I read an article from the Associated Press about how the Harry Potter series is now finally going to become available in e-book format. However these ebooks will only be available through J.K. Rowling's website: Pottermore. They will not be sold by Amazon or any other ebookseller. She has completely cut the booksellers out of the loop. And this situation got me thinking, does this spell the beginning of the end of booksellers? Could all ebooks be put out on individual websites by authors or publishers? It seems that by cutting the booksellers out then the authors/publishers could have a larger margin of profit on each book sold. In this sense, these ebooks could be a huge profit for J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter is one of the most popular book series ever having sold over 450 million copies and having been translated into 67 different languages. However I wonder if this elimination of the bookseller would only work for types of books like Harry Potter, that already have huge followings. For new authors and lesser known works I still feel like booksellers will play and essential role because consumers won't buy those books because they are looking for a specific book. They will more likely find those lesser known books and authors through searches by topic, genre, browsing, or through marketing efforts of the bookseller.
I have a color nook from Barnes and Noble, and as a nook owner I am signed up for a weekly email advertising ebooks that Barnes and Noble offers. These emails include popular titles (ones that probably don't need marketing), and lesser known works that are advertised as "great deals" because they are usually much cheaper than the popular titles. But because of this advertising I would surmise that these books achieve much better sales then they otherwise would. And in this sense these authors and publishers "need" booksellers. But J.K. Rowling decided that she did not "need" them to sell her books so she is creating her own alternative book selling website.
In my personal opinion I hope that not many other authors decide to go down this route because that would eliminate the browse-ability factor of booksellers. I know that "browse-ability" is a concept that librarians love to talk about, the serendipitous effect of finding great reads by randomly browsing shelves or in an online marketplace by scrolling through different topics or genres. I think it would be a large pain to have to search multiple different websites to find different books that I would like to buy and read. Therefore I hope more authors do not follow in J.K. Rowling's footsteps. Even though booksellers do make books more expensive because they must add in their cut to make a profit, the convenience they provide in searching for a book to buy improves my overall experience and therefore I find them to be a worthwhile part of the process.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Review of Ready Play One
Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, was honestly one of the most enjoyable books that I have read in a long time. I hope that statement conveys my strong positive recommendation of this book because I am an avid reader and read many books each week. But Ready Player One grabbed my attention early, made me care about Wade Watts, the protagonist, and kept my brain stimulated with trivia and puzzles. Ready Player One is set in 2044, where our current environmental and economic problems have caused severe problems for the earth leaving humans seeking a way to get out of their reality. They do this by playing a virtual reality game called OASIS, which it seems that every single person on earth plays for significant portions of their day. The creator of OASIS, James Halliday, is obviously then a billionaire many times over. And when he dies with no heirs he creates a contest to find a secret “Easter egg” hidden in the OASIS video game. To find this prize there are three keys and gates which you must find and open first and all of the trials in this contest center around his favorite subjects: 80’s trivia and videogames. Five years pass with no one being able to even find the first key, then Wade stumbles upon the first key and suddenly the game kicks into high gear. With memorable characters, an exciting story line, random bits of videogame and 80’s trivia, we follow Wade and his fellow gunters (those who spend all their time searching for the Easter egg) as they try to win the contest before the enemy “Sixers” (who only want the Easter egg so that they can control OASIS and institutionalize it) can.
I am not a huge videogame fan, but I was born in the 80s and therefore I enjoyed a lot of the 80’s pop culture references. This book is not overly geeky so that only videogame fans would enjoy it. Cline’s storyline and characters were so gripping and realistic that they were able to take center stage of the story while the videogame lore filled in as just part of the plot. Overall I recommend Ready Player One to all adults and young adults who enjoy adventure, mystery, or science fiction stories. I think it should be one of the top books of 2011.
Awesome Awesome Awesome Book Five Huge Stars (out of Five)
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Why Libraries?
With so many budget cuts in communities and public schools, often funding for libraries is being cut. In the Charlotte area principals were told that they had to choose between a counselor, a academic facilitator or a librarian position for the 2011-2012 school year, they could not have all three. Consequently many librarians are losing their positions for next year. As I keep reading articles (online and otherwise) about this topic of cuts to library and library staff funding, it seems like every time someone makes a comment along the lines of: "I don't use the public library, so why should my tax dollars pay for it?" Which relates back to the question of why are public libraries important?
I wanted to spend a little while trying to answer this question, but I felt that it was too important for me to wait and potentially forget about. Because no matter whether or not I ever actually get to work in a public library (which I would love to do), I still believe that they are vital and important to strong and healthy communities.
Reason 1 Why Libraries are Vital: They provide learning and self-help opportunities.
Libraries provide access to vast amount of information that can provide individuals with learning and self-help opportunities that they may not be able to get else where. You may say that the Internet can do the same thing, which is partially true that the Internet can provide vast amounts of information however there are three things that the Internet can't do.
One, is provide you with only verified information. Part of a librarian's job to selectively choose the resources that are made available in the library. Librarians are called to provide diverse view points of resources on issues, but also to make sure that those resources are of high quality for their purpose. Google can't guarantee that its results are good results, only that its results seem to have the key words that you entered into the search bar.
Two, there are still many people who cannot afford to have the Internet at home, therefore they must go somewhere with computers to access all of that information on the Internet. Where do people go to find free access to computers? The library.
Finally, there is still a lot of information not on the "free" Internet. If you use a Google search there is still a lot of very good and useful information that you will not be able to find. Some of that information is still only found in books. Not all books have been digitalized and even if they have been digitalized not all of those ebooks are available in a simple Google search. Often they are proprietary (not free) information that is located behind a pay wall. Furthermore there are many databases which libraries subscribe to, which are also proprietary in nature. Databases often contain articles or reports which are very useful and often some of the most recent and highest quality resources available on a certain topic. Databases usually can only be accessed through someone who has already paid for access, such as the library. Furthermore, don't even get me started on the deep web, the vast amount of information that is stored on the Internet, but will never come up on a Google search because it is not indexed by Google. Part of what librarians are trained to do is to find information of all types and sizes on all sorts of different topics. Some great information on some topics can be found in the deep web and some librarians (such as myself) are trained to help you find it there.
Now that my lengthy explanation that not all information can be found on the Internet is over, hopefully I have shown that libraries are essential to providing those learning and self-help environments and resources that people need. Libraries are free, try within reason to have reasonable hours, provide useful resources on many many different topics and also provide helpful staff, trained to assist patrons in how to find the information they need. With out these free places for people to learn, how could they improve their lot in life? How much more would their quality of life suffer without having access to this information that could help them: find a job, start a business, research a medical condition, or whatever other issues they needed to investigate?
I hope to provide more reasons in the future as to why libraries are important, but it feels good to at least get one out in public.
I wanted to spend a little while trying to answer this question, but I felt that it was too important for me to wait and potentially forget about. Because no matter whether or not I ever actually get to work in a public library (which I would love to do), I still believe that they are vital and important to strong and healthy communities.
Reason 1 Why Libraries are Vital: They provide learning and self-help opportunities.
Libraries provide access to vast amount of information that can provide individuals with learning and self-help opportunities that they may not be able to get else where. You may say that the Internet can do the same thing, which is partially true that the Internet can provide vast amounts of information however there are three things that the Internet can't do.
One, is provide you with only verified information. Part of a librarian's job to selectively choose the resources that are made available in the library. Librarians are called to provide diverse view points of resources on issues, but also to make sure that those resources are of high quality for their purpose. Google can't guarantee that its results are good results, only that its results seem to have the key words that you entered into the search bar.
