The Eeyore Librarian

Of blogs, tweets, and education.

2009-09-17T15:20:00.000-07:00

It's become apparent that I'm much more communicative on Twitter these days. This fall I started my last semester of my MLIS and my classes include one on research methods, a library management (much needed), and an online class on the 'History of the Book' which, while interesting in a libral arts kind of way, isn't going to contribute to my abilities or skills as a librarian at all, but at least I don't have to drive to it.

I've taken online classes before, in particular from Rutgers on Social Web 2.0 for libraries which was fairly useful in helping me articulate why it is important for public libraries to expose their data and services in a multiplicity of ways essentially allowing our users to determine the most efficacious manner to interact with us is for them instead of us dictating how to interact with us (its ON THE WEBSITE).

That one, as this current one, invariably involves much - mandatory - discussion. If you've ever been 'forced' to be social online you will find that its fairly exhausting (except for that person or two who has online verbal diarhea...) Last time it left me unable to compose the burning blog posts I would like to compose for my Eeyore blog. I'm anticipating the same this time, which combined with some conference blogging for ASIST (shaky yeah!) AND fighting for library funding in my county (voting in November...) will probably leave me mute.

I will be yakking on Twitter: www. twitter.com/eeyorelibrarian

Even if its for Eeyore?

2009-07-17T08:07:00.001-07:00

via "Awful Library Books" which is my favorite blog-du-jour lately:

Passion for Donkeys

A Passion for Donkeys
Svendsen
1988

From anonymous submitter:

“It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to get into the donkey-breeding business. I understand that passion is the key to life, and I like to think I’m open-minded, but anyone with a passion for donkeys probably needs psychiatric help.”

I may need help!

Image by Brian Vallelunga via Flickr

Week 1 - Web Services Coordinator

2009-05-15T19:46:00.001-07:00

So this week was fairly chaotic, and it was partially my fault for not being able to say no.

This was my first week working by myself as a Web Services Coordinator for my rural public library (Publib1.0), the gal who had it previously is also in charge of all teen programing and she is a teen librarian at heart. She managed to persuade management to let her give up the 'assigned' 8 hrs she was committed to managing our website so that she could have more time on the Reference Desk (and probably a lot less stress!). I have been working on call as a public service assistant since September with no regular hours and since being an Online Branch Manger/Librarian is one of my 'dream jobs' I was super excited about this turn of events. I still am pretty humbled that I was able to secure such a high level professional job before graduation - albeit extremely part-time. The fact that this is so few hours fits really well with my 'lifestyle' right now as I wanted to concentrate on primarily staying home with my son this summer (after being such a distant mom with grad school and all) as well as the fact that I still have another full-time semester left on my MLIS in September. In other words fellow un/underemployed librarians - no more job hunting for me until January ;-)

The quandary of course is that 8hrs is NOT enough for this job. I'm maintaining standards and growing our Joomla based CMS website, Co-ordinating the efforts of our content -providers (Ref. head, Readers Advisory head, Teen Head, Kids Head, Foundation, etc etc etc). Still working out snags in our system that our developers left us (long story for another day when I have a better understanding of the problems, igh). Simply going from zero Joomla experience to having to teach people how to use it (like already happening) has been an intellectual challenge.

In some ways I'm glad for the challenge, in others I feel emotionally exhausted over the totality of my responsibilities and the straight jacket my employers have put me in. Obviously I'm doing work outside of the office at this time. I probably will be doing that all summer until the rubber hits the road in September.

I can't even ask for more hours right now. We are broke. In November we are going to the voters and begging for money which, if we don't get, there won't be more hours for anyone. In fact, we're going to have to cut back and probably reduce open hours and services. Again, that's another story for another blog post. Budget issues are not my speciality.

So ideally I'd like to Library 2.0 us - Facebook, Twitter, etc. Let's get us out there, let our patrons decide how they want to interact with us. Develop a social network policy, not necessarily to be on the forefront of change (to many shuderers) but to at least use reasonably stable and proven venues.

