Credo Reference Blog

As promised yesterday, here are more of our eclectic personal reading pleasures of the moment…

From Anne Kail, UK Sales Director:

Why am I never reading Tolstoy or Proust or Ibsen when asked ‘what are you reading?’  Here in the Oxford office it’s our busiest time of the year, so a bit of light-hearted escapism is what’s required.

Starting Over

Dilemma: you can see I’m too much of a literary pseud to be seen curled up with chick lit (or admit it here).  Solution: chick lit written by a chap wouldn’t be chick lit, would it?

Nick Hornby and Tony Parsons to the rescue! Absolutely ripped through Nick Hornby’s “Juliet, Naked.” It’s about a handful of guys obsessed with a long-retired rock star who wants nothing to do with them.  It doesn’t have the laugh-out-loud lines that I found in “Fever Pitch” and “High Fidelity,” but every so often you want to read bits out loud to whoever is nearby.  Oh…  that’s just me, then?

Have nearly finished Tony Parsons’ “Starting Over.” It deals with cellular memory syndrome (see, hardly chick lit!). George is in his 40’s, steady job, married with two children; he has a heart attack, gets the heart of a 19 year-old, and starts behaving like a teenager and loses the lot. A real page-turner. How will it end!?

(Note to self: I will definitely read “War and Peace” sometime soon.)

From John G. Dove, Credo President:

Lemprières Dictionary

I am reading “Lemprière’s Dictionary” by Lawrence Norfolk.   It was suggested to me by the librarian of the Houses of Parliament (who is getting her PhD on the characteristics of subject encyclopedias).   This historical novel is a Dan Brown like thriller which has at its center the famous lexicographer of mythology who grew up on the island of Jersey.

Could there be a more perfect novel for me to get lost in?

From Heather Blaine, Sales Marketing Manager:

As I wrote about here, I am in the midst of reading “This Book is Overdue” by Marilyn Johnson. I’m further along and really enjoying all the different stories and examples of what leading-edge librarians are doing and have done in the past few years. The book is organized thematically by chapter and I’ve just finished the chapter on “Blogging Librarians” so now my list of blogs to follow has doubled!

The Sea of Monsters

In addition, I’ve started the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series – I’m now on book two, “The Sea of Monsters.” I really enjoyed the Harry Potter series and I LOVED studying Greek Mythology in school so when someone recommended these books to me I thought, why not? Well, I’m pretty well hooked. I think Rick Riordan has done a great job of creating a compelling story that is relatable in today’s world but which is also sneakily educational at the same time.

So, now you’ve had some insight into our reading habits at Credo Reference. What would you suggest we read next?

It should come as no surprise that an organization that blends technology, libraries, publishing and research would have an eclectic group of people with varied tastes and interests. This latest installment “What We’re Reading” is a perfect example!

From Al Stevens, CTO:

The Invention of Air

“The Invention of Air” by Steven Johnson, a fascinating account of the life of the English scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley. His religious and political views forced him to flee England and then nearly landed him in prison in the US.  Besides discovering oxygen, he helped found Unitarianism, invented soda water and influenced the thinking of George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

From Lisa Hill, Senior Library Relations Specialist:
I’ve recently become immersed in the Karla-Smiley espionage trilogy from author John Le Carre.  Begun in 1974 the series takes place during the heart of the Cold War and pits British Intelligence chief George Smiley against his Russian counterpart known as Karla.  I’ve just finished “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” which dealt with the hunt for a Russian mole within British intelligence.  I’m now nearing the finish of “The Honourable Schoolboy” which has George Smiley and his men following Karla’s tracks in Southeast Asia.  “Smiley’s People” ends the trilogy, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I’m enjoying the series because it doesn’t follow the standard ‘espionage novel’ template and doesn’t read like a Hollywood movie.  Le Carre takes time to develop the characters, flaws and all, so that the reader receives a fully fleshed glimpse of the spy trade.  I’ve missed my train stop on more than one occasion.  Read “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and you too can be late for work!

From Nancy King, Product Manager:

Pedaling Revolution

I’m reading “Pedaling Revolution” by Jeff Mapes.

