all my books. I have to add that I also like Paperbackswap.com because it is a great way to swap and trade paperback books with people around the USA. I am a 'boxer' which means I trade boxes of books, making it even cheaper and more economical and I love this site too. That is where you will find most of the books that I have read and don't care about keeping for one reason or another, goodreads is the books for keeps.

Thing 18

Google, Zoho or just good old Word? I actually have been debating this recently with myself because after I bought my new computer I was not sure I wanted to spring the extra money for word when there are so many other options out there. I started out with Mac's version of notepad and that is horrible and will not work. So I downloaded OpenOffice.org and I have been trying to use it, and it is ok, but I have had problems pasting elements of documents created in open office and the open office extension is not accepted by any other program so you have troubles if you do not save in the correct format. Then I looked on GoogleDocs and Zoho both. I think that both are very similar and although I think that Zoho may be slightly better and have more features, options and things and ways to create everything you could need I am going to stick with Google and Word.
I like GoogleDocs because it allows me to share my documents, but on the other hand I am not ready to have an online file cabnet and until I get to that point for all of my files I am going to use word to save to my hard drive simply because I need to keep one version of everything in one spot. It gets too confusing otherwise. I do not know how we are supposed to keep up in this digital world with all the passwords, the different versions of documents, the different places we have put things and so on. I almost need a reminder e-mailed to me just to remind me, hey you saved this thing on Zoho.....what do you want to DO with it?!

Thing 17

I think we really need to look at this one. I think the objective of the thing was to have everyone edit a wiki but the sandbox idea made it confusing and I have no idea of what this one kept going on and on about, so I am once again skipping it as a wiki expert. Let me know if you object and I will take the test to see if I pass.

Wikis

As the owner and manager of over 6 wikis and having looked at both WikiSpaces and PBWiki extensively for an assignment last year in grad school I am making the executive decision to skip this one because I think I get this thing.

Librarians in a 2.0 World

I am a little overwhelmed after this weekend with Bridget and looking over the first 15 'things.' However, it did help me to read Michael Stephens' post about library web 2.0 because now everything is in perspective. It was and is good to learn about the new tools and technology available over the internet and in the web 2.0 world and there are a LOT of them, and I have to admit that most are impressive and make us as librarians look impressive. I need to keep learning about each of these tools so that I can evaluate each for myself and determine which are worthwhile and which are just worthless. However, I am a big believer in looking deeper and beneath the surface to the true content. Some of these are just that: an impressive facade, and we need to remember our primary goal is to serve students and teach them to use and access information and find the joy in reading. (This is what I believe the true goal of school librarianship is, but I have always had trouble defining it with others in the field and I always wonder if I am correct.)
I can see how some can have trouble controlling their technolust, as Michael Stephens would put it, because some of these tools are really great on the surface. However when I ask myself how does this help my students, what objective are we meeting by using this technology, I find that sometimes we are just using technology just to use technology. That is wrong. Do first graders need to use PhotoStory to make a pretty story to demonstrate the concept of beginning, middle and end? No. Does it look impressive? Yes. However, when I think of all the extra work that entails and the fact that the first graders simply needed to hear their own stories aloud, I think that we would just be using technology to use technology. As Harry Wong would put it, the person doing all the work is the person learning and the person doing all the work in that situation is the librarian scanning pictures and recording and saving stories.
I can also see that I need to embrace Web 2.0 tools where needed. I would like to teach my 6th graders to use PhotoStory because I want them to see how research presentations can be presented using tools other than PowerPoint and to evaluate how the presentation and information is what is most important, not the pretty pictures or fancy music. I also want to use Bookr with these same 6th graders because I was going to have them type up a book on word and follow some very complicated steps to print it, but they would love Bookr and it would accomplish the same goal and save a few trees in the process. See I can embrace technology.
I also think that we need more than JUST 23 Things! We need 23 Things round 2 and so on to expose us to all of these great tools, and I also would like to see this spread to teachers. I would love to see our teachers learn about these tools, but they just don't have the same wonderful opportunities that we do. How can we help them?

Bridget B.

