On being a slug and Halloween wrappers

It's late, I haven't written in awhile and I am coming out of a week of sluggishness. I have worked hard to rid myself of the habit of procrastination...so I've been battling the beast--why when I live in a state that has 4 distinct seasons--a place I have lived in most of my life--do I find every year is as difficult an adjustment to the change of season/time as the one before. I love Fall but hate the change from summer energy into winter slug.

I have been reading lately--goes with slug behavior so it makes sense. I am listening to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on CD---what an awesome example of how YA literature is not always poorly written or formulaic (sp?). I always love hearing a good story. I felt the same way about listening to Laurie Halse Anderson's story Speak or Alice Sebold's Lucky. These stories are so helpful to me---I remember being intense and sensitive and reflective as a teenager. Why as a thirtysomething do I often think of them only as silly and shallow??? I am also reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter which is equally engaging.

As for work, the library is sweltering again. Now we have moved from AC or the lack of it to heat and the lack of need for it. Am I being prepped for a life in the tropics???? Anyway, we are entrenched in term paper season, so I find myself moving between Reconstruction and the Holocaust, Mary Shelley and Emily Dickinson. Actually, I just find myself moving. All the time. Nonstop. Did I mention I am exhausted? I love research...it is like an addiction for me...so it is difficult sometimes to be helping students who haven't caught on to it yet or will never be interested in it. Luckily, I have been blessed with patience and optimism.

Tomorrow...and the day after I will be battling Halloween candy wrappers that will escape me...despite that my keen ears can hear the crack of a soda can opening or a wrapper crackling, an occupational hazard (is hazard the right word? I certainly don't want to be that nasty librarian who is cold and unfeeling.) I am tired, so this doesn't make sense I am sure...I will still have fun on the worst day at this job so I don't want it to sound totally negative.

I guess I just wanted to write a post to make sure I have more than one in October, to make sure too much time doesn't get by me, to make sure I can hold on to something as time flies by.

BibMe, FixYa! and other contemplations

There's an irony to knowing that the AC gets fixed two days before a cold front passes through...but at least it's fixed!! Last week I was stumped by a TV that was stuck in Progressive Scan Mode, and today I fixed it in 2 seconds...it was great!!! I went to Google and typed in the problem and the brand of the TV. About 15 hits came up, and I ended up at FixYa!, which diagnosed the problem in a minute..not the TV, the DVD player. The fix? Take out the DVD and hold the Stop button for 5 seconds. Easy or what? Bring on the next problem...I am ready!
The AV issue is always problematic, and my favorite teacher response is"didn't they teach you this stuff in school?" Last I checked, library school doesn't have specific classes in how to program a DVD without the remote...mostly because noone returns the remote with the TV! It's a sensitive issue because, like nearly every school in the nation, when the district cut back from 2 to 1 librarian, the AV one got cut and technically it is not in my job description, but it needs to be maintained and protected. In my opinion, we need a clear plan for how to maintain our equipment--especially the LCD projectors that we have in the building. I am researching a solution with our tech guy to lock them down to the carts so that they don't walk. As they get smaller in size, they fit nicely into a backpack and can easily walk away.

