on the power of fandom

Over at The Movie Fanatic, they are running a series called THE TWILIGHT SAGA: and today's installment is The Twilight Fandom: Who they are and what they're capable of.

I was hoping for a little more from the title, ie "what they're capable of" but perhaps that is coming in the rest of the 4-part series. For now, though, it's just fun to read things like this and know that people can be really really really passionate about books:

Twilighters Around the World: Twilight sites are not limited to English speaking countries. If you think Harry Potter is the only ‘worldwide’ phenomenon, think again, here's our current alpha list:

Argentinean sites: http://www.twilightlatino.com/ and http://www.eclipse-la.com
Australian site: http://www.twilightaustralia.net/
Brazilian site: http://www.twilightteam.com.br/
Chilean site: http://www.twilightchile.com/
Colombian site: http://conexionvampirica.blogia.com/
Finnish site: http://www.vampirelove.net/
French site: http://the-meadow.fr/
Italian site: http://www.twilighters.it/
Mexican site: http://www.crepusculo-mx.com/
Philippine site: http://www.twilightsaga.multiply.com/
Portuguese site: http://www.twilightportugal.blogs.sapo.pt/
Spanish sites: http://www.crepusculomeyer.blogspot.com/ and http://www.crepusculo.com.es/
Swiss site: http://www.bellaswan.net/
Venezuelan site: http://twilight-fans-venezuela.blogspot.com/


According to the Twilight Top Sites, there are now 86 websites dedicated to Stephenie Meyer's book and soon-to-be movie, Twilight.

giving stuff away for free can mean making more money

From Neil Gaiman's blog (bold emphasis mine):

It's worth drawing people's attention to the fact that the free online reading copy of American Gods is now in its last six days online (it ends 31 March 08). I learned this from an email from Harper Collins, which also told me the latest batch of statistics.

For American Gods:

68,000 unique visitors to the book pages of American Gods

3,000,000 book pages viewed in aggregate

And that the weekly book sales of American Gods have apparently gone up by 300%, rather than tumbling into the abyss. (Which is -- the rise, not the tumble -- what I thought would happen. Or at least, what I devoutly hoped would happen.)

The book is up at This URL, if you're interested, or want to pass it along to a friend.

Hear that you sellers of books and music and journals and other content? This is how you make fans. Fans buy stuff. Simple as that.

libraries + video games in the new york times

I love the focus of this article, legitimizing video games as a medium that is worthy of its place in libraries, not only as program center but circulating material. Plus, the idea that the video games encourage young people to use the library, and that is something we actually want (v. trying to get rid of teens in libraries)

Taking Play Seriously At The Public Library With Young Video Gamers >

librarian, for realz

I'm a real librarian now. Job, already started two months ago - I'm a public ya + reference librarian. Done with my grad work, all but a pass/fail class finalized (and no worries on that front).

Today I taught a kid how to tie his shoes.

a press release from my favorite online community doing good stuff . . .

LibriVox makes it to 1,000!

LibriVox, the free audio book project has just cataloged it's 1,000th book: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," by Edgar Allan Poe (read by Reynard T. Fox).

LibriVox.org started in August 2005 with a simple objective: "to make all public domain books available as free audio books." Thirteen people collaborated to make the first recording, Joseph Conrad's "Secret Agent."

Two years later, LibriVox has become the most prolific audiobook publisher in the world - we are now putting out 60-70 books a month, we have a catalog of 1,000 works, which represents a little over 6 months of *continuous* audio; we have some 1,500 volunteers who have contributed audio to the project; and a catalog that includes Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice," "Moby Dick," Darwin's "Origin of the Species," "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Einstein's "Relativity: The Special and General Theory," Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," and other less well-known gems such as "Romance of Rubber" edited by John Martin. We have recordings in 21 languages, and about half of our recordings are solo efforts by one
reader, while the other half are collaborations among many readers.

We are always looking for new volunteers! Come join us.

young Librarians in the Chronicle of Higher Education

What I like most about this article, which is largely a response to the New York Times article from the not so distant past on Hip Librarians, is the thoughtfulness of the process and the simplicity of bringing together a bunch of very very smart folks and allowing them to speak for themselves. Instead of manipulating quotes and sound bites into a pre-formed article, author Scott Carlson provides the forum, some good, open questions, and lets the words and formed thoughts roll. And, bonus, some audio as well.

(and don't it feel good to be able to link to the NYT?)

A vision of students today

from the Kansas State University Digital Ethnography folks, another brilliantly conceived, planned, and executed video.

a little more spresent testing

that last thing went well, and for bloggy size the built in size is well and good, but i'd like to go bigger. Can I?

testing spresent.com

(which thus far is wicked awesome, btw)