Archives for April 2015

Registration is Open for NYTSL’s Spring Program

April 23, 2015 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

And this one is going to be fascinating, so if you’re interested, go to the NYTSL website and register now!

Disaster Recovery for the Digital Library

Presented by the New York Technical Services LibrariansOur presenters will present two real-world library disaster recoveries in New York City and how to better prepare for the future.

Date:
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
5:00 – 7:30 PM
Refreshments: 5 – 6 PM
Program 6 – 7:30 PM

Location:
The New York Public Library
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, South Court Auditorium
476 Fifth Avenue (at 42nd Street)
New York, NY 10018$15 for current members
$30 for event + new or renewed membership
$20 for event + new or renewed student membership
$40 for non-members

Speakers:

Frank Monaco

Frank J. Monaco and Associates LLC

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, nearby Pace University faced emergency conditions in implementing a less than perfect IT Disaster Recovery plan. This presentation will first review, from the point of view of the then current Chief Information Officer, what his organization (and the entire University) faced and how he and his team dealt with the situation. After this brief review, a discussion of what digital disaster recovery technologies have emerged since that fateful day, and how Universities, to include their libraries, can take better advantage of these DR developments.

Neil H. Rambo

Director, NYU Health Sciences Libraries and Knowledge Informatics

When Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New York City on the evening of October 29, 2012, it produced an unprecedented storm surge along portions of the East River. The facilities and infrastructure of the NYU Langone Medical Center were overwhelmed by the violent flood. The NYU Health Sciences Library facility was destroyed. But library services and support across the Medical Center were only briefly disrupted. This review will focus on the recovery efforts made in the aftermath of the destruction, from immediate-term to the present. The focus of those efforts were and are on strengthening the digital library, increasing the presence of librarians with user groups, and redefining the nature and role of the library across the Medical Center. In parallel with these efforts and informed by them, the library facility has been reconceived and is now under construction, to be opened in late 2015.

Reader Advisory: AW: Genesis

April 21, 2015 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Everyone remembers the day they truly became an adult; some call it the best day of their lives while others think of it as the worst. Kasey Byrne will never make that choice, because it’s just been taken away from her. Her old life has ended along with her world. What remains is an existential comment on the details; her memories, her regrets, her dashed hopes for the future, and the insanely deadly situation which she now navigates on a one way trip to the End of the World.

As the book opens, eight-year-old Kasey is playing on the beach when a stranger hands her an amulet, insisting that he’s sorry. For all the fuss her Mom makes of the encounter, Kasey feels safe when wearing the device, embossed with the figure of a white dragon.

Ten years later, she’s living the life of a million other Long Island girls her age: school is done, and summer approaches. She baby-sits her neighbors’ kids for cash. She has friends, a decent home life, a new car (a birthday present from her Dad to compensate for a bitter divorce), plenty of time to go surfing on the South Shore, and a boy who is interested in her.

All that comes to a screeching halt after she wakes to find thousands of dolphins in the process of beaching themselves, in obvious terror from something looming on the horizon.

That thing is, of course, the Apocalypse, embodied in this case by the Blood Riders and Red Ship minions which hold the people of Babylon, New York, in their bloody grip. Kasey must find other survivors as she and Jack (the boy mentioned previously) weather the death of her mother and murder of the police who answered the call; the kidnapping of Jack and Kasey’s long, hard journey to retrieve him.

She picks up valuable help in her travels: Jennifer Wang, an ex-Marine M.D., Blair, just a professional guy trying to keep it together in the face of his wife’s death, and Aarika, the extremely practical, forward-thinking Indian kid who ran his uncle’s gas station until all hell broke loose.

All this leads to Douglas, the man who gave Kasey the amulet ten years ago. And he is the only one who can train her to weather the rigors to come as the world teeters and tips into oblivion.

Stefan Bolz has given us what he describes as a “very personal” story. It’s a poetic tale that draws readers in by dangling the myth of childhood as an idyllic, perfect, blissful state of being before us, and shatters it (and his characters) by smashing the mythology against the ugly, harsh face of disaster.

Suitable both for adult and YA audiences, my only complaint about Genesis is that the book ends on a cliff hanger: with Kasey taking a literal leap of faith in order to learn what she needs to harness the power of the White Dragon and save the world.

But that’s another (eagerly awaited) book.

Get The Book!

[book size=”150″ slug=”apocalypse-weird-genesis”]

Reader Advisory: AW: Medium Talent

April 14, 2015 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Confession time: I just finished Forbes West’s addition to the AW universe, Medium Talent, and oh, does my head hurt. West has a Hemmingway thing going on, and it’s grizzly, ugly, and stressful to read. Forget the facts, the iceberg theory of writing, the Kilimanjaro stuff, or the Spanish civil war. Hell, forget about the old guy alone in the cabin with the shotgun on his lap. Forget all that, because if you don’t, you head will hurt, too.

Medium Talent is the tale of Key West survivors of a world-spanning hurricane three years earlier; the Supply Org (the AW version of FEMA) is the last bit of government around, which gives aid and comfort to the fortress fleet of the rich and powerful, while the denizens of the Florida Keys and most other places scratch what they can out of crappy local economies. Danger is ever present: if it’s not the Supply Org shaking you down, it’s the playboys on their armored yachts, or the sea monsters, or the zombies, or local thugs, or even the infected who are warehoused in the Depository.

Into this sub-tropical hell hole we meet Wendy Wicker, captain of the Medium Talent, who presents herself as a smuggler, artist, wife, adopted mother, and incredibly violent borderline sociopath. Somehow she is all these things, and yet, truly none of them. Trying to give you a linear picture of this distinctly non-linear world and story would be a hopeless gesture, but I can tell you the Wendy is far more complicated than she seems, she does meet Hemmingway back in 1934 Key West, and deep down she really does want to save the world. Or at least her little corner of it.

Anyway, the Hemmingway thing has its advantages; it creates a fascinating thread through a rollicking world that alternately confuses and makes perfect sense. It gets weird, but that’s sort of the name of the game, isn’t it?

Get The Book

[book size=”150″ slug=”apocalypse-weird-medium-talent” desc=”0″ purchase=”0″ notereviews=”0″ excerpt=”0″]