I have to mention how happy I am that I found BibMe.org because yesterday it saved my life before grad school and my presentation on Libraries Serving Remote Users. I absolutely love how you can type in some of the information and then the site searches for the URL and finds the rest to fill in. What a time saver!! I was so wired last night after class from all of the fun stuff I am learning. The most interesting topics to me were the Handhelds, the Disaster Planning, and Wireless, and the EField Trips. I have been searching for Virtual Fieldtrips to recommend to my colleagues, and some of what was presented was pretty cool. It got me thinking and I am considering trying to put together some of my own from vacations that I have taken. Or at least consider how I photograph the future vacations I am planning on taking. The whole wireless thing mentioned WiMax, which is Sprint and Nextels merge to create the next step in wireless technology. To learn more about it go to Mobile-Tech-Today from CIO to read some articles on it. As for my topic, I am considering moving to the Cleveland area so I can be a part of CLEVNET, which is a library network that has huge remote offerings for its patrons. Check out the site:
http://dlc.clevnet.org/1E157477-78CB-4E7A-93F7-68443B4027E3/10/219/en/Default.htm . This library consortium offers e-books, audiobooks, videostreaming, and music downloads for remote users. WOW!!
Well, that's all for now. I realize that noone reads this blog--but I am okay with it; it has really become okay that I am only writing for myself and sometimes I write about stuff, read it later and realize I had forgotten about ideas or projects. I do get weirded out sometimes that I talk to people like they're really out there reading though. Anyway, I am exhausted...I just realized a bit ago that my son used the metal can opener as a hammer---vague recollections of noise while I was cooking dinner--and now my hardwood stairs and stair railing are dinged up--hence, this didn't go over well with my husband tonight. Maybe I can find a fix at FixYa! I'll have to Google it. If not, as my daughter says to her kindergarten teacher, "Tomorrow is another day!" Yes, and in my case, it will be another day doing a job I totally love.

Where'd I Put My Sense of Humor?

This week we have had HSPA make up testing in the library so I have been able to catch up on my professional reading and do some planning for library programs. We are still battling the heat---this is our 3rd or 4th week without AC and I am starting to feel the effects. I try to find the humor in it---Dante could use this place for research on the sequel to The Inferno (yes, I know he is dead), etc., but I am starting to lose my mind a bit. It would be different if the windows opened. I am getting a lot of comments about "back in the day when there was no AC...yes, I remember those days since I never in nine years taught in a classroom that had air conditioning and I taught one year in the tropics--give me some windows that open and I am quite capable of perserverance!

On a positive note, both the HSPA and the heat have gotten me out of the space and into other classrooms for some 9th grade history orientations. I mostly cover database use and some of the features of printing and citing from the databases. I also cover what sites are best--gov, edu, org and sites that still have human editing like directories and Librarian's Index to the Internet and Internet Public Library, which are two of my favorite sites.

I did find a citation builder this year that I like besides www.citationmachine.net . It's called BibMe! at www.bibme.org . If you choose Manual Entry Mode, I think it is clearer and more aesthetically pleasing to use than Citation Machine. Sorry, David Warlick :(

The magazines have all been organized and the routing schedule has been established. This year we have over 15 teachers involved in our magazine routing service, and over 12 different magazines being routed. In the spring I asked for suggestions and got some very good ones from the staff. I particularly like Discover, Inc, and Cuisine-at-Home. I was disappointed by FamilyFun, which I thought would be great for staff who have families since it is from Disney. It's not bad, but it is not as good as I thought it would be.

Teen Read Week is October 14-21 this year and the theme is LOL at your library. When I went searching through our catalog to find humor books, I realized we are seriously deficient in the most obvious of choices provided by ALA --which led me to think about the last time I laughed out loud. Suffice it to say that, except for the occassional giggle, I am a bit devoid of humor in my life. Time to watch some Jack Black--maybe School of Rock???? Yes, it is a favorite. Please send some suggestions as I can't even remember what is funny anymore!! Except for my own kids--though even they haven't been making me laugh hard enough to make my stomach hurt. I welcome any suggestions--for reads or flicks that might bring some much needed laughter to my life :) I actually did find other web sites that had great humor booklists for teens, making me realize that humor is kind of an individual thing. Here are some links to some I found: http://sfpl.lib.ca.us/sfplonline/teen/booklists/teenhumornew.htm and http://www.scld.org/teens_booklist.asp and http://teens.denverlibrary.org/find/genre/humor.html .

Right now, we have a student worker for one block a day who is helping me with a weeding project. We have so many old videos that haven't circulated in a long time--some are old high school events that I definitely want out of the catalog. Hopefully after this long project is done, I will be able to resubmit my collection to Follett and see if we are moving closer to a collection age within 10 years of 2007. I took on weeding the 300s but had to stop because of the heat and other things of greater urgency.