Two, there are still many people who cannot afford to have the Internet at home, therefore they must go somewhere with computers to access all of that information on the Internet. Where do people go to find free access to computers? The library.
Finally, there is still a lot of information not on the "free" Internet. If you use a Google search there is still a lot of very good and useful information that you will not be able to find. Some of that information is still only found in books. Not all books have been digitalized and even if they have been digitalized not all of those ebooks are available in a simple Google search. Often they are proprietary (not free) information that is located behind a pay wall. Furthermore there are many databases which libraries subscribe to, which are also proprietary in nature. Databases often contain articles or reports which are very useful and often some of the most recent and highest quality resources available on a certain topic. Databases usually can only be accessed through someone who has already paid for access, such as the library. Furthermore, don't even get me started on the deep web, the vast amount of information that is stored on the Internet, but will never come up on a Google search because it is not indexed by Google. Part of what librarians are trained to do is to find information of all types and sizes on all sorts of different topics. Some great information on some topics can be found in the deep web and some librarians (such as myself) are trained to help you find it there.
Now that my lengthy explanation that not all information can be found on the Internet is over, hopefully I have shown that libraries are essential to providing those learning and self-help environments and resources that people need. Libraries are free, try within reason to have reasonable hours, provide useful resources on many many different topics and also provide helpful staff, trained to assist patrons in how to find the information they need. With out these free places for people to learn, how could they improve their lot in life? How much more would their quality of life suffer without having access to this information that could help them: find a job, start a business, research a medical condition, or whatever other issues they needed to investigate?
I hope to provide more reasons in the future as to why libraries are important, but it feels good to at least get one out in public.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
My future in Librarianship
I graduated with my MLIS degree about 1 month ago. So I can officially call myself a librarian, I guess. However, how do I spend my days? I work as a veterinary assistant at an animal hospital, so am I truly a librarian? If you asked me a year ago where I would be today I felt sure that I would be job hunting or hopefully in a librarian role, but here in Charlotte both the public schools and the public libraries are not fairing well and are either laying off librarians or not hiring any more. Since moving is not an option right now, where does that leave me?
I just started this job as a veterinary assistant slightly over 1 month ago. I took the job because it was full time (I was only part time before) and it meant no working on Sundays and after 90 days I will have health benefits. Are these good reasons for taking a job? In this economy (which in Charlotte is still not great) I personally thought that it was a good decision. But what does that do for my career as a librarian?
I have been thinking about this a lot recently, I still feel called be serve others through providing them with information and I still feel that literacy, books, and reading are extremely important. Right now I am fixated on the career of being a researcher, of being assigned a certain topic to research and then righting a report about it for a client. Part of me would like to be a consultant of some kind, helping companies organized their materials. (Part of the desire to be a consultant stems from a cataloging internship that I did and blogged about in my last semester as a graduate student).
On days like today I feel lost as to where I am supposed to be going in my career. Questions whether to stay at my job or keep looking for a new one. I feel an obligation to my current job because they just hired me and I feel it would be kind of crappy for them to invest all this time training me and then I go and quit on them.
I just read a post by Ken Haycock, a summary of a speech he gave as a commencement address to graduating MLIS students. And this paragraph stuck with me:
"7. Your job title is irrelevant. The discipline is Library and Information Science, the profession is Librarianship (in my opinion, there is no such profession called Information) and the job title is irrelevant. Don’t look for a job title in the ads, look for a reflection of your knowledge, skills and abilities. There are jobs, good jobs, if you don’t limit yourself by geographic location, by type of preferred work environment or type of library or by lack of imagination. Remember that employers do not care about your grades or the courses you took but do care deeply about what you can do and how well you can play with others. The largest employers of librarians today are not libraries but vendors, and they are challenged in finding qualified and capable librarians to work for them. In my forty years I have never had the job title “librarian”; indeed, my professional skill set was probably most useful when I was a school principal where we planned action research, made decisions based on evidence and collaborated through partnerships. "
I want to look outside the traditions, but I feel caught between wanting to continue to search for new opportunities and the desire to be lazy and stay where I am at. I have been job searching for almost 2-3 years straight (long story, but I basically kept changing jobs). I am tried of job searching, but I afraid that some great opportunity is going to be passing me by if I don't. I want to use the skills I gained through my MLIS, I feel I could be great at a job where I could use them... but it seems like there is little out there for me right now and it is difficult to keep up with trends in librarianship when you aren't in a library...
Or maybe I am just a big whiner. :)
I just started this job as a veterinary assistant slightly over 1 month ago. I took the job because it was full time (I was only part time before) and it meant no working on Sundays and after 90 days I will have health benefits. Are these good reasons for taking a job? In this economy (which in Charlotte is still not great) I personally thought that it was a good decision. But what does that do for my career as a librarian?
I have been thinking about this a lot recently, I still feel called be serve others through providing them with information and I still feel that literacy, books, and reading are extremely important. Right now I am fixated on the career of being a researcher, of being assigned a certain topic to research and then righting a report about it for a client. Part of me would like to be a consultant of some kind, helping companies organized their materials. (Part of the desire to be a consultant stems from a cataloging internship that I did and blogged about in my last semester as a graduate student).
On days like today I feel lost as to where I am supposed to be going in my career. Questions whether to stay at my job or keep looking for a new one. I feel an obligation to my current job because they just hired me and I feel it would be kind of crappy for them to invest all this time training me and then I go and quit on them.
I just read a post by Ken Haycock, a summary of a speech he gave as a commencement address to graduating MLIS students. And this paragraph stuck with me:
"7. Your job title is irrelevant. The discipline is Library and Information Science, the profession is Librarianship (in my opinion, there is no such profession called Information) and the job title is irrelevant. Don’t look for a job title in the ads, look for a reflection of your knowledge, skills and abilities. There are jobs, good jobs, if you don’t limit yourself by geographic location, by type of preferred work environment or type of library or by lack of imagination. Remember that employers do not care about your grades or the courses you took but do care deeply about what you can do and how well you can play with others. The largest employers of librarians today are not libraries but vendors, and they are challenged in finding qualified and capable librarians to work for them. In my forty years I have never had the job title “librarian”; indeed, my professional skill set was probably most useful when I was a school principal where we planned action research, made decisions based on evidence and collaborated through partnerships. "
I want to look outside the traditions, but I feel caught between wanting to continue to search for new opportunities and the desire to be lazy and stay where I am at. I have been job searching for almost 2-3 years straight (long story, but I basically kept changing jobs). I am tried of job searching, but I afraid that some great opportunity is going to be passing me by if I don't. I want to use the skills I gained through my MLIS, I feel I could be great at a job where I could use them... but it seems like there is little out there for me right now and it is difficult to keep up with trends in librarianship when you aren't in a library...
Or maybe I am just a big whiner. :)
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Book Review: Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon
Back on my trusty blog again...
So it seems my posts have been thematic in nature, as I go through different phases, by posts go through different phases. Most of the posts (who am I kidding) ALL of my posts this spring were about my internship with Family Support Network. Now that has officially ended. I greatly enjoyed that consulting experience and would love to do something similar again at some point if the opportunity arises.
However today I wanted to post a brief review of a book galley I read this week. It is of the book Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon. I saw it on my weekly Netgalley email and I love Cinderella stories so I had to read it. And overall it was pretty good, for a YA novel.
Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon is an interesting new take for YA readers on the classic Cinderella story, although it strays the farthest from the original Cinderella of any version I have ever read. In this version Cinder and Ella are two sisters, Cinder the obedient one and Ella the beautiful one and closest to her father. They have two sisters, Katrina who is the bossy and demanding one and Beatrice who is immature and greedy. The girl’s father is bewitched by the evil Prince and leaves/disappears, while their mother becomes completely absorbed in her spinning. From this set up we can see the similarities with the traditional Cinderella story; however the plot drifts far from the original. The novel includes all of the elements of a good fairy tale: knights, adventures, and love, while not treating the story too simplistically. The characters in the story especially Ella, are thoroughly developed and while they have stereotypical moments most characters are highly humanized and very personable. Additionally the dialogue between the characters is often witty and fast pasted. However, the plot itself I felt was not fully as developed and flushed out as it could have been. For example, in the background of the story is the legend that each person’s life is connected with a tree that grew on the same day they were born. This legend, while mentioned, seems to change throughout the novel as further magic is introduced into the story. Sometimes that magic seems highly contrived and used just to get the author out of a tight spot. I wish the author had gone back and written in the magical elements of the legend when it is first introduced rather than having them appear later.
So it seems my posts have been thematic in nature, as I go through different phases, by posts go through different phases. Most of the posts (who am I kidding) ALL of my posts this spring were about my internship with Family Support Network. Now that has officially ended. I greatly enjoyed that consulting experience and would love to do something similar again at some point if the opportunity arises.
However today I wanted to post a brief review of a book galley I read this week. It is of the book Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon. I saw it on my weekly Netgalley email and I love Cinderella stories so I had to read it. And overall it was pretty good, for a YA novel.
Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon is an interesting new take for YA readers on the classic Cinderella story, although it strays the farthest from the original Cinderella of any version I have ever read. In this version Cinder and Ella are two sisters, Cinder the obedient one and Ella the beautiful one and closest to her father. They have two sisters, Katrina who is the bossy and demanding one and Beatrice who is immature and greedy. The girl’s father is bewitched by the evil Prince and leaves/disappears, while their mother becomes completely absorbed in her spinning. From this set up we can see the similarities with the traditional Cinderella story; however the plot drifts far from the original. The novel includes all of the elements of a good fairy tale: knights, adventures, and love, while not treating the story too simplistically. The characters in the story especially Ella, are thoroughly developed and while they have stereotypical moments most characters are highly humanized and very personable. Additionally the dialogue between the characters is often witty and fast pasted. However, the plot itself I felt was not fully as developed and flushed out as it could have been. For example, in the background of the story is the legend that each person’s life is connected with a tree that grew on the same day they were born. This legend, while mentioned, seems to change throughout the novel as further magic is introduced into the story. Sometimes that magic seems highly contrived and used just to get the author out of a tight spot. I wish the author had gone back and written in the magical elements of the legend when it is first introduced rather than having them appear later.
Overall Cinder and Ella is a good light read for YA (especially female) readers. I would recommend this story to readers who enjoy fairy tale adaptations or adventure stories with female protagonists who love to focus on great characters. Lemon‘s questions at the end of the novel are also good conversation starters and could transform this light read into a good discussion book.
Just a thought for those of you who like these types of novels :)
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Seeing the Finish Line
I apologize for not posting last week. I completely forgot and then didn't realize I forgot until today! I think this speaks for how busy I am this semester. I titled this entry seeing the finish line because I am finally seeing the end of the cataloging portion of this practicum project and I am seeing my graduation date just around the corner as well!
D. The past two weeks have again been spent mostly cataloging. I have officially finished all of the books and videos at the Child Developmental Services office and now only have the brochures at the CDSA and the remaining resources at the Family Support Network office in Huntersville. Also I was informed this week that there are two more filing drawers full of brochures to sort through as well. As I look at the resources I am not weeding out books or videos that are too old, because I feel that that would not be a good judgement call for me to make, however I am making decisions about the brochures, which is often harder because many lack publication dates so it is hard to tell if they are current or now. Many of the older brochures (especially the ones with newer versions) I have permission to toss. By the end of next week hopefully I will have all the cataloging done and a very large pile to take to be recycled.
This week I also had a meeting with my site supervisors about the physical space of the resource room. Although my supervisors want to create a larger resource area by appropriating part of the lobby space the county has nixed that idea and the library will be housed in its current location which is a room about 10ft by 10ft. I told my supervisors that I would need at least an additional bookshelf (bringing the total to 4) some bookends and shelf labels to complete a bared-bones library set up. They already moved in the extra bookshelf and bought the bookends, however I still need to look up a company to buy shelf labels from.
E. Overall these past two weeks have been very much "business as usual." I spend much of my actual hours cataloging materials, which I will admit can get boring after doing it for 3 hours straight. I am looking forward to being done with the cataloging and moving on to the organizing and creating the instruction manual. I am a little worried about being done by the end of April. I know Dr. Bird said just to do my best, and that giving FSN a list of their materials was better than nothing, but I am not good at leaving projects half finished so I hope to work my butt off to get this all done in the next month.
AL. It is hard to say what I learned these past couple of weeks. I am still learning just how long it takes to catalog things. And I am learning that a lot of good information is missing a lot of metadata about it. For example I found a video today called "Today's Child" And that was it. No other information on the label. I don't have a VHS player to even play it to see what it is, and I don't think I have time to watch it either. So I just cataloged it with the title. But this experience is making me want to label all of my resources at home a lot better. It is making me thankful that my husband created a great labeling system for our pictures and files that we have stored on our computers so I have a lot of metadata about each picture, just by its location and file name.
D. The past two weeks have again been spent mostly cataloging. I have officially finished all of the books and videos at the Child Developmental Services office and now only have the brochures at the CDSA and the remaining resources at the Family Support Network office in Huntersville. Also I was informed this week that there are two more filing drawers full of brochures to sort through as well. As I look at the resources I am not weeding out books or videos that are too old, because I feel that that would not be a good judgement call for me to make, however I am making decisions about the brochures, which is often harder because many lack publication dates so it is hard to tell if they are current or now. Many of the older brochures (especially the ones with newer versions) I have permission to toss. By the end of next week hopefully I will have all the cataloging done and a very large pile to take to be recycled.
This week I also had a meeting with my site supervisors about the physical space of the resource room. Although my supervisors want to create a larger resource area by appropriating part of the lobby space the county has nixed that idea and the library will be housed in its current location which is a room about 10ft by 10ft. I told my supervisors that I would need at least an additional bookshelf (bringing the total to 4) some bookends and shelf labels to complete a bared-bones library set up. They already moved in the extra bookshelf and bought the bookends, however I still need to look up a company to buy shelf labels from.
E. Overall these past two weeks have been very much "business as usual." I spend much of my actual hours cataloging materials, which I will admit can get boring after doing it for 3 hours straight. I am looking forward to being done with the cataloging and moving on to the organizing and creating the instruction manual. I am a little worried about being done by the end of April. I know Dr. Bird said just to do my best, and that giving FSN a list of their materials was better than nothing, but I am not good at leaving projects half finished so I hope to work my butt off to get this all done in the next month.
AL. It is hard to say what I learned these past couple of weeks. I am still learning just how long it takes to catalog things. And I am learning that a lot of good information is missing a lot of metadata about it. For example I found a video today called "Today's Child" And that was it. No other information on the label. I don't have a VHS player to even play it to see what it is, and I don't think I have time to watch it either. So I just cataloged it with the title. But this experience is making me want to label all of my resources at home a lot better. It is making me thankful that my husband created a great labeling system for our pictures and files that we have stored on our computers so I have a lot of metadata about each picture, just by its location and file name.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
More Cataloging :)
D. This week I went on Monday up to the Huntersville Family Support Network office, where they keep a lot of their resources. I spent Monday morning cataloging those resources. Most of the resources were fairly straight forward books, however I cataloged my first CD-ROMS and training packets. I also had to email my supervisors to ask for some clarification on some items. For example, there were some magazines called Exceptional Parent, and I looked at these and noticed that they were thematic issues, so I was wondering if I should catalog each issue individually or catalog the magazine as one item. (My supervisor and I talked over this issue today and decided that I would catalog each issue individually, although I haven't actually gotten to that part yet). There were some other issues about out-dated catalogs and other things as well.
