My Blog

Staff Association

2008-06-05T16:45:00.003-04:00

Brenda is the staff association person at my branch.

And this is the last orientation blog post I'll be making!

IT Room

2008-06-05T16:44:00.001-04:00

The troubleshooters at my branch are Brenda and Cindy.

The IT tech is Sherry.

And a CCPL wiki is the Summer Reading Team.

Operations

2008-06-05T16:38:00.004-04:00

The most fascinating thing I learned about operations was that Scott has the best job in the entire system and that 77,000 items were processed by technical services in the last year!

Facilities Manager-Tom Sheets
IT Manager-Bob Kuntz,
Technical Services Manager-Elaine Adkins

Outreach Room

2008-06-05T16:33:00.003-04:00

I saw the PowerPoint on the programing philosophy. Since I serve on the Summer Reading team and have done numerous story times I mostly already knew about the aims of programming, what's considered a program and so forth. However I thought the PowerPoint was very complete and helpful to somebody new who didn't know a lot about programming.

Booking a Meeting Room

2008-06-05T16:18:00.001-04:00

I've booked the meeting room for all of the children's programs since I started. Its simple to book and quick. I really like the feature to book multiple dates for the same time, very helpful for booking it for storytimes. I already know how to delete the booking (or I think I do anyways). I called ILL and left a message. I believe you have the patron email or call ILL in order to delete it.

One thing I learned...

2008-06-05T16:17:00.002-04:00

One thing I learned in the External relations room is that its all right to ask to call a reporter back so you can gather together what you plan to say.

Meeting Someone New

2008-06-05T16:12:00.002-04:00

Somebody new I've met recently is Sam Eddington the new Adult Services Supervisor here at Mt. Airy. A couple of things I've learned about him are that he's in a band and used to work at a very small town.

Shelfari

2008-04-28T18:34:00.003-04:00

Just wanted to blog about how wonderful Shelfari is. I LOVE it! I am using it to keep track of books to do reader's advisory, to plan what I'm going to read next and to plan for book talking with the others who'll be also book talking. Its a great resource since it gives you a way to organize books into three catagories: reading, plan to read and read. Library Thing doesn't offer this wonderful option, which I find very helpful to keep track of what I want to read in the future and books that I've already read. In addition you can give your books tags including mass tagging books. I tagged my books according to the age group that they were most appropriate and then further broke them down into tags for things like sports, non-fiction, family or orphans. I love Shelfari!

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Winding Down

2008-02-25T18:10:00.002-05:00

My LATI experience has been winding down. I've finished all the assignments except for the things for the final project and things are coming along nicely for it. I've received feedback on a lot of the assignments and it was all positive. I am shocked at how close to the end of my LATI journey I am. It's gone by very quickly although I do feel like I've learned a lot about library resources.

Wii Meeting

2008-01-25T11:33:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday I got to attend a meeting of the Woodbine Rec Council who funded the purchase of our Wii. The branch manager and I talked about what we were doing with the Wii and then let the members try it out. Although most were reluctant a couple brave ones did get to play a few games with the Wii. I think they enjoyed this presentation and they seemed pretty happy with the Wii.
Everything for LATI is coming along in a timely manner although it does feel a little bit much right now with so many deadlines not very far away. I am surprised how far along I am in the LATI journey the time has flown.

Time to Relax....a bit

2007-12-20T12:08:00.000-05:00

I finished all my basic reference resource reviews! All 22 of them have been reviewed. It was a really good experience since it showed me new resources that I hadn't used before and have already used since I first started exploring those resources. Now that I've done that and there is a bit of a break for LATI I have time to relax and throw together a couple story time boxes and hopefully shift everything in the J non-fiction section so I can interfile the rest of the J reference books. But the holiday break is nice. I am very excited about Christmas and some of the gifts I got for certain people.

A Whole New Mind

2007-12-05T17:26:00.001-05:00

If a patron asked me about the book this is the summary I would give them:

It's a look at the direction of the career market of the future and what skills will be most rewarded. The book also explains which type of person, left brain or right brain, would most likely possess those skills.

My questions for Daniel H. Pink from each chapter are:

Chapter 1-Do you think there will one day be a computer with right brain abilities?
Chapter 2-What about left-brain jobs that need to be done in person like the computer repair done by geek squad?
Chapter 3-Don’t we always need some left brain and right brain people such as painters during the industrial age or politicians in the more left brain directed past?

