fun books found while checking DDC

Going Dutch in Beijing : how to behave properly when far away from home by Mark McCrum: apparently giving someone the finger is impolite everywhere. Thumbs up is rude in Iran (it means “sit on it.”)

Richard Renaldi : figure and ground (photographs) I love the cover shot, of a woman holding a rose, a water bottle peeking out of her “New York” purse.

Art of the knife / Joe Kertzman Not a book I would have ever even looked at had it not come across my desk. But beautiful–who knew? And a little DDC trivia–739.72 is for “edged weapons,” but interdisciplinary works on knives go under 621.432. The text on the back cracks me up: “Page after page, Art of the Knife delivers!” “It’s a parade of pearl, ivory, mammoth tooth, damascus, silver wire, exotic wood, diamonds, rubies and more. It will definitately be a conversation piece when displayed on your coffee table…” I don’t have a coffee table, but if I did, I’m not sure what it would say about me if “Art of the Knife” was taking up prime coffee table real estate…but, if your library has this, take a look, the knives are AMAZING.

yes i changed the theme

and once I start taking pictures again, maybe I’ll get a more exciting header…I’ll keep you posted (pun noted.)

all was quiet…

I know at some point I’m going to run out of “quiet” related post titles, and that will probably be a GOOD thing, but for now…

So…I’ve been doing a “post every day” challenge on my other blog, hence I have been ignoring this one.

It’s April and boy oh boy, summer is upon us! Most of our Summer Reading programming is already mapped out. I need to brush up on the Evanced software, as I will be doing most of the Admin functions for our library this summer. This will be our second summer using Evanced as our summer reading software, but our library’s fifth year using online registration/programming.

My mom is doing a program on Monarch butterflies at our library in August and we’re offering it to a few neighboring libraries in a two day window. There will be many emails sent by me that read like this: ”No, that time won’t work, how about this time?,” or “I’m sorry, there are no more time slots available.” My boss says it’s good training for management.

I added a new link to my “librarian” links on the blogroll: The FISH Bits, a blog written by our Scholastic representative, Brad Fish. His tagline is “thoughts and ideas on creating great school and public libraries.” So far it looks wonderful.

Books I’ve read and loved in the past week (or so): YA fiction: Sweethearts by Sara Zarr (I wept and wept at the end…); YA non-fiction: Body Drama by Nancy Redd (a let-it-all-hang-out health guide for the adolescent girl, with photographs);  Juv fiction: A crooked kind of perfect by Linda Urban (oh, this is such a great book–it lifted my heart.) Here’s a question: do you call it Juv or J Fic or Children’s? I was giving a tour to some Boy Scouts about a month ago and he asked me what the J stood for. When I said Juvenile, he said, that’s the bad kids (as in juvenile delinquents, which is a connotation that had not occurred to me.)

Oh, and today I voted online in the ALA elections. A little bizarre to do that the day after the Pennsylvania primaries. I’m a poll worker, so I was at the polls yesterday from 6:45 a.m. to 8:45ish p.m. I’m not a real political person, (although I can get swept up in it) so I figure working the polls is one way that I can be involved.

Well, I have some emailing to do before I leave, so until next time…

Happy National Library Week!

I am going to be swamped this week, what with Library Week festivities, a book group meeting, and this morning, a “strategic planning” meeting. But here’s a link to the ALA page…

I really like the poster this year.

GAH, gotta go!!

more on PLA…

So I’m just transcribing my notes here…I know this is not the way to “brand my blog” but that will come in time. Right now, I have a deadline and fuzz in my brain, and so transcribe I will…

The first session I attended at PLA was the only one I absolutely HAD to attend. I mean, as a librarian who sings with six month olds, I couldn’t not atttend something called Clap! Shake! Play! Sing! Creating musical storytimes to encourage emergent literacy.

I seriously am considering getting the $99 set of PLA audios…

Okay, pop quiz, no looking: what are the six standards of early literacy skills?

1. Print Motivation (she chews on books instead of her stuffed bear)
2. Vocabulary (her first words are moo laa laa and good night moon)
3. Print Awareness (she knows which is the first page, she holds the book right side up.)
4. Letter awareness. (When you ask her “What letter is that?” she responds ”It’s a L!”)
5. Narrative skills (She can tell a story)
6. Phonological Skills.

Here’s an early literacy link from the Hennepin County library (that’s Minnesota, where I was for PLA!

The two librarians (from California, their names HERE) do the musical storytimes in between their normal storytime sessions (So if they do six weeks of normal storytimes and take a 3 week break, in that three week break they’ll do the musical storytimes, as it takes man (or woman) power to hand out instruments, play with puppets, etc.

Their storytimes have two parts:

1. Books, Action Rhymes
2. Distribute shakers, bells, handdrums

They did a bunch of books. I’ll list those later. Or maybe I’ll just link my post from the PLA blog…

On with the next. Oh, it is so hard to look at notes from over two weeks ago…

So I’ll go back to the Web 2.0 session. Because I can’t get excited writing about disconnected youth right now.  Forgive me if I write in fragments…

Web 2.0 isn’t really a technological phenomenon; it’s a social one enabled by technology (Jen Manay)

Jen had an amazing power point. I’ve never seen someone be such a part of their powerpoint–usually you can take either the person or the powerpoint and you’ll get all the info. But the way she did hers, you needed both–she was actively participating in the technology. She’d say, will everyone love this? and she’d flip the slide: “Maybe.” It was like the powerpoint was the punchline.

She talked about how individual Web 2.0 is: no one can make the decision for you. You have to try stuff and see if it works, see if people buy into it, if you get participants, traffic. If not, stop it! If your blog is lonely, do something else, because “lonely is bad.” She talked about an online poetry forum her library tried for Nat’l Poetry month–it bombed. They had three people!