Then today I went to the normal FSN office and continued my cataloging work. I finished the first set of resources from the CDSA, and started on the second (smaller set). I again took more resources home to catalog from home. Sandra and I also talked about a time line of where we are going from here. My goal is to finish cataloging all the resources by early April so I can have a few weeks to do the physical organization and also to create the manual on how to use their catalog in LibraryThing.
E. Overall I felt accomplished this week to finally have completed at least one milestone in terms of cataloging. There is just an overwhelming amount of resources to catalog and I am beginning to realize how much stuff their is.
AL. I am learning a lot about this subject area of early childhood, and childhood disorders. For example today I learned that there is a distinct difference between speech skills and language skills. Speech is actually being able to say words while language is choosing the correct words and knowing what they mean. I am also learning just how time consuming cataloging is.
I hope to keep cataloging a lot more and put in a lot of hours over the next couple of weeks
Then today I went to the normal FSN office and continued my cataloging work. I finished the first set of resources from the CDSA, and started on the second (smaller set). I again took more resources home to catalog from home. Sandra and I also talked about a time line of where we are going from here. My goal is to finish cataloging all the resources by early April so I can have a few weeks to do the physical organization and also to create the manual on how to use their catalog in LibraryThing.
E. Overall I felt accomplished this week to finally have completed at least one milestone in terms of cataloging. There is just an overwhelming amount of resources to catalog and I am beginning to realize how much stuff their is.
AL. I am learning a lot about this subject area of early childhood, and childhood disorders. For example today I learned that there is a distinct difference between speech skills and language skills. Speech is actually being able to say words while language is choosing the correct words and knowing what they mean. I am also learning just how time consuming cataloging is.
I hope to keep cataloging a lot more and put in a lot of hours over the next couple of weeks
Thursday, March 10, 2011
More and More cataloging
D. Today I essentially spent my entire time cataloging and adding more resources into the FSN collection. The process has become fairly streamlined, especially since I can input most of the bibliographic description of each book straight from Amazon.com or Library of Congress into LibraryThing. The longest part is decided on what tags to use as subject headings. For that I have to skim the back cover, inside flap, and table of contents. I was also briefly called into a meeting today to present a short tour of the FSN collection on LibraryThing to all 4 of the FSN staff.
E. I still wish I was working faster at cataloging. I have entered in 130 records into the catalog. I think I am getting faster with the books, but the pamphlets are still taking a while because I have to enter them by hand. Also I looked at my time sheet and I need to start increasing the hours I work on this project each week. I am still taking books home to catalog from home. And next week I will be going in two days to catalog.
AL. It is hard to say what I learned this week. I feel like I am gaining knowledge of early childhood, parenting, and childhood disorders through all of the resources I am looking at about those subjects. I think I am also improving on my skills in terms of picking good subject headings and knowing when to create new ones.
This week has been very busy in other areas of my life, I have been working more hours at work and we are in the process of buying a house which is also stressful.... so hopefully next week will be calmer, but honestly I doubt it. :)
E. I still wish I was working faster at cataloging. I have entered in 130 records into the catalog. I think I am getting faster with the books, but the pamphlets are still taking a while because I have to enter them by hand. Also I looked at my time sheet and I need to start increasing the hours I work on this project each week. I am still taking books home to catalog from home. And next week I will be going in two days to catalog.
AL. It is hard to say what I learned this week. I feel like I am gaining knowledge of early childhood, parenting, and childhood disorders through all of the resources I am looking at about those subjects. I think I am also improving on my skills in terms of picking good subject headings and knowing when to create new ones.
This week has been very busy in other areas of my life, I have been working more hours at work and we are in the process of buying a house which is also stressful.... so hopefully next week will be calmer, but honestly I doubt it. :)
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Catching up on Cataloging
I apologize for not posting last week. Time seemed to get away from me. So this week's post will talk about both last week and this week. Both weeks were very much the same.
D. Essentially I have spent both of the past two weeks entering books into the Family Support Network's LibraryThing catalog. I have worked some at the office and have brought books home both weeks. I have entered books, pamphlets, and booklets so far. Some can be entered using data from amazon.com or Library of Congress that LibraryThing automatically imports into your record, but most I have had to enter manually. For each record I obtain all of the basic bibliographic data about the book and then also enter in "tags" to create subject access points. To figure out what tags go with the resource I either skim through it, or look at the table of contents, and examine the Library of Congress' Cataloging in publication data on the copyright page if there is any. I am trying to only use terms for tags that are in this subject heading list, or taxonomy that I created a couple of weeks ago with the input and advice of my FSN and CDSA supervisors. So far I have entered in around 70 resources.
E. Overall I have not been impressed by my cataloging speed. I feel like I am going very slowly and because there are so many systematic details to follow in format and content I hope I am not making too many mistakes. I am also going slowly because I am enjoying these resources too much. I really just want to stop and read all of them. Some are these great children's books about kids with disabilities or normal fiction books about a child with down syndrome. I hope to pick up the pace in the future.
AL. I know as I catalog these materials I am learning a lot about children's health and development. I also learned how to create Spanish typing when outside of Microsoft word, for example how to type a "é" or an "ó". I learned how to do this because some of the resources I am cataloging are in Spanish and the keyboard shortcuts that I learned (from the Internet) seem like the best way to type in Spanish without trying to translate the entire LibraryThing website into Spanish (which you can do, but then I would have a really hard time reading it all).
I am looking forward to continuing my cataloging!
D. Essentially I have spent both of the past two weeks entering books into the Family Support Network's LibraryThing catalog. I have worked some at the office and have brought books home both weeks. I have entered books, pamphlets, and booklets so far. Some can be entered using data from amazon.com or Library of Congress that LibraryThing automatically imports into your record, but most I have had to enter manually. For each record I obtain all of the basic bibliographic data about the book and then also enter in "tags" to create subject access points. To figure out what tags go with the resource I either skim through it, or look at the table of contents, and examine the Library of Congress' Cataloging in publication data on the copyright page if there is any. I am trying to only use terms for tags that are in this subject heading list, or taxonomy that I created a couple of weeks ago with the input and advice of my FSN and CDSA supervisors. So far I have entered in around 70 resources.
E. Overall I have not been impressed by my cataloging speed. I feel like I am going very slowly and because there are so many systematic details to follow in format and content I hope I am not making too many mistakes. I am also going slowly because I am enjoying these resources too much. I really just want to stop and read all of them. Some are these great children's books about kids with disabilities or normal fiction books about a child with down syndrome. I hope to pick up the pace in the future.
AL. I know as I catalog these materials I am learning a lot about children's health and development. I also learned how to create Spanish typing when outside of Microsoft word, for example how to type a "é" or an "ó". I learned how to do this because some of the resources I am cataloging are in Spanish and the keyboard shortcuts that I learned (from the Internet) seem like the best way to type in Spanish without trying to translate the entire LibraryThing website into Spanish (which you can do, but then I would have a really hard time reading it all).
I am looking forward to continuing my cataloging!