And then there is the InTRAnet. It is NOTmeeting the needs of our staff. As a Web Services Librarian, in theory, that should be my area of concern as well. Right now its nobodies...

eight hours, eight hours, eight hours.

So my first week wasn't a complete disaster - being Eeyore things could have gone a lot worse. But when the Director 'all of a sudden' needed something added to the Front Page and I spent half and hour trying to photoshop an image for it before giving up in despair because I am not a graphic artist at all before I finally called the Big D into my office and told her that THIS is simply going to have to wait until next week when our graphic artist is in the house because as the Librarian in charge of our webpage I did not want a photo that looked like a talentless hack with no photoshop skills created it (me). I put my foot down on keeping our most visible and landed on page professional looking, and the Big D agreed. I'm not sure if I handled the whole situation the best way possible. Upon reflection I think I should have come to the conclusion that this THING that the Big D wanted would have to wait for early next week and that was that. Things need to be communicated in advance if they require coordination between multiple units within the organization (graphics, publicity, web).

Of course, standing up to people and saying no and not trying to take on the world just because someone asks is a perpetual weakness for me. Maybe management class in the fall will cure of that?

Busted

2009-03-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

My MLIS school is in the middle of a director search. Because of employment laws and such we can't talk about the individual candidates, I understand the privacy concerns. However, a fellow student with a blog (dangerous objects these blogs) had been blogging about her impressions of the directorial candidates (without naming names or institutions or anything). I felt she was being discreet (maybe other then naming her school - but I've probably slipped and done that in tweets - oops). Personally I don't have time or money to go and sit in on the candidates speaches and forums and such and was happy a friend was blogging about it. I'm close enough to graduation I don't feel a huge stake in this - but I'm still curious and concerned and would like to stay informed.

She was asked to yank her posts. Then we all got this email:

this email is to remind you about the confidential nature of the Directors Search process. If you are blogging, twittering, facebooking or using other social software to formally/informally report, or comment on the candidate visits, you must stop and delete all postings immediately. When such discussions and statements are posted on a blog or on any other web software, they are considered published, and therefore are stripped of their confidentiality. As result, such postings jeopardize the integrity of the search process, and must stop.

The student did take down her posting in compliance with the school policy which is pretty much the only action she could take. I am starting to get frustrated with administrations all around.

Oh well, back to my regularly scheduled end of semester chaos.

I am 500% Siryous

2009-03-08T12:43:00.001-07:00

For those of you having trouble reading this it says: "Make the printers free or lower. What if it is a life or death. I am not lying, I'm 500% serious."

Note: We do have some flexibility to print things for free in response to a reference question and assuredly, if you were having a genuine life or death we would surely print for you for free. We don't want death in our library. I feel bad this kid didn't get the help he needed at my branch - but maybe he learned a valuable life or death.

My Industrious Classmates

2009-02-28T16:16:00.000-08:00

Have created this video in an attempt to win a student contest to attend the 2010 SLA conference. Note: it does not feature me, I could not find an eeyore mask fast enough ;-) :

And on that note I have some ideas for future posts (once this semester is over and I take a break for summer - a very much needed break). There are all these journals that publish fascinating journal articles on LIS issues that I never have time to read (due to school), but I really would like to read at least one published articles, and comment on it, once a week this summer. I'd also like to get something published in some student journal somewhere, and contribute more to LIS wikis....Beware of my lofty goals....

Note: I'm much more active on Twitter these days then this blog. Follow me!

library_mofo: Not library, but for all those who have

2009-01-13T19:13:00.000-08:00

library_mofo: Not library, but for all those who have

This Semester I'm Taking...

2009-01-09T22:46:00.000-08:00

Information Systems Retrieval - Algorithms

This class started out with 5 people. We are now down to three. I hope I'm not the only girl. It seems like a fascinating class on

Nerdy stuff. We'll see if it's canceled. Stay tuned to Twitter for updates.

Document and Subject Analysis

Cataloging stuff with a professor who I've had several times before whom I like. Easy squeezie.

And That Internship...

