While you were waiting...

I graduated, attended my first BEA, and completed my first year as a school librarian! Woo hoo!

I've also been binge reading through my stack of books from BEA (and related books in various series), as well as contemplating which blogs to continue/discontinue/start. And I'll continue doing so for a bit.

BUT... in case you missed it, I had to share a link to this post by A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy. A compelling press release about author Albert Borris and his forthcoming debut novel. Can't wait to read the book, and my prayers go out to Mr. Borris and his family.

hall of shame: ALA and NJASL

As an LIS student, I rely on professional library organizations for information for papers and online discussions. So, I was quite annoyed to find, for the 2nd time this month, a library organization has taken formerly free information on their website and moved it to a (paid) members-only section.

Hello? I thought:
library = free = access to information
Right?

I mean, I'm willing to pay for a hard copy. I realize these documents take money and effort (albiet from VOLUNTEERS) to produce. But, get with the 21st century already and throw up a free pdf on your site. Actually, in these cases, KEEP the free pdf that you ALREADY HAD (for FREE) on your site for months (or YEARS). Why move it to a member-restricted section of your site NOW? (i.e., A few weeks before the end of MY semester?!)

ALA, NJASL? You know what documents I'm referring to. I'll be waiting for your reply while I find a friend to email me a copy she wisely downloaded before you went all Amazon on me.

from Easter eggs to Amazon

Just last week, my family & I were discussing Easter eggs in video games and DVDs. Somehow, the conversation turned to Google bombs like Find Chuck Norris, French military victories,
and the now defunct miserable failure.

So, when Amazon laid another kind of egg this Easter weekend, I wasn't surprised when the following Google bomb had immediate and huge success: Amazon Rank. [Enjoy! Kudos to the gals at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. And don't forget to vote for their definition of amazon rank at Urbandictionary.com, and use it in your everyday speech. As in, "My principal amazon ranked me and removed the copy of And Tango Makes Three from my library."]

So, anyway, now they're blaming it on catalogers?! [No wonder RU removed the word library from one of its top-ranked programs! But I digress.] Nice try, but ahem, and #glitchmyass.

Aside from my moral outrage [and, yeah, my growing annoyance with the garbage showing up in my #Amazonfail clogged Twitter stream], I am ticked that now I can't keep up with my gadget girl neighbor and get a Kindle. How can they do this do me. Darn you evil corporations!

feeling meme-ish

Actually, I'm shamelessly copying Purple Polka, but here's what my blog looks like on Wordle:



Kind of reminds me of the first time I heard my voice on tape: "Do I really sound like that?" Except now, it's like, "Do I really blog like that??" Looks like I like sound like my middle-school son, with like the big giant, "LIKE" and all. (Go ahead and click on it, because it looks so much better up close and in person on the Wordle.net website.)

I like heart Wordle, so, I'm going to declare this a meme. Cuz, I like, you know, have all of about 3 readers. But, if you're like feeling all memey, consider yourself, like, tagged.

library hall of shame: dead links on the ALA website

I'm sorry, ALA, I am sick of your dead links, and I'm calling you out. Yes, your website redesign was a good idea (even if your new look is a bit sterile for my tastes). But, hello? What's with all of the dead links?

I am sick of all of the external dead links I'm getting from my professors and colleagues sending me to your site. Yes, I'm a MLIS candidate who knows her way around a search engine, and many pages are easily located. But what's with all of the dead links still cluttering your in-site navigation? Like this one, and this one, and this one, on this page. (I should add that I eventually found the articles I was looking for, but not through ALA's search function. I had to use (gasp!) Google.)

And, could you, like, throw us a bone...or site map?

As librarians, don't you have an obligation to make information accessible? For shame!

i missed that class too...

The ASLC Blog has a feature called, "What I Wasn't Taught in Library School." Love, love, love this post.

cleanliness is next to godliness and early literacy skills

or so it seems. My kids must be outliers.

Read the SLJ article here.

[Found at Jen Robinson's Book Page.]

speaking of time sinks...

here's an awesome time sink if you like riddles, visual puzzles, scavenger hunts and the like: http://thisisnottom.com

i'm stuck on the mailman

overdue book count - February 09

Currently at one. I took out this book to read to my kindergarten classes a month ago. Never got to it. Now it is More than One week overdue (more like 3!).

Do I feel guilty? Not really. It is not a wait list book, and they have several more copies. Plus, a wise friend/librarian once told me that it is our duty as librarians to have overdue books, so that we can pay fines to contribute much-needed funds to the libraries we use. To promote this theory, I'm adding overdue book counts as a new feature to this blog.

tip on reducing time sinks ... from my time sinks

I haven't really had a use for my Twitter account since my social software course. But that hasn't stopped me from checking in almost daily.

I also haven't gotten much done in the way of Edublogs (not to be confused with EduBlogger, but that doesn't stop me from reading their feed via email.