Why am I reading it? Well, I’m desperately hoping for an early spring so that I can get back on my bike and off the subway. It’s an interesting read about bike-friendly cities and how they’re creating a place for cyclists on city streets. If only Boston were more like Amsterdam or even Portland, Oregon… Next up is another transportation-related book – “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)”
But, wait, there’s more…our next installment will include dictionaries, heart transplants, librarians and Greek gods!

Join our Kiva Team here.

Anne Kail, Sales Manager in our Oxford office, is a tremendous wit and an all-around hilarious person. She sent us this charming anecdote as a justification for keeping print copies in this increasingly digital world:

We love books. Books online, obviously, but we love them on shelves too and in the Oxford office we have bookshelves full of the titles that we feature online. But you all know that there are times when only a book on the shelf will do. Chris from Orchadis.com in a neighboring office has often stopped by to admire them. One day this week his admiration seemed more… purposeful. ‘I need a bible urgently’. Easy! I handed him the King James version, maintaining, I thought, a neutral demeanor, but obviously failing, and eaten up with curiosity. ‘I need it for someone to swear on’. Ah. Glad to help. I had been thinking of pruning our ‘library’ but am now reconsidering. Who knows when someone will want to swear on the Qur’an or… Evolution Wars: A guide to the debates?

Credo Reference turns 10 this month! We’ve certainly come a long way in the past 10 years. We started as Xrefer, an ad-supported site based in London. Today, we are a subscription site with offices in both Boston, MA and Oxford. Our President, John Dove, recently did a Q&A with Library Journal, where he talks a bit about our origins, and our more recent name change:

How was Credo Reference born? Was there an a-ha! moment?

Adam Hodgkin, former reference editor for Oxford University Press, was the brainchild behind Credo. In 1999, Adam realized that the movement of content to the online world was overdue when it came to reference information. He conceived of a dot-com based on reference content that could be supported by advertising. And his team of experts in technology, sales, and marketing quickly brought Xrefer.com to life. Xrefer would have met the fate of 99 percent of dot-com start-ups if it had not been for two things: one, Adam’s team quickly realized that the advertising model wouldn’t be sustainable, and two, Adam found Bela Hatvany, who had twice before built worldwide companies that served libraries.

Why the name change from Xrefer to Credo?

It was at a RUSA President’s Program at ALA in 2005, where I appeared along with Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and four other panelists. A reference librarian said from the audience, “Don’t you all get it? Wikipedia, Google—these are fun words to say and are popular with students.” At that point, I was determined we’d get a new name. We wanted a name that stood for an important characteristic of our company and its products. “Credo” and its association with credible put a point on the fact that our information comes from authoritative sources.

Read the whole article here.

Here’s to many more years of providing high-quality reference content on an innovative platform!

Once again, staff members are Credo Reference are sharing what they are reading!

Sara Ortins says: “I am reading Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of The Namesake. This book is a compilation of eight short stories that take us from Cambridge to Seattle to India and Thailand, as they explore the secrets of family life. The stories dramatize the divide between immigrant parents and their American-raised children and explore the lack of deep-down understanding and trust in a marriage between a Bengali and a non-Bengali. The stories have left me just as satisfied as I am after reading a lengthy novel. Lahiri is able to expose the complexities of multiple characters all within a short story. As one reviewer commented, “ideal for people with limited time for pleasure reading and a hunger for serious literature.””

John Dove is reading a book recommended by Jenny Walker: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. He says: “It’s a fictional account of the lives of Channel Islanders during the 4 years that they were under German occupation and cut-off from both British and German societies until the War was over. It’s funny.”

Mike Sweet just finished listening to Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He states: “This book tells a different story about why certain people become extremely successful and others do not. Gladwell challenges the widely held notion that success solely comes from people being more naturally talented or just working harder than others. Among other things, it argues that luck, circumstance, and cultural background all play much bigger roles in success than is often believed. To emphasize its points, the book uses many fascinating examples taken from the lives of very famous and successful people.”

Mike also recently read Iron John by Robert Bly, and he says that it “offers an intriguing look at the factors influencing the development of the male psyche.”

Heather Blaine states: “I just finished Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. It’s a historical novel that looks at life in Seattle during WWII – particularly the treatment of Japanese-Americans. The story is told through the eyes of Henry Lee as a 12 year old in 1942 and as a widower in 1986. It’s a sad and beautiful story, I’ve been suggesting it to anyone and everyone who asks for a book recommendation!”