Setting up Our Catalog - From Feb 18th
D. Previously I had created a subject heading list of terms to use to catalog the resources with. My three supervisors had comments on my terms so I spent a good hour revamping the list and creating one hopefully authoritative list. LibraryThing also has some synonyms that are tags are all come up when either one is searched so that is helpful too. Then I officially set up the FSN catalog on LibraryThing (check it out here: http://www.librarything.com/profile/FamilySupportNetwork). I entered the in the basic organizational information and set up the collections. The library will have 3 collections: FSN, Children's Developmental Services collection, and a wish list collection. Then I started cataloging. I already had my game plan set of what information I was going to put in which of the librarything blocks (Since we are modifying some and codifying some). For example in the comments section the only two things in that section will be the location of the resource and if it is available. In the private comments section will be the information about if it is checkout who has it and when it was checked out. I got through cataloging six books, and then I took a box of materials will be home to catalog as well.
E. Yesterday was so exciting! I created a product that is live online and that anyone can see I progress has been made. So it felt really good to get started cataloging.
AL. As I cataloged the first six books I realized that I was going really slowly because I wanted to get a real feel for what the book was about and therefore categorize it accurately. So I feel like I learned more about my strengths and weaknesses as a cataloger and how long this might really take me
E. Yesterday was so exciting! I created a product that is live online and that anyone can see I progress has been made. So it felt really good to get started cataloging.
AL. As I cataloged the first six books I realized that I was going really slowly because I wanted to get a real feel for what the book was about and therefore categorize it accurately. So I feel like I learned more about my strengths and weaknesses as a cataloger and how long this might really take me
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Odds and Ends and email
D. Today I worked from home on my practicum. First I checked my FSN email and found that Tami had commented on my subject headings list. A lot of her comments were saying that we needed to keep both terms that I had asked her to pick one of. So I emailed Dr. Bird asking if it was better to tag a resource with a lot of similar tags (ex. with both aspergers and aspergers syndrome) or just tag a resource with one tag and then create an index for how to find things in the future (ex. tag with aspergers syndrome and then in the index write aspergers-- see asperger syndrome). Dr. Bird then suggested I look into how LibraryThing did its searching, when I did I discovered that they do tag cominbinations to create synonyms for common tags so that even if the search term is similar to the tag it will still find the tagged term. Additionally I did some other email correspondance back and forth related to my practicum and then searched around in LibraryThing more so I am fully aware of my cataloging game plan.
E. I feel like I have my game plan all set now, my terms have been vetted, the tag combination feature should allow me to choose just one term and have the other terms be found as well. I have ideas on how to seperate out collections, but I am still waiting on my supervisors to choose a name for the library. To them this is very important so that they can brand the library with the Family Support Network name. So I guess I feel a little held up at the moment, but hopefully the name will be done by tomorrow so that when I go into FSN I can set up their catalog in LibraryThing and get started. Overall I guess I feel very confident about this part of the project and excited to get started on the actual cataloging.
AL. I learned some great new terms from Tami in her email when she commented about my subject heading suggestions. Additionally I learned about the tag combining feature of LibraryThing that I had not looking to before.
E. I feel like I have my game plan all set now, my terms have been vetted, the tag combination feature should allow me to choose just one term and have the other terms be found as well. I have ideas on how to seperate out collections, but I am still waiting on my supervisors to choose a name for the library. To them this is very important so that they can brand the library with the Family Support Network name. So I guess I feel a little held up at the moment, but hopefully the name will be done by tomorrow so that when I go into FSN I can set up their catalog in LibraryThing and get started. Overall I guess I feel very confident about this part of the project and excited to get started on the actual cataloging.
AL. I learned some great new terms from Tami in her email when she commented about my subject heading suggestions. Additionally I learned about the tag combining feature of LibraryThing that I had not looking to before.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Creating Subject Headings
D. At FSN today I first checked-in with Kelly and we had a brief discussion on what the next steps in the project would be. She said that she and Sandra would decide on a library name by next week so that we can set up our library's account in LibraryThing. I told her about my visit to the Levine Children’s Hospital's Family Resource Center and shared with her my idea about using general subject areas as shelf labels. Kelly agreed that it was a good idea. I spent the rest of the time creating a list of key words that I want to use to tag the resources in the collection. LibraryThing will only let you search the title, author, ISBN, and tags. Therefore the tags in the catalog must function as our subject headings. I want to try to standardize my tags so that they will be the topics that FSN, the CDSA, and their families are most likely to use. So today I looked over the list of resources that the FSN has and I went to the closet where the CDSA stores their books and tried to pull out the topics and key words that I would most likely be using. I then emailed the list to my supervisors to review.
E. Even though I feel like in some ways I am "recreating the wheel" because LC already has subject headings I feel that this list I made today and standardizing these terms are going to really help make this collection easily searchable. It was a lot of fun to start going through some of these resources. To be completely honest it went slower then I could have because I started reading some of these books. Some of their resources are children's fiction books about kids with disabilities or handicaps. They were really interesting. My favorites were the one about the ADHD turtle and the epileptic duck. It was cute. By the end of the day I felt very accomplished. I really hope that my supervisors get on board with this key word concept though. I have explained to them a couple of times why it is important, but I am not sure they exactly understand why. I feel that they won't get it until they start searching and can't find something because it isn't labeled under that term.
I was also stumped by a couple of different terms that I hope my supervisors will help me out with. There were a lot of books talking about children with disabilities and explaining that concept to other children. What would you label those? "Diversity" "Handicapped Children" Also one book was titled mental retardation. Is that an ok term to use anymore? I hope my supervisors will help out on those questions.
AL. I learned that there are a ton of resources available to parents who have children with special needs or disorders. I wonder how many parents know about them. But there are so many resources available. I also learned how hard it is sometimes to describe why something is so important to others who don't understand the system that it works in. (It was difficult to emphasize why this key words thing is so important).
I hope that next week I will get to start cataloging!
E. Even though I feel like in some ways I am "recreating the wheel" because LC already has subject headings I feel that this list I made today and standardizing these terms are going to really help make this collection easily searchable. It was a lot of fun to start going through some of these resources. To be completely honest it went slower then I could have because I started reading some of these books. Some of their resources are children's fiction books about kids with disabilities or handicaps. They were really interesting. My favorites were the one about the ADHD turtle and the epileptic duck. It was cute. By the end of the day I felt very accomplished. I really hope that my supervisors get on board with this key word concept though. I have explained to them a couple of times why it is important, but I am not sure they exactly understand why. I feel that they won't get it until they start searching and can't find something because it isn't labeled under that term.
I was also stumped by a couple of different terms that I hope my supervisors will help me out with. There were a lot of books talking about children with disabilities and explaining that concept to other children. What would you label those? "Diversity" "Handicapped Children" Also one book was titled mental retardation. Is that an ok term to use anymore? I hope my supervisors will help out on those questions.
AL. I learned that there are a ton of resources available to parents who have children with special needs or disorders. I wonder how many parents know about them. But there are so many resources available. I also learned how hard it is sometimes to describe why something is so important to others who don't understand the system that it works in. (It was difficult to emphasize why this key words thing is so important).
I hope that next week I will get to start cataloging!
Visiting the Levine Children's Hospital's Family Resource Center
D. Yesterday I went to visit the Levine Children's Hospital's Family Resource Center and talked with their librarian Angela for about an hour. The purpose of this visit was to see how she set up her library because her library is a Consumer Health Library for families with Children, which is very similar to what the library will be for the Family Support Network. The Levine Family Resource Center uses the National Library of Medicine system to organize their collection in the catalog, however on the shelves it is arranged by general topics such as Autism, Allergies, Cancer, Pregnancy, etc. The topics are then in order alphabetically. Angela and I discussed how she put books into categories and how she dealt with books that didn't fit neatly into one category. She also suggested that Planetree was another classification system that I could look into using. We also discussed how to catalog brochures. She doesn't include them in her catalog, she just has to recommend them to visitors or a visitor has to randomly discover them themselves.