So, from these two time sinks comes a link to a Tweet linking to a blog post about software to monitor and alert me to overuse of my time sinks. (See step #2 here.)

Interesting. How long do you think it will take me to research, choose, download and install software to prevent me from wasting time on the sites that alerted me to the software in the first place?

feeling snarky

Title of an actual in-class discussion thread: "Collective Wisdon" (sic)

How reliable do I think information posted in that thread is going to be? Hmm...

what's the word?

Maybe it is all of the stress hormones affecting my brain, but lately I seem to have trouble coming up with the words I want and need. I can feel them flitting among my neurons--avoiding those that would transport them from mind to mouth or fingertips.

In any case, the word I am currently looking for would describe my sense of delight at discovering the convergence of one of my favorite books with one of my favorite bands in a movie I am trying to convince my kids to bring me to see:

Coraline-Other Father Song

new(ish) blog

So, I didn't fall for tumblr afterall. ;-)

Bookmobilekids is now "bookmobile reviews" on WordPress. Though, I may run out of free space there and eventually return to Blogger.

Decisions, decisions--my external internal struggle. Such is the life of a Libra with Gemini rising.

In any case, check out my current space for book reviews: http://bookmobilereviews.wordpress.com. More to come here and there, soon.

dissed

disenfranchised [dis-en-fran-chihyzd] - MLIS students and alumni of the Rutgers School of Communication, Information and Library Studies who discovered--in a brief post to a listserv--that their new dean and faculty had approved a proposal to drop "Library" from the school name, without prior notice of the vote (or even that a name change was under consideration), and without sufficient (any) opportunity for input.

disillusioned [dis'i-loo-zhənd] - (1) This student, who has heard the importance of advocacy for libraries, librarians and librarianship emphasized in every week of every semester of graduate study in a school that suddenly devalues library science to the point that it is willing to spend untold dollars--in this economy--to rebrand itself to eliminate the term "library" from its name.
(2) This student, who has heard nothing public (or otherwise) on this issue from the same professors who have been drilling the need for library advocacy into her head for two years.

disappointed [dis-uh-poin-tid] - This soon-to-be graduating MLIS candidate, who has been looking forward to graduating from the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, but may now graduate from the School of Communication and Information.

See also: Library Journal news item and NJSLA blog

teaching online (part 2)

What's the alternative to my previous post?

If you are teaching online, make full use of the medium. For example, a fabulous TEDTalk on education was included in this week's material for one of my online classes:



Another example is the immersive social software course I took last fall: http://russl.pbwiki.com/.

In short, if you are going to teach online, then teach online.

teaching online (or not)

A few tips for truly ineffectual teaching in the online environment:

1. Create lectures by reading lengthy stretches of text in monotone with complicated sentence structure (sans pauses).
2. Upload lengthy ppt presentations with walls of text to accompany #1.
3. Don't forget to make some complicated flowcharts and diagrams using ppt, because drawing in ppt is so much easier to use than any real illustration programs - nevermind that it is indecipherable and looks like crap.
4. Post related information randomly in multiple places in the course shell - online students are computer savvy (especially LIS student), they'll find it.
5. Be intentionally vague in stating your objectives for the discussion, and let the conversation flow where it may.
6. Berate the class when the discussions in #5 don't go where you intended.

somebody should do this for twilight...

I spent much too much time on Facebook last semester, and have vowed to cut back. However, these inspired retellings of Hamlet and Pride and Prejudice have me pondering hours and hours of additional Facebook time. Certainly, Bella's whining and inner turmoil are FB status/newsfeed worthy.

my new online identity experiment #1

The time is near for me to settle on an online identity. The kids are getting older. I'm about to start my final semester of grad school. I have a new career. So far, I've blogged as a wannabe children's writer, a reader, a mother, and a LIS student (here, here and here).

Whoa. Talk about your Sybil. Right? So, what's it gonna be?

Here's my latest experiment in blogging: bookmobile kids -- It is (or will soon be) a microblog of children's book reviews. I loved the bookmobile as a kid. Plus, since I envision it as a microblog, I'd love for my future hordes of readers to subscribe in their mobile web browser (you know, so they can read my reviews right in the library or bookstore)--so "bookmobile" is also a little play on words. (Clever me. ;-)

I'm not married to the tumblr platform, but the learning curve was short, and I'm happy enough with the results for now. Take a peek. Let me know what you think here, since there's no automated option for on-blog commenting on tumblr--it requires some plug in or development. I'm also taking suggestions for other platforms. (In the end, I might even stick with Blogger, who knows.)

creepy goodness

My kids' other mother? Yikes.

Loved the book. Introduced my 4th grade students to the audiobook. (Resulting in a waiting list for the book in our library!) Can't wait for the movie. Check out the Coraline website for more creepy goodness!

[Found at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy]