What’s New @ AFPLS

World Book Day, designated by UNESCO as a “worldwide celebration of books and reading,” is celebrated in over 100 countries accross the globe. In the UK and Ireland this annual event has sparked the World Book Day team to come up with a list of books, both fiction and non-fiction, that not only entertain but also provide further food for thought and discussion. They asked publishers large and small to submit titles they felt worthy of being talked about and have whittled down a list of 50 from the thousands of suggestions they received. Now, I know this is yet another list of books, but what is really interesting about this one is that a lot of the books don’t even sound familiar to me. It’s a list of things we here on the other side of the pond might not have come up with ourselves and so provides the opportunity to discover both new titles and authors at the same time. Exciting, right?!

The full list, Spread the Word: Books to Talk About, will be voted on by the public and narrowed down to a shortlist of 10 titles, with a final winner announced on March 5, 2009. To see the list and get in on the voting visit the site here. Then check the AFPLS catalog to see which of these titles have been hiding in our very own stacks!

Thanks to About Contemporary Literature for the article and links.

For more information about World Book Day and its origins, visit this page from UNESCO, here.

September 27-October 4 is Banned Books Week for 2008. I usually try to pick a book each year that has been banned and read it for myself during the week to see what all the fuss is about. So rebel and find yourself a banned book to read this week! Here are a few links to help you out:

*Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2007
*Banned Books Week on Facebook and MySpace

You can check the AFPLS catalog here to see which banned books are available at your local branch.

If you have a multi-language household or want to refresh your high school language skills, it can difficult to find books in languages other then English. Luckily, AFPLS provides many foreign language books through our Global Access Department. Materials from this department can be placed on hold through the online catalog available at www.afpls.org. When using the catalog search, first click on power search then scroll down and click on the language you’d like to see materials in.

If you don’t feel like waiting the 3-5 days it takes for materials to transfer between branches, you can also read foreign language books online for free! Foreign language materials that are in the public domain, which means that they are no longer under copyright, can be found at Project Gutenberg’s Foreign Language Page. Books are available in over 50 languages, from Bulgarian to Welsh, with some languages, such as Spanish, French and Chinese having over 50 titles available. These titles can be downloaded and read online for free, along with thousands of English-language books. Check out Project Gutenberg and enjoy!

With the November 4th election just on the horizon, Fulton County wants residents to know that we are now less than a month away from the registration deadline. Below you will find links to useful information regarding voting registration and information. You can fill out a voter registration form at any branch of AFPLS, so be sure and do so if you haven’t already! The deadline to vote in the November 4th General Election is October 6, 2008.

• General Election Info
• Find out where to vote:  Simply enter your info and click Submit.
• Absentee Voting Info
• Printable Absentee Ballot Application

For absentee voters, once you have filled out the application you can fax or mail it to the address below to have your ballot mailed to you.

FULTON COUNTY BOARD OF REGISTRARS:                              

Fulton County Election Supervisor

141 Pryor Street, SW, Suite 4075                                    

Atlanta, GA 30303-3444

Telephone: (404)730-7020

FAX: (404)730-7024

The website for the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, www.afpls.org, underwent a few changes over the weekend! You may have noticed there is no longer a lnk for the databses. They are accessible now through our single search feature.

On the left hand side of the screen, there is a white box that says Search Options above it. You can choose from searching the catalog, databases or the library website. If you are looking for a specific database, or want to search all of them, click on Database Search. On the next page, to find a specific database, just scroll down to the alphabetical list, or you can search across all the databses using the search box at the top of the page. Clicking on Catalog Search will take you to the traditional catalog search page.

We are making these changes to make the website easier for you, our patrons, to use! Please let us know how we are doing by leaving a comment with this post or drop an email to comments@fultoncountyga.gov

The 2008 college football season truly kicks off tomorrow and it’s great to know that ESPN College GameDay will be here in town at Centennial Park! But if, like myself, you don’t have tickets to a game or your school is in another state, you still have time to get ready for the new season!

Here are some of the preseason polls if you want to see how your team is doing before they play a game:

AP Top 25 Preseason
Coaches’ Poll
BCS Rankings

For scores, schedules, and stats, click here for the NCAA Football site.

You can also read about your favorite teams and all the big games online from home from some of the biggest sports publications, including Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News (as well as many of your favorite local newspapers) all from the comfort of your home computer! Cick here to access e-Library, type in your library card number and you’re ready to go!

If you want to be a true armchair athlete, AFPLS has many college football DVDs for you, including:

We Are Marshall
Rudy
Knute Rockne All American

You can search the AFPLS catalog here to see which branches have these or other movies.

AFPLS does not officially stand behind any team, but unofficially I just have to say Go Gators! Enjoy your football season!

This Sunday marks the finale of the 2008 Summer Olympics, so I thought it best to fit one more Olympic themed post into the blog! UK newspaper The Guardian has put together a short quiz on Chinese literature in honor of the Beijing games. Test yourself and see if you can beat my paltry score of 4 out of 10. Obviously I have some brushing up to do in this area! Fortunately for people with my lack of Chinese lit knowledge, AFPLS has many works by authors mentioned in the quiz such as Gao Xingjian and Jiang Rong. You can also search the library catalog for information about some of the mystic philosphies and historical figures mentioned, like Taoism or Confucius. Good luck!

Thanks to About Contemporary Literature for the link to the quiz.

Want to know what presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama are reading? Then sign up for Google Reader’s Power Readers in Politics and get a peek into what articles McCain, Obama and some of the top political journalists are sharing through this service! You can get the most recently shared news items from both campaigns and both sides of the debate right at your fingertips.

This cool tool is available to anyone for free, not just people with a Google email [gmail] account. Simply follow this link to register using your current email address, create a password and access your new Google account [which will include access to other Google services such as Google Scholar, Google Documents and Google Earth] from anywhere!

And of course for even more presidential information, including biographies and autobiographies of both candidates, you can always check the AFPLS catalog here, or the AFPLS databases here.

The second week of the Beijing Summer Olympics has begun and just in case you haven’t been watching the Olympics every night (how could you have missed Michael Phelps record-setting 8th gold?!) here are some websites to help you catch up:

From the publishers of Consumer Reports Magazine comes a collection of blogs helping the public stay in-the-know on products before they purchase them. The various blogs you can choose to subscribe to cover cars, electronics, safety, home and garden, health, money and shopping, and babies and kids. At first glance the posts seem to be well-written and informative, and can range from product testing to the latest news tidbits that may affect consumers.

Of course you can always access current and back issues of the Consumer Reports Magazine at your local branch library, or from home by going through the library’s databases. To search this and countless other popoular and scholarly magazines and journals from home, just follow these steps:

1. Visit the library’s webpage at http://www.afpls.org/.
2. Scroll down to Books, Research & Databases and click on the A-Z List of Databases.
3. From the list select the third database, Academic Search Complete.
4. At this point you will be asked to enter the GALILEO password which you can obtain by either logging into your account on the library’s homepage with your card number and PIN, or by calling your local branch.
5. Once in Academic Search Complete, click on the word Publications at the top left corner of the page.
6. Type in Consumer Reports [or any other magazine title] into the Browsing field and click Browse.
7. Click on the title of the magazine you wish to search
8. To search within a specific issue, simply select it from the date menu on the right. To search all issues of a particular magazine, click on the Search within this publication link.
9. Start searching!

It might seem like a lot of steps, but once you’ve done it a few times you’re sure to discover how convenient it is to have this wealth of information available at your fingertips! And be sure to check out all of the other databases available to you through AFPLS!

Thanks to the Librarian’s Internet Index for the heads up on the Consumer Reports blogs.