Community Directory

2007-11-26T20:27:00.000-05:00

A few months ago there was a quiz on the Carroll County Community directory. So I got acquainted with the directory then however the community directory module for LATI was a nice refresher and had me check out some additional directories although the Carroll County Community Directory is my favorite. The Maryland directory was pretty easy to use but it just seemed like the Carroll County one brought up more pertinent results more of the time. I do like the multiple county search function though. Being located on the border of four different counties a lot of times people don't want to go to to somewhere in Carroll county for a service. This would be a great way of showing them options available in the area but not limiting oneself to county borders. I did not like the Memphis, TN directory. It was confusing and you had to sift through a lot of information to get the desired results.

LATI Days

2007-11-17T12:31:00.001-05:00

On Wednesday I had the programming day of LATI. Although I thought the information that was presented was good being from the same county as the presenters meant that I'd heard most of it previously. But I think it was important to include. I would have liked more on teen programing since I'm always trying to get ideas to do for that.
I enjoyed going to the central branch of Enoch Pratt Free Library. For starters the library is fun to look at especially the ceilings and lobby. Its a very impressive building. However I also learned a lot about things I can take back to my branch. I grabbed a ton of their reading lists for YAs to help with reader's advisory questions. They were very nicely broken up into genres, interests and a special short books list for the reluctant reader. I also am excited to learn they get public viewing rights for a lot of their movies (with the exception of the big Hollywood ones) so it might be possible to do a movie night or something for teens without having to pay for the public viewing rights. I found how they filed everything very interesting although I think it would be confusing with all those departments overlapping in certain areas. And it could be even more confusing if you have a patron that isn't exactly sure what they want. In the afternoon I went to the workshop Mother Goose on the Loose. It was very fun and gave me some new ideas to do at story time although I mostly do story times with older kids.

Wii Staff Play

2007-11-08T16:40:00.000-05:00

Today I introduced some of my fellow staff members to the Wii. Everybody loved it naturally and had a lot of fun playing Wii Sports. I am really impressed by this game system and can't wait till I get to run a program for it for teens. I had the staff sign up just like the teens will and it went pretty smoothly. And there was a scramble in one of the groups to pick the game. Here are some pictures of the staff playing on the Wii.

Basic Reference Module

2007-10-29T19:24:00.000-04:00

Well I completed my first reference resource review. I was really happy that this module had lots of step by step help and the example of a reference resource to walk me through it. I also really appreciated Honore's feedback on my resource. While I understand there isn't a single right way to do it I just wanted to make sure I was on the right track. I'm beginning to think about other resources that I would want to include in my top ten and review in general. A children's reference book on Native Americans keeps popping into my mind since its VERY helpful for school reports because it has a paragraph on a whole bunch of tribes.

Right Brain/Left Brain

2007-10-22T13:37:00.000-04:00

I finished reading the first three chapters of the book A Whole New Mind and it was very interesting although most of the general left brain/right brain stuff I'd heard before. Having majored in Early Childhood Education at TU I really got a lot of learning theories and all of that. So left brain/right brain isn't new nor is multiple intelligence, which I actually did a research paper on at one point. The book A Whole New Mind though with its focus on how right brain might come to play a better indicator in job security was very interesting.
The whole left brain/right brain makes me think of my future in-laws. My fiance is in the computer field working at a help desk and majoring in Computer Information Systems at TU. He also has decent people skills and so his right brain isn't left unused. His older brother however is very, very intelligent but his people skills are very much lacking. He has the right skills to work in the computer field but he doesn't interview or deal with people very well. So he's been working in a bagel shop. He's definitely using primarily his left brain. Their other two biological siblings use more of their right brains. His younger brother is and English major and always has had lots of friends. His youngest sister wants to be a music major and plays a variety of instruments. In his family it seems to go from very much left brained to much more right brained as they go down the line. Its very interesting. His father is in the computer field and his mother is a seamstress and very artistic. My fiance's nephew is only five months old but showing signs of being left handed so I'm guessing he's going to be one of the more creative ones.
I think some left brain jobs will be kept around in the United States because help desks and such can only do so much from across the ocean. We need people who can go out and fix the computers in person and those people can't be in India. Although I do see the demand for more right brain people then before as our society progresses. But I don't think it'll ever be a "well your left brained so I don't think you have much hope for ever having a decent job" or anything. Which it sounded like the author was projecting in the distant future.

