Is it just me, or is it the habit of most library employees to continually be checking out resources that look interesting - and never finishing them? I must be in the middle (or near the beginning) of at least 5 books, all located in various locations in my apartment, my car, my backpack... And I just discovered I have 2 days to finish one of them before it's due, and I can't renew it because someone has a hold on it.
Goal 1: Keep everything I have checked out in one location. Goal 2: read it!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
More Lessons from Recycling
Sorting the recycling helps one learn what NOT to keep... years of files of things that seem important, unceremoniously discarded in one fell swoop. Sign in sheets, letterhead from the 80's, whatever it was that used to fill filing cabinets is now relegated to the blue bins next to file 13. Instead of recycling paper copies of our data we are using energy, electricity, 1's and 0's to file all that information we might need someday.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The Reference Interview... is important.
Patron: "Can you tell me where your baby books are?"
Me: pulling a kids' cardboard book from the cart behind me "We have a selection of these board books on the back wall of the kids' section downstairs..."
Patron: "No, I'm having a baby..."
Me: "Ohh!"...
Yep, clarifying what the patron is looking for (e.g. "So you're looking for books for babies, or books about babies?") is important!
Me: pulling a kids' cardboard book from the cart behind me "We have a selection of these board books on the back wall of the kids' section downstairs..."
Patron: "No, I'm having a baby..."
Me: "Ohh!"...
Yep, clarifying what the patron is looking for (e.g. "So you're looking for books for babies, or books about babies?") is important!
Friday, March 25, 2011
Two classes
Two classes this semester can be my excuse for not posting... and my reason for posting again.
In database class we are learning about organizing information so as to make it possible to write queries of a database and find pieces of information we are looking for. In reference we are looking at materials with information on statistics, bibliographies, indexes... It's as though an index tries to be the report generated by a query of all known information in a certain area or time. Imagine if all the words in all the books and journal articles in all the world were in one large database. (It would take forever to query. Well, not forever, but more than a few cups of coffee.) Perhaps someday we'll know for sure if we've found ALL pertinent resources, not just sufficient ones.
In database class we are learning about organizing information so as to make it possible to write queries of a database and find pieces of information we are looking for. In reference we are looking at materials with information on statistics, bibliographies, indexes... It's as though an index tries to be the report generated by a query of all known information in a certain area or time. Imagine if all the words in all the books and journal articles in all the world were in one large database. (It would take forever to query. Well, not forever, but more than a few cups of coffee.) Perhaps someday we'll know for sure if we've found ALL pertinent resources, not just sufficient ones.
Monday, August 30, 2010
13 Things I love about my job.
1. I don't smell like food when I leave.
2. I get to work with other people who have the same organizational habits (like alphabetizing...)
3. It's a non-profit. We're not here to take your money. If you're fine is under $5, we don't care if you pay today or not.
4. It's a 'third place'. A safe place for people to go that's not home, not work, but, 'third place'.
5. It's a climate controlled third place. (the park is not heated or air conditioned.) It's really nice to have somewhere air conditioned you can go hang out in for free, no?
6. It's full of books. Need I say more.
7. The internet connection is really fast. And I get to use lots of technology. I like technology...
8. Speaking of technology... we have really great techie guys (ours just happen to be guys) who answer our questions (very pleasantly) and fix our computers.
9. it's quiet. Generally.
10. I learn new stuff. Like, 13 library 2.0 things. Or bu reading the inside covers of books I'm supposed to be shelving...
11. Kids. I see lots of cute kids at the library.
12. I see not only kids, but lots of people I know. And I'm getting to know the library regulars, too...
13. Because I finished my 13 things my library is giving me a gift certificate! (I'd like the Labelle one.)
and the bonus: Celebrate! I have been a library employee for a full year. And I still like it!
2. I get to work with other people who have the same organizational habits (like alphabetizing...)
3. It's a non-profit. We're not here to take your money. If you're fine is under $5, we don't care if you pay today or not.
4. It's a 'third place'. A safe place for people to go that's not home, not work, but, 'third place'.
5. It's a climate controlled third place. (the park is not heated or air conditioned.) It's really nice to have somewhere air conditioned you can go hang out in for free, no?