One thing we are talking about doing here is creating a place in Outlook to schedule our computer labs. If that works then we will look into scheduling equipment as well. I think it will be a great way to utilize existing programs to make our job easier and more efficient. Of course, it has to go through the technology dept...so we will see.

In an effort to hold true to my promise to myself, I also sent the library's web page url to www.school-libraries.net , the site founded by Peter Milbury. I included this blog separately in the personal interest pages. Still not exactly sure how much my job and my opinions can diverge. Hopefully it will help me check out some sites and put names to faces when I go to the conference (NJASL) in November.

Weeding: An essential task in collection maintenance

This week I managed to get half of the new nonfiction books I purchased onto the shelves. To do this I moved the 800s, cleaned all the shelves in the 800s and added the new books. I also weeded many books from the beginning 300s and will clean those shelves and add the new books. I took all of the old titles out of the computer and prepared them for discard. I am only weeding books that were published before 1970 that haven't circulated in the last 7 years or books that are damaged, faded, and falling apart. I still can't believe no one weeded these shelves, though I do know efforts were made at one point. The big task is going to be the 600s. Something is wrong with one of the chillers in the library and they are waiting for the part, so the working conditions have been terrible--by afternoon no one can work in the space. I am hopeful that the temperature will improve during this week.

This week I also went through all of my web resources from CJRLC and LII. I handed out different web sites to the staff for their content areas. I also discovered some that I liked. One of them was www.pagebull.com which is a search engine that displays the opening page of each of its result list so that you can see whether that page would be helpful to your search. I really liked using it. I compared the results with Google and found that the quality of the results were similar. I also discovered some teacher sites, which I will include in the next entry.

For grad school this week, I am preparing my casestudy rough draft. I have to include a whole bunch of data and information about the school, area, and the media center itself. I measured the space and discovered it is around 5,000 square feet, which I could be wrong about, because it is shaped as an arc---not quite as easy as measuring a box. I also have been looking over policies and procedures and realize that they are kind of old and outdated---another project to work out. For this past week's class, I had to investigate software and hardware web sites/programs. I got to play with Picasa, Google's photo management and editing program. I also reviewed www.mobiletechtoday.com --which is an online site dedicated to providing up-to-the-minute news on what's happening in mobile technology tools. It was interesting, but way above my expertise. I will stick with Picasa!

A New School Year Begins

In late August I visited the Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C. with my kids. One display there continues to run through my brain. A display of a huge Emu-like bird with an explanation of how increased isolation led to increased physical size in the species and a lack of flight due to lack of predators. I come back to that display often while starting the new school year, continually drawing the same conclusion: I don't want to be an Emu! I didn't expect to continue this blog, even though I enjoyed the Tech Challenge and am planning to do the second one also. I am still unsure about blogging...for me. Honestly, what has drawn me back is the thousand thoughts I have a day about stuff that I really can't share with anyone else in my building and perhaps can only share with one other person in my district. But no matter how great even that person is, a varied opinion is needed after awhile. That's also why I am back in school working on the last 6 classes towards my MLS. I miss talking shop with someone. I am sure that many would disagree, but in my circumstance, the school library can be a lonely place. Maybe I will see it differently after awhile. Last year I still had a teacher-centered mentality. But teachers don't all see M.S. as teachers--especially here since there is only one--with all the management and administrative tasks, the teaching has moved to the back burner. My overactive brain struggles from time to time with where I fit in here. New district, new position. My more rational side says, "don't overthink, just keep forging ahead!" So I will, but I am going to set a goal for myself to reach out and make contact with other school media specialists to avoid feeling lonely.

In other news, I finished last June inventorying the entire library, something that hasn't been done in more than six years. Our tech guy was able to make me a portable cart to move throughout the stacks so that I could scan the books and make updates. I was able to do a lot of the inventorying during AP exams and final exams in June. That made me realize though just how much weeding needs to be done. There are so many old books in this library...I get frustrated thinking about how many years no one weeded these shelves. Now that I have ordered new books, I am having trouble fitting them on the shelves until I weed. Unfortunately, I am starting the school year without a secretary since she has been pulled to help every day in another part of the building. I know that many people don't have support help, but here it is essential. Our library seems massive. It is difficult to be in the back of the library and monitor doors and equipment in the front of the library. So getting into the stacks to work will have to wait for the moment.

