Add To My Contacts

What's with the abstract art in the right sidebar? It's called a QR (quick response) code. It sends information to a cell phone equipped with a code reader. The Civil Librarian and Hapalibrararian have blogged about QR codes, speculating on potential uses in a public library setting. The Dover Town Library in Massachusetts featured QR codes in its summer reading program this year.

In some cases, the code will lead you to a web site; in others, it might send a message to a contact phone number. Or it can be coded to provide business card information, or ...

The QR code on this blog will offer to add the phone number for our new My Info Quest: text 4 answers service to your cell phone contacts, so you can text us the next time you have a burning question and get an answer in minutes from a librarian. (You can add it or decline it.)

If your camera phone is equipped with a data plan, and if you have acquired a code reader, just point your phone's camera at the code and take it away!

RINCóN LATINO: PELíCULAS EN ESPAÑOL

,,SIN NOMBRE" de Cary Joji Fukunaga




,,Sin Nombre" es una película dirigida por el cineasta estadounidense Cary Joji Fukunaga pero producida por los actores mexicanos Diego Luna y Gaél García Bernal. Ésta película se trata de un par de desconocidos que se encuentran en un tren haciendo el largo viaje clandestinamente desde centroaméroca hacia los Estados Unidos. La historia se concentra en dos viajes y no solamente uno, donde una familia hondureña intenta reunirse con sus familiares viviendo en Nuevo Jersey, y el otro viaje se trata de un joven huyendo de una vida violenta para salvar su propia vida.

Si ustedes se preguntan porque no comento más sobre estas películas ...es porque quiero que ustedes las piden por prestado en mi biblioteca ó en las de su estado.

Time Travelers

The movie made from Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife will be in theaters this week. This is one of the very few books I've read that I can truly and without hyperbole say is 'mind-bending'. Right now, because of the movie, there are many holds on it. However, there are LOTS of other time-travel titles in the library for both kids and adults! If the topic intrigues you, I can recommend Charles Dickinson's A Shortcut in Time, which has similar themes, and also Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. See you whenever!

Sacramento Squeaked in 1975 - One Journalist's Back Story at the Central Library

Longtime Central librarians remember Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme wandering, aimlessly through the Central Library's old reference room. It was soon after, in September 1975, that Fromme tried to shoot then-President Gerald Ford as he moved from car to building on Sacramento's Capitol Grounds. Last year, ex-City Editor for the Sacramento Bee, Art Nauman, recounted his experiences with Squeaky as part of the California Past Digital Story Project. Click on the screen below to view this short movie starring Nauman:



For more stories from the California of the Past and Sacramento Stories Project, go to blip.tv: http://sacramentolibrary.blip.tv/

After 34-years in prison, Fromme is scheduled for release on August 16, 2009.

Artful Stories to Be Heard and Seen on Second Saturday!

The Central Library's second cycle of digital stories will be premiered during Sacramento's hallowed "Second Saturday" festivities on the 8th of August. Ten Sacramentens - oral historian to former California State Librarian - offered up their time over the spring and summer to put together an satisfying volume of tales.

The program's emcee, and Sacramento Stories project manager, will be Karl Alexander of Sacramento's own Kinetic Illusions Creative Studio. If you should miss the event, look for the stories to be posted shortly after the premier at http://sacramentolibrary.blip.tv/.

RINCóN LATINO: PELíCULAS EN ESPAÑOL

,,El Baño del Papa" de César Charlone


,,El Baño del Papa" es una película la cual toma lugar en la ciudad de Melo en el Uruguay. En 1988, el Papa anuncia su gira por Sudamérica y Beto, quien se dedica al contrabando, decide en hacerse rico pero se frustra en escuchar las malas hazañas de sus vecinos malcreentes. Entonces decide Beto en hacer lo inesperado ... alquiler un baño portátil para rentarlo a los esperados 500,000 visitantes. ¡Buen idea no!

Sacramento History Photo(s) of the Week: Issue No. 22!

This promotional photo for the Bercut-Richards Cannery was taken in 1942. The model is shrouded in one of Sacramento’s most lucrative cash crops – peaches. By the time of the photo, “Orchard and Vineyard” crops were Sacramento County’s third largest agricultural money-maker at $2,119,000, behind field crops at $3,443,000 and live stock at $3,340,000. Bercut-Richards, located at Seventh and Richards, was Sacramento’s highest-profile cannery. It opened in 1928 under the dynamic management of Thomas Richards, and, as War approached, in 1942, the cannery morphed into one of the West Coast's primary military depots. Sacramento’s inland location and access to major rail lines made it safe from air attack and ideal for shipping military goods toward the Pacific Theater. What's more, by the end of the War, nearly 540 prisoners-of-war from Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps were working within the warehouses of the depot and the cannery.

This photo and many more like it can be found in the Sacramento Public Library’s Sacramento Room which is open to the public Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday 1 to 5, and Thursday 1 to 8.