I went to the WPSLA workshop this weekend with Bridget B. as our speeker and she was impressive and showed us a lot of great tools (I feel like I am MORE than behind the times now and I thought that I was ahead of the curve!) . I am going back through and truly exploring each site and determing IF and how I want to use each. I especially liked KidThing.com but that was before I realized that you hsbr yo pay for each book. I also liked Lookybook.com and that one seems to be free. I can also embed the book on a blog or site like this one so I am testing it out, how does Gail Gibbon's book look below?

Thing 6---I think.

Sorry my title is wrong, I finally caught on and MANY of my things are misnumbered, by week # rather than thing number. This is really Things 13 and 14. Other than the fact that I do not 'get' why this site and g.ho.st. and several others now that I stop and think about it, insist on separating their name with periods or dots as if their name was an abbreviation. Maybe it is supposed to be cute and instead of just using the G.H. and S. they have made a creative name, but I just find it annoying and impossible to remember how to properly site.
However, back to Delicious (we are going to forget the dots because they are annoying remember?) I think that it is one of the most useful new tools and everyone needs to get an account. When my last 3 computers crashed, each time I lost the precious bookmarks that I had in some accounts saved over a matter of years. Now I have no record of that great 4th grade teacher's state reference site because I only remember that it was "that great 4th grade teacher's site". However, with my new iMac I immediately downloaded Delicious and now every single bookmark is now backed up on the Delicious site and tagged and most of all just as easy to use as the ordinary bookmarks.
I have also looked at other Delicious applications, especially the sharing of links and I think that this has the possibility to be a wonderful tool but it is currently being misused. I was greatful earlier this year when a member of PSLA sent us her delicious site for links about legislative issues, and I will be linking to this from the PSLA Students wiki. She did it the right way, the list is not too long and each link is listed with tags AND a brief description. Most people will give you a list that is way too long, completely unorganized and that contain absolutely no description and only tags that refer to every possible word that applies to that site (not the two best words, but EVERY word they could think of!). This type of Delicious list is pointless and useless to all except the person who created it. I still believe that we are better served by creating links pages on websites if that is what we want because it forces the creator to put the time and effort deserved into each link. For this reason, unless they are done right, I see limited use for these in the K-8 setting.
On to Technorati. I get it and see how and why it works but I have to be honest and say I did not complete the discovery exercise because once again I ask you (the one person who reads my blog, because really who would want to read THIS blog!?) Don't you have something better to do? (No offense!) There is nothing remarkable about it and I really do not want the world knowing my thoughts and would not want to encourage people to read it! (see my first post for more thoughts on this subject). This also has more to do with what I do for a living too. Not only do I fear for my job in today's world where teachers are expected to be both saints and real people at the same time, but held to the standard of saints when pushed and for that reason anything I write in this blog could come back to bite me so I can't truely be honest or forethright. But also, there is little application for me to share a blog with my students or my community of teachers or parents. So I don't need to promote it through Technorati, but I am glad such a tool excists if I ever change my mind.

Rollo

Check out my rollosearch! It searches my four favorite clipart sites but really is only searching for words so I am not sure how GREAT this search is. I think the rollosearch is a great concept and has many possibilities, but I found the site a little clunky and hard to navigate and find things, which means that students would be even more lost. I would love to see a main page where you could search or drill down (like a directory) to the rollosearch that you need and then utilize that search engine. For example I would love to teach my 5th grade students that just like you want to carefully pick your books and encyclopedias, choosing a specific search engine would also help online research and then instruct them on how to find an animal rollosearch, the starwars rollosearch, the celebrity rollosearch, etc. I would also of course want some filters on these searches and for all of them not to default to all of the web at the end. But in the end it has possibilities, just not ones that I will be adding to my lesson plans just yet.

G.ho.st.

