"After stumbling across the Jackson-George (Mississippi Gulf Coast) Regional Library System's 'Top 10 Books' List -- and verifying that it's indeed a list of the most frequently circulated books in that library system at the moment -- I've decided to regularly post libraries' 'most popular' lists. If your library keeps such a list online, please let me know and I'll post a link to yours.

The Jackson-George 'Top 10 Books' list currently consists of:

1. THE SUMMONS - John Grisham
2. DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL - Mary Higgins Clark
3. 2ND CHANCE - James Patterson
4. THE SHELTERS OF STONE - Jean M. Auel
5. THE COTTAGE - Danielle Steel
6. THE NANNY DIARIES - Emma McLaughlin
7. SHORT FOREVER - Stuart Woods
8. VIOLETS ARE BLUE James Patterson
9. TISHAMINGO BLUES - Elmore Leonard
10. CITY OF BONES - Michael Connelly" [WPL: waterboro lib blog]

This is a fantastic idea (maybe give this its own page, eh Molly?), but what I'd really like to see is a compilation of the top ten circulation titles nationally. That's one way we could start proving our worth to the publishing and marketing industries and gain some of the clout we deserve.

I'm going to go ahead and brag about this because he starts in three weeks: The Laughing Librarian is going to be the new Head of Adult Services at my home library! I am, most naturally, thrilled! In honor of the occasion, I may finally break down and buy a t-shirt with my second-favorite librarian saying (you all know my all-time favorite), which is from Koans of the Zen Librarian:

"The Zen Librarian searched for nothing on the Web and got 2,456,803 hits."

"For years, the notion of a cashless society has been a futurist's dream deferred almost everywhere -- except, to some extent, in Hong Kong.

Here, just about everyone carries an Octopus card -- a rechargeable, contactless card that is passed over a scanner to access almost every train, bus or ferry. The territory's 6.75 million inhabitants make nearly seven million Octopus transactions each day, worth about HK$48 million (US$6.12 million).

And while cash remains king in this commercial hub, an increasing number of retail merchants, from Starbucks to fast-food chains and 7-Eleven, accept the Sony-made card. Still, getting around on the city's sprawling public transportation network accounts for over 90 percent of Octopus transactions....

The elegance of the Octopus card is its simplicity.

It does not require contact to be read. At rush hour, women can be seen passing entire handbags over scanners, also made by Sony, as they race through subway gates. It's almost as easy for men, who don't need to remove the card from their wallet.

Each microchip-embedded card contains an electronic purse.

Unless a holder chooses a personalized card, his or her identity is unknown.

According to Tai, the contactless system takes only 0.3 seconds to register a payment, compared with one or two seconds for a contact card, not counting insertion and extraction time. He said each card has a potential life span of roughly 10,000 transactions.

Card value can be replenished several ways, and every transaction is settled by the end of the day....

'We're not out there to get the larger payments market. We see ourselves as a micropayments operator,' said Tai.

The next frontier for Octopus is as a security device. Already, some 30,000-40,000 cards are used as main door access devices for residents of the housing estates where many Hong Kongers live." [Yahoo News, via Slashdot]

Check out the Future of Money article noted in the Slashdot write-up, too, because it provides a little more context and history.

I agree with Jakob Nielsen that we just haven't figured out how to implement micropayments on the web yet, but cell phone wallets and electronic cash cards make a lot of sense in today's world, too. Sure, I'll lose my card a couple of times, I have concerns about privacy, and there are whole segments of the population that, for various reasons, can't pre-pay a balance, but for a large demographic, this would be a godsend.

Hong Kong has become an early adopter because of a confluence of events, but it will happen here eventually. I love the idea of just walking through the turnstile to pay for my train ride (it'd be right up there with the I-Pass system we have on Illinois toll roads). I know some of the vendors in the library world that manufacture checkout systems are looking at technology that lets a patron check out titles just by walking out the door. I already use the self-checkout lanes at K-Mart... what will be next?

In last week's commentary about the QuestionPoint virtual reference service, I forgot to note that those in the Chicagoland area can attend a workshop on September 19 at SLS to hear about the service from the proverbial horse's mouth:

Reference without Boundaries: CDRS/QuestionPoint at Library of Congress and OCLC

"Digital Reference Specialists at Library of Congress present the latest information on the Collaborative Digital Reference Service (CDRS) partnership with OCLC to create the QuestionPoint program of virtual 24/7 reference."

Cost is a mere $30, so sign up now! Unfortunately, we don't have a streaming video service (yet?!), so you'll have to attend in person. Offer void where prohibited.

Addendum: here's another article about the service.

QuestionPoint Marks New Era in Virtual Reference

"In the history of computing, the date to remember is the one when IBM produced the first PC. In the history of the Internet, future historians may note the date when Mosaic became Netscape or perhaps when Bill Gates finally decided Microsoft would recognize the Net. It?s not the originating date, it?s the maturing date. The Virtual Reference Desk movement may have reached such a juncture with the launch of QuestionPoint by OCLC, the world?s leading library vendor, in a joint project with the Library of Congress, the world?s largest library. The production model of the service should go online June 23." [Information Today, via Library Stuff]

It's official, so now I can finally link to it. I'm a freelance blogger now since the Spartanburg Herald-Journal (in South Carolina) is syndicating some of my content to a blog on their site. Radio makes this obscenely easy on my end, and over at GoUpstate.com I'll be known as the Tech Goddess. Here's the press release.

Andy Rhinehart is the wizard behind the curtains here, and when we first started talking about this, I came to an interesting revelation. My undergraduate degree is in Journalism (University of Kansas, Go Hawks!), specifically Broadcast News. That's a capital "J," in case you're wondering.

But instead of becoming Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, I wound up being a librarian and then a techie librarian, but now I find myself at an interesting nexis of broadcasting and information. I see blogging in general, and the GoUpstate blog in particular, as a new type of "broadcast news," one that I doubt anyone ever imagined back when I was in j-school.

Doc Searls, Dave Winer, Glenn Reynolds, and others are currently debating the differences between "big J" journalism and "little j" journalism, and it will be interesting to see what piece I might be in this puzzle (if any). I don't lay claim to being a journalist in this role, but I am definitely broadcasting news, starting discussions, and informing readers. I'm not quite sure what to call that yet. I'm content to just do my thing and see where it all ends up.

So you can catch all of my posts here at TSL, or you can subscribe to the more techie stuff over at the TechGoddess. Same content, different focus. Down the road, we may try to figure out some unique content for the Herald-Journal's site, but right now we're still taking those necessary baby steps.

I can't say enough great things about Andy, so I'll just sum them all up in a big THANK YOU and note my eternal debt to him.  I think it's great that the SHJ is willing to experiment with blogs in this way (they'll be starting their own blog soon, too), and they deserve full credit for their initiative. While some folks are getting bogged down in labeling, it's nice to see others making the most of this rising tide.

Stay tuned, because it's going to be a fun ride!

Two new library blogs of note:

• "Library Notes, by Sondra Clockedile. She also helps run the Wilton Library weblog, a great example of how weblogs can improve library web sites." [via Library Stuff]
   
• VR, a blog to announce news, share ideas, and practices for virtual reference in all types of libraries - written by a librarian who wishes to remain anonymous... [via Library News Daily]