My notes are such a sad substitute…

quote from Steve Abrams “Web 2.0 cannot be explained in abstract.”

We need to design for uncertainty, experiment, play.

If you’re going to have an “emerging technologies team” you need self-proclaimed luddites on board–these are the people that will ask all the so-what questions before you in all your enthusiasm say “this is it!” and then bomb. Talk back and forth. Because you can’t do it all.

The main thing (and I know, I’m preaching to the choir) is that it’s not going away. Ignoring it will not make it go away.

At Pima County, they found that web 2.0 stuff worked better when it was tied to a library program.

2.0 = moving toward a conversation.

Okay, I think I might try to do some non-PLA-notes related work.

stomping and tiptoeing on a Saturday morn…

So this morning I read about how to get around the WSJ’s fee “curtain” at the librarian in black, read all the comments, emailed it to my father, who gets his morning coffee at Panera because they have the WSJ as their morning paper. (He used to go to Starbux, but he can get the NYT online already.) As I forwarded the article, I wondered what fiscal chaos I was putting upon Panera…

Then I found out why so many of Jen Weiner’s books feature lawyers: her hubbie is one. His article about democracy and campaign finance which is also really about net-neutrality is wonderful, talking about how the Internet levels the playing field, which is something I didn’t mention yesterday when I moaned about the digi-divide. (And while we’re on the topic of yesterday’s post, let me say that the point of the FABULOUS Web 2.0 workshop I attended was “look, cool stuff! Use it.” So they weren’t wrong to not talk about the digi-divide, but I wish that someone at PLA had planned a session that talked about it.)

My cell phone alarm keeps letting me know I’ve “slept” past my getting up time. It’s so much easier, though, than a clock radio, as I have limited electrical outlets in my garret apartment.

The opening line to Bonin’s article (that’s Jen’s man) pulls you in: “While the outcome of the primaries and the presidential election is still uncertain, one clear victor in the 2008 presidential campaign is the Internet.” It’s a good read. Not as good as Certain Girls will be, once I get my hands on a copy, but pretty good for a guy.

This post, which has an interview with a Swedish blog, is why I love Jen.

Well, I should get off to starting my day. More on PLA to come, I’m sure. If all great writing is re-writing, then this blog will probably never be my best work…but it’s good to have a place to play, to experiment, to communicate.

Saturdays are when I go beyond my usual “checking Dewey numbers” to actual problems that have been on my desk all week. Off I go.

quietly, slowly, tiptoeing–STOMP! (thoughts on PLA)

So it is time for me to expound on all that I’ve learned at the Public Library Association conference–the notes that I write out will go to my colleagues, my bosses, and the library board. I want to be succcinct but deep, witty and worldly, humble and…perfect.

Yes, I am caught in the perfection cycle. So since I can’t have any more coffee today (I’ve had two cups) and I have one more hour on the desk in Children’s, I’ll post some thoughts here, in the hopes that it will help me in finishing my report.

Besides, what is it that I so firmly applauded in the Web 2.0 session? “Throw out the culture of perfect.”

So a few thoughts about PLA. I loved it. From the long walk (with suitcases) from the Light Rail to the hotel, to the early morning breakfasts at the Holiday Inn, getting to hear John Wood (from the front row, thankyouverymuch), getting to hear some Web 2.0 gurus (Michael Stephens, Jan Maney (Pima County Public Library), and Jon Blyberg (Darien Library)), checking my coat (the best $2 I spent every day) and on and on…

I think what I came away with are some dichotomous (is that a word) thoughts: I adored the Web 2.0 session, but it didn’t address the percentage of homes in the U.S. that do not have Internet access (which in 2004 was 8.4, but that’s still a lot of people.) (I am a bad statistician, but here goes: 2007 U.S. population estimated at 3 hundred million. If the 8.4% figure holds, and I have no idea if the digital divide has gone up or down since 2004, that would be 25 million people with no home access to the Internet.) That’s a lot of people. That’s two times the amount of people that live in my state, Pennsylvania (based on 2006 figures.) That’s almost the 2006 population of Texas (23 million.)

So my two favorite sessions (Web 2.0 and John Wood’s opening address) live on the opposite sides of the railroad tracks. On the one side, we have a big house, where one person has a laptop, a cell phone, a PDA (maybe a cell phone that is a PDA), an iPod, and a subscription to NetFlix. They go to the library for tax forms. Then we have a smaller house, with a TV, DVD, radios, a cell phone (maybe a family plan) but no laptops, PDAs or cable. Maybe they have a computer. And maybe that computer has dial-up. But maybe not. They go to the library to print out their taxes.

Technology is great. Books are great. And I can’t put those ideas together without thinking but what about the folks that don’t have technology? What about the people that use technology so much that they don’t read books? In the author/illustrator lunch that I attended with Pat Mora and Raul Colon, Mr. Colon said he is grateful he grew up before X-Box–as an ashmatic child, he spent a lot of time out of school and a lot of time filling notebooks with pictures.

There are too many numbers to play around with. And I really want to be able to hit publish. So I’ll come back to this.

pretty quiet…

Apparently the “blog early and often” bug hasn’t hit me for this blog yet. I have lots to write about:

PLA and all that I learned

learning about formatting on this blog and why hitting return just gave me a doublespace

I have blogger block. It’s true. I have another blog, that I started about three years ago, wherein I have a made-up name and don’t write about library stuff very often. And over there, I pretty much just write something and hit post! But this is my “professional” blog and all of a sudden, I am super-shy. And therefore quiet.

More later. I promise.