LATI

2007-10-15T20:19:00.000-04:00

I already posted about my project mostly because I was so excited about that but I thought I should have a post about my first few weeks doing LATI. I've been super busy not just with LATI but with other stuff too. So I hadn't gotten a chance to reflect yet on any of the first weeks assignments. For starters I'm already done 23 things and I'm really glad because its nice to already have something finished. The confidentiality and wild card modules (which are pretty much the same thing) were a nice intro to some procedures and ideas. I disagreed with the Crossman article about VIVO technology. The written language will always be sticking around. As we create new technologies written word is very important.
However the article about the Bookless Libraries did have some good ideas. I graduated from Towson University in 2006 and I rarely used the library for its books while I was a student there. And if I did use the library for books it was for a major research paper that required 2 book sources. Mostly I used the journals, which I accessed from databases while in the comfort of my dorm room in most situations. I did use it for a video I had to watch for class that I couldn't find anywhere else and some teachers would have extra study materials only available at the library. I didn't even use the computers that much because Cook Library was a decent walk up a lot of steps from the Union and most of my classes and since most of the buildings had computer labs or rental laptops if I needed to use a computer I would just use one of those instead of making the hike.
All the information about confidentiality was good to know but a lot of it I had already learned when I started or during the past year since then. But it was still good to read about it since its such an important subject. I keep my county's What to do if Law Enforcement arrives asking for records on my desk so its easy to grab in case that were to happen.

LATI Project

2007-10-15T20:17:00.000-04:00

I talked to my Branch Manager and she helped me come up with a project for LATI. I'm going to do the Wii programs that I was already planning to do but really try to promote them and make them a sucess and come up with some creative ideas to keep all the kids busy during the programs. I'm really excited about this project because its going to be lots of FUN!

Putting 23 Things to Use

2007-08-09T12:09:00.000-04:00

I created a wiki for my team to discuss options for some money we've generously been given. I used pbwiki and was impressed with the ease of setting everything up. I really felt like I was putting the things I learned in 23 things to use and I'm sure this is just the first of many times that I will use the information I learned while doing those things.

23 Completed Things

2007-08-03T16:16:00.000-04:00

I really enjoyed completing 23 things. Some were things that I had done before like creating a blog and using Flickr but other such as bloglines were new. My favorite exercises were probably you tube (those videos are hilarious), Library Thing and creating the avatars. All of those things were enjoyable.
I am always interested in learning new technologies. And this gave me an excellent chance. Nothing really surprised me but some things were a little more complicated to figure out then I had thought at first and there turned out to be some new aspects to things I had used before.
I thought the program was really good. However it would have been nice if the blogs on the participants page were organized by branch instead of birthdays. It would have made it a lot easier to tell which blogs belonged to which people.
If a program like this one were done in the future I will definately participate again. I really enjoyed it. I really thought this program helped keep me up on new technology in a fun way. the "things" or exercises were easy to complete but definately taught lessons and allowed me to experiment with things I wouldn't normally have sought out and tried on my own.

Downloadable Audio Books

2007-08-03T16:02:00.000-04:00

I explored the various web sites connected with downloadable audio books. I was impressed by how many title were available to checkout. I followed the directions on the overdrive tutorial. I used my fiance's laptop to download overdrive and actually listen to a bit of an audio book just so I would actually know how to to do it. However there are a bunch of titles that are missing such as the Harry Potter books, which are amazing in their audio versions. I thought Project Gutemburg was really neat too. I hope in the future more and more titles are available online although I know patrons will probably have mixed reactions to that. I ended up downloading Bread and Roses Too by Kathrine Paterson. It wasn't a book that I was really eager to read but I had seen a review of it while ago and it sounded interesting.

Podcasting

2007-08-02T14:05:00.000-04:00

I've listened to Mugglecast, which is a podcast about Harry Potter before. Although I always downloaded it through itunes because it so much easier! I used Yahoo! Podcasts to look up various podcasts although I added the link for my bloglines account from podcast alley. In addition to a few Harry Potter podcasts, which I only listened to the begining because most of those are quite long I also looked up and listened to some book reviews and one podcasts about booktalking. I really enjoyed the book talking one since it was nice to hear a short and sweet description of a few children's books. I tried creating my own audio but it was taking forever for the studio to connect and I decided it wasn't worth it. Anyways I really didn't have much to say other then "testing, testing, testing" "can you hear me"? Maybe I'll try later.

You Tube

2007-07-31T16:16:00.000-04:00

I love you tube! There are so many funny movies uploaded on there and its a really great way to share videos with people if I ever were to take any videos. I chose to share with everyone a hilarious video from blendtech called "Will it Blend" in this particular segment they blend an iphone! There is no great intellectual reason for picking this clip, its just fun to watch them destroy an iphone. I also like the one where they use glowsticks. The thing I really like about you tube is how easy they make everything. Especially sharing and searching for videos. Its quite easy if you would like to see all the "Will it Blend" segments to bring them up. I think youtube programs for teens would be great! Lots of teens already use youtube and perhaps you could have a short video contest or something. Or just teach them how to use it. The one problem with you tube is just about anything can be posted including offensive or inappropriate materials.