Right now, Heather is reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. She says that: “She’s writing about a year in which her family made the decision to be true locavores – growing and raising as much of their own food as possible and buying locally otherwise. I’ve only just started, but it’s fascinated me thus far.”

Heather is also very excited for the arrival (on her Kindle) of the newest Daniel Silva novel – she says: “it’s my guilty-pleasure summer read!”

The always-hilarious Anne Kail has just finished reading The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway.

Anne describes the arduous process: “I had to take a holiday to finish it. Over 500 pages. I never intended to read it, but I hate waste. I’d bought it for my partner, Mick Fortune, as Nick Harkaway is the nom de plume of the son of David Cornwell and that’s the nom de plume of John le Carré and Mick is a huge fan. But not of the son. I’d bought it, so it had to be read. Another good reason for using your library! I thought that the concept of The Gone-Away World itself was extraordinary, but then I don’t read (m)any post-apocalyptic war books. Like the curate’s egg, it was good in parts. And I’ve finished it! I’m free! Now what? Perhaps I’ll take a recommendation from one of my Credo colleagues. Wonder if any of them will want to read TGAW after reading this?!”

What have you been reading lately?

As my colleague Pete Ciuffetti wrote earlier this summer, Credo Reference recently instituted a new program challenging Credo employees to “Be Good, Do Good” both for our own health and for the good of others.

For my “Be Good, Do Good” I decided to get back on my bike – I had, once upon a time, spent a great deal of time cycling but in recent years let my lovely bike gather more dust than it deserved. To give myself more incentive to ride regularly and to push myself harder I decided to find and train for a 100-mile, or “Century” ride.

My criteria were pretty simple: a 100-mile, one-day ride here in New England that raised money for a cause I believed in. When I heard about The New England Parkinson’s Ride I knew I had found the perfect event. The ride takes place on September 12, 2009 and starts and ends in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. The ride offers three routes: 30, 50 and 100 miles – each a one-day ride. I’ll be doing the 100-mile loop with my youngest brother, Josh. Together we are hoping to raise over $1,000 for the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

My maternal grandmother, Helen Goldstein, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s when she was 68 and had been suffering from symptoms for a few years already. She was an amazing woman – creative, spunky, fashionable, energetic and oh so smart. Over the next 16 years the disease took more and more of her away from us until her passing in January 2005. I miss her every day and I do this ride to honor her spirit and memory.

Parkinson’s is a chronic, degenerative neurological disorder affecting 1 in 100 people over the age of 60. At present there is no known cure. The Michael J. Fox Foundation, beneficiary of my ride, is working aggressively toward finding a cure for Parkinson’s and improving the lives of Parkinson’s patients through research grants. To date they have funded over $149 million in research.

To learn more about the Michael J Fox Foundation, or to sponsor my ride, please go to http://www.teamfox.org/teamfox/blaine?faf=1&elid=2580208498

Image “bicycle“, from the Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide, on Credo Reference.

As a company, Credo Reference is focused on learning and libraries, so it should come as no surprise that its employees are avid readers. Many of us commute to work by train, which nicely affords us some time in the mornings and evenings to partake of a book – in some form. As you’ll see from below, we have very varied, even eclectic, tastes in literature. What follows is a roundup of what Credo employees are, or have recently, read.

Jim Slattery is reading Hellions: Pop Culture’s Rebel Women by Maria Raha. He says that: “It’s an easy-to-read take on recent pop culture and examines the roles of some of the most influential women such as Janice Joplin and Jane Fonda. Pretty good so far but I doubt this book is for serious historians of American culture, seems kind of light.”

Heather Blaine: “I’m reading two books concurrently, not unusual in this office I suspect. The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine (pen name of Ruth Rendell) – it’s a British-political-scandal / psychological thriller – very dry, very thoughtful, very good. The other book is New Moon, book two of the Twilight series. I started this in solidarity with my sister, an 8th grade language arts teacher who wanted to read the book her students are obsessed with. That’s why I started book one, Twilight, now I’m reading on because I can’t seem to stop! Oh, and the occasional essay from Secret Ingredients, a book of food-related essays from The New Yorker. All of this I read on my Kindle, making it very easy to queue up my next book!”