Last year I also reevaluated our magazines and polled the staff. They gave me a list of new titles--more parenting, more general reading periodicals for kids to read. I added a title for people with ADD. More specific titles to recharge the staff's interest in their content areas. We are going to continue our magazine routing service to the staff since it was successful last year. I think there will be more people participating since we've got lots of new titles.

So far the students who have been in the MC have been very focused and courteous. I miss the big groups that I built up last year during lunches...hopefully they'll be back this year. Tomorrow we are putting up our Hispanic Heritage Month display, me and the student worker we have for the last block of the day. We were able to get all the new and freshman student IDs made this year more efficiently by working with the technology department to have the names inputted earlier. Same with our database for the library. Last year was a nightmare. Overall, I am pleased with what I accomplished last year and feel confident that I will accomplish a lot this year as well.

CJRLC Tech Mtg. Reflections

I learned so much from attending the tech meeting yesterday. It was so cool to know what is happening out in the world of the Internet and how we can keep up with the information using RSS feeds. I'll definitely be back on Bloglines adding more feeds from some of the places Robert Lackie suggested. Since I am a total believer in libraries as equalizers, I really liked knowing how much of what we saw yesterday can be located for free using JerseyClicks and other databases that are provided for free through the state library. I need to really evaluate the periodicals that we get in paper form and will be cutting back on many of the ones that don't seem to be read. We (hopefully) will be subscribing to Gale's Elite 500 package also next year, which will give us access to many of the periodicals that we receive in print form now plus many that aren't included in EBSCO. One idea that has worked well, that I took from the middle school, was to circulate our magazines out of the library to the staff, which has increased our readership a great deal. At least 15 teachers/staff have participated in this program.

Since it could possible take me all day just to write this one entry in between helping staff and students, I will just end it with the links to the websites that Robert Lackie gave us yesterday. His website wwww.robertlackie.com contains many interesting articles on Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and educational resources. The PPT presentation can be found at the following link: http://leto.rider.edu/~rlackie/exploring/webtoolbox5-2007.ppt. In a nutshell, the things that I am going to put my time into learning more about are Zuula, Exalead, Clusty, and especially the Wayback Machine, which is part of the Internet Archive, the group that is spearheading the universal digital library project. Information on all of these tools is available via the power point.

I was too shy to take any photos of the presentation or of Robert Lackie; I guess no one feels they need to ask permission anymore at these gatherings, but I still feel funny just taking the pictures. So after the presentation finished, I headed out into the library and went to the Children's Section. It is phenomenal--beautifully designed with scenery indicative of the shores of Monmouth County. While the library itself wasn't, in my opinion, as visually interesting as the Mercer County branches are, they do have some features at Monmouth County headquarters, like a snack bar and tables where people can meet and talk outside in the lobby that I am sure add a "bookstore" feel to the library. So it is taking me some time to text the pics to the blog. So there will be more as the day goes on.

There Was Human Life Out There...and I Missed Them!

Duh. This is the part where I realize that I am really naive at this blogging stuff. I was walking around thinking noone would ever read this blog...and of course, who would because I have been too afraid to give the url to anyone :) and today I realized that a month ago that a persona actually posted comments to me! So there was human life out there and I missed it! I'll be sure not to make that mistake again!!

So my mother called me yesterday to tell me she was watching GMA and saw how young professionals are using blogging in their jobs, and out of curiosity she decided to Google me. She said she found my blog and was very interested. Beside the other person, thanks Janice Painter at PPL aka librarylvr for your comments, I can now say my mother has joined the ranks in my readership. Yahoo!! Knowing my mother, she will have her own blog and a large readership within 2 months of her reading mine! (JK Mom!)