Web 2.0 Award Sites

2007-07-28T15:15:00.000-04:00

I decided to check out some websites from Web 2.0 award winners. There were lots of them to choose from so I explored a couple. I really liked Yelp it was interesting to look up places and hear what other people have to say about them and could prove really helpful if you were trying to pick out a new restaurant or something. My only complaint is a lot of places weren't reviewed. I hope Yelp catches on so there is a more complete list of reviewed places.
I've had a Facebook account for over a year now so I didn't re-explore that website but it was cool to see it was listed. I like that facebook seems to me a more subdued version of myspace. You can still list people as your friends and create a profile and post pictures but you don't have music blasting whenever you click on some body's page and it seems fewer people put inappropriate pictures up on facebook.
I'd also used Zillow before but didn't recognize it immediately. Its a very nice way to get an idea for the housing market. However they seemed to be missing a LOT of houses that I know are on sale having looked at them on other housing directories or driven past signs advertising that they were for sale.
I checked out Fuzzmail and sent one to my fiance. And it definitely seemed like a interesting idea although I can't imagine using it on a regular basis. Overall the award winning websites were interesting and I think I may visit this page later at home to play around with even more with them!

Google Spreadsheets

2007-07-24T14:20:00.000-04:00

I tried out Google spreadsheets doing a mock budget of the one I use Microsoft excel for at home. I was hoping that it would be easy because then I could keep my wedding budget online and make it easier for people (my fiance, father and myself) to access. However I wasn't happy with Google spreadsheets. It was easy enough to enter the information but when it came time to create a formula it took me awhile to figure it out and seemed very difficult to create a range. I tried for awhile but it just didn't work very well and when I finally figured it out I felt it was too much work. Anyways by keeping it on my computer its easy to manage who accesses it and the changes they make.
While online documents are cool I think I'll mostly stick to the normal Word just for ease of use because I already know how to do most things that I want the program to do. However if I ever need to create a document and don't have Word available or I am without anywhere to save it (which doesn't ussually happen since I have Yahoo! briefcase to upload files that I need to save). But I still thought this technology was very neat and fun to play around with and with time I may start actually using it on a regular basis.

blog post

2007-07-24T14:11:00.001-04:00

I didn't really know about Zoho Writer. And I definitely like it because there are lots of fun things you can add to add to your document. And of course there is spell check, which is good for people with poor spelling like myself. Zoho Writer is so much like Word that its easy to use. And I do enjoy all the smiley faces. And there is even an option to insert html and ♥ there are special characters and stuff. I'm going to try to export this into my blog now. Wish me luck!

Harry Potter

2007-07-19T10:46:00.001-04:00

I'm very excited about working tomorrow night for the Harry Potter release party! I brought in a costume today so I can dress up and tell people's fortunes. I even have coke bottle glasses to make myself look a little bit like Trelawney. I think this will be my favorite book release because hopefully I won't be out until 2 am (like one year when I went to Borders and only arrived at 11:30 so it was 2 am before I finally got my book) or anything. And I get to work and help create the fun for other people! I'm very excited. I completed the sorting hat ceremony in anticipation of tomorrow night. Here it is:

I'm a Hufflepuff!

I've done the ceremony before but tried it again and got the same result. I hadn't taken the Harry Potter character quiz before and it says I'm Neville, which doesn't surprise me too much.

Which HP Kid Are You?

Maryland Libraries Sandbox

2007-07-16T14:41:00.001-04:00

I added my blog to the favorite blogs on Maryland Libraries sandbox. I may go back later and add some favorite books or any of the optional stuff. I had some trouble posting my link on the wiki because there is a bug and I kept trying to post it using html, which isn't working for some reason. Oh well I just put the plain link and that's a bit more descriptive anyways since it has my name versus "My Blog", which could belong to anyone. I really would like to think up a more creative name but still haven't. Oh well. Wikis are lots of fun and I think I might play around with them a bit more.

Wikis

2007-07-16T13:46:00.000-04:00

I think wikis are really cool. Its a way for people to be able to make changes to a page without the technical knowledge normally required. When I need just some general information that accuracy isn't a huge concern I check out wikipedia for it. One time I helped a patron use it was for a project a second grader had on a type of moss. They needed some general information about the moss to help point us towards the right books because none of them had the type of moss the child was assigned. After checking out wikipedia we found that the moss had another name that was commonly used to describe it. Searching using that name provided us with plenty of resources and the resources supported that it was the same type of moss the little girl had been assigned. Of course I always feel cautious using wikipedia since you really can't always be sure who posted a particular piece of information.
I thought the booklovers was a great idea though because I love reading reviews of books. In my opinion this is the best way to apply wikis to libraries because allowing patrons to edit the catalog would concern me a little bit and be something we would have to constantly be watching over. But book reviews are just personal opinions so they are a perfect way to allow the public to put in their two cents and a wiki is a great way to go about it. However I was disappointed that the reviews are only arranged in one way. Right now there aren't too many books in any category but in the future browsing by author instead of title would be a good option and so would by rating so if you have a long list you can start with the best rated books and work your way down. I did like the 5 star category.
I think internal use of wikis is also a good idea for libraries. We use them at CCPL for teams. The summer reading team wiki has meeting minutes posted, which is an easy place to go to quickly retrieve past minutes. Especially since you can access the summer reading wiki anywhere versus if you saved or printed the minutes.

Technorati

2007-07-13T11:43:00.000-04:00

I've been using tags for awhile on my blog. I think its an excellent way to keep track of posts this way when I want to see all of my posts about 23 things I can just click on that tag same for while I was doing orientation. I've claimed my blog on Technorati so if anyone feels like favoriting it they can and I've favorited a few blogs people I work with although there are some people I probably forgot.
I enjoyed exploring Technorati a lot. There wasn't too much that surprised me with the most popular tags and I enjoyed looking through the things tagged Harry Potter. I looked at a couple of the most popular blogs but none of them particularly interested me. I've added the mdlearn2 tag to this post.

Library 2.0

2007-07-11T12:07:00.000-04:00

I think library 2.0 is a very good idea. The world is changing and of course libraries should change with it and embrace modern technology to its fullest. However I think most libraries are already doing this and eagerly embracing this philosophy and moving forward as fast as they can to better serve patrons. At least this seems to me what we're doing in Carroll County and while I know all libraries are different I don't understand why a library wouldn't want to use all the new technology since it makes life so much easier!

However I also think some of the suggestions of ways that a library can become a Library 2.0 are expensive, require a lot of staff training and in some cases an overhaul of the system. These things will take time for libraries to make the changes and for patrons to adapt to them. I think there are exceptionally high expectations for how many changes libraries should make in such a short period of time. While I think we should be working towards Library 2.0 as fast as we can some things such as using RSS to catalog records isn't going to happen overnight. Also patrons have be to be ready for the new technology while using instant messenger to notify some patrons would be a great idea for other patrons doing so would be impossible.

So while I like the idea of Library 2.0 I don't think it needs to happen overnight. But I think that's OK because its the philosophy behind Library 2.0 is what makes it so great. The idea of embracing technology and breaking down previous barriers to make libraries more user friendly is a wonderful one and should be used by libraries all over. All the various technology will be integrated at some point but for right now I think a open prospective to changes and working hard to utilize technology is a good place to start.

Del.icio.us

2007-07-09T13:15:00.001-04:00

I've used online places to store bookmarks before. When I was at Towson a course I took on technology in education required us to find 5 websites for science, social studies, math and reading that could be useful for teaching children those subjects. And we stored those bookmarks online, although I now forget what the website was called. However Del.icio.us is a much better choice in my opinion to that website because it stored things in folders instead of by tags. Using tags would be much more helpful for a multi-faceted website. Such as one that math and reading things for kids. I really like tags to organize things. I created my own Del.icio.us account and added a few of my favorite websites including two Harry Potter websites, a site that lists historical fiction for kids and a site with tax forums. The last two are ones I've found very helpful at work. During tax season the one with tax forums was a great help and the historical fiction one helped me when I had a historical fiction display in the children's section.

I also liked the social networking aspect of Del.icio.us because its a great way to find people with similar interests and find similiar sites that you may enjoy. Such as following the tag Harry_Potter allowed me to find the Leaky Cauldron, another Harry Potter fansite. This makes this online bookmarking website even better. I plan to use it to hold onto important links. Here is my Del.icio.us:

Library Thing

2007-07-02T19:16:00.000-04:00

This was fun and I'll probably work on this some more. I divided my books into three tagged lists reading, read and want to read. This is a great way for me to keep track of all the books I want to read and rate the ones I've read. Bellow is my widget of books. There are so many books I want to add but just settled for a few that stood out as really good books or recent reads.

Rollyo

2007-07-02T17:03:00.000-04:00

The hardest part of this exercise was trying to figure out what I type of search engine to create. I just couldn't think of any specific type of resources that I wanted to compile for this search. After some thought I decided to use resources that I used when deciding which apartment complex to live in. So I put websites that contain apartment reviews by renters and management. Here is my Rollyo searchbox. It was very easy to create once I decided on a topic for the search.

