How May I Help You?

The family of an Omaha artist whose work is better known than his name visited Omaha Public Library staff offices in March to research the Omaha Public Library’s special collections and to share stories, photos and articles about Charles M. Plein . Joining the group was Omaha historian Jeffrey Spencer, who shared significant information from his extensive research and collections of the time period. Plein (1870-1920) was the great-uncle of Jean McElheney of Rippey , IA (seated). He lived for a time in that area after emigrating from Alsace-Lorraine and before settling in Omaha in the 1890s. Jean told the library staff members that she had heard many stories about Plein from her mother, Elizabeth, Plein ’s favorite niece. The family collection includes photos of Charles; his brother, Eberhardt (Tony) Plein , who also lived in Omaha; vintage postcards sent to Elizabeth; published articles and personal letters. Jean now owns two bronze sculptures created by Plein , discovered and...

Ron Wirth from Oregon contacted the Omaha Public Library. His great-grandfather's brother, Walter J. Lowrie , was a member of the Omaha Hook and Ladder Company. He had in his possession a copy of a booklet published by the Omaha Bee newspaper called " Lowrie's Last Ride." It recounts the accident on July 21 1880, that took the life of Lowrie , the oldest paid member (except for the chief engineer) of the fire department while he was on his way to a fire. Ron asked us: "Are their any photos of the fire departments of that time in Omaha in the archives, or personal and or donated images?" As it happened, I had run across a photo in the Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company records and so we scanned it for him. Mark Dasovic , a fire fighter / historian at Omaha Fire Department, identified the photo as one they also have in their collection. The photo was taken in January, 1879. It shows Pioneer Hook & Ladder Company #1 hand-pulled fire wagon with ladders on th...

We frequently get questions from people needing the spelling of a word. With the Internet these are easier to find than plowing through a print source. I had a request this morning from a gentleman who was going to make some signs and wanted to make sure his spellings were correct. We had a laugh over a potential new slogan for his business: "I can't spell but I can guarentee my residentiel remodelling."

Robert G. Cunningham asked. He had joined the Marines when he was 18 years old during WWII and had been a pilot with the Marine Bombing Four-Thirteen Squadron. He thought the island they ran missions from started with an A, maybe an E - - and eventually , thanks to Google, we found it - Emirau Island . You can see the runways from this satelite image. He was trying to write some of his memories. He showed me a small black and white photograph of a couple of shirtless fellows. One went on to be a professional baseball and football player - the other - he couldn't remember his name. I told him he needed to write the information on the back and gave him a pencil. We went back to look at a world atlas to see where the island was and he started telling me a story about two men who got drunk and were in a jeep on the runway and decided they were going to take off like a plane and drove the jeep over the edge and dropped about 200 feet - both were killed. Another story was how he was t...

A young girl was at the desk with her mother asking for biographical information about Bob Marley, legendary reggae singer and song writer: she was writing a paper about him. I told her I had the opportunity when I was in Jamaica in 2006 to visit the Bob Marley's Birth & Final Resting Place at Nine Mile. (It took most of the day traveling on dangerous and winding roads through the mountains in a car driven by a Rastafarian to get to the remote and rustically baracaded site.) Our catalog revealed we had a biography in both the adult and children's section. I always recommend children's books - they are a fast and easy way to get the main points of a subject without getting buried in the detail. We also had a "Bob Marley: Songs of Freedom" songbook with lyrics that might be good to get an insight into his music. I found he was in our Wilson Biographies Database which I explained they could get to from home with their library card. I was a bit disappointed that ...

Helen called wanting information about what organizations had received previous Mentoring Children of Prisoners grants. There was a federal grant opportunity open again and she knew that grants had been given in the past and she didn't want recreate the wheel - she wanted to use the ideas of the successful programs. Luckily, she already had the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families website with the information. On the far right was the link to the current grants, and down below, a link for the archives. It was in the Archives that we found the listing for the grantees for the 2006 grants. She was very happy. She also wanted to know if there were any grant writers who could help her. Doing a Goolge search for "grant writing Nebraska" I found a terrific site with listings for Nebraska Grant Writers .

Diane is getting her education degree so she can teach K-6. She said she'd been a para for about 20 years and decided she was going to finish up her degree. She had an assignment to explore how the Puritan movement influenced the literature of Benjamin Franklin and Judith Sargent Murray. We found some information in Gale's Literature Resource Center. It was interesting to learn that Judith Sargent Murray, an early feminist, wrote one of the first "female advice columns" with fictitious letters to help frustrated housewives. These were compiled and published in "The Gleaner: A Miscellaneous Production" (1798) which also included short stories and essays on philanthropy, hospitality, and economy.