Speaking of my mother, she has been perusing Squidoo as well, since she read about it here. Mom, why don't you post a comment?

Tech Group Meeting Today in Manalapan

The CJRLC Tech Group will meet today at Monmouth County Library Headquarters in Manalapan, featuring a presentation by Robert Lackie of Rider University entitled The Web Search Toolbox. It is supposed to be practical tips and techniques designed to help you make more effective web searches. I am excited just to be in the same room with Robert Lackie, since I have heard so much about him. He is also a contributor to the Library Garden blog that I like to read and have subscribed to receive RSS feeds to through bloglines. To learn more about the Tech Group, you can go to their blog at: http//cjrlctech.blogspot.com/ To read the blog Library Garden, go to www.librarygarden.blogspot.com

I get really excited about any of these free meetings as it is a great way to network and meet new people around NJ. Since school districts in NJ are in such financial hardship, it is really essential that between library school programs and cooperatives and state offerings, we are able to participate in some of these workshops. In this year alone, I have learned more information about Flickr, RSS, movie making software, Web 2.0, blogging, collection development/reader's advisory, among other topics I can't remember at the moment. I am so hungry to learn more about my profession, and so thankful to have so many really cool library people within an hour of my school to talk to and use as resources!

RSS Feeds via Bloglines and Potpourri

Today I created a bloglines account and subscribed to some blogs via bloglines. I would like to know if I can have them posted to my blog, but I am not sure how to do it. Will wait for a response. I can see how I could get easily overwhelmed by reading feeds. I only clicked two categories on the suggested links that Bloglines provides and ended up with 10-12 different sites. I quickly scaled back to get myself started with only a few blogs, like LibraryGarden, Pop Goes the Library, and The Shifted Librarian. I need to hunt up some school library blogs.

Things we've been doing around here lately include crowd control (kids get rowdy when the weather changes), manual inventory (even in this day/age we are resorting to pencil and paper--sad but true!), renegotiating database subscriptions for next year and increased fees for our circulation system. Cleaning up records and collection development--both have been fun. I love looking at Sets and Series in Titlewave and finding things that will add to our collection. I inventoried the small section of 100s. B did the Biographies. Currently we have AP testing in the MC so we have been given kid-free time to get some of this work done.

Google Earth and Map

Lest people think all I do is whine, I have reserved some positive remarks for Google Map and Google Earth. In my house, we adore Google Earth. It's a shortcut on the desktop! We have the best time going to addresses in other countries where we have lived and looking at how things have changed and where roads now lead. My husband, who is from another country, loves the fact that he can locate our home in his country--when it is so remote that it doesn't even show up on a regular map. My daughter was fascinated when we showed her where her grandparents lived and required some explaining as to why she couldn't see the front or back of the house, only the rooftop. My husband and a friend who came to stay with us spent over an hour looking at the town that our friend was going to move to in Utah--switching between the street map and the satellite--they had the best time in a way I don't think I will ever understand except to say that brain research shows men's brains are very spatially oriented and therefore I can get why they get into Google Earth on that level. We've been exploring it by using it to locate the towns of our Aupair candidates in South America. It is kind of fun to feel like you know a bit about where they come from while you are talking to them.

Anyone who wants to check out Google Earth can do it at http://earth.google.com/. Something really cool to do is check out the 3D buildings of America in Google Showcase: http://earth.google.com/showcase/

Squidoo Lens

Squidoo--what is it? According to its creators, most of us are overwhelmed by what we see on the web, which they believe may desensitize us from taking action because it takes us so long to poke around and become informed. So their alternative is Squidoo, where one can peruse groups and look at lens that are created by people who are interested/passionate about a particular topic enough to pull resources on that topic onto one page or lens. It is interactive because other people can chime in on what they think on the topic and the lens itself, and Squidoo even mentions that people may get paid for the recommendations they provide on materials purchased by others. I have no idea yet how that works. My basic frustration is that at school the computers are so slow that Squidoo does not inform me, it frustrates me as I try to narrow my search of its lens and groups. I haven't looked at it enough to know if I think I would use it all the time. I think it could be fun to spend time in some of the groups, but I would probably just put the links into delicious and use them from there or a favorites page. If I am missing something here, and anyone actually reads my blog and cares to share it with me, I would appreciate it. So far, here's what I have found:

