1. DD 006-10.999 (Tony) Who Let The Blogs Out? 006.7 STO

Who Let The Blogs out:A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs is the reason we have this blog. If it wasn't for this book I would have thought Blog was the sound my friend Phil made when he was bored or trying to mate with sophomores. The author, Biz Stone, helped make the blogging community interesting and come alive. In fact, he made me want to join up. I'm just glad he wasn't a Marine recruiter.I'm just glad he wasn't a Marine recruiter.They say that computer go out of style every 3 days. So when Biz talks about ways to write on Blogger with HTML, one must understand that this book was written before blogger.com started added things like bold and add links to its Create and edit post pages. Even still, some of the codes and ways to upgrade your blog are still a little intimidating to me. But don't be afraid to experiment. The worse that could happen is that you lose you site and have to start over. The blogging community is unique. It's not like the internet community where I met my wife online 7 years ago. The exchange of information and rate of networking is mind-boggling. As well as it's impact. This book makes several key examples of this like the KayCee Swenson Cancer Blog Hoax and blog bombing. (Please don't do this to me!)Who Let The Blogs Out? is not a book for the blog master. It would be too simple. But for the casual Blurker or person who always wanted a web site: here's your chance to learn how. Many of the tips are simple. And with practice, you won't even need to copy straight out of the book. Like those crazy college professors always say, technology is the future. And The blog is soon to become the next step in computer science and modern society. It's big now, but soon it will be the 50 foot woman. So grab this book and log in. You have nothing to lose but your cookies.

DD 001-005.999 Tony; The Great Pretenders 001.95 BON

"The Great Pretenders" By Jan Bondeson is a collection of essays based on the mysterious lives of several well known cases of identity thief. One may think identity theft is a relatively new thing thanks to the internet. However, the author, who is also a medical professor in Wales, proves that it's an activity that's being going in Europe at least since the waning days of the French Revolution, when almost 200 people claimed to be the missing Dauphin of France.
Other cases of fraudulent claimants include a Siberia Holy Man who was believed to be the deceased Emperor of Russia, Alexander I; Young Kaspar Huaser, a teenager whose sudden appearance in Germany and claim to be imprisoned in a dungeon his entire life, led many to be believe he was the Crown Prince of Baden; and the disappearance of one Sir Roger Tichborne and the man who 20 years later claimed to be him, just 200 lbs heavier and unable to speech his native language of French.
The most interesting essay in The Great Pretenders is Bondeson's examination into the popular British rumor that King George the First was secretly married at age 13, to a woman 15 years his senior named Hannah Lightfoot. If the rumor is true, George and Hannah had a child who later moved south. Meaning that our current British Royal family is not Elizabeth and her son Charles, but a black, South African family by the name of Rex.
Bondeson's book was a rather interesting read. He presents clear interesting facts and is a master of dialogue. However, each essay has a bunch of characters and at times, it's hard to keep folks straight. I don't know if this is history's fault or the author's. But it is a fascinating read and I would like to read some of Bondeson's other books, especially his Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays Natural and Unnatural Marvels.

Chapter One: Our Local Library

Our town library is not the smallest library in North Carolina, that I have ever seen. Nor is it the biggest. The library in the town of Hillsborough, North Carolina is situated in between Orange County Department of Social services and the OPC (Orange, Person, Chatham) mental heath facilities. Not even a five minute drive from out home, our library is such a vital part of our personal community as well as a sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the quickly growing Hillsborough area.
This library on Bald Head Island, NC is about the size of 2 telephone booths. They work on the honor system.

Known as the Orange County Public Library, OCPL is not the only library in Orange County. There are Orange County Public libraries in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill has many libraries devoted to the arts, medicine, and law. And, there are dozens of libraries in the Orange/Chapel Hill/Carrboro school systems.

The OCPL in Hillsborough has many modern facets like: computer labs, Polaris search engines for books in the Orange County family of libraries, and an ever growing Hispanic Literature section. It was recently renovated to include a large print section, more stacks for books, and more seating. The movie section is 99.999% VHS, but they add new DVD's every week.It's children's books are overflowing to such a point they fill up a large room plus the outer corridor of the library. New security check points had to added in order to prevent children from being lost.

OCPL's selection is small compared to the Chapel Hill Library. However, the staff at OCPL must have a guardian bibliophile as they have the most extensive, regularly renewing new book collection I have even seen in a public library. The librarians even take suggestions for new books to purchase, as recently, after I requested more graphic novels for their new selection of "Comics", new titles grew from 2 new books per month to 5 per month.

It was thanks to the OCPL staff that my wife and I realized that our goal to read 1 book for every 10 numbers in the Dewey Decimal System, was to broad a reach to grasp the enormity of the variety of subjects housed in our library. They are quite knowledgeable when it comes to research and the internet. Plus, the librarians there don't seem to mind my weekly phone calls to stay on top of the due dates for all the books we have checked out.

