Here are some photos of our library, which was built in the early 1990s--I think 1992 or 94.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
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.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
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.
Monday, March 12, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, March 9, 2007
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.
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