E. Overall this was a very good visit. Angela gave me a lot of advice and insight into how to organize a consumer health library. She mentioned that when families are in crisis they don't want to figure out an organizational system, they just want information and fast. So easy to use subject headings seems the best way to go. I wrote down all of her shelf titles as a reference/starting guide. As I thought about my visit later on last night I came up with a plan of action. I want to catalog all of the items in the library first and then see my most popular tags. By knowing the most popular topics I think that that will make it easier to create shelf labels.
Angela was very helpful, she even sent me links to more information that I could look at. I am enjoying this practicum experience because it is truly making me feel like a professional. I feel more professional because I am having these conversations with other professionals and I feel like I am being treated like an equal. Maybe I am weird in this feeling, but in my past/current jobs I have always been a teacher/educator and therefore around kids all the time and spending most of my time talking to kids. So I guess I feel grown-up now that I get to talk to adults. :)
AL. Today I learned that there were many classification systems, not just Dewey and LC. I learned a little about the National Library of Medicine system and that there was another system called Planetree. I also learned that many small libraries just make up their own system, especially if they do not coordinate with other libraries that much. Furthermore I learned the reasoning and rational behind why a subject heading /shelf labeled system works well in Consumer health libraries. Overall a good learning experience
E. Overall this was a very good visit. Angela gave me a lot of advice and insight into how to organize a consumer health library. She mentioned that when families are in crisis they don't want to figure out an organizational system, they just want information and fast. So easy to use subject headings seems the best way to go. I wrote down all of her shelf titles as a reference/starting guide. As I thought about my visit later on last night I came up with a plan of action. I want to catalog all of the items in the library first and then see my most popular tags. By knowing the most popular topics I think that that will make it easier to create shelf labels.
Angela was very helpful, she even sent me links to more information that I could look at. I am enjoying this practicum experience because it is truly making me feel like a professional. I feel more professional because I am having these conversations with other professionals and I feel like I am being treated like an equal. Maybe I am weird in this feeling, but in my past/current jobs I have always been a teacher/educator and therefore around kids all the time and spending most of my time talking to kids. So I guess I feel grown-up now that I get to talk to adults. :)
AL. Today I learned that there were many classification systems, not just Dewey and LC. I learned a little about the National Library of Medicine system and that there was another system called Planetree. I also learned that many small libraries just make up their own system, especially if they do not coordinate with other libraries that much. Furthermore I learned the reasoning and rational behind why a subject heading /shelf labeled system works well in Consumer health libraries. Overall a good learning experience
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Thoughts about the future of this FSN cataloging project
We chose LibraryThing as our cataloging program so the next steps should be....
In cataloging we learned that when organizing a collection there are essentially three steps: 1.Describing the object so as to separate it from every other object, 2. Creating access points for the object so that others can find what that object is about, and 3. organizing that object in relation to others that are similar to it (aka a classification system like LC or Dewey).
1.Step 1: I see as easy enough on LibraryThing, mostly pulling the record from somewhere else or cataloging the other objects (pamphlets and websites) by hand.
2. Step 2: In terms of access points, LibraryThing does not let you search the LC subject heading section of the record even though it has that section and you can import the subject headings from other catalogs if they have them. However the search function on LibraryThing does search the tag fields, therefore I want to tag the resources to provide an access point. The word document that Sandra sent me already put the books into categories and I hope to use those as the basis and foundation of the tags. I also want to tag the language and maybe pull some other tags from the LC subject headings if there are any that correspond with that item. I plan to read over that word document listing the resources and create a list of probable tags for Kelly and Sandra to review. I want them to look over the tags because I know that librarything will only look up what you type in, not variations so we need to choose if dyslexia or dyslexic would be the best terms to search for.
3. Step 3 is determining an organization system so that they can find their books. Since this is going to be a very small resource center I was thinking that we would not be large enough to use LC or Dewey classification system, that would also necessitate putting labels on all of the books. Also an alphabetical system by author or title I didn't think would be very useful either. I was thinking some sort of general subject system where resources are first put under their main subject and then within each subject maybe alphabetical by author. I was thinking about going to visit some bookstores and then the Levine Children's hospital resource center to get some other ideas about organization.
Some other process thoughts about how to set up the resource center:
Circulation. Since Librarything does not have any formal circulation functions I read about using the comments fields to conduct circulation. There are both private and public comments fields. In the public comments would either say "Checked out" or "Available" and also the Location Info/classification scheme. The Private comments would only be filed when a resource was checked out, and would say the family's name and date of checkout.
Collections - LibraryThing lets you have different collections and also lets one resource be part of more than one collection. I wanted to use the collections feature to keep the FSN and CDSA collections separate. I also wanted to use the collections feature to start separate out the Spanish language collection, or any other collections that FSN wanted to create. Perhaps even use that to create a separate Wishlist collection.
As I go along I am also thinking about what I will need to train Kelly, Sandra, Tami and maybe some others about. So far the "manual" I plan to write has three parts:
1. How to find a resource
2. How to checkout a resource
3. How to add a new resource
In cataloging we learned that when organizing a collection there are essentially three steps: 1.Describing the object so as to separate it from every other object, 2. Creating access points for the object so that others can find what that object is about, and 3. organizing that object in relation to others that are similar to it (aka a classification system like LC or Dewey).
1.Step 1: I see as easy enough on LibraryThing, mostly pulling the record from somewhere else or cataloging the other objects (pamphlets and websites) by hand.
2. Step 2: In terms of access points, LibraryThing does not let you search the LC subject heading section of the record even though it has that section and you can import the subject headings from other catalogs if they have them. However the search function on LibraryThing does search the tag fields, therefore I want to tag the resources to provide an access point. The word document that Sandra sent me already put the books into categories and I hope to use those as the basis and foundation of the tags. I also want to tag the language and maybe pull some other tags from the LC subject headings if there are any that correspond with that item. I plan to read over that word document listing the resources and create a list of probable tags for Kelly and Sandra to review. I want them to look over the tags because I know that librarything will only look up what you type in, not variations so we need to choose if dyslexia or dyslexic would be the best terms to search for.
3. Step 3 is determining an organization system so that they can find their books. Since this is going to be a very small resource center I was thinking that we would not be large enough to use LC or Dewey classification system, that would also necessitate putting labels on all of the books. Also an alphabetical system by author or title I didn't think would be very useful either. I was thinking some sort of general subject system where resources are first put under their main subject and then within each subject maybe alphabetical by author. I was thinking about going to visit some bookstores and then the Levine Children's hospital resource center to get some other ideas about organization.
Some other process thoughts about how to set up the resource center:
Circulation. Since Librarything does not have any formal circulation functions I read about using the comments fields to conduct circulation. There are both private and public comments fields. In the public comments would either say "Checked out" or "Available" and also the Location Info/classification scheme. The Private comments would only be filed when a resource was checked out, and would say the family's name and date of checkout.
Collections - LibraryThing lets you have different collections and also lets one resource be part of more than one collection. I wanted to use the collections feature to keep the FSN and CDSA collections separate. I also wanted to use the collections feature to start separate out the Spanish language collection, or any other collections that FSN wanted to create. Perhaps even use that to create a separate Wishlist collection.
As I go along I am also thinking about what I will need to train Kelly, Sandra, Tami and maybe some others about. So far the "manual" I plan to write has three parts:
1. How to find a resource
2. How to checkout a resource
3. How to add a new resource
A Formal Presentation and Could I Be a Consultant?
