Ancient & Medieval Historical Fiction discussion
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yeah, some people are just so inconsiderate to others. I have had DVDs in pitiful state from the library before too.
I was NOT a happy little bunny.
Which "House of Cards" are you watching? I'm asking because we are just tonight watching E1 of the original British show. I keep comparing the two versions. Doubly enjoyable!
I am not idle waiting for the government to build a new library. I work for the same state government as the administrator of the Historic Archives Link Here and We have a small library focused on history and economy of Sinaloa, Mexico so We started growing It to include all kinds of books thru rallies of books, donations and now We boast 8,000 volumes and growing. We lack systems, computers, We have no money and I have a total of three old ladies (love them) working there but We are going ahead.In the meantime We received a donation of three old scanners and We are in the process of making available to the world books on History and Economy of this state asking the authors for permission and scanning old books without copyright and now We have a Digital Library online (sorry, It's all in Spanish) Link Here 170 books online but at the end of the year will be at least 300 books.
So I am not defeated and I am looking for ideas on how to grow the library, now the most important public library in all the state.
So, We love books and We are showing It.
I admire what you're doing Carlos. Raising funds must be one of your concerns. I know that our library, even though it's government supported, has a Library Guild run by volunteers, which arranges book and media swaps and sales, outreach programs, special events and fundraisers. The more people, including community leaders, family, social and civic groups, news organizations, business owners and educators that become involved with the library, the better. These supporters have expertise and ideas that can be very helpful and fruitful.Portia, my husband and I are watching Season 1 of the American House of Cards. I saw the British one on public TV a few years ago. Sometimes these series don't translate well, but that isn't the case with House. For once, both versions are terrific.
Carlos wrote: "I am not idle waiting for the government to build a new library. I work for the same state government as the administrator of the Historic Archives Link Here and We have a small library focused on ..."Carlos,
If I were wealthy, I would send you all my spare books. They would be in English, yes, but they might help people learn another language or give those who speak English some books to read in English.
Unfortunately, I am not wealthy and postage costs a fortune in my country. :[
Terri wrote: "Carlos wrote: "I am not idle waiting for the government to build a new library. I work for the same state government as the administrator of the Historic Archives Link Here and We have a small libr..."The intention is what count here. Thanks Terri. My own private collection used to run on 3,000 books (many soft covers) I donated all and now at home We only have around 900 books. My wife and two of my daughters are heavy readers too. But, alas, We have discovered TV series: Scandal, The Good Wife, Broadchurch, Sherlock is a favorite so We are reading a lot less (I am blushing) I only read 38 books last year. Please don't kick me from this group.
haha! hey, as long as you still read we won't kick you out. ;)38 books is still a good amount. Plenty of our members only read approx 10 a year.
In fact...we have a poll that shows you that 38 books is a lot more than the majority of our poll voters read.
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/9...
Terri wrote: "haha! hey, as long as you still read we won't kick you out. ;)38 books is still a good amount. Plenty of our members only read approx 10 a year.
In fact...we have a poll that shows you that 38 bo..."
Have You noticed that almost 13% of them reads more than a hundred books a year? What do They put on the water there? Eating an sleeping is soooo overrated.
There has to be something to this speed reading thing. I need to learn one of the techniques.I was taught speed reading in school a little bit. (a long time ago). they told us to train your eyes to not read the end of a line. To stop halfway along the line and see the rest of the sentence in the peripheral of the eye.
That way you move quickly to the next line.
I have been doing this all my adult life and it doesn't help me read fast. :\
I don't think You'd enjoy reading that way. I think We are OK reading the way We do. Let's take It easy and let's reread the books We love. I have read more than 3 times The Iliad (my favorite book of all time), Don Quixote, The Count of Monte Cristo and many other books. Let's take It easy. Go Grammy's
Oh no..I am not a re-reader. I do that maybe once a year only. :)
I would like to take a moment to remember a library I knew many years ago. The Benjamin Franklin Library is in México City in México and It is beautiful. It is a present from the people of the USA to Mexico. Photo here. I used to read a lot there, like 20 years ago when I was living in that city. What really amazed me was that in all the libraries I knew You could find old books but in the BFL every month They received NEW books (let's say John Grisham, James Patterson, or the big bestsellers churners of that era. I was in love!
Here's the Link to the Library. Good Memories.
I am switching libraries next week. From a small library to a tiny library!! :)I should be well known there in no time.
Carlos...come and play in this thread. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...We talk about the BBC TV series Sherlock a lot in there. :)
Carlos wrote: "I am not idle waiting for the government to build a new library. I work for the same state government as the administrator of the Historic Archives Link Here and We have a small library focused on ..."Ola, Carlos
I'm a retired librarian (bibliotecario) and getting to participate in the construction of a new library building was an exceptional creative experience, one quite political, too.