6. It's full of books. Need I say more.
7. The internet connection is really fast. And I get to use lots of technology. I like technology...
8. Speaking of technology... we have really great techie guys (ours just happen to be guys) who answer our questions (very pleasantly) and fix our computers.
9. it's quiet. Generally.
10. I learn new stuff. Like, 13 library 2.0 things. Or bu reading the inside covers of books I'm supposed to be shelving...
11. Kids. I see lots of cute kids at the library.
12. I see not only kids, but lots of people I know. And I'm getting to know the library regulars, too...
13. Because I finished my 13 things my library is giving me a gift certificate! (I'd like the Labelle one.)
and the bonus: Celebrate! I have been a library employee for a full year. And I still like it!
A synopsis of 13 things assignment.
Here is a synopsis of the 13 things I got to explore about library 2.0 for work this summer, well, starting with # 5.
5: RSS
RSS... repeating the same stuff...
I like the way it's set up to read, it's like your own compiled newspaper from only the authors you want, on a web page... except everything I want to read (blogs, news, etc.) I already read somewhere else. I login to google reader and it says I have so many unread posts... except I already read them on igoogle or have them set to come to my gmail. Hence the 'repeating the same stuff' definition of RSS. I doubt I'll use it. There's still something appealing about skimming the Morning Sun in paper form.
I did find a fun feed entitled 'The Inspired Library School Student'. Maybe it will give me something to read when I'm bored listening to my 'Intro to the profession' lectures...
http://lwb-online.org/?feed=rss2
http://churchlibrarians.ning.com/group/evangelicalchurchlibraryassociation/forum/topic/list?feed=yes&xn_auth=no
http://themorningsun.com/?rss=opinion
6: Photo Sharing
I started a flickr account 5 years ago, and used it for about a year... Only because a friend (who takes a lot better pictures than me!) used it.
I really dislike yahoo... and flicker is affiliated with yahoo. Facebook works well enough for the twice a year I post someone else's pictures... You just cant download pictures conveniently with facebook.
If I get a camera and have pictures to post I'll probably use picasa (yay google affilation!) because my mom does.
7: Podcasts
I've had a couple 'i-thingys' (an iPod touch, and now I've 'downsized' to a 2nd generation teeny tiny shuffle) - and that works extremely well for me using itunes to listen to whatever podcasts I want. There's only really 2 I've listened to - one by a favorite musician, Andrew Peterson called the Rabbit Room and one trilogy of talks that involved another favorite musician, Sara Groves from iTunes U from some talks she gave at a university about social justice and the arts. I also found some 'how to speak Hebrew' podcasts that I never quite got into...
I guess, podcasts and all this stuff is great, but it's finding the content you want that's really the important thing (why we all have jobs, eh?) Seems like all this (RSS, blogs, podcasts...) is just another route (or should I say delivery method) to find and recieve the stuff you want to listen to and learn about. Well, maybe it's more finding the content you want in a way you can digest it. (LP vs regular, audio vs print, video vs audio, web vs. print, etc etc..)
8: Tagging
The coolest (and most library-relevant) tagging experience I"ve had is from librarything. If you create an account and sign in, you can play a 'game' where you tag books based on the cover art - so, you'd tag 'Twilight' something like 'black, apple, hands'.
You can search for books by user tags at librarything too. Go here: http://www.librarything.com/search and use the 3rd box down on the left (from the top it lets you search by works, authors, tags!).
I didn't have tons of success searching for books by tags that describe their covers (my roommate thinks that because I work at the library I can find the title and author of a book if she tells me what the cover art looks like...) Well, we're getting closer... but I didn't get 'Twilight' when I searched tag combinations like 'apple, hands' or even 'apple, vampire'. I DID however come up with 'Dogsong' when I searched for tags 'sled, blue'. Who knew?
Technorati seems pointless in a world of facebook and librarything once click-no code tagging. Who will use it? If they made it more 'clickey' and less 'codey', maybe...
9: Digital Downloads
I searched and downloaded an e-audio book from home. I waited to do this at home so I could put the book on my ipod - which was a little dissapointing. The first book I came across that I wanted to read didn't support ipods, just the windows media files with the digital rights management... But I found something else to download and listen to. I don't know if I'll ever get into listening to to books though, I like the printed word... easier to slow down, speed up, skim, re-read a cool part. :)
the process for downloading from net-library seemed a little tricky. It is true we have to setup a user-name and password to be able to download books with them? I thought I already had one from looking at e-books a while ago... but of course I couldn't remember it. So I made another one, that I probably won't remember when I want to use netlibrary again 6 months from now or so... which was after I'd signed in with my library card number to the CRDL site and accessed netlibrary from there.