Today was my first day at the provincial branch of the federal Law Library. (Not the provincial law library across the street mind you.) It went alright, I was a little nervous driving into the big city, but I plotted my way to a couple of different parking garages and memorized the street order so I wouldn't get too lost. This is going to be a very expensive parking semester. And gas - which is at least half off of what it was last year. Too bad I'm driving twice as much!

I'm mostly doing cataloging... we'll see what else I get to do. They don't use MARC records and already I'm going batty trying to map their records to an eventual merge with the other provincial branches of the Federal Library that do use MARC. This might get nightmarish.

Botanical Librarianship - First Semester Reflections

2009-01-05T11:31:00.000-08:00

My first non public service librarian job has been in a Botanical Library of which my duties have been to develop collections management policies and organize the contents of the library. Previously to me being hired, the Reading Room (as it is called even though there are no chairs to sit on and read anything) has been volunteer run off of a typewriter. Yes, a typewriter. It took me two months of quietly and tactfully trying to convince TPTB to remove it to have it removed. It was hard, but I now have a printer hooked up to my Windows 2000 computer (at least its not ME). The volunteers are in their 80's and 90's and I am a bit concerned whether I can teach them to access documents on the shared drive so that the information can continue to be updated after I'm gone in the spring (contract position). There is no circulation system other then pen and paper (no barcodes on the books, etc) although the monograph collection is catalogued. The collection had never been previously weeded. I took on a big challenging job and I'm loving it!

One of the first things I did was to look up professional support for Botanical librarians and I did find one agency - The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries, Inc..

Unfortunately they've been very slow to respond to our requests and frankly, after three months, we still have not had any contact from anyone about membership, even though we have sent them a check. I'm wondering how active they are and how helpful they would really be if they don't even have a responsive basic member services individual.

Over the holidays we've had some water leakage in the roof and some books were damaged (not as much as I imagined driving up there!) and I definitely leave work with my nose all plugged up from the dust I'm wallowing in!

I am taking great enjoyment out of rolling a recycling bin into my library and trashing tons of old serials that are currently available on databases. My biggest challenge (as I'm supposed to weed books) is actually getting my supervisor to agree to some of the books that need weeding. And it's been a learning curve for me learning about the different needs of research scientists versus the 'general public' in terms of books that need to be kept for research purposes. Generally in public libraries you weed the non-fiction after 5-10 years depending on the subject matter. Granted in my Public Library we keep gardening books a little longer since they contain information that doesn't get particularly outdated. A rose is a rose, so they say!

I definitely plan to reflect more on this new opportunity after it is all over. I'm contracted until April. Actually between now and then I'm going to be supper busy with classes and a new internship (in a Justice Library - more after I start on Monday). But I will be very unemployed after that (or at least down to my zero hour library sub job). But I'm going to let the future worry about itself! Follow me on Twitter for more timely updates - I seem to be making a switch to that format as a more informal way of communicating (mostly with myself still, but getting more connected all the time!) TTFN.

Unassigned

2008-11-11T15:31:00.000-08:00

Eeyore Librarian's Dewey Decimal Section:

164 [Unassigned]

Eeyore Librarian = 555585292818914 = 555+585+292+818+914 = 3164

Class:
100 Philosophy & Psychology

Contains:
Books on metaphysics, logic, ethics and philosophy.

What it says about you:
You're a careful thinker, but your life can be complicated and hard for others to understand at times. You try to explain things and strive to express yourself.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Oh the Google Gadgets

2008-10-22T18:09:00.001-07:00

Posting from my iGoogle page. This really should be a twitter post but I wanted to test out this new feature of blogging right from my home page. For the record, I'm still not liking the side tabs... I'll just go stand in the thistle patch for awhile.

I am the Botanical Librarian!