I spent some time exploring Squidoo and the lens related to parenting and children. Here are some of the ones that I thought would be appropriate to mention on my blog:

1. Tips for Teens on MySpace http://www.squidoo.com/TipsforTeensonMySpace/. This lens seemed worthwhile to me--informative and well-planned.
2. Children's Books http://www.squidoo.com/groups/childrensbooks
3. Children's Authors and Illustrators http://www.squidoo.com/groups/childrensauthors
4. The Wonder of Girls http://www.squidoo.com/groups/girls. This is a moderated group that focuses on lens celebrating raising strong, healthy daughters.

There were several others that interested me as well, but after looking through them, the quality of the lens varies so much, I am not sure that I would want to spend hours searching through them. Apparently, if you go to www.squidoomadeeasy.com you can get free help on becoming a "Master Lensmaster".

I think I will peruse this sparingly!

Delcious and Squidoo

I should just email my blog entries since I am so far behind on my blog. I have been using delicious and find it quite easy to use, except that it is not set up properly for use at school so it takes me a lot longer to use. I think once my head is above water in this job and I can actually just search around for some of the stuff that the teachers need instead of relying on what comes through outside sources, then it will be easier--I feel pressure to add so many sites daily. Anyone who wants to see my delicious site can see it at http://del.icio.us/ellendavila . Right now it is basically sites that Phyllis from CJRLC sends me daily and what I get from LII. You can see Phyllis's list of favorite sites in the on-line copy of the CJRLC newsletter at http://www.cjrlc.org/Newsletter/newsletter.htm and you can get to Librarian's Index to the Internet at http://www.lii.org and join their newsletter, which posts on Thursdays. I have had a lot of the teachers rave about sites that they have seen on the LII newsletter. I send that to them directly using a distribution list. Yesterday I went to squidoo.com. I am not sure what I think about it yet. I kind of get it, but I wasn't that impressed with what I saw. I decided to look more into the lens that focus on religion and parenting since they might spark my interest more. I will play with that more and write about it again.

It's Been A Long Time!

Wow! it has been a long time since my last post. I spent some time before our school break working with delicious and found that it is taking me longer to do things from school because I don't have the authority to set up my computer completely the way that I would like to make tagging easier. Still I am perservering, reminding myself that once it is set up, next year it will be a snap to keep myself organized and to add to my favorites. After looking at the email that Roz sent to us regarding the Tech Challenge, I spent some time this morning perusing others blogs as well. Ironically, I spent this school break coming to terms with the fact that I won't accomplish all that I set out to do this school year and letting go of much of my anxiety about how much I know and still have to learn about my job. I have to keep it in check when I look at other people's blogs--they have so much to say, and seem to say it so well. I have to keep reminding myself that I am new and not going to set the world ablaze in my first year. I did enjoy the library garden blog and enjoyed reading Janie Hermann's entry on gratitude, hugs, and chocolate. I have to say I have had a few moments like those this first year here at Ewing, so I can say that I love my job beyond that I just love to develop the collection and love organization! I know my weakest area is programming right now--I didn't really set any goals this year except to get to know the patrons and to learn what is popular here. But programming is what public librarians thrive on, and I know from my time at MCL Lawrence that it was a huge part of what I loved as a youth services assistant. I guess my point in this post is that I am treading water this year, but loving it. Metaphorically speaking, I hope to make it to the island of summer break and have some time to relax, reflect, and plan for the next school year.

Ewing High School Media Center Photos

Here are some photos of our library, which was built in the early 1990s--I think 1992 or 94.