And, I downloaded an mp3... with no DRM, will that ever dissappear from my computer? Or will it just stay there till I delete it? Clearly downloading anything without DRM is potentially a hairy mess for anything involving copyright law... I wonder what my LIS classes are going to have to say about this.. :)10: Chat
10: Chat & IM
I use google (talk) to 'chat'. (and I call it google chat.) I use facebook less frequently, but certain people I see on facebook that I don't with google. I've been trying to get a windows live id up and running with the messenger software on the computer here at Blanchard... It's up and running (finally) after having to mess with downloading some newer version of messenger software (I dislike being required to download anything when google and facebook don't make me.) Then I had to add contacts, because even though I signed in and linked it to my facebook, it doesn't automatically pull in contacts, that I can figure. Since I'm (probably) not going to use windows live messenger (I own a mac! come on!) I stopped there.
11: bookmarking & Delicious
I... like it. I doubt I will use it. If I was still in school without a computer of my own, using computer labs and libraries, probably more likely. Like Erica, everything that's important I just.. remember. And, I have iGoogle... which I can put any links I use a lot in. They even have a widget for your links. Of course, the widget doesn't allow for the 'social networking' aspect of links. But if I want to 'social network' a website I just link to it on facebook anyway. If facebook joined google they would probably take over the world. At least, until the chinese got mad at them.
12: Mapping. (or, I love google maps.)
Mostly. I added a 'google maps' widget to my iGoogle page. I think the only thing I don't like about google maps is that whenever I try to use the scrolly mouse button to scroll down or up in the map... it zooms in or out. Oops. You'd think I'd learn by now.
My favorite is using google satellite and looking at the route I kayak on the chip from winn rd to vandecar rd.
I've also created google maps of routes I run, mostly so it will caluclate the miles for me if I run through mill pond park or something goofy.
I found about 5 libraries close to Yakima, Washington where a friend of mine just moved. If I go visit her while she's in school I'll probably hang out in at least one of them while I wait for her to get out of work.
Thing 13: Games!
So, I've played bejeweled, solitaire, tetris etc online, but never something like Runescape, so thought I should try it out for this assignment.
The music is sweet, I'll give you that! I could definately get sucked into this... and start wasting too much time.
The game did take a while to load. Drawback.
5: RSS
RSS... repeating the same stuff...
I like the way it's set up to read, it's like your own compiled newspaper from only the authors you want, on a web page... except everything I want to read (blogs, news, etc.) I already read somewhere else. I login to google reader and it says I have so many unread posts... except I already read them on igoogle or have them set to come to my gmail. Hence the 'repeating the same stuff' definition of RSS. I doubt I'll use it. There's still something appealing about skimming the Morning Sun in paper form.
I did find a fun feed entitled 'The Inspired Library School Student'. Maybe it will give me something to read when I'm bored listening to my 'Intro to the profession' lectures...
http://lwb-online.org/?feed=rss2
http://churchlibrarians.ning.com/group/evangelicalchurchlibraryassociation/forum/topic/list?feed=yes&xn_auth=no
http://themorningsun.com/?rss=opinion
6: Photo Sharing
I started a flickr account 5 years ago, and used it for about a year... Only because a friend (who takes a lot better pictures than me!) used it.
I really dislike yahoo... and flicker is affiliated with yahoo. Facebook works well enough for the twice a year I post someone else's pictures... You just cant download pictures conveniently with facebook.
If I get a camera and have pictures to post I'll probably use picasa (yay google affilation!) because my mom does.
7: Podcasts
I've had a couple 'i-thingys' (an iPod touch, and now I've 'downsized' to a 2nd generation teeny tiny shuffle) - and that works extremely well for me using itunes to listen to whatever podcasts I want. There's only really 2 I've listened to - one by a favorite musician, Andrew Peterson called the Rabbit Room and one trilogy of talks that involved another favorite musician, Sara Groves from iTunes U from some talks she gave at a university about social justice and the arts. I also found some 'how to speak Hebrew' podcasts that I never quite got into...