Avatars

2007-07-02T15:23:00.000-04:00

I tried creating avatars on various sites. Here are my avatars and my feelings about the creation process based on ease and ability to customize.

The avatars you can create on Yahoo! are fun to create and you can customize them to a certain extent. However being an avid player of Sims2 it was disapointing to not be able to further customize every aspect of the face. I suppose the avatar I created looks somewhat like me but not that much. I also felt that too many of the pants were too lowrise and the shirts too high up allowing your tummy to show, which wasn't the look I wanted. But its free and everything is free so there is no disapointment of having it all set and then discovering that you can't actually use it without paying. Getting dressed was difficult because there aren't catagories so if you just want to look at jeans then you need to go through all the bottoms instead of just looking at the jeans. The ability to show emotion through your avatar was nice though.

Meez was a lot more fun the yahoo! I really liked the animations and the breakdown of catagories. It was a lot easier to dress this avatar and I liked that you could customize the nose. And there were more hair options that didn't look quite as overly styled as Yahoo! avatar's hair. The animations were fun to add but the coolest items cost money, which is very disapointing. But it was fun and you can save multiple looks for you meez so bellow is my meez trying to deal with the copier. I may have had a bit too much fun with this thing.

And just so you know what I really look like here is a picture of me:

Helpful Blogs and News Feeds

2007-06-25T19:06:00.000-04:00

Here are some helpful and hilarious things I found to put onto my blogroll:

Bloglines News-This was automatically added to my blogline feeds. I figure it may be useful in finding new things that bloglines offers.
Kids Lit-This website has book reviews of kids and YA books. I think this will be helpful in keeping up with popular children's literature.
Library Bytes-This blog is created by the woman who helped me learn about RSS feeds and so I figured she could provide additional helpful information. Her blog talks about new technology relating to libraries. Definitely a good useful source of information.
Merlin-This will provide me with more information on new technologies and a place to pose questions if I have any. And since its local it may prove to be the most important to me.
Mrs. B's Blog-This has story time ideas including what the author has done most recently in her own story times. I think this blog may help me come up with some new things to do at story time and I may find some good story time books through reading it.
The Reader's Club-This wonderful site has the latest books listed. Its a great way for me to keep up to date with literature and help with reader's advisory. It also will help me with picking books that I want to read.
The Shifted Librarian-This is blog is one of the most popular library blogs and was the only one listed on bloglines when I signed up. So I figure that this should prove to be a good resource for technology advice.
Teenlibrarian-Since I'm the YA chair it seemed like a good idea to keep up to date on YA related issues. After some searching I found this blog, which seemed a good choice.
Unshelved-I love this comic strip since I discovered it a few months ago. When I saw it was listed on the suggested feeds I quickly added it to mine. It also has book reviews, which may provide helpful.
Young Librarian-When I saw this blog listed on a list of library related blogs it sounded like a good choice for me to include. After all I'm young and a librarian. And it will provide me with information about recent events in the world of libraries.

RSS Feeds and Bloglines

2007-06-25T18:48:00.001-04:00

I think this is the first thing that has challenged me! I had a blog before and used Flickr before but I didn't know much about RSS feeds and hadn't used bloglines. So I was excited to really expand my knowledge this week! And I did!
I watched the pod cast and followed the information about how to set up a bloglines account. But it took me a little while to figure out how to add things and I really wanted to post them onto my blog, because what's the point of having a bloglines if people don't see it on my blog? That took me awhile but finally I located the correct java script to add it. And I am pretty happy with the results.

Flickr

2007-06-19T16:05:00.000-04:00

I really enjoy flickr! I've played around with it before and really like being able to share pictures with people in such an easy fashion. I think its much better then emailing pictures or Yahoo! pictures. I also like the small squares to give you a glimpse of the shots because sometimes those squares show a much more artistic and beautiful picture then you took. Of course other times they cut off people's heads. Yahoo! photos is also nice but you can't search if your looking for particular photos and it doesn't say the type of camera used to capture the image.

The various toys are lots of fun. I could play with those all day! Here are a few ones that I had the most fun and was happiest with the result. The trading card maker was fun although this like other Flickr toys require some degree of creativity, which I found difficult today. I decided to use my picture although I typically hate all pictures of me since I tend to have that deer caught in headlights with a way too big smile that looks fake look.

The captioner was lots of fun. I think of all the toys this was my favorite since it allowed you to adjust how you added things on the picture. I found lots of the ones that just did stuff to your picture without much ability to customize cut off important aspects of the picture. And if I went through all my pictures including the ones that came out pretty poorly I think I could have a lot of fun with this toy!