John Dove: “I’m reading Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Charles Dickens. I figured that since I wrote a paper about the benefits of reference publishers implementing a small piece of the semantic web and used, as an example, an exploration of Charles Dicken’s life in and around Doughty Street, that I’d read Ackroyd’s biography and see what he found out about Dicken’s during the years he lived there.”

Anne Kail is reading The Conqueror by Jan Kjaerstad (in translation from the Norwegian!)

Pete Ciufetti: “I’m reading The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. It’s fascinating to watch his development as a young scientist and to see how he analyzes the flora, fauna and geography. You can see that he hasn’t figured out the origin of species yet and reading along is like a favorite movie that you know the ending to. Its also amazing that he doesn’t get killed. He’s in almost constant danger from hostile Indians. Wild savages or natural disasters. There’s a reasonable chance that he wouldn’t have lived to tell his story.”

Jill Rosa is simultaneously reading, kindling and listening to these books:

Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, et al. (print) Learning to lead with emotional intelligence.

Be the Pack Leader by Cesar Millan, et al. (audiobook) Learning to lead with calm, assertive energy. It is not at all surprising that Cesar quotes Danial Goleman’s bestseller, Emotional Intelligence when talking about the characteristics required to be an effective pack leader to your dog.

Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values by Fred Kofman. (kindle edition). This is a book about effective human interactions and putting what should be common sense into common practice. It also explores personal and corporate responsibility. I’d bet that Fred Kofman has a well-behaved dog too.

Sara Ortins is reading This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. She says: “This book was a product of NPR’s program, This I Believe, which was kicked off in the 1950’s. Since then, essays have been collected from both famous and ordinary people. This book consists of some of the best essays received by producers. Reading this book has helped me examine my own “personal credo.”

As for me? I’ve recently finished The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine, by Benjamin Wallace. I found it to be an interesting look at a world I knew nothing about – that of very highly-priced, often very old, wines. I also found it fascinating how willing these wine connoisseurs were to simply disregard the historical facts and likely provenance of these bottles that they were paying many, many thousands of dollars for. I’ve just started The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl, which looks to be an interesting mash-up of mystery story and actual little-known historical details.

What have you recently read?

Earlier this year Credo Reference challenged its employees with a ‘Be Good, Do Good‘ program. Essentially the plan suggests we get off our butts and if we do something good for our health, anything almost, they’ll pitch in and donate to a cause of our choice.

My job involves sitting in front of a computer all day wondering how they work. This burns almost no calories. My closet is full of stuff that no longer fits.

The ‘Be Good, Do Good’ program is actually a follow-on to a longer running program at work called ‘Let’s Cook & Eat Goodies‘. Various really skilled bakers vying for culinary supremacy are constantly leaving piles of homemade tollhouse cookies, brownies and cupcakes in the office kitchen. I am unable to resist.

The combination of being immobilized for most of the work day, getting up only to grab yet another brownie, was too much. The Be Good, Do Good program was a possible way to combat its more sinister companion.

So I committed to bike to the office in Boston from my home in Concord—about 25 miles each way—once a week for the whole summer. And, since my wife Betsy has MS, I chose the 150-mile MS Cape Cod Bike Ride as my cause. My own monetary contribution will be $210 which I will earn by not buying my July commuter rail pass, using my bike to commute each day in July instead. And Credo will be chipping in $500 too!

If you want to find out more about the Multiple Sclerosis Society, or to sponsor my ride, please go to http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/peterc

Image “Poster advertising Gladiator bicycles and motorcycles” – find out more about it on Credo Reference.

We still haven’t finished January’s Cribbage Contest, but time must move on, and it’s time for March Madness! Most of the employees in the Boston office filled out their brackets, and we’ve been avidly tracking the results. Our scoring system is based on points:

1st Round: 1 pt per victory
2nd Round: 2pts per victory
3rd Round: 4pts per victory
Quarter finals: 8pts per victory
Semi finals: 16 pts per victory
Finals: 32 pts
Tie Breaker: Score of final game

With perpetual bragging rights on the line (or at least until next year), Nancy is currently in the lead with 53 points. Unfortunately, Pete is at the bottom of the standings with only 30 points. There is still plenty of time for upsets, though!