I was talking to my brother today, and I mention this because he works with some really smart people down at CMU and is daily living and breathing not only today's new technology but tomorrows. When I mentioned my g.ho.st. idea and asked his opinion he said it would NEVER happen and for two very specific reasons: security and privacy. And I agree with him, but I will never make the money he will and I work in a library where I see people who make even less and that changes my viewpoint. In the days where library demand is up and budgets down because of an ailing economy we librarians have to think of ways to save money AND meet patron demands and I still think that my idea has value for these individuals and for libraries.
Yes, in an ideal world we would never want to put our files and history in the hands of an outside source and severs, but this is not utopia and we cannot all afford that privledge. Lets be honest, there are patrons who do not have their own computers and they are saving their files to either a remote device, like a USB disk, or to a remote server, like google documents or e-mail attachments. All of these are ok options for those that use library computers but I am sure many would PREFER my option, where they just log-in and pull up their completely customized desktop with remotly saved files.
There are also those of us in the middle class, who can afford our own computers but cannot afford laptops and do not work for huge corporations that provide them. So we jump from our home computer, to the computer at work (at least one), maybe to the library or other computers during meetings, and to a family, friends or even hotel computer when we are traveling. Wouldn't it be nice just to log-in once and pull up YOUR DESKTOP at every computer you visit and not have to deal with multiple log-ins and multiple copies and versions of files, or leaving something behind on the wrong computer just when you need it or completely losing your files because you can't find them on the right computer. I think for these people we should argue and praise programs like g.ho.st. Still, my little brother is right. Privacy and Security have become privledges in this digital world and we need to think about that and how far we are willing to bend for a little convinience.......

Week 5

I have actually lost track, what week SHOULD we be on? With no communication between people in this Library 2.0 program I am feeling a little lost and I am not sure it is working as well as I had hoped. I guess I thought I would have some contact, some interaction, and especially some feedback. As you saw in my last post I played with the image generator and made several new images, I am just lost as to how to create images that I can actually USE! Where and how do I find those?
I also looked over the best of the web 2.0 tools and there sure are a lot of them. Most are good IDEAS but I think we are almost to the point of being overwhelmed with too many choices. I used Google Docs and I loved that because then I had my collaborative documents in the same place, but then I scrolled down and found G.ho.st. and that sounded even better for the files I use at school, home AND elsewhere, but now don't I have THREE copies of a file and just a more complicated life?
I already use delicious, flikr, craigslist, the job sites, and knew about Lulu books (an option to publish my book if Simon and Shulster does not work out), and SO MANY of these others. Most are worthwhile applications and I love them but where is the line AND HOW DO YOU KEEP UP?!!!!
Back to G.ho.st, which is the most inovative of all programs and I really like the idea but it came to me as I was driving that I just bought a brand new computer and it already has an operating system, why do I need a new one? I also thought about how much windows costs and how easy it would be to do without windows if you could just use g.ho.st......so what is to stop the future of computers from just coming with a processor and internet access and a SIMPLE opperating system that simply asks you to input your g.ho.st URL upon startup and then you really do HAVE your own computer everywhere you go. I guess this is essentially what it does now, but because I am opening it in Windows or in MAC it seems like a duplication of efforts (and it is).

If nothing else I created interesting images, I will keep working on this one though because I think I can come up with something better. The first two came from ImageChef. The third is from ClassGiant.com. I also love the diploma but I will have to save that. Which do you like best for a front page image? Do you recommend any others for the PSLA Students Wiki homepage?

Thing 4

Trouble in MacWorld.......no nothing is wrong with the new computer. Yet, I have discovered yet another problem that you encounter when your Windows machine completely fails unexpectedly. I backed up my most important files (and know how to get the rest) and either way I now LOVE Mac's Time Machine feature/program which will help me back everything up with more accuracy and less effort. The problem is, I never backed up all of my Internet bookmarks! I can remember some of them, however as I was trying to come up with sites to check for RSS feeds (obviously I wanted to check my favorite sites first!) I noticed that I no longer have all of my bookmarks!
How does one go about remembering ALL of their favorite sites? How do you pick new ones? All I can remember is that I had some GREAT hard to find sites bookmarked that I had stumbled upon in the last few months and years....but that really is little hope. I guess I need to fast forward to Thing something or rather, whichever one is delicious or online bookmarking and tagging site and start keeping my bookmarks online.
But back to this THING, the RSS feeds. I see their purpose and can see the point of adding sites to them as I go, and I will, I just do not see the point of adding sites just to have sites on there. I am not one of those people who needs to check CNN and WTAE and Car and Driver every day for the latest news (no that is my brother). I am content letting the news find me. If it is important enough I will hear about it on TV or via word of mouth. Maybe this is one of those 'play' tools that I just don't get and do not know what to do with because I am not good at playing. PLUS.....the read site (to me at least) is just one MORE site to check to see what is new! I know I might be old fashioned, but I love list-servs and online Newsletters because they come straight to my in-box and I do not have to remember to go find THEM. Am I missing something that makes RSS feeds so wonderful for me?

