A river of words : the story of William Carlos Williams / written by Jen Bryant ; illustrated by Melissa Sweet. – Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2008.[34] p. : col. ill. ; 27 cm.
Bibliography: p. [31]
Includes chronology
ISBN: 9780802853028 (lib. bdg.)
1. Physicians -- United States -- Biography. 2. Poets, American -- 20th century – Biography. 3. Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963
Willie Williams was a very energetic boy. After playing with his friends, he would roam though the New Jersey countryside and then inspired by the poetry that his teacher read aloud in class, he would stay up late to write his own poems. It’s a good thing he had a lot of energy. He grew up to be a doctor and a poet. By the end of his life he had written 48 books and helped deliver over 3,000 babies.
2 comments:
I have always wondered about your entries. Are you creating this content and writing these summaries, or are you copying them?
If creating, are they being used in some other resource?
Thank you for the question.
The content has two parts. The first is the bibliographic description of the book. This is the part probably of interest only to librarians, but catalogers who do not catalog as part of their regular duties find it useful to channel some of these obsessive tendencies to socially useful or at least socially neutral uses. The resulting description and subject headings are a mash-up. In part this is copied from the work of others, and then modified. I will use the description provided to the public by the Library of Congress [http://catalog.loc.gov/] or another public library and tinker or meddle with it. I regularly place the reader of an audiobook in the place usually occupied by a co-author. This is idiosyncratic on my part, and not common cataloging practice. I will often delete or add subject headings to reflect what I, as the reader, found as most significant in the work. I do, however, use the Library of Congress Subject Headings as the controlled vocabulary, or authority [http://authorities.loc.gov/], for them.
The more interesting part, for the general reader, is the annotation of the book. It’s a summary and a bit of a review of the book, but I write it with a specific purpose: to entice or persuade a potential reader to read it. It’s a sales pitch what they call in the book trade, hand-selling, or in the library field, readers’ advisory. I try not to read any other reviews of the book before I write it. Occasionally however, especially in the case of audiobooks, I will scour other reviews for the spelling of proper nouns.
The result is recycled in several places: I post reviews on GoodReads [http://www.goodreads.com/] and a condensed version, limited to 750 characters, on Noting: Books [http://notingbooks.com/]. Unlike this blog I will post reviews of books that I’ve read and wouldn’t recommend to another reader. If the book is one that I own, I will also post it on LibraryThing [http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=MaowangVater]. Blog contents is often recycled on the Harris County Public Library website [http://www.hcpl.lib.tx.us/] in various topical book blogs, Kids, Teens, Nonfiction, etc. or at http://www.hcpl.lib.tx.us/blogs/bruce-farrar.
Does this completely answer your question?
Post a Comment