I guess, podcasts and all this stuff is great, but it's finding the content you want that's really the important thing (why we all have jobs, eh?) Seems like all this (RSS, blogs, podcasts...) is just another route (or should I say delivery method) to find and recieve the stuff you want to listen to and learn about. Well, maybe it's more finding the content you want in a way you can digest it. (LP vs regular, audio vs print, video vs audio, web vs. print, etc etc..)
8: Tagging
The coolest (and most library-relevant) tagging experience I"ve had is from librarything. If you create an account and sign in, you can play a 'game' where you tag books based on the cover art - so, you'd tag 'Twilight' something like 'black, apple, hands'.
You can search for books by user tags at librarything too. Go here: http://www.librarything.com/search and use the 3rd box down on the left (from the top it lets you search by works, authors, tags!).
I didn't have tons of success searching for books by tags that describe their covers (my roommate thinks that because I work at the library I can find the title and author of a book if she tells me what the cover art looks like...) Well, we're getting closer... but I didn't get 'Twilight' when I searched tag combinations like 'apple, hands' or even 'apple, vampire'. I DID however come up with 'Dogsong' when I searched for tags 'sled, blue'. Who knew?
Technorati seems pointless in a world of facebook and librarything once click-no code tagging. Who will use it? If they made it more 'clickey' and less 'codey', maybe...
9: Digital Downloads
I searched and downloaded an e-audio book from home. I waited to do this at home so I could put the book on my ipod - which was a little dissapointing. The first book I came across that I wanted to read didn't support ipods, just the windows media files with the digital rights management... But I found something else to download and listen to. I don't know if I'll ever get into listening to to books though, I like the printed word... easier to slow down, speed up, skim, re-read a cool part. :)
the process for downloading from net-library seemed a little tricky. It is true we have to setup a user-name and password to be able to download books with them? I thought I already had one from looking at e-books a while ago... but of course I couldn't remember it. So I made another one, that I probably won't remember when I want to use netlibrary again 6 months from now or so... which was after I'd signed in with my library card number to the CRDL site and accessed netlibrary from there.
And, I downloaded an mp3... with no DRM, will that ever dissappear from my computer? Or will it just stay there till I delete it? Clearly downloading anything without DRM is potentially a hairy mess for anything involving copyright law... I wonder what my LIS classes are going to have to say about this.. :)10: Chat
10: Chat & IM
I use google (talk) to 'chat'. (and I call it google chat.) I use facebook less frequently, but certain people I see on facebook that I don't with google. I've been trying to get a windows live id up and running with the messenger software on the computer here at Blanchard... It's up and running (finally) after having to mess with downloading some newer version of messenger software (I dislike being required to download anything when google and facebook don't make me.) Then I had to add contacts, because even though I signed in and linked it to my facebook, it doesn't automatically pull in contacts, that I can figure. Since I'm (probably) not going to use windows live messenger (I own a mac! come on!) I stopped there.
11: bookmarking & Delicious
I... like it. I doubt I will use it. If I was still in school without a computer of my own, using computer labs and libraries, probably more likely. Like Erica, everything that's important I just.. remember. And, I have iGoogle... which I can put any links I use a lot in. They even have a widget for your links. Of course, the widget doesn't allow for the 'social networking' aspect of links. But if I want to 'social network' a website I just link to it on facebook anyway. If facebook joined google they would probably take over the world. At least, until the chinese got mad at them.
12: Mapping. (or, I love google maps.)
Mostly. I added a 'google maps' widget to my iGoogle page. I think the only thing I don't like about google maps is that whenever I try to use the scrolly mouse button to scroll down or up in the map... it zooms in or out. Oops. You'd think I'd learn by now.
My favorite is using google satellite and looking at the route I kayak on the chip from winn rd to vandecar rd.
I've also created google maps of routes I run, mostly so it will caluclate the miles for me if I run through mill pond park or something goofy.
I found about 5 libraries close to Yakima, Washington where a friend of mine just moved. If I go visit her while she's in school I'll probably hang out in at least one of them while I wait for her to get out of work.
Thing 13: Games!