2008-10-21T19:00:00.001-07:00

So a lot has happened in the past month. As you know, the situation over the past year or so at Publib1.0 has been less than satisfactory for me. We went through several managers and the leadership from administration has been disappointing. Well... I had another job interview with them and although the Ass.Director called and said that I gave an excellent interview they were going to give the job to a local gal who they thought would be happy in that position for 5 or 10 years. The Ass.Director used the fact that I was going to get my MLIS as a reason NOT to hire me for this position which was a step up for me, but not a 'professional' level position. I was very flabergasted.
Instead of letting the situation become chicken and eggish, I propositioned her. Give me the promotion to that position, but with no expectation of hours. We have a substitute problem and I felt I would be OK subbing for absent staff members instead of regular hours. It was a HUGE risk money wise and reputation wise. And she came through for me!! I couldn't believe it. I'm still not a big fan of her leadership, but I definately feel some loyalty and respect now. I guess that means I'm easily bought - but really, aren't we all?

So that was my one promotion that week. It got a little greener after that..... Stay tuned!

Where are the books?

2008-09-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

My classification theory class looks be very discussion focused which is great! Here's another example where I'm so much more project focused than theory and why I need to have a job in cataloging (sooner rather than later).

This is what the entire catalog would say. Because most books are fiction-science fiction or some such nonsense. We are in desperate need of smart catalogs!

Zombie Pinups and Open Access.

2008-08-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

From ren at her blog - this great pinup I had to share!

How does this tie into Open Accesss (OA)? Recently I completed a LIS course on OA and our first guest speaker was Brian Owen from Simon Fraser University, who spoke about the Public Knowledge Project. Brian is also involved in some clandestine research on a zombie problem Burnaby Mountain has been having. He gave an uproarious presentation on his methods of zombie rehabilitation at the recent British Columbia Library Association Conference! PKP is a federally funded OA initiative that seeks to bring together researchers and academics, journal editors/publishers, librarians, and software/IT specialists (thanks Francesca!). From their brochure: “PKP has developed free, open source software for the management, publishing, and indexing of journals and current conferences” and PKP has numerous awards including the Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration. This is a tremendous OA resource and is currently the leading open source software for journal publication.

Our second speaker was Jean-Claude Guedon, a participant in the formation of the Budapest Open Access Initiative. He even has his own Wikipedia article. All I can say is WOW!! He gave some mind-altering information to us about some real issues facing the OA movement, especially around academic journals (that which the OA movement is seeking first to free from the claws of private distribution companies).

This is where we learn that Elsevier is evil (insert ominous music here).

The objective of big publishers (in pursuit of a profit) is to figure out how to maximize control of the content they produce. Actually it’s to maximize revenue and one of the ways they do this is through careful control of their product (the finished journal). As an example of this Guedon described how Elsevier allows self archiving of the article if an author desires, but not the pdf version of the same article. Presumably they do this because of pagination issues. When you cite a journal article, you are going to have difficulties doing this in a standardized way unless you’re using the journals official pagination, therefore the publishers still own the version (branding) that has any real value in academia. Control of citation gives the publishers control over reputation (Impact Factor) which means tenure, grants, and references. It's the giant circle of suck with the big publishers acting like big vampires (Guedon's analogy).

We give the publishers free content, paid for with public money, free peer review, and then they in turn, get to charge mainly public entities (universities, libraries) to access that said same material because we currently need their branding matrix (What’s your Impact Number?). I hope I explained all that correctly. My pardons to Mr. Guedon if I messed anything up.

Even if all journals went fully online OA right this instant, how would all the individual libraries be able to know which ones to subscribe to instead of just getting a big bundle and the assurances that come from the giant publishing businesses. How do smaller journals (and other producers) get seen or heard if there are no big Publishers (like Elsevier) out there to push their product into academia. One possible solution that Guedon suggested is that maybe the big aggregators (who receive fees from subscribers) can pay the OA journals (content providers). Another possible solution Guedon suggested is maybe a wiki model with limited entry (wiki with credentials). Wikis have the advantage in that it “is a not a thing but a process” and in that it retains a complete history of changes made. Wikis could provide a true communication matrix that is missed even in the vaunted peer-review process (or at least at a much s-l-o-w-e-r response rate). David Lee King also blogged about the immediacy of comments/criticism on a blog vs. the s-l-o-w rate of official peer review response in traditional publishing. He questioned which one is a better form of peer-review.