The on black toy was nice. It sure does make a picture look a lot nicer to see it on a black background. However it wasn't one of the more fun toys since you really aren't doing anything but seeing the picture on black. But nice nevertheless.

There were other toys that I enjoyed such as the random picture and the photo stream. Its fun looking at all the picture that I've uploaded. I'll probably end up fooling around some more with the various toys at home.

Digital Cameras

2007-06-13T14:29:00.000-04:00

I have owned and operated a variety of digital cameras since my first one that I received when I was in tenth grade. My first digital camera was a Cannon Elf one and the best thing about it was that it was tiny. It was easy to carry everywhere I went and fit nicely in my purse. I can't recall the specifics about how good it was but lets just say the pictures were clear enough but nothing especially fabulous. Its zoom was just about nothing, which I hated but made do not having the ability to zoom in. It had a rechargeable battery, which I hated because it always seemed to run out when I wanted my camera the most! I took it to Europe twice though and that camera served me well. Finally it died a slow and painful death where I first lost the LCD screen then the door the battery compartment then finally it stopped working all together. Here are a few pictures taken with it:

My next camera was a hand me down camera from my dad. I'm not sure about any of the particulars except its pictures were clearer then my old one and it was a cannon. It was bigger but still small enough to carry around. Just not tiny like the elf. It used the same type of memory cards and took AA batteries, which was nice because I could always just carry batteries with me. However it went through them quickly and kept having problems. At one point you had to shake the camera before you could take a picture. I used both the elf and this one in hopes that one of them would work. Here are some pictures I took with it:

My current camera is my favorite by far. I researched it on epinions to make sure it was the right camera for me and would meet my requirements. I wanted it to take AAA so no rechargeable battery. And I wanted to have zoom since that was one of the things I thought would have made the elf a GREAT camera. I found all these things in the Kodak Easy Share Z740. The camera can take 5 mega pixels pictures and while its the largest camera I've owned its relatively small. There is even an attachment if you want to zoom in on a subject. I LOVE this camera, although I suppose as technology progresses and I get a new camera I will love that one even more. The camera was a gift from my 21st birthday although I didn't receive it until the summer because my dad wanted me to think about which camera I wanted and research it before we could buy one. Here are some pictures from this camera:

What camera would I like to own next? I've been told a Canon Digital Rebel is a great camera. I'd like to have more stabilization since sometimes my photos come out blurry. And I want it to take AAA batteries. Medium size would be good since most of the small ones are either really expensive or poor cameras.

Teamwork Room

2007-06-04T16:03:00.000-04:00

This is the last room where I had to respond to questions so it'll be my last orientation post unless I end up coming back to reflect upon it later or an unfinished part is finished and blog questions are added. Anyways this room was very easy and not too informative for me but that's mainly because I'm already on two system wide teams and the team leader for a branch team. And when I became a team leader the branch manager gave me oodles to read about teams and teamwork, which covered everything in this room and more. Nevertheless I think the information here was good especially for somebody newer who hadn't yet joined a team.
Here is a link the Umbrella Group's most recent wiki page where you can review their minutes and see team updates.
The names of two system wide teams that are currently operating are Summer reading and the proactive customer service team. I'm a member of both of these teams. With summer reading we plan out the summer reading program (which kicked off on Saturday) and organize everything for it. This is quite a bit of stuff to do because performers need to be booked, we get incentives donated and lots more. But its a very fun team to be a member of and the program seems to be off to a good start, which is really nice to see. The proactive customer service team addresses new ideas about customer service and looks to bring them to our library system. At the moment we're very focused on bringing roving reference to our library system. I like this team a lot too because I think we have a great chance to really improve the customer service here (although its already very, very good). Being on this team also keeps me up to date with brand new customer service ideas that are happening in other systems. One team in my branch is the YA team, which I'm the team leader. We're having our first meeting on Friday and that's when we'll start planning programing and other wonderful things for the Young Adults that come to our library. Anyways this final blog post was probably supposed to be a few sentences yet I've just gone on and on! Oops!

Life Long Learners

2007-06-04T15:34:00.001-04:00

There are seven and a half habits of life long learning:

1. Begin with the end in mind.

2. Accept Responsibility for your own learning.

3. View problems as challenges.

4. Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner.

5. Create your own learning toolbox.

6. Use technology to your advantage.

7. Teach and mentor other.

7.5 Play!

My favorite one is play because its fun and just playing around with things you really can learn a lot particularly when it comes to technology. I think that most of what I know about technology and how to use it comes from just playing around with things. That's mainly how I've figured out the bit of html that I know and do different things with the computer. I am really looking forward to the 23 things because a lot of things are interesting and it will be playing yet I'm sure I'll be learning quite a bit!