It's Jim again, and he doesn't have a computer....so I look for "Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm" in AbeBooks .com - there are several; and for a biography of the Canadian Prime Minister, Lester B. Pearson, by Bruce Thordarson . Of course there are a lot being sold by Canadian booksellers so I limit this by booksellers in the USA - -and find several. He is always looking for a cheap hard cover in good condition. The other interesting question was "Who was the girl who sang the vocals on the song "Simple Things" written by Jim Brickman . Apparently he had tried to get an answer earlier in the day, and this librarian, described to me by our patron Jim as "tenacious as a bull dog," hadn't been able to come up with the information. I felt good that I found a review of the album by the same title which gave the information he was seeking: Rebecca Lynn Howard.

asked James, the most intelligent man I know. I took a human geography class with him at UNL back in 1990. He has a master's degree in just about every social science discipline and is the most well read person, I am sure, in Omaha, and probably the whole state of Nebraska. I found information for him in our "Cambridge History of Japan" Volume 3, Medieval Japan and the "Kodanisha Encyclopedia of Japan."

asked our customer, Jack - - - He is always watching movies on TV and caught this on the credits at the end of a movie he had missed. I found his answer here: Music for Millions (1944) and at Rhapsody I found the music to " Toscanini, Iturbi and Me " I could play for him while he listened over the phone! And oh, by the way, what other movies did Mr. Iturbi have a part? Good old Internet Movie Database to the rescue.

Congratulations to Deirdre who it looks like, masterminded the majority of these exercises. That was a lot of work on top of the workload she already has! I would say this experience was very enlightening. I did take more time to do the exploring, learning exercises, and blogging than anticipated. I've expored some of the other blogs created by my colleagues and there are some terrific ones, with great ideas and creations, but unfortunately, they didn't have time to devote to get to the end. I would think a reward is in order for getting to the half-way mark and encouragement to finish the last half! In doing this, I've discovered that there are a lot of resources that offer similar services, such as video upload. It was originally You Tube, but now Yahoo and Flicker and others are in the game. I've discovered that I've created accounts at dozens of places with dozens of login and passwords. I can see a need for one portal to all of these accounts - of course, that ...

It had escaped my attention that we had the e-books for kids. I explored Tumble Books. Tried out the verb game - -a little contrived but swatting the verb was interactive. There wasn't a story with this and I think that would enhance the experience. As I kid we had an Aesop's Fables album that we listened to all the time so I was glad to see there was an Aesop's audio book available. Also, there were lots of classics, Black Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, House at Pooh Corner, etc. Once I have my mp3 player, I'll look forward to adding some of these and listening. I thought it was interesting that they had a "Story Book" section rather than a "Picture Book" collection, and that I didn't see any of the picture book classics there - probably copyright issues and expenses with having those available here. The books had sound effects and multiple voices and highlighted the text being read which kept them engaging. Under the "Learning Languages...

Prior Experience with Podcasts: My son, Brandon, had a podcast about the Cornhuskers - Midwest Coast Bias - so I was subscribed to that before he took it down at the end of the year 2007. I went to the PodcastDirectory.com to see if I could find it and I did-though the links no longer worked. I also tried to find podcasts by using the google maps. Got to Nebraska and found several in Nebraska, mostly Omaha and Lincoln, and one in Sutton. The one in Sutton had nothing. There was one in Lincoln called "The Composer's Notebook" that had interviews with various Nebraska composers, including Carol Curtwright and Jackson Berkey. But another one called "Ben's Bits" didn't have anything of use and after going there and allowing the Active X my cursor started acting goofy. The find podcasts by City was overwhelming - I was going to go to Omaha, but it involved scrolling through all the cities starting with A, B, C, etc., so I gave up. I think this finding section...

I started a You Tube account after our Hawaii vacation in May. Rick was best man at a wedding on Kau'ai and at the luau the night before the wedding our groom, Aaron was taken to the stage to dance the Tahatian Love Dance for his bride, Julie. I got up near the stage and recorded this on my digital camera. When I got home, I created a You Tube account and posted it for all to see. I've since added music I've recorded at various events....In fact, I recorded a fabulous musician at Wavz Beach, Negril, Jamaica in January, 2006. I did a quick look up on the Internet of his name just to see if he was anybody. When I recorded him, he was homeless. I gave him money and was so disappointed that he wasn't at the beach the next day. It turns out, shortly after I recorded him, he was rediscovered by Ian Jones of Baltimore, MD. Claudius was a roots reggae pioneer from the 1970s who had fallen on hard times. He now has a couple of new albums out with Ian. I put the description of th...