Mattering in the Blogosphere

The March 07 copy of American Libraries cover story features, "Mattering in the Blogosphere: Observations from the Well-Connected." Since I had been wondering if doing this is really worth anything because I doubt anyone is really going to read it, I quickly turned to this story and was excited to see some familiar names from librarianship that I had learned about from my web travels and from my Foundations class. Some things that I took away from the article were that blogging provides a forum for discussing issues that aren't discussed in the mainstream (Librarian at the Kitchen Table) such as unions and librarys' connections to human rights issues, that blogging provides a place for humor (Goblin in the Library), and that blogging can connect those who are working in rural, often technologically underfunded communities with a larger community (Librarian.net). To quote a few responses, "When you're open and honest and allow people to participate, they really feel more attached to what you're doing. Librarians need to let go of their fear of losing control and of using a less-than-perfect system" (Blake Carver, LISNews). "The other thing I'd really like to see is biblioblogs that interact more with their communities. It would be interesting to have a public library blog with the local government or a school media specialist blog with a class of students, that type of interaction" (Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian). Actually, one of my brainstorms has been that there could be many students in my school who would love to blog about reading and books, but since we have a no blogging policy in my district, it becomes an issue that needs to be discussed and considered. After visiting each of these people's blogs, I realize that some of my issue with blogging stems from my present state of mind. I am in the middle of my first year of my first full-time library job and am finding that I am in a mental whirlwind--I don't really know what I know and I don't really know what I think about everything that is happening or not happening around me. In some ways stepping out and actually blogging would help me define my beliefs and reach out to other people. One of the aspects of a school media specialist position that I didn't forsee is the isolation and loneliness factor of being in a library when I am new to the school and only know a few people on staff. There are days when I hardly speak to anyone--beyond learning of their AV needs, since there aren't too many opportunities to get out into the rest of the school. I'm gaining insight into how Web 2.0 is helping many librarians to fight isolation and the resulting disconnect from the rest of their colleagues. I think if I could have a blog that focused mainly on popular reading and book discussion and even magazines, that would be more my thing--I am not ready to break into all of the politics of librarianship.

Ok, I think that I finally have figured out how to use the email to blog function. On other tech notes, Alexandria is still causing major headaches and T will not be happy when we tell him what craziness is going on, since he likes patterns and there doesn't seem to be one right now. Since there is HSPA makeup testing in the library this week, I might find some time today to try out delicious and incorporate all of the websites I keep getting from Phyllis at CJRLC and also from LII.

Mobile Blogger

Wow! I'm trying new stuff refers to my learning that I can send text messages that I can claim when I log in to Blogger and then have them post to my blog. Of course, I had to try this. Next I will try sending a photo to my blog. All of this I discovered while trying to figure out how to post via email, a technology I am much more comfortable with.

Wow! im trying new stuff!

Wow! im trying new stuff!

Digital Scrapbooking

(I am trying to do most of my blogging out of school and after hours, but I am having a problem with my firewall at home or cookies--until I resolve it and/or figure out how to post directly via email--I will email to school and then post. Thus, the dates and times will be wrong for a while. These entries were from Saturday morning around 7:30 am, when I was up way too early with my kids :) )

Last night I had 7 people over to learn about digital scrapbooking via Creative Memories and I am going to get hooked on their storybook product. All the guilt of being years behind on Nevin’s birthday pages will be gone, especially knowing I can create the pages while sitting on the sofa watching tv with my husband, thus making it a bit easier to be all things to all people. By bringing my laptop on our family vacation to Guatemala, I can even create the pages on a daily basis and have my sister-in-laws contribute their journal boxes, with the intent of publishing a book that is a reflection of the whole family. Of course part of me thinks immediate process means lack of reflection time, but the alternative is looking at photos and guessing how old the kids were when the photo was taken. Actually that doesn’t have to be the alternative, but it presently is. The download for Storybook is free and 20 page books (bound, sewn) start at $40, which is very reasonable. They also have a Memory Manager, which I was digging b/c it reminds me of Flickr in the way you sort, tag, and group your photos. It made cropping and editing photos very easy and will save each revision of the photo you make. It can store one photo in multiple groups, so you don’t have to remember to physically move them anywhere. You can sort by many different categories, including time, date, and name. You can find photos down to the day you took them or uploaded them. This was good for people like us, who are either 1) lazy—in my case or 2) can’t agree on how the photos should be organized and end up with folders that don’t make any sense. Of course, with multiple kids there can be a question of where to put the picture…. There are other products and companies on the Internet that do the same thing for about the same price, but since I’ve been a CM customer and die-hard scrapper for several years now, I will go with this one---it doesn’t hurt to get it for free b/c I had the party :). I asked the CM consultant what future retreats will look like—will we all be bringing our laptops and digitally scrapbooking instead of lugging more scrap supplies than regular luggage to the conference center? Her reply, more time for the fun stuff---facials, massages, etc. I can’t disagree with that :).