HR Room

2007-06-04T14:55:00.000-04:00

I am now working on the HR room of orientation, which means I'm nearly finished it! Anyways there are some questions in that room that I'm supposed to blog about. Let's see the first thing that I am supposed to blog about is my favorite part of employee self service. Although the time card is the most useful part and the part of employee self service that I use most frequently I think my favorite would be the time off section. Even though I haven't taken (and don't plan to) a lot of time off it is interesting to watch it build up as I continue working here. Since I'm a pretty healthy person I am particularly interested in seeing how little sick leave I'll be using (so far only one day in the over six months that I've worked here). I can't wait to add my sick leave the sick leave bank for people who actually need that much sick leave once I've accrued enough sick leave to be allowed to share it. Also since I'm planning on getting married next year and will therefore need to use a some of my time off at that time and its very helpful for planning to know how much annual leave I'll have in July 2008.
The other blog question for the HR room was who are the members of the staff and my favorite prop. The members of the HR staff are Muffie Smith, Terri Simmons and Kathy Smith according to the intro to the HR staff. However I received an email about Kathy leaving near the end of this months so that info will very soon be outdated. My favorite prop is the cow because we have a cow puppet just like that at my branch and its a very soft and cuddly puppet.

Corky

2007-06-04T13:21:00.000-04:00

My information question to CTR was when did Corky make his first apperance. Unfortunately nobody at CTR knew so they forwarded the question onward to another librarian who was able to provide an answer. Corky has been the mascot since 1990! I was impressed by how quickly my question was answered despite the need to ask multiple people. Very interesting!

More Orientation Responses

2007-06-01T11:45:00.000-04:00

This is part of orientation. I submitted a question to CTR about how long has Corky been the mascot. The contact us portion was very simple and straightforward. Its easy to locate on the website although I think most patrons with a burning question will be calling or coming into the branch so I wonder how many questions they get via email at CTR.
For Ask Us Now! I picked a bit more fun question after consulting about what to ask with a co-worker I asked the Frederick County Librarian who was in the chat what the weirdest question they'd ever been asked. He said it was a young lady asking if he could take her to her prom when he was just starting out as a librarian. The chat method is easy to use and quick too! And would definately be good if you just need a bit of assistance in finding some information or had a very general library question.
I think these services are really great although I would imagine that phone CTR would be the most helpful since it seems a lot of people struggle with technology and want an immediate response.

Deputy Director's Room

2007-05-29T15:54:00.000-04:00

Part two of orientation. The current members of the board are Todd Herring, Gilda Hogan, Keir Knight, Nancy Lynch, Joyce Muller and Richard Soisson.
There are 22 people that work at my branch not including subs and volunteers since that can vary. I've met everyone who works here although I don't know the pages as well as I know the rest of the staff. I'll try to introduce myself to somebody new at another branch the next time I get a chance and record it later.
After speaking to the branch manger she explained what they do when a library materials are challenged. She discusses the offensive material with the patron making the complaint. Then depending on their degree of anger she explain that we have lots of materials for different audiences. And reminds them that what might not be right for you might be right for somebody else. Her goal is to calm them down and find out exactly what has offended them. Then she has them fill out a suggestion complaint forum that goes to headquarters. The most recent complaint being made at our branch as been people complaining about what is shown on the television.
One library service funded by LSTA was the discovery zone project at WEC and NCC. This project is aimed at helping families at Title I schools by providing special story times and creating a game board that allowed families to earn points for doing library activities like using computers. They also offered kits of educational materials for families to take home.
The risk takers network is a group of people that address problems that have been submitted to them. They take risks to solve the problems and improve the library.

Movie Poster

2007-05-29T13:04:00.000-04:00

In the section of orientation about the director's staff there was a question about the movie poster in the administrative assistant's office. I emailed her to find out that the signed movie poster is from To Kill a Mockingbird, which was one of the books for On the Same page. When they did that book Mary Badham visited the council of the arts where they showed the movie. And she gave out signed movie posters. The administrative assistant was fortunate enough to be given one for all the hard work she'd put in for the team.

First Post

2007-05-29T11:47:00.000-04:00

This blog is primarily for professional things like posting my response to the orientation and a fun program to learn more about technology. I couldn't think up a title so I just did "My Blog" that will hopefully change later and I'll manage to be a little bit more creative. I added a count down for my wedding, which is pretty far away but I'm kind of excited about it and its something else to put on this very blank at the moment page.