Question (una pregunta) Are there english language novels set in northern Mexico that you can recommend?
I'd particularly like to read something like Fontes "Dreams" or another NOWO by Zollinger.
Dreams of the Centaur
Not of War Only
When I posted the question to Carlos, a pop-up arose, one which concluded with the message "This disappears after your first post here. So, to make a pop-up vanish, I'll confess to being a career politician. As library director, I asked voters for money fourteen times. Knowing that keeping the library open required voter approval did influence collection development. Edited Postscript : that pop-up is still on my screen.
Concerning the new building, we asked voters to approve a bond for up to $2.7 million to construct a building not less than 14,000 square feet. We ended up at 17,500 with $600,000 in the bank.
Happy,Getting voter approval was an interesting experience in applied politics, one that included publicizing selective statistics. For instance, we emphasized that over half the people in the county had borrower cards. We didn't state that only 7% of the cardholders accounted for 77% of the borrowing.
Since I haven't had a stat fix for many months, I played with some Goodreads numbers over morning coffee. Hope they attach .
A statistical look at the A&M discussion group (4/16/14)
1.3 million books and nearly 69,000 comments from 880 people from a group of over 2,850 people.
Using the first 95 pages of the 30 people per page Goodreads listing of group members, I counted the number of books, comments, and people making comments. Thus 2850 people were surveyed, with 7 excluded for math simplicity.
Statistically, also to keep the math simple, I tallied the top three people per page and multiplied by 10. Also used 10 page clusters for stat-comp purposes.
First 10 page cluster yielded 415,480 books and 50,470 comments, with comments made by 40 people of the 300 members. Those first ten pages represented the people most recently active.
The 10 page cluster for pages 81-90, representing people not active in recent months, yielded 48,860 books, with 3 comments total from 2 people.
Pgs 1-10 = 41,548 bks, 5,047 comments by 40 people *
Pgs 11-20 = 27,758 bks, 1,416 comments by 10 people
Pgs 21-30 = 16,790 bks, 50 comments by 7 people
Pgs 31-40 = 11,007 bks, 193 comments by 6 people
Pgs 41-50 = 11,854 bks, 78 comments by 5 people
Pgs 51-60 = 7,983 bks, 55 comments by 9 people
Pgs 61-70 = 4,433 bks, 6 comments by 5 people
Pgs 71-80 = 2,812 bks, 25 comments by 4 people
Pgs 81-90 = 4,886 bks, 3 comments by 2 people
Pgs 91-95 = 2,028 bks, zero comments
131,099 books, 6,873 comments by 88 people
x 10 = 1,310,990 books, 68,730 comments by 880 people
divide by 2,850 members = 460 books per person, 24 comments per person, 78 comments per commenter
* 2 people combined for over 5,000 comments in the first 10-page cluster … skew
Some future groggy morning, I'd like to find a pattern of books per member that have been read or are to be read.
I did not check math ... but many years ago read a useful book ...
How to Lie with Statistics
So did you have the members sorted by last online for this breakdown??
Because that means that your stats would change as members logged in or out of GR's. Specifically, it would seriously affect the average if the 5 biggest contributers were on at the same time, thus having us all in one page cluster.
The sequence was by last online and I tried to hurry through the pages to minimize the effect of log ins and log outs ... I was watching for the primary contributors in the random sample pattern, and two did fall into the mesh ... I was curious while using the old fashioned random sample technique with a non-static database whether Goodreads has the computer software tools to do an instant analysis. Could a GR software tech simply ask for the numbers at a fixed point in time.
Also, assuming comments remain when users delete themselves,(*) how many of A&M total comments are no longer attached to users. And, if comments were tallied by discussion threads how well would that number correlate with comments tallied by member linked comments?
(* If I recall correctly, there were two less members in the group within an hour after I ran the sample.)
Chrisl wrote: "Carlos wrote: "I am not idle waiting for the government to build a new library. I work for the same state government as the administrator of the Historic Archives Link Here and We have a small libr..."My main line of work is to keep an administrative eye on this branch of the Government of the State of Sinaloa, It is a small position with a tiny salary but I took the position because I have a good office and lots of free time to look on my other, and much rewarding business, that is to create webpages focused on the market of Culiacan and selling Ads on 'em.
The decision to make the library much, much bigger is a personal one and It makes no common sense because as far as I know there's no one taking books from the library to read. Only scarce people doing homework on weekdays but what can I do? I love to read and with the help of my team We are making one amazing library to bequeath to the city, and the state.
