Library Lookup Project

If you have ever been browsing the website of bookseller and want to look up a specific book in your library's catalog, this tool makes it super easy! The LibraryLookup Project is a place where you can create a bookmarklet that with one click will lookup a title in your library catalog based on ISBN number. This bookmarklet is really easy to create and put into your Links toolbar, especially if you use the Firefox browser. If you are using Internet Explorer and have Windows XP on your machine, it is a little more complicated but there is a tutorial on the LibraryLookup page to help you. Just a note, the library I use, King County Library System, is not listed under the Innovative link. Instead, click on the LibraryLookup Bookmarklet Generator and enter http://catalog.kcls.org/ for the Base URL (or your the URL for your library's catalog) and for Library Name instead of putting the name of the library, enter LibLookup (or another short name like KCLSlookup) so that this is what shows in your Links toolbar and you know that when you click there it will search your library's catalog based on the ISBN. This tool doesn't work in all cases, I noticed that it seems to work based off the first ISBN listed. In Amazon the 10 digit ISBN is listed first and so most of my searches work, but Powells lists the 13 digit ISBN first which is not always so successful. Have fun!

Library comic

If you haven't already heard of it, Unshelved is a hilarious look at life behind the scenes of a fictional library that is scarily like the one you patronize or work at. Pimp my bookcart!

Name spelling

I was cursed with a first name that people constantly misspell - Shawn. That's why I sign my posts as ShawnNotSean. As someone who grew up having to correct people on how my name was spelled, I have always gone out of my way to make sure that I spell other people's name correctly. I also made sure to give my children names that don't really have common spelling variations. But back to Shawn - the spelling of my name was actually the most popular spelling variation in the US back in the 70s when my parents (probably mostly my mom) came up with the name, not the more traditional Sean. Maybe back in the 70s people were trying to spell phonetically, I don't know. Now to top it off, sometimes people even think I'm female based on the spelling of my name if they have never met me. Talk about identity crisis! It seems that at some point, people started naming their daughters Shawna, and some have even dropping the a altogether for their daughter. I don't know if this is really PC, but I really don't like having a name that is now unisex. So the next time you need to spell someone's name or make an assumption about the gender of someone based on their name, think twice.

Children & Life

I have a son who is 7 months old and a daughter who is almost 3. My wife and I knew that our lives would change forever, but I don't think you can ever really be prepared for how much children will change your life. We thought having our daughter Lily* changed our life - never getting enough sleep and never having enough time for ourselves anymore, but then came the boy, Linus*. We quickly discovered that having 2 children versus 1 child quadruples the amount of work and has an inverse relationship on parental sleep.

Lily started sleeping through the night pretty early on, but Linus has been a challenge to say the least. First we discovered that Linus had what used to be called colic, but today in most cases is now diagnosed as acid reflux, so now he takes a liquid acid reflux medicine that seems to be keeping him from throwing up so much and other stuff associated with acid reflux in young children. Then Linus kept getting cold after cold and was miserable. We are finally now settling into a fairly predictable pattern, Linus goes to bed between 7 and 8pm, then he wakes up around 6am. If he could just make it to 7 am we would be thrilled! We have tried moving his bedtime to later in hopes of getting him to sleep in, but it didn't work. Our next hope is that when daylight savings time returns he might sleep in a little more....

*Names changed to protect the innocent (well, in most cases innocent!)