D. Today I went to FSN and after checking in with Kelly, went to my cubicle to work. I first went over my presentation and then shared it as a GoogleDoc with Kelly, Sandra, and Dr. Bird. After reviewing and preparing my presentation I send out a long email to Dr. Bird about where to go from here, after FSN selects a cataloging system. (I will do a second post that presents those thoughts). Then I emailed the librarian at the Levine Children's hospital Family Resource Center about going over to tour her library and see how she organizes her collection to hopefully get some ideas for how to organize the FSN collection. She emailed me back almost immediately, so I have a tentative date to met with her next Wednesday afternoon.
After that I started reading up about LibraryThing and found a manual online that another company had made for teaching their employees how to use LibraryThing. It would be a similar manual to what I would be creating in the future for FSN. At 11:30 I met with Tami and Kelly to start the presentation. Sandra was working from home so she joined us on a conference call. Since my presentation was a GoogleDoc she was able to view it at the same time we were on her computer at home. I gave my presentation answering questions from all three women as I went and trying to explain some of our library terms to them. By the end the women agreed with my presentation and agreed to use LibraryThing as our cataloging system. They want to get started quickly so that they can see something actually happen. At the end of my presentation/ our conversation there was some debate about what to call this resource center. The debate stemmed from the fact that both FSN and CDSA were going to be using it and if those two groups split up what would happen to the name. My suggestion was to "brand" the library with the FSN name, and if FSN leaves the CDSA building we can separate out the two resource sets and create a new account for CDSA under their name.
E. This morning was at first a very slow morning. I just wanted to get the presentation over with so that we could have the official ok to go ahead and get started with LibraryThing. I am so happy/relieved that FSN agreed with my/our recommendation of LibraryThing. I was afraid that LibraryThing would not seem professional enough for the CDSA (which is part of the mecklenburg county government). But after the presentation I think even more that LibraryThing was the right choice, because the CDSA plans to use this mostly in house inside their building. Therefore it does not have to have that "professionally/governmental" feel. I am really excited to get started. I was also really pleased on the reception that my presentation got today. Kelly said that it was very professional and an excellent presentation. I think I explained myself really well and helped them understand the differences involved between creating a whole ILS on a server that would be housed in a building versus a web-based model that can be maintained anywhere. There are still some things to show them about how circulation would work and such, but I think that it will work out in the end.
AL. I am trying to think if this was my first professional presentation today. I know it was my first librarian professional presentation. I am fairly sure that I have done formal presentations before, I have taught other teachers professional developments before and I have done presentations in front of students 100s of 100s of times. But I guess perhaps what I "learned" today was more introspective. I felt really good presenting and being able to explain these library terms and applying library concepts to really world situations. For example, I explained about how we would need to "tag" the resources with key words that people could search for because we needed to create more access points to the resources (more than just the title and author). So I guess I "learned" that I enjoy presentations and explaining things and perhaps I learned that I am good at those things.
Overall I am really enjoying my practicum, it is making me think more about library consulting, I think I could be good at it, although I am not sure I would be able to market myself to do it
After that I started reading up about LibraryThing and found a manual online that another company had made for teaching their employees how to use LibraryThing. It would be a similar manual to what I would be creating in the future for FSN. At 11:30 I met with Tami and Kelly to start the presentation. Sandra was working from home so she joined us on a conference call. Since my presentation was a GoogleDoc she was able to view it at the same time we were on her computer at home. I gave my presentation answering questions from all three women as I went and trying to explain some of our library terms to them. By the end the women agreed with my presentation and agreed to use LibraryThing as our cataloging system. They want to get started quickly so that they can see something actually happen. At the end of my presentation/ our conversation there was some debate about what to call this resource center. The debate stemmed from the fact that both FSN and CDSA were going to be using it and if those two groups split up what would happen to the name. My suggestion was to "brand" the library with the FSN name, and if FSN leaves the CDSA building we can separate out the two resource sets and create a new account for CDSA under their name.
E. This morning was at first a very slow morning. I just wanted to get the presentation over with so that we could have the official ok to go ahead and get started with LibraryThing. I am so happy/relieved that FSN agreed with my/our recommendation of LibraryThing. I was afraid that LibraryThing would not seem professional enough for the CDSA (which is part of the mecklenburg county government). But after the presentation I think even more that LibraryThing was the right choice, because the CDSA plans to use this mostly in house inside their building. Therefore it does not have to have that "professionally/governmental" feel. I am really excited to get started. I was also really pleased on the reception that my presentation got today. Kelly said that it was very professional and an excellent presentation. I think I explained myself really well and helped them understand the differences involved between creating a whole ILS on a server that would be housed in a building versus a web-based model that can be maintained anywhere. There are still some things to show them about how circulation would work and such, but I think that it will work out in the end.
AL. I am trying to think if this was my first professional presentation today. I know it was my first librarian professional presentation. I am fairly sure that I have done formal presentations before, I have taught other teachers professional developments before and I have done presentations in front of students 100s of 100s of times. But I guess perhaps what I "learned" today was more introspective. I felt really good presenting and being able to explain these library terms and applying library concepts to really world situations. For example, I explained about how we would need to "tag" the resources with key words that people could search for because we needed to create more access points to the resources (more than just the title and author). So I guess I "learned" that I enjoy presentations and explaining things and perhaps I learned that I am good at those things.
Overall I am really enjoying my practicum, it is making me think more about library consulting, I think I could be good at it, although I am not sure I would be able to market myself to do it
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Preparing the Presentation about My Recommendation
D. Today I spent about 3 hours at Family Support Network. Essentially almost all of that time was spent in preparation for a presentation I will be giving them next week. I brought in my laptop today because I can save files on it and that way I can still have Internet access, but don't have to go through their systems (and therefore their long training). Sandra helped me get my laptop set up and then I spent the rest of the time working by myself in my cube. I am trying to make this presentation as professional as possible so first I sent out a Google calendar invite to Tami, Sandra, and Kelly, who I will be presenting to next week. Then I used the Presentation program on Google Docs to create a presentation. The presentation basically covers: a summary of the FSN needs in a resource center, Koha, LibraryThing, a comparison of the two, and then a formal recommendation that LibraryThing. After reading the articles Dr. Bird sent me and the time I spent in LibraryThing yesterday and today I strongly feel that it would be a great program for them and would meet their needs. I also looked at the word document where FSN has listed all of their resources. I counted their resources to get a ballpark figure about how many records they had. They had about 320 pamphlets, 40 books and videos, and 60 websites, so just about 400 total. These numbers are necessary because of the limit of records that LibraryThing has (5,000). After I completed the presentation I went to check in with Sandra and Kelly before I left. Both of them were very excited to be this far in the process and Sandra told me that she had sent a blurb about the project to the FSN main office for North Carolina in Chapel Hill. That office was also very excited about this project.
E. My major emotion today was excitement. I really enjoyed making the presentation and I tried to make it very professional, hopefully next week when I present they three listeners will agree with my suggestion. I feel like this week I have really been in the role of a consultant and now I am making a recommendation to the board. I feel that I need to present koha to them to explain what I originally thinking, although I will be honest and hope that they are not interested in it at all and that they can see why LibraryThing is better for their needs. I tried to be honest in my presentation mentioning and showing the pros and cons of both software choices. But I ended the presentation with a recommendation of LibraryThing and clear points as to why it is a better system.