In other technology reflections, Alexandria went wacko yesterday. Kids returned books and they were clearly in the system when they checked the books out, but they weren’t in there when they returned them. T was working on the system yesterday and decided to run a program that hadn’t been run in a year. The problem is mainly with the 9th graders, who are just now being added to our system. We had been putting them in by hand, which was quite troublesome when 15 from a class are lined up to check out books for research. Also, b/c we didn’t all enter them exactly the same—mostly b/c I am still learning—b/c B is fastidious in her work, so retrieving them has some times been problematic. The whole thing with Alexandria is that to learn it you have to use it, and the number of students using books versus checking them out is significant. In today’s world, if they can copy the pages for free, why take the book out? There is a way to track book use in Alexandria (even if they don’t go out) but I have to look into my notes on how to do it. Basically, though, the real problem with Alexandria is that each school is using a different version so when we call for help to FMS, they tell us something that works for them, but may not work for us. The other thing is that the physical catalog needs so much work---inventory hasn’t been done in years, it could take significant hours to get the catalog back into good shape and also to update the subject fields for many records since Follett and B&T provide only limited cataloging. This also requires the use of Sears and Dewey but really to my mind, requires me to also talk to the teachers about the keywords they use with their students so that we can make sure the kids can find the books by keywords the teacher’s use. I know Dewey purists would roll over in their graves, but in my mind, things in Alexandria aren’t set up to search the exact way they are at MCL (the closest library they know), so kids won’t automatically become familiar with the Sears subject headings. In the past there was one person who mostly only did the one job of entering addl subject headings. Now there are two of us doing everything, and as I see it a huge problem that school libraries face is as they reduce funding/staffing, the expectation is that fewer people will be doing the same level of work that was done previously. Something always has to suffer in that equation and at Ewing it is the collection maintenance and the catalog that have suffered. One person can not maintain the space, no matter how empty or full it may look on a daily basis. How to educate those who don’t understand that is a challenge I and many face currently.

Getting Started

Well, I finally got this thing set up, which was no easy task, despite Blogger's claim that they've made it as easy as possible. Managing a Flickr account with Yahoo and a Blogger account with Gmail + school and personal email accounts ends up being too many usernames for me to keep track of. But here I am. A blog. About how I am managing and learning to use the various technologies that are part of Web 2.0. Time seems to be the biggest constraint for me, since I sort of know how to use them, but don't know them well enough yet to really make them work efficiently. So far I have posted some pictures of our school library to Flickr and have explored other people's pics of their libraries. If anyone had told me that at age 35 I would enjoy looking at pics of libraries on the Internet, let alone touring libraries on my vacation, I would have said they were crazy. And yet, it has become a pasttime, one most of the people in my life don't understand. Sometimes I am skeptic about this whole Flickr thing, though, in my current capacity in a high school library--I mean, who really will be interested in my photos of various displays around the library. I haven't been doing much programming (that is a goal for year 2-3) and we can't put pictures of kids up without a media release (aka a lot of hassle), so what is the point? It's like the tree falling in the forest with noone to hear it-- of course, my pics and these words mean something to me, but should they be seen and read by others? Does that change what I write here if I think others will read it? I guess I should stop thinking and just experience this whole thing to see where it takes me.