Sorry, but as much as I try to remember there's not one book in English dealing with the northern part of Mexico. Many books in Spanish but if I remember one I'll get to You. I am at a loss regarding the logic of the math inferences You are trying to make. I'll reread them to see what can I add. Thanks for asking.
When I add up all the comments in the threads I only come up with 48,000. Comments do stay when someone leaves the group. And thus would show up in the threads but not in the members list.
I think GR's staff must be able to pull a significant amount of stats considering the ones they do for best reviewer, most reviews, top librarian....
19% of members have left at least one comment and 5.5% have posted more than a dozen times and 1.3% over 100 posts and (just for fun) .2% over 1000 comments. Interesting when you look at it this way.
The larger the group, I imagine, the smaller the percentages become because when we were smaller I think they numbers were higher.
Dawn wrote: "When I add up all the comments in the threads I only come up with 48,000. Comments do stay when someone leaves the group. And thus would show up in the threads but not in the members list.
I thi..."
Would it be fair to assume that comments are like books? Members' comments on A&M list, like their book totals, are for all of their groups, not just A&M. That leads to the questions (trivia) : what percentage of A&M members contribute to multiple groups and what are their comments ratios per group.
Carlos, just as there is little reason for my rock stacking projects, there is no logic to playing with statistical numbers. That short stat filled sentence Dawn wrote, starting with 19% concisely states what I was looking for.
I'm pretty sure the comments are for this group only. Just because my thousands of comments don't show up in the members lists of other groups. It would be interesting to see the stats on comments over multiple groups but that would be super time consuming for likes of you and me. :)
It's a good thing we have Carlos here to make comments on libraries, I think we've gotten a bit off topic with stats......much as I love them!!
Which reminds me....have I mentioned how much I love my new library?? I've been using it for 6 weeks, and have been in about 8 or 9 times. They already know my name and have my holds on the counter when I get there and have my account looked up so fast I don't have time to take out my library card, offered to get my ILL's shipped in from my old library because we couldn't change their destination before they got there......it's fabulous!!
Not that my old library was bad, just too big for such wonderful personal service.
Carlos wrote: "The decision to make the library much, much bigger is a personal one and It makes no common sense because as far as I know there's no one taking books from the library to read. Only scarce people doing homework on weekdays but what can I do? I love to read and with the help of my team We are making one amazing library to bequeath to the city, and the state...."I think this is great. Libraries are a very important part of keeping education affordable for the masses and we can never have too many!!
I have had some library dramas lately.There was a change in the Shire lines.
The way things used to stand, the library closest to me was tapped into about 10 other libraries. I had a broad database from which to Inter library Loan.
The other month when they changed the Shire lines, my library is now only in a family of two!!
I no longer can ILL to those other 7 libraries and those 7 libraries included the largest libraries in the area.
:(
not all is lost though. I will just have to take more trips to the large shopping town where the large library is if I need books from it.
I had to get both the May group read books from there.
Dawn wrote: "Which reminds me....have I mentioned how much I love my new library?? I've been using it for 6 weeks, and have been in about 8 or 9 times. They already know my name and have my holds on the counte..."
Pics of the library or It didn't happen. Share the love.
Picture, picture......I think I can remember how to do this....Nope, can't make it work......damn computer...here is a link to a picture though: http://www.librarything.com/pic/3540285
It looks bigger than it is because it's part of the recreation complex, with the ice rink, pool and gym.
You can't get ILL's from any other library now?? That sucks. Your library has always been so good Terri. At least you can still get to the other system.
I was deflated when I found out we were outside of the main library system now.I suppose it gives me an excuse to go down to the major shopping centres now. Because we can't do a 2 hour round trip just to pick up a book. I have to combine it with some shopping of some sort :)
Which is what I did on the weekend I went down and picked up one of our May Group Reads. While I was there I discovered that libraries have a large array of jigsaws!! I never knew this and grabbed a 1500 piece one for fun.
I used to love big jigsaws when I was a kid.
Now I just need to clear all the crap off the dining room table to do it. The dining table always tends to be a dumping ground for hats and mail and random stuff.
Terri wrote: "I was deflated when I found out we were outside of the main library system now.I suppose it gives me an excuse to go down to the major shopping centres now. Because we can't do a 2 hour round trip..."
Hope you have a puzzle with all the pieces ... that was an interesting inventory challenge for library staff when patron returned puzzle with comments of frustration about missing pieces.
Terri wrote: "Now I just need to clear all the crap off the dining room table to do it. The dining table always tends to be a dumping ground for hats and mail and random stuff...."Mine too. Just seems so convenient!