Thing 3 Windows OR Mac?

I have not been the same without a computer. I am normally on top of tasks for these THINGS and when my computer crashed two weeks ago I was left feeling adrift. You have to understand that I had a windows computer that lasted about 4 years, just out of warranty that crashed last winter. I then looked into my options and although I had heard the 'Vista is Bad' rumors, I had heard no facts and as a long time PC supporter I was willing to give them a chance and I ordered a brand new PC with Vista on it. It crashed and froze repeatedly and never really ran right, I paid a restocking fee and returned it. I then had purchased an older unused computer with Windows 2000 on it from my brother and was set for about 6 months, then everything started going wrong, it was freezing, running slow, and just having so many problems. I looked into more windows options and just could not do it.
I have now switched allegiances and have an iMac. I love it so far and the only thing that I do not like is that I have to learn all the shortcuts and to be a Mac expert as I was a windows expert before. So I guess bottom line is, even if you always thought of yourself as a PC, next time you NEED to buy a computer, take a look at the Mac options and really consider that road, it might soon be the one more traveled.

Thing 3

Not a character in a Seuss book, but my entry about photos and images on the web. I explored Flikr again and added one of my images to this blog (see below). However, I am a flikr veteran. We decided to use it last year to share PSLA Conference photos, and you see them on my photostream because I am conference photographer along with my friend Christine, a post that I have to give up after the 2009 conference, so if anyone wants a PSLA job....let me know! I learned with those photos that the batch edit button comes in really handy to add tags to LOTS of photos quickly. I have since learned that I love Google's Picasa program because you can EASILY do just about anything with your photos including sending them to be printed or blogging them.
Photo tools online just keep growing and improving and these are just two examples. My mother found ShutterFly this summer and she now is addicted because she figured out how to scan her old family photos (these were OLD, we are talking pictures from the last 3,4,5 and 6 generations...since the first photographs probably....maybe I exagerated the generations.....) and then she made this great bookstore quality book for her and her twin sister of all the photos, with stories and labels on each photograph. I saw it the other day and it is a wonderful book! I am now hoping she will get to work on photos from my and my sibling's childhoods and make us books! I was just exploring Flickr and they too have a similar program called Blurb, but the best tool for the book creation category has to be iPhoto from Apple. I also saw one from Hallmark on someone's coffee table but can't find anything about that on the web, so who knows how they did that.

JP

Picture 257
Originally uploaded by Miss Hefley

This is my bear JP. He travels all over the world and then I use the pictures and information he collects to create a first grade research unit that is also followed by the entire school on a bulletin board. He is hugely popular and the research unit is a big hit too. Here he is on his latest adventure. Can you figure out where he is? I will give you a hint: He is riding a train to find gold in the 49th state.

Thing 1 and 2

Does the title of this post remind anyone else of Dr. Seuss's Thing 1 and Thing 2? That is immediately what I thought of when I wrote it and it reminds me that I just recommended this as a great literary and simple costume for new librarians at Halloween. It also reminds me that I need to dig out my trusty and dusty Happy HalloREADING shirt for next week!

I also want to admit right up front that I do not 'get' blogs. I do not like writting about my thoughts and opinions and having written evidence of these to begin with, but to write them AND post them on the internet just seems crazy to me. I like the format of blogs and know that they have USES. I like that I can use it to post jobs for new librarians and it lists them with the newest ones first. I like how the Carnegie Public Library uses theirs to reach teens, and I like how some people use it as sort of a newsletter for their library or business. I have read Gail Fireman's great article about blogging and have visited many blogs. However, I just do not understand why individuals would post their own lives on blogs and open themselves up to criticism. This is actually my second blog, my first was an assignment for a graduate class and in the end I was posting things like "This is my fourth post. I hope you like it." It seemed somewhat pointless an exercise to me. I invite you to change my mind, but I am also puzzled as to why anyone would want to read someone else's blog! Don't you have anything better to do?

Oh yeah, the homework: Which of the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners did I think was hardest and easiest and why? I think that I am best at beginning with the end in mind and using technology to my advantage, maybe because I am very young and have grown up with these pieces of technology as everyday tools and because I have goals and want to work towards them. I think that for me, playing is the hardest. I know this sounds odd, but I am so focused on my goals, so focused, and such a loner that 'playing' comes harder to me than to others.