Technically a Librarian

I have been spending my day catching up on my blog reading through Google Reader. Wanderings has posted a blog about the librarian stereotype called I Have a Dream!!! that struck a resonate note with me. On my Geocities page I have this for my description: Librarian. It conjures up images of spectacle wearing women stamping books for all they are worth or hushing people-Harry Potter’s Ms. Pince is a good example or Marion from the Music Man. In this new age of computers this image of librarians is false. Being a librarian means collaborating with teachers to help meet both information literacy & technology goals. It involves training your teachers and students to embrace new technologies as well as new literature. It is a multifaceted job where every day is different. No matter how many different titles we are saddled with-School Library Media Specialists, Teacher-Librarians, Information Resources Specialist, the simple truth is that we are librarians. Our individual goals are var...

LibraryThing Local Become a LibraryThing member to do more with LibraryThing Local: Add your favorite bookstores and libraries Keep track of interesting events Connecting with friends, and more.

The download version of Suze Ormond's book *Women and Money* http://www.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/200802/tows_past_20080213.jhtml Download your free copy of Suze Orman's book in English before 8/7c theevening of February 14.It's about 300 pages.This offer was made on Oprah's show on 2/12/08

If you need a great laugh today, read this post by the Annoyed Librarian. The comments are great as well! Some of these course will even make the "hard-core" librarians chuckle! LIS 501: Library Politics LIS 502: Appearance and Deception LIS 503: Doing the Work LIS 504: Library Organization From the comments: LIS ABC123: Stirring the Pot LIS 2112 Advanced Self-Promotion: Marketing "You", the Brand. "Library Meetings," LIS 623: Abnormal psychology LIS 1000 How Not To Deal with Perverts@ Your Library LIS 583b Bandwagoning L-ChiLib 101, how to be the Children's Librarian LIS 5050: The Gentle Art of Negotiating LIS599 Special Topics: Suburban Librarianship for Urban Librarians LIS 509 Library Obsolescence LIS 6666 - Defense against the Dark Arts - Cataloging and Technical Services LIS 560: Library Productivity & Patrons LIS 001 "Introduction to Actual Librarianship: Practice and Theory" LIS 5233 Porn and You LIS 4552 Managerial Support LIS 4...

If you are having trouble viewing this go here. This is a visual image of SAT scores - based on a Facebook analysis (by Virgil Griffith via Tyler Cowen )

As a New Year's resolution for professional development I am going to try to keep up a little better with my blog. There are many fantastic new "things" out there as well as great "old" things to brush up on. Videos to watch such as this: curiosity Video:a short film by film-maker Nic Askew on the nature of curiosity. Starring the ever-curious Seth Godin. http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid980097284/bctid1385253108 I can't wait to see where the gaming in education programs will lead. There are already libraries having game night. {I have a teacher with a PS2 hidden in his room...} I worked today on my presentation for SLMS 2008 entitled Books for Boys. I am creating a wiki to go with it. It is easier than printing off all the handouts though I will print out the booklist that I am creating. There are a lot of good booklists that I am just linking in. This will be my third wiki. I created one for last year's presentation too. I love pbwiki.

http://www.laughinglibrarian.com/bd_stopblogga.htm

David Warlick published a post on the Quiet Revolution where he discusses a colleague who was speaking to a room of 19-20 year olds and when blogging was mentioned, no one raised their hand. Is blogging becoming an obsolete term? If the same person has asked if those students wrote on Facebook or MySpace the response would've been different. They don't consider that blogging. Many of these same students probably keep a journal at Open Diary of LiveJournal, do they consider that blogging? As vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds, I would suggest subscribing to a reader {like Bloglines or Google Reader } and adding some RSS feeds to see what the most current influences in technology and your occupation will come from next.

A great link from Doug Johnson ! This website judges your blog's readability http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx Thanks for the mention Rob ! {Even though you called me Julie instead of June.}

If you would like to see who is editing the Wikipedia and where they are located, check out WikipediaVision It will give you a map of the world, powered by Google (no surprise!). It is amazing!

Interesting take on information.

The Resource shelf just published a list of free resources from the databases people subscribe to. http://www.resourceshelf.com/2007/11/05/resources-of-the-week-free-stuff-from-pricey-database-vendors/ Some of these resources include: EBSCO Free Databases LISTA EBSCO Publishing is proud to provide the Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) database as a free resource to anyone interested in libraries and information management. This world-class bibliographic database provides coverage on subjects such as librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information retrieval, information management and more. Delivered via the EBSCOhost platform, LISTA indexes nearly 600 periodicals plus books, research reports, and proceedings. With coverage dating back to the mid-1960s, it is the oldest continuously produced database covering the field of information science. As well as many others.

Did you know that some of the great movie speeches are available on YouTube?

Okay-we all need a good laugh. Check out this site on OPAC errors and the messages that SHOULD be used. http://warriorlibrarian.com/ROFL/opac.html

We have all gone back to a favorite website to find it "missing". Some people routinely use the Wayback machine to find "lost" websites but sometimes you can't find it using this site. What do you do then? The Search Engine Showdown has made a list of different websites to use to find your lost page! http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/others/archive.shtml

I was catching up on Joyce Valenza's blog from the AASL conference where she was saying how disappointed it was that there wasn't any evidence of 2.0 technology being used at the conference. As I have been pondering this all morning, I had a idea. Couldn't they put up all the sites/links/presentation mentioned as a set of bookmarks on del.icio.us? Then everyone would have access to the resources.

This is always a great topic. Usually blame is put firmly on the school's shoulders but Walter Dean Myers spoke up yesterday in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer . "I would say there is a crisis," said children's book author Walter Dean Myers. "Too many parents have walked away from this idea . . . that education is a family concept, is a community concept, is not simply something that schools do." It should be the community. If students aren't read to at home and encouraged to read, the blame shouldn't be put on the schools. Parents should be held accountable too. Myers is primarily speaking about boys' reading habits and is giving a lecture called "Books & Boys -- Making It Work!" at the University of Washington this week. It is still a great article to check out!