We also have books checked out from Chapel Hill's library. It's bigger, especially their biography section and you can reserve time on a computer monitor via an automatic reservation system. However, Jan and I have made it a priority as well as a rule to try to limit out selections for the "Journey Through the Dewey Decimal System" to the Hillsborough branch as much as possible. That way we can enjoy the wealth of knowledge housed in our local small town library.

Epilogue: The Rules

Before we cracked open the spine of our first book, we decided to establish some ground rules. This is a good idea when tackling any project. It keeps you focused. It creates an obtainable goal. And most importantly, it prevents cheating.
(Author's note: It is important to note that some of our goals have changed over the past few weeks due to the limited number of some books in some categories. I will cover these rule revisions... They were not revised to cheat... Honest, it wasn't... stop looking at me like that...)

Rule 1: We read 1 book out of every 5 categorical numbers in the Dewey Decimal system. The numbers start at 001, not zero, so our range to find a book was 001-005, 006-010, 011-015... and so on.

Rule 2: All books are to be read in order. No skipping around the Dewey Decimal system.

Rule 3: We did not have to read just Dewey Decimal books. Thus if I was not in the mood to read my DD book for a couple of days, I didn't have to force myself to read it. Nor are we bound to reading just on books for this project. So right now, as I write this, I am reading a book called Just Curious, Jeeves numbered DD 030 Min, at the same time as my DD book. So while it's okay to read, it can't get credit for my 026-030 book.

Rule 4: Books are not reserved just to the stacks. We can read new books as well. This is a rule we changed due to lack of books in certain categories.

Rule 5: We can change books once per category. We also changed this rule after my wife almost died of boredom reading her DD 001-005 book. I wanted this rule in the first place since libraries are kinda like video dating services. The Cover is the video you watch about the person you want to date. It may look pretty and the dust jacket may build it up, but once you get to the meat of the subject, you discover if your "date" is a bestseller or a bargain book. (It is encouraged to tough it out with a book as much as possible).

Rule 6: All books must come from a library in Orange County, North Carolina. Though our focus is to keep our books coming from our Hillsborough library as much as possible.

Rule 7: Dewey Project Books must be read cover to cover.

Note from Jan: These rules were initially developed without me-I just wanted to read some books. Mostly, I am okay with the rules, especially # 3 and #5. However, given the size of the libraries here in Orange County (reasonably well stocked, but pretty small, as we are a small county), we'd have more variety in some of the more obscure categories if we checked out the Guilford County library, in the county where my mom lives. And rule # 7 may make me head for a smaller book than I might have chosen otherwise simply due to time constraints, if it has a whole bunch of little sections in it or is a humunguous book.

Foreword

Tony This project started on January 1st, when my wife announced that her New Year's resolution would be to read her way through the Dewey decimal system at our local library. For months, she kept promising to do it as soon as she finished her stack of books to read.

Like waiting to have kids when you're ready, I knew her promises would never be fulfilled. (She's still ready a Tom Clancy novel that she started reading 5 years ago.) So about a month ago, while at our local library, after hearing my wife make her promise to read through Dewey (for the ump-teenth time); I called her bluff and approached my local librarian. "My wife and I want to read our way through the Dewey decimal system." Suddenly, I 'm putting myself into this challenge as well. "But we know it goes from 1-9999. Can you help us find a WEB SITE that details each category?"

It took a few minutes of searching, but she found us some great resources. After noticing that Dewey catelogues book types by tens, we felt that we had narrowed our book focus. Boy, were we wrong.

Under the Dewey Decimal system (DD from now on), the books in section 1-10 range from UFO's, Big Foot Sightings, Orgins of words and sayings, Urban Legends, and imposters to computer hackers, How To cheat at solitatire, and writing in HTML. Suddenly, our focus is to read a book not from every 10 but every 5!

As one does the math, you'll come to find that to read 1 book for every 5 categorical number in the DD, we will both be reading 200 books.

We both started before the creation of this blog, but we still have a long way to go. I am working on my book for DD 6-10. My wife just gave up on her 1-5 book and is beginning another selection. So this will be a long journey; one I hope you will enjoy and maybe one day even try. My ultimate goal is to inspire 1 person to read 1 of the books we have selection and discussed. Reading is the ultimate joy and a dying past time. And with the rising cost of everything, books are not cheap. So maybe one day someone will link to my site, and like Comic Book Guy on the Prisoner episode of the Simpsons, be a little curious to know what all this fuss is about and discover the joys of their public library.

To learn more about the categories of the Dewey Decimal System.

---

, Jan In my defense, I have finished hundreds of books since starting the Tom Clancy book. It is just difficult to read Tom Clancy during a war and while under various other types of stress. To me, he's one of those "have to be in the mood for" authors. But once I'm in the mood, I can't put the book down. And in my defense again, my first selection was about 50 years old and smelled musty. I read about half of it, and while it was interesting, it just wasn't worth the effort to kep going.