Monday, April 30, 2007

Roadtrip Impressions

There is something about a college campus and this one didn't let me down. It was more compact than the school(s) I went to and beautiful. The original buildings were made with sandstone blocks and they have made most of the new buildings of the same and in a style to complement the old. There are the posted fliers for all kinds of events. Students walking the purposeful walk if going to class or the lazy walk if not and both almost always on a cell phone. The dorm rooms were messy and small like I remembered, but much cooler stuff in the common areas like a big screen TV with stadium seating in one. And the bookstore in the Union and in Aggieville. (Both, of course, run by the same company and the only game in town.)

The area around campus is full of run-down houses with dirt and dandelion yards that would be condemned in any city that isn't a college town. In a college town they are off-campus student housing and valued rental properties. And the aforementioned Aggieville, a few blocks of sandwich and burger places, a couple of gift shops, a used-book store, but mostly, bars. Saw parts of the real Manhattan too, the mall, downtown and the new Best Buy. Again, all you could want.

And we had fun. We just did what we wanted and saw what we wanted. Had lunch with some of his friends. (And I was a cool parent, bought lunch for all 4 of them. Probably won't be the last time.) His friends all seem to like being there.

Because, besides the education, there is more about going to college that I wanted him to experience. This looks like the place.

Don't want to forget the scenery. It was a beautiful drive. I don't remember when there were no trees, but suddenly noticed the rolling prairie landscape. Especially driving home, the sky was blue, white-white clouds, all shades of green and yellow in the hills, shadows. Very different and very beautiful.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Roadtrip

Tomorrow.
To Manhattan.
It was the kid's idea some time ago that we should go visit his future alma mater when I had a day off. It turns out he really meant it and tomorrow is the day. He has plans. See the library. Lunch in Aggieville with some friends. Other stuff.
How cool is that.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Relationships - 24 Style

Chloe wounds Morris during an argument by saying at least she didn't arm the nukes. Cruel Chloe, it was under torture after all.

Karen Hayes, National Security Advisor, makes her husband, Bill Buchanan- head of CTU, take the fall so she can keep her job and she fires him. She said it was to protect the President. Right.

But our Jack is willing to give up Russian nuclear protocols and cause an international crisis just to save the love of his life, Audrey, from the Chinese. Of course, he is ready to blow up the Chinese and himself to do it, but CTU agents stop him and the Chinese get away. You would think by now they would know to just let Jack be Jack.

Will Audrey survive the mental breakdown she seems to have suffered and even recognize Jack? Will Morris and Chloe ever get back together? Will this Bill settle for being an unemployed husband with a powerful wife? Stay tuned.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

The Other Side

In the interest of fairness and showing both side of the question, there is this.

"The Virginia Tech murders confirm the value of empowering ordinary citizens to carry a concealed weapon."

Chilling.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Copyright Infringement

See Right

It's too small to read, may not keep it, but was bored and wanted to play with stuff.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Pretty Bubbles

This is rather addicting.

http://www.k2xl.com/games/boomshine/

Even the music gets to you after a while.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Now We're Talking

Jack is back being Jack, interrupted by a little civics lesson on the 25th Amendment.

We are down to 2 suitcase nukes after Jack crashed a drone plane carrying one. There was minimal damage, unless you count the 2 dozen or so first responders who may have some issues resulting from radiation exposure.

The Russian bad guy uses an axe to cut off his arm to lose an implanted tracking device, but dies later anyway.

Is "pharmaceutical torture" a real term? Jack, on torture, "Trust me, I haven't begun to enjoy myself."

Jack infiltrates the Islamic terrorist HQ by hanging on to the undercarriage of a garbage truck driven by the leader. Jack takes out all the members inside and does some nice hand to hand combat resulting in the leader hanging from some chains. All nukes are secure.

Wait - aren't there about 6 hours left to fill this season? A cell phone call. The Chinese have Audrey Raines, the love of Jack's life. (Apparently since Kim Raver's other show this year, The Nine, was cancelled, she had some time on her hands.)

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Duh!

Sometimes, even though I hate to admit it, I'm a little slow. I can usually put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4. However, I enjoy discussions and learning new viewpoints and that can clutter up the pathways. I value personal relationships and see business as impersonal and political and I forget that, basically, I do work for a business. It's a people centered place that provides a service, but it is a business. So I'm using all of that as an excuse for the lateness of this realization. Library 2.0 is not about communication, being where the people are or providing service in a new way, it's about marketing.

There was a presentation at a recent departmental meeting highlighting ideas relating to current library projects. Needless to say, one involved adding information to a MySpace page, or maybe even creating a whole new MySpace page. This time I didn't even inwardly groan at the term, or even laugh. I had a light-bulb moment. It's marketing, stupid, so why don't we just call it that and look at this in a whole new honest way. It is possible that this type of discussion has taken place somewhere, but not in my hearing. Why are bands on MySpace? Why do authors link to library MySpace pages? The same reason large corporations have MySpace pages. Marketing.