I looked at the Twitter feature on the Recipes for Success site. I signed up for this about the time that Stacey Aldrich was leaving OPL and hadn't used it since. She gave me her name so she is currently the only person I am following. I guess I thought you needed to have a mobile device - but no. It works anyway you can get to the web. I notice Stacey was posting Twitters with mobile devices, web, mobile web, Twitterific (Twitter application for Macintosh) and Twinkle -(Twitter application for iphone). I had had an e-mail request a few months ago from an old friend requested to be one of my Twitter followers and so I finally approved him. Tried to get into my hotmail account contacts so I could invite my contacts to follow me, but it said I had no contacts..... I'm not sure why it wasn't connecting because I've got a lot in there. It has a drop down where you put in your email address and then it chooses the msn, hotmail, gamail, etc. It wouldn't let me search my w...

My First Web Doc Experience I am in Google Docs - -November 13, 2008, 1539 - my best friend's 51st birthday. Can it be that I am finally taking part in the technological revolution as part of the O! What a Geek program at Omaha Public Library? I heard about these kind of documents and thought - how cool - to never have to carry a thumb drive (at that time a floppy disc) around anymore. But then, or course, you might have to deal with no connectivity. Would the world come to a complete standstill if that happened? No more Twittering and keeping up on every single move and 140 character thoughts of your friends and neighbors? Ok - I'm getting ready to save this for Thing #18 of the O! What a Geek Experience! Ready..... Set..... Go! Ok - now to find it again. I see I have a "Docs Home" link over here to the right. Sure enough, it is there under the "Owned by me" and "Opened by me" - - I wonder how I can assign it a star, or make it hidden? Let's s...

Wow! Lots of libraries are using this sandbox to explore. Nice to see that OPL had their own little section down there at the bottom. I added a favorite book, too. When I took Micahel Saur's class, he encouraged all of us to do the "classic" version - where you actually had to do a little coding. I don't think PB Wiki even lets you start one of those anymore. So, I hadn't used any of the tools that allow you to make links, etc., so that was fun. Much less labor intensive, although, it was fun to get to know a few of the things that make a site like this tick. I think that the great thing about web 2.0 is that you can create a lot of content WITHOUT having to know all the fancy languages that make it possible. I love that!

Last year, after I attended a Wiki class with Michael Saurs from the NLC, I created a Wiki using PBWiki to use with the Education Committee of the Douglas County Historical Society. I have found it very useful to keep track of our committee work. I originally was hoping that everyone would buy into it and we could do some collaborative grant proposal writing. That didn't happen. It was mostly due to a technical skills gap of the committee members - or, at least a perceived technical skills gap. I have continued to use it to post meeting agendas, meeting notes, sub-committee project information, etc. I will state that it hasn't always been as easy as making a Peanut Butter sandwich, but it has been a learning experience! I looked at the linked sites - the St. Joseph County Public Library reading genre links were good and I noticed that they were also updated in October - and had book jacket covers which made them more interesting than a pure textual site. I think this i...

The power of web 2.0 became apparent last week when Manya asked about borrowing my digital camera to take pictures of the Fan.Art.Fusion contest entries. My batteries were low so she used the library camera. Within the next day I had an invitation on my Face Book account to check out the cool slide show she had put together of all the art entries for her Fan.Art.Fusion art contest and exhibit on OPL's Flickr Account, which I then promptly sent to my friends. View it here (still haven't figured out how to make the link and pretty this up!). http://www.flickr.com/photos/30648453@N06/sets/72157608655636804/ For this "Thing" I also explored the Tame the Web blog and read some of Karl Fisch's musings. One former posting was about contributing to a 3rd grader Abby's travel wiki virtually and with a real postcard. So, I went to Abby's web page and this is what I found (obviously written by Abby's teacher or parent): "Due to the overwhelming response...

...asked the appraiser..... She was appraising a quilt done from the blocks that were published in the World-Herald from October 1939 to February 1940 that was being donated to the International Quilt Center. http://www.quiltstudy.org/ We have all these quilt blocks in a drawer in the back room filing cabinet - I've never used them before. Apparently this quilt was done in the colors and materials that were suggested and so it had more value than other quilts that she has seen done on the same theme. The quilt center, located in Lincoln, didn't have this in their collection. She valued it at $3200.