So, I've played bejeweled, solitaire, tetris etc online, but never something like Runescape, so thought I should try it out for this assignment.
The music is sweet, I'll give you that! I could definately get sucked into this... and start wasting too much time.
The game did take a while to load. Drawback.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Recycling.
Library recycling.
Going green at our library means I get to sort the blue bins of recycling... and what an adventure it is. Being one who naturally likes to save things... it's actually a tad difficult to part with some of the stuff I find in the recycling (though there is occasionally something that will make me gag.)
One of the most bountiful items in the library recycling is old newspapers. I've taken stacks to use at kids' art projects. You can glue pages from old magazines onto the newspapers for some great collages. As a library student, it's great to findi the month-old library association magazines in the recycling. Free subscription to American Libraries!
Among the more interesting finds were several packets of wildflower seeds. I keep forgetting to plant the forget-me-nots... Oh, and I did clean the bathroom a few weeks ago with a free sample packet of some green cleaner. I'm still looking for a purpose for the local maps... I may have to re-recycle those. My dad, however, loved the 'Barn of the Year' posters.
Of course, there are a great many things the library recycler must destruct - (not for the faint of heart!)
Many of my library-loving friends are dismayed when I come home from work telling stories of book destructing when I get weeded library books or rejected donations in the recycling. (The Readers Digest Condensed books have really nice covers... I had to restrain myself from saving them for a craft project when I ripped the pages out..)
Ripped up pages of mysterious pictures that come from the computer lab printer, old journal pages, school notebooks from the past school year - a whole slew of local and social history in the recycling. (I promise I refrain from reading the notes... but be careful what you write on the front cover, kids.)
Staff cleaning of offices also yeilds fascinating library recycling. I can't help but laugh out loud at meeting notes typewritten from the 1980's and 'Friends of the Library' letterhead that nowadays would be utterly laughable and dismissed as archaic. Has technology really advanced so fast?
Don't forget the unmentionables, or the 'trash' people add to the recycling that, I certainly don't know how to recycle: gum, used: bottles, empty: and yes, even diapers, soiled.
I am not sure how to recycle a dirty disposable diaper. That one sorts its way into the trash - sorry to whatever green mom really wanted that diaper recycled... I'd suggest using cloth if you really want to go green.
recycling
library
trash
Going green at our library means I get to sort the blue bins of recycling... and what an adventure it is. Being one who naturally likes to save things... it's actually a tad difficult to part with some of the stuff I find in the recycling (though there is occasionally something that will make me gag.)
One of the most bountiful items in the library recycling is old newspapers. I've taken stacks to use at kids' art projects. You can glue pages from old magazines onto the newspapers for some great collages. As a library student, it's great to findi the month-old library association magazines in the recycling. Free subscription to American Libraries!
Among the more interesting finds were several packets of wildflower seeds. I keep forgetting to plant the forget-me-nots... Oh, and I did clean the bathroom a few weeks ago with a free sample packet of some green cleaner. I'm still looking for a purpose for the local maps... I may have to re-recycle those. My dad, however, loved the 'Barn of the Year' posters.
Of course, there are a great many things the library recycler must destruct - (not for the faint of heart!)
Many of my library-loving friends are dismayed when I come home from work telling stories of book destructing when I get weeded library books or rejected donations in the recycling. (The Readers Digest Condensed books have really nice covers... I had to restrain myself from saving them for a craft project when I ripped the pages out..)
Ripped up pages of mysterious pictures that come from the computer lab printer, old journal pages, school notebooks from the past school year - a whole slew of local and social history in the recycling. (I promise I refrain from reading the notes... but be careful what you write on the front cover, kids.)
Staff cleaning of offices also yeilds fascinating library recycling. I can't help but laugh out loud at meeting notes typewritten from the 1980's and 'Friends of the Library' letterhead that nowadays would be utterly laughable and dismissed as archaic. Has technology really advanced so fast?
Don't forget the unmentionables, or the 'trash' people add to the recycling that, I certainly don't know how to recycle: gum, used: bottles, empty: and yes, even diapers, soiled.
I am not sure how to recycle a dirty disposable diaper. That one sorts its way into the trash - sorry to whatever green mom really wanted that diaper recycled... I'd suggest using cloth if you really want to go green.
recycling
library
trash
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