This big question about the future development of OA journals won't disappear until the OA community comes up with its own set of branding metrics. Until then the branding monopoly that is tied to the current production of journals will continue.

A larger question also came up (yes, this was a VERY meaty discussion) on how open is OA when large chunks of the world have no access to the networks or infrastructure necessary to access the online content? Guedon had some interesting ideas about the solution to that, worthy of further discussion.

1. Local production of digitized materials.

2. Physical distribution - Bring the material in, (maybe through an embassy?) make copies to go to the universities who could then redistribute them where needed.

Access to OA is a big concern, especially in Africa where any access is nearly impossible. Closer to home, in many rural areas, people have dial-up at best which makes going online a teeth-pullingly painful experience. This is not the spirit of OA.

I do wish we had discussed, in addition to the resources we did cover, specific strategies for implementing OA policies in our institutions and promoting OA in our reference work or our library systems. Unfortunately this was just a short little seminar and not a full course offering (yet!) and as such it suffered like most of them, from being material rich and time poor.

Any suggestions for promoting local adaptation of OA?"

How To Say No in Administration-ese

2008-08-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Well, after a number of your emails over the years, I have to credit you with a high degree of “out of the box thinking” brain cells. Very nice for both of us! Your suggestion will be added to the discussion and I’ll let you know what is decided. Keep THINKING Eeyore Librarian!!!!!!!!!

My Big Boss is a pro - but that is definately a no. I guess that's it, that was my last college try at trying to make my current job work. I guess I'm going to have to make a bigger effort at applying at other libraries. I'm so ambivalent about leaving, but between the hiring freeze, the 'voluntary reduction in hours' all-staff request and the giant torpedo of a cost saving measure that would have given me some satisfaction career-wise I guess that means I'm done.

I think?

Invisalign here I come! (worry).

2008-07-30T18:15:00.000-07:00

I've always had an embarrassing gap in my front teeth, which of course along with an overbite have made things rather unattractive. I missed out on braces when I was younger cause my parents were too poor to drive me into town (nearest orthodontist was 5hrs away). I've been going to school or parenting my child (stay-at-home mom) since then and even though I'm still in school full-time to get my graduate degree, I'm splurging. Thank god for student loans. I really feel likes its now or never since I'm going to begin my professional career soon.

I always assumed I'd be wearing the metal braces because of the severity of my problem, but everytime I've gone to an ortho they didn't want to just slap some on and get it going, they wanted my mouth to be textbook perfect and therefore that always meant surgery to break my jaw and repair my overbite first. Braces cost money, ortho surgery cost mucho money. It was always just another huge barrier that I could never cross. But I started thinking about Invisalign more and thought, what the heck, I'll just get a consultation.

Best thing I ever done. Now, I know he is trying to sell me a product. But just the fact that he said yes, I can fix your teeth now made me want to weep for joy. I just want to look normal, I realise I still won't have Superman's jaw or whatever, but when you look at me, my teeth won't be abnormal and unattractive. Praise be jeebuz.

I still did my reseach because of some concerns with root loss when teeth are moved to fast (and mine have a long ways to move). But I found some great current blogs of actual (I think...) people. With front tooth gaps.

Learning How to Smile (with a cute canadian girl in glasses - my husbands favorite type - and no, he doesn't want me to get lazer eye surgery next but I'm thinking about that as well)
From Imperfect to Invisalign who created a great video to view in her blog.

I also check out the message boards including the ones on Archwired and this forum at Dentistry.com and although there was plenty of stories from people who had some problems, there was a lot you were generally satisfied and it made me feel a whole lot better about my decision. And there won't be funky metal in my mouth!

I'll see if I can get a youtube of the animation of my teeth moving. 4-6 weeks before they get here. Look out world.

PMOG's

2008-07-29T07:40:00.001-07:00

I feel like I owe this blog some posts... but I'm just going to skip ahead and start a new topic and play catch up later.