Let's acknowledge the fact that all "friends" are not created equal. When I have questions about how young people use these places, I go to a source I have a personal relationship with. He may not represent everyone, but at least I get a real perspective. There is a group on Facebook called "I ran into a Facebook friend in the hall and it was awkward." Having friends is about having numbers. Most of the users will have lots of "friends", but actually communicate with only a few.

So if they aren't your friends, what are they? Simple, they are your customers. See how that changes your focus. How do you want to be treated as a customer? Start there. So as far as initiating communication with a library's MySpace friends, probably not. Even if you are young and cool. It's possible that if there is a class/project/group relationship already established, communication about the activity may be welcome, but I would stop there. Amazing how changing a few little words can change the way you look at things.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Irony?

So why does global warming news break right when we are having record low temperatures?

Thursday, April 05, 2007

I Love My Job

I was going to write about this morning. It was one of those days and all before noon. School was out in the local district, but it wasn't the kids, it was the parents. I was going to write about the parent who wouldn't believe me when I was trying to explain that the Ralph S. Mouse paperback we had was the same one her kid was reading in class even though the cover was different. Or about the parent who called three times wanting the volunteer hours her son worked over last summer because she had to turn them into the High School today. And when my co-worker called her back, the cell phone was off. So mom then came in because she needed it in writing and signed, so I did and I wasn't even there last summer. Or about the parent who came in with her son who was assigned a research paper on anything he wanted and thought the librarian would have good ideas for a topic. Did I mention it could be on anything he wanted? So I suggested he think about his interests and spent 20 minutes taking them through a process to discover something he might have fun doing and some preliminary searching.

But I won't because something very cool happened this week.

Our part-time IS person is leaving in two weeks. It was suggested to the IS/YS staff by the former manager that we might want to consider turning her hours into clerk hours. We have an incredible amount of materials and holds moving through our building so we are always days behind on processing. The manager thought more clerk hours would take some of the clerk stuff away from us and give us more time before we opened. This would impact our night and weekend schedules and more and he wouldn't do it if we didn't want to make the change.

Alternative schedules were suggested, by us. We also knew that to really make a difference, we would probably keep the send item list in the morning and give all the clerk hours to circ just to help them keep up and hopefully not have a backlog like we do now. It was all about what was best for the patrons and good customer service. We would run leaner on our desks. Vacations and sick days may get scary, but patrons might be able to have their holds in less than a week. The circ staff may actually feel like they are accomplishing something instead of always being behind.

We were encourage to submit any random thoughts or ideas to the new manager. I thought one of my comments was blown out of proportion when it came out and caused too much discussion. It was about one small part of the change. I came to realize that it was only because they wanted me to be comfortable with the situation and were really behind me. I even had a co-worker actually tell me I had the right to say "No" if needed and not just accept the situation because I thought it was my job. This same person explained my situation better than I could to someone else and who then actually saw it in a new way.

So what was so cool? There wasn't one IS or YS person who said clerk stuff isn't my job. We knew that even though the former manager's idea was to free up some of our time, to do what was needed that wouldn't happen and it didn't matter. There wasn't one IS or YS person who was against this change. This has to happen. We would make it work. We would at least try it.

I am very fortunate and proud to be a part of this team.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Overwhelmed

Saturday I attended the DNA Children's Literature Festival with two co-workers. Although I have always been a great reader of books, I do not have any sort of literature training. This was a wonderful way to see and hear more about children's literature from the authors and illustrators themselves. There was a mix of presentation methods from paper and easel to overhead projector to slide shows to laptops. Some were encouraged from childhood to follow their art and others were told to study for a real job, but somehow their talent won. Their processes and methods were as varied as their personalities.

It seems luring Paul Goble away from his home in South Dakota was a real feat and well appreciated. An Englishman who grew up with a fascination of Plains Indians who moved to the U.S., lived among them and wrote and drew their stories. Mordicai Gerstein who said his books were "where your imagination meets my imagination." Mark Teague creates his illustrations with layers of color, a techinque used by the old masters.


I first learned of Kadir Nelson watching a Scholastic Book Fair filmstrip over and over again years ago in the elementary school. I started paying more attention to his work, thought he could win a Caldecott someday and have watched and waited for it to happen. This year it was a Coretta Scott King Award and Caldecott Honor for Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. His work is detailed, rich and luminous. The true artist of the group.




Amelia and Eleanor Go For A Ride is one of my favorite books. It's hard to say why, it just hits the right notes for me. Pam Munoz Ryan is a California girl, was a quiet child, appreciates the land and the ocean, has a late December birthday and believes in the power of making a difference in small ways. A kindred spirit.








Brian Selznick used his interests in French cinema, automatons, and illustration to create the very unusual The Invention of Hugo Cabret. For his reading, he showed one of the illustrated sequences in the book accompanied by music from an old horror movie. It was amazing. I will spend more time with the illustrated sections and will now have a sound track running through my head. While normally I would have started reading this book as soon as I came home, I'm saving it for a while. I have a few things I have to finish and I want to give this book some time of it's own.


A great day.