Chrisl wrote: "...Hope you have a puzzle with all the pieces ... that was an interesting inventory challenge for library staff when patron returned puzzle with comments of frustration about missing pieces"
I am worried that I'll spend hours looking for pieces that no longer exist..
Dawn wrote: " Mine too. Just seems so convenient! ."I guess it is because we eat dinner in front of the tv or at the table in the backyard. The dining table is for more official occasions and therefore doesn't get used regularly for its intended purpose. :)
Great minds think alike. :D
http://www.imls.gov/research/public_l...In the USA, the Institute Museum and Library Services has the most comprehensive database. Here are selections of three sets from their numerous pages of statistics.
US Fed Stats for PubLibs FY 2011
Annual Library Visits Per Capita
01. New Hampshire = 7.99
02. Ohio = 7.71
03. Illinois = 7.11
04. Utah = 7.09
05. Vermont = 7.05
06. Connecticut = 6.89
07. Wyoming = 6.80
08. Indiana = 6.75
09. Washington (State) = 6.74
10. Iowa = 6.61
11. Colorado = 6.55
12. Oregon = 6.52
17. New York = 6.07
33. Oklahoma =4.52
34. California = 4.50
35. Florida = 4.49
41. South Carolina = 3.92
47. Mississippi = 3.40
49. Tennessee = 3.34
50. Texas = 3.30
USA Average Annual Library Visits Per Capita = 5.09
Annual Circulation Per Capita
01. Oregon = 17.16
02. Ohio – 16.61
03. Utah = 13.76
04. Indiana = 13.60
05. Colorado = 13.05
06. Washington (State) = 12.91
07. New Hampshire = 11.65
08. Wisconsin = 11.29
09. Minnesota = 11.09
10. Kansas = 11.02
11. Idaho = 10.86
12. Illinois = 10.41
24. New York = 8.60
30. Oklahoma = 7.17
33. Floria – 6.75
35. California = 6.46
39. South Carolina = 5.72
43. Texas = 5.11
49. Tennessee = 4.14
51. Mississippi = 2.92
USA Average Annual Circulation Per Capita = 8.14
Annual Revenue Per Capita
01. Ohio = $67.68
02. Illinois = 65.15
03. New York = 63.28
04. District of Columbia = 60.70
05. Washington (State) = 57.28
06. New Jersey = 55.39
07. Indiana = 55.08
08. Connecticut = 54.19
09. New Hampshire = 54.07
10. Colorado = 53.18
11. Wyoming = 52.30
12. Oregon = 50.99
29. Oklahoma = 34.64
30. California = 34.28
33. Utah = 32.91
38. Florida = 27.53
42. South Carolina = 25.84
48. Texas = 19.65
50. Tennessee = 17.07
51. Mississippi = 16.65
USA Average Library Revenue Per Capita FY 2011 = 38.09
I was looking to find some stats for BC and got sidetracked by some fast facts that I thought were interesting:-There are 243 public library branches that serve more than 360 B.C. communities.
-There are 16 million items available to borrow in British Columbia's public libraries.
-There are 56 million visits to public libraries in B.C. each year.
Secret Libraries of New York Cityhttp://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/...
It's a good think my sister doesn't know about the Horticultural Society. I'd never get her out of it!!
Yes, Utah is in the top 5 for both visits/capita and lending/capitaI'm not sure what the revenue/captia means - but I'm not surprised we in the bottom 1/3
It seems logical that the smaller and more northerly (colder) states rate higher. I am surprised that Alaska doesn’t rate any higher. It is also a welcome change to see that Texas isn’t anywhere near the top.
Dawn wrote: "Secret Libraries of New York Cityhttp://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/...
It's a good think my sister doesn't know about the Horticultural Society. I'd never get he..."
ooooh how BEAUTIFUL now I want to visit them all!!!! Dawn, you are morally responsible for that, so come pick me up and bring me there. I'll be waiting outside since the weather is mild today.
And then we can go to the opera and visit the Met and walk in Central Park.......*sigh*
It sounds like a good time, doesn't it??
Ancient & Medieval Historical Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
The Fellowship of the Ring (other topics)Raiders of the Nile (other topics)
Hannibal: Enemy of Rome (other topics)
The Fellowship of the Ring (other topics)
The Fellowship of the Ring (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
John Grisham (other topics)James Patterson (other topics)
You saying you are going to pick up House of Cards reminds me to check if my library has any series' that I have missed o..."
Only problem I have with dvds from the library is the fact that previous borrowers tend not to be very careful. I got "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" on dvd from my library and it was so scratched it only played about half before jacking it in. :(