I've been playing with PMOG's this month. If you don't know what it is, go to www.pmog.com, sign up and play! Ally with me (romck77) if you want. It is basically a web-annotation 'game' and I feel it has quite a few implications for libraries.

I'm taking an Adult-Services program right now and investigating this for use in a library setting. The big drawbacks are that its pretty much a Firefox specific program, not that I blame them for not supporting Explorer (yick) and requires a download which is sometimes hard to do in the library (we don't allow downloads in my public library - or Firefox for that matter). But for creating a self-guided tour of online services PMOG's are very effective. Several have already been built. Check-out:

I haven't gone on the smut tour yet, but I was told it's not as bad as it sounds.

So far I'm pretty excited about this. We'll see how it goes.

Grade update

2008-07-01T21:49:00.001-07:00

Woo Hoo!! This from a solid A- person. I don't think I've ever gotten a grade that nice so far. I'm almost done with my social software class, final project is due on Thursday. I've had to do 5 -9 blog posts a week for that class so I was a little blogged out. But I will have commentary when I'm totally done. I guess I should be more 'cool' and use the word of the day.

w00t!!

Oh My Blog!!

2008-06-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

My social software class is requiring me to write 5 blog posts this week. And I'm losing 4 days due to a wedding. Ugh. I am so blogged out right now. I just wrote a massive (1000 word) blog post for my OA class as well. I'd swear off blogging after this semester, but I don't think it would stick!! I'm going to feel the need to communicate eventually!!

Here's my student blog: http://rmscils598x08.blogspot.com/

Have fun guys!!

CLA part deux. Much better!!

2008-05-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

I had a much better day volunteering today. Maybe it was because I actually got to listen to some sessions and actually felt I was AT a conference that elevated my mood. I showed up, there were lots of other volunteers there, again, just like the BCLA there were more than was needed so we could sneak off to the sessions . I helped direct traffic (luckily it was day 2 and everyone knew where they were going 'cause I didn't have a clue where half the stuff was!) and I helped with an author signing (Susan Juby), but they kinda regulated the authors to this far off corner of the conference that no one could find. So actually I just directed more traffic and realized that being a Wal-Mart greeter is not a good career choice for me. The last session I went to had some of my co-hort doing the presentation and they rocked the house!! I'm so proud of them. I have no problem expressing myself online, but public speaking is just not going to be in my future either. Boy I'm closing off a lot of career paths today!

Day 3 of Wii Fit and I'm still unlocking stuff. I'm ferrying over to the island tomorrow so no exercise. I'm never underestimating competitive yoga again!!

Wii Fit & the CLA

2008-05-21T21:35:00.000-07:00

I went into Vancouver today to volunteer for the CLA. Because of my work schedule I'll only be able to attend one session on Friday, but I thought I'd do extra volunteering anyway because it's always a good networking experience right? Big giant WRONG. Boy what a waste of time. The gal who was supervising me was obviously completely uninterested in who I was. She never did find out what my name was. She had a nametag so I know exactly who she is, and I wondered how long she could go without asking such an obvious icebreaker question, or anything else like 'are you a student?' or something about which conference sessions I was planning on going to or anything at all. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And I did try to engage her, I asked how she involved with the CLA, I made a few other polite chit-chat but the bitch was just fridgid, and not in a shy way. I can tell when people are shy (being VERY so myself - I'm happy being left alone most of the time). This was just someone completely uninterested, not in a mean way, just in an uncurious way, she just didn't seem to care. Hopefully this doesn't make me sound narcissistic, it's not that I have to tell a stranger all about me - we could have talked about library science or the conference or... So that blows out any ideas of networking (or at least stimulating library conversation). I'm so taking all the swag I can carry out on Friday. Vendors watch out!!

Coming home I found my mother's day present - a Wii Fit!! I'm so excited - I have a weight problem and I need an excuse to exercise. So we set it up and it kicked my ass. My fit age is very old!! And it fattened my mii after weighing me. My mii is fat!! That yoga tree pose better be a bigger calorie burner than it looks like!! Slalom everybody.

Blogging opportunities?

2008-05-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be a guest student blogger over at Open Sudents as part of the requirements for a little quickie summer course on Open Access issues. This is going to be a very exciting thing! I'm also taking an online class on social software technology that will also require some blogging (probably at a different blog!) so if this one is a little slow, it may be because I'm all blogged out! I love being able to express myself here and I realize I may get a little 'ranty' occasionally. That's probably a result of happiness requires no words, but sadness is a river of verbiage. I'm going to make more of an effort to post good stuff as well. I'll start with this: I got an email from my husband who was in the downstairs doing his thing on the desktop while I was upstairs on the laptop doing my thing:

Yes, instead of going to the library catalog himself he sent me an email! Why couldn't he do it himself - because he's sending me to librarian school so that he can have his own personal librarian. Money well spent I guess.

Semesters Over

2008-04-30T18:07:00.000-07:00

I managed to maintain my undergraduate gpa, which is OK, but not excellent. I felt really frustrated over not being able to spend more time with each assignment but I was taking four classes so I pretty much just went from one assignment to the next with no or a negative gap (there was this terrible week with multiple double-digit percentage assignments due). Have I answered all the questions, have a met all the minimum requirements. Check. OK, on to the next one. It was like that.

Now that I'm done I have some observations. For the most part the classes were great. I got the standard basic cataloging, the standard basic reference class, the 'intro to librarianship' class which was great because we got to go on a lot of tours and see various types of librarians at work. Than there was the technology class.

The goal was to be exposed to various types of technology that we would be using in our graduate program/career. They were:

Powerpoint
Webdesign
Blogs

I think we were supposed to learn a little about databases as well but since none of that unit was tied to any GRADES then no, I didn't pay the least bit of attention to it (and I can always take an Access class). I realize that this is more of a class to get everyone up to speed so that we are already on the same page, but for someone already familiar with the above technologies it was more about the content creation than the tech skills (hmm - how do you blog??).

Most frustratingly was the webdesign. Now, as information professionals we should know what an accessible webpage looks like. We should know how to build them. Or, barring that, how to use Dreamweaver which is the program you would actually be using in the real world if you weren't using a CMS like Joomla or Drupal. Instead, we used a WYSIWYG called Koompozer which is an offshoot of NuVu. It's alright. For those of us who know basic HTML/CSS it was frustrating because we weren't graded on our code. Just on our content. For those who didn't have any previous knowledge, they didn't learn anything other than how to use a WYSIWYG they will never use again.

Networking

2008-03-07T23:10:00.001-08:00

I went to my first 'First Friday' which is a get together for all the librarians in my county. There were a couple of tables of us including a lot of people I was introduced to so it was a good networking experience. There was one part that now that I think back on I should have kept my mouth shut. One of the gals I met works for the city library and she was saying how she didn't enjoy the way she was being treated by some people there because she has a low position (but is going to MLIS school). I commiserated with her about feeling unappreciated. I'm wondering now if that was the right thing to do. I hope no one thinks I was badmouthing my employer - which I was, in a way, but I just don't want anyone thinking that. Oh my mouth. Other than that I had a blast!! Librarians are a lot of fun. And libraries are the #4 thing to do in a recession!!

I'm officially losing it!!

2008-03-03T11:51:00.001-08:00

OK, so I'm sitting at home after dropping off my son at school thinking I'd spend the day doing school work. How silly of me. My Techlib1.0 director calls asking if I can come in that afternoon. Sure I say, I'm always eager to please (and my last two facebook updates go "is worried I can't say no to people"). So I get lunch in and get out the door and than BLAM almost drive over several gangs of middle-schoolers that are ambling all over the place. Hmm, I think to myself, why are they out of school. Than the eco-efficient light-bulb goes off in my head, AHA it's early release today. Followed by the OH-SHIT its early release!!! Luckily the elementary schools get off an hour later so I'm not late, but I had to call in to work and say - oops. So thanks to this unfortunate series of events without which I would have absolutely forgotten to go get my kid from the school I can now pretend I'm organized, proficient and on top of it all. I just wish the reality was not so far from the truth!!