AL. Sometimes it is hard to describe my learning when I spend my time alone with just me and my computer. I guess today I did learn the ins and outs of the presentation software on Google Docs. I don't like it as much as PowerPoint, but because FSN uses Google Docs almost exclusively for their documents I decided that Google Docs would be the best presentation program. This way I can also share the presentation with them so that they can keep it if they need it for future use. On a more personal note, I learned or had reconfirmed, that I work so much better when I am out of the house and in a desk space than when I am at home. Home has way to many distractions.
Overall I am very excited and looking forward to next week when I will be presenting my recommendations.
E. My major emotion today was excitement. I really enjoyed making the presentation and I tried to make it very professional, hopefully next week when I present they three listeners will agree with my suggestion. I feel like this week I have really been in the role of a consultant and now I am making a recommendation to the board. I feel that I need to present koha to them to explain what I originally thinking, although I will be honest and hope that they are not interested in it at all and that they can see why LibraryThing is better for their needs. I tried to be honest in my presentation mentioning and showing the pros and cons of both software choices. But I ended the presentation with a recommendation of LibraryThing and clear points as to why it is a better system.
AL. Sometimes it is hard to describe my learning when I spend my time alone with just me and my computer. I guess today I did learn the ins and outs of the presentation software on Google Docs. I don't like it as much as PowerPoint, but because FSN uses Google Docs almost exclusively for their documents I decided that Google Docs would be the best presentation program. This way I can also share the presentation with them so that they can keep it if they need it for future use. On a more personal note, I learned or had reconfirmed, that I work so much better when I am out of the house and in a desk space than when I am at home. Home has way to many distractions.
Overall I am very excited and looking forward to next week when I will be presenting my recommendations.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Koha vs. LibraryThing
D. Between last Thursday's work at the Family Support Network (FSN) and today many emails have been exchanged and conversations had. First I conversed with my advisor, Beth about my nervousness about KOHA and its technical demands. Her suggestion was to try to find an IT person in the FSN building to install koha on the server for me. After that Dr. Bird emailed me suggesting that using LibraryThing could be a better solution to manage FSN's collection. She sent me three articles to read. Today I spent about 1.5 hours reading those articles and looking up supplemental research on LibraryThing.
For those who many not know, LibraryThing is a social cataloging website. You can enter a personal or organizational collection into the website and share it with others, thereby seeing other's library collections as well. You can enter 200 items for free, or pay a small fee for a yearly or lifetime membership. I personally use LibraryThing and therefore was familiar with it when Dr. Bird suggested it, however my further research today has provided many other good reasons why LibraryThing would be a better option for FSN.
E. Today's emotion was excitement! When Dr. Bird first suggested LibraryThing I remembered thinking about using it at the very beginning but being worried that it wasn't "high-tech" or sophisticated enough, or "librariany" enough. I felt that perhaps using Librarything would be a cop-out choice, the easy way out of a difficult situation. However as I did more research today my mood began to improve. Using LibraryThing to manage FSN's collection would definitely be easier then learning to use KOHA, but additionally my research finding prove that it also could be much much more useful. The different features that LibraryThing has (that I describe some of below) would in my opinion provide better service to FSN and the families it serves without the technical hassles that koha has. I feel that my personal agenda has been modified, because a couple days ago I felt that LibraryThing was not "worthy" of consideration because of its easy and lack of technical requirements. However being a true information service provider and 'consultant' in this case doesn't mean giving them something fancy that they definitely could not have done on their own, it means giving them something that would be the best fit for their situation.
AL. Most of what I learned today dealt with the amazingness of LibraryThing. Although it is geared towards personal and small organizational collections, the more I learned about it, the more it seemed to fit the needs and wants of the Family Support Network. First, it is accessible from anywhere and already online. There is no technical overhead and no server space needed. Copy cataloging can be done from Amazon, the Library of Congress or bunches of other libraries, it can be used in different languages (which FSN will like because some of their families are native Spanish speakers). Also LibraryThing has the code for a widget which can put a catalog search box directly on a website. You can add information about FSN and link FSN to the local community, which can help them meet other families who many need their services. Also if families use this catalog they can directly see reviews and suggestions for other books they may like which can help to give these families more information about the disease or disorder their child has been diagnosed with.
The only downside is that there is a price, $25 for a lifetime membership. And one area that I will have to work with Kelly and Sandra about it the searching capabilities. LibraryThing searches your catalog by title, author, ISBN or tags. So I need to work with my directors to make sure that we create great tags that will be the topics that families are likely to search for, so that they can easily find what information and resources they need.
For those who many not know, LibraryThing is a social cataloging website. You can enter a personal or organizational collection into the website and share it with others, thereby seeing other's library collections as well. You can enter 200 items for free, or pay a small fee for a yearly or lifetime membership. I personally use LibraryThing and therefore was familiar with it when Dr. Bird suggested it, however my further research today has provided many other good reasons why LibraryThing would be a better option for FSN.
E. Today's emotion was excitement! When Dr. Bird first suggested LibraryThing I remembered thinking about using it at the very beginning but being worried that it wasn't "high-tech" or sophisticated enough, or "librariany" enough. I felt that perhaps using Librarything would be a cop-out choice, the easy way out of a difficult situation. However as I did more research today my mood began to improve. Using LibraryThing to manage FSN's collection would definitely be easier then learning to use KOHA, but additionally my research finding prove that it also could be much much more useful. The different features that LibraryThing has (that I describe some of below) would in my opinion provide better service to FSN and the families it serves without the technical hassles that koha has. I feel that my personal agenda has been modified, because a couple days ago I felt that LibraryThing was not "worthy" of consideration because of its easy and lack of technical requirements. However being a true information service provider and 'consultant' in this case doesn't mean giving them something fancy that they definitely could not have done on their own, it means giving them something that would be the best fit for their situation.
AL. Most of what I learned today dealt with the amazingness of LibraryThing. Although it is geared towards personal and small organizational collections, the more I learned about it, the more it seemed to fit the needs and wants of the Family Support Network. First, it is accessible from anywhere and already online. There is no technical overhead and no server space needed. Copy cataloging can be done from Amazon, the Library of Congress or bunches of other libraries, it can be used in different languages (which FSN will like because some of their families are native Spanish speakers). Also LibraryThing has the code for a widget which can put a catalog search box directly on a website. You can add information about FSN and link FSN to the local community, which can help them meet other families who many need their services. Also if families use this catalog they can directly see reviews and suggestions for other books they may like which can help to give these families more information about the disease or disorder their child has been diagnosed with.
The only downside is that there is a price, $25 for a lifetime membership. And one area that I will have to work with Kelly and Sandra about it the searching capabilities. LibraryThing searches your catalog by title, author, ISBN or tags. So I need to work with my directors to make sure that we create great tags that will be the topics that families are likely to search for, so that they can easily find what information and resources they need.
Catch up on Practicum Postings
It was suggested to me by my advisor that it would be advantageous for me to connect my blog that I am working on for my practicum to my capstone website. However the blog I am writing for that class is on a password protected drupal site. In order to share my experiences with the rest of the online world I will be reposting my blog posts here, in my personal blog.
This semester I am completing a practicum class (like an internship) at the Family Support Network of Mecklenburg County. Essentially what I am doing is setting up a resource library for them. I will post all of the entries made prior to today in this post. Future entries will be posted on the day they are written.
published by Michelle Bridges on Mon, 01/17/2011 - 21:17
Hello all!
I am Michelle Bridges and I (like some others) will be finishing my degree in May of this year. I am very excited to be starting my final semester. I am originally from the Washington D.C. area but I moved to NC to go to college. I went to Davidson College and earned a degree in Biology. After that I taught middle school and high school science for a couple of years before I decided to go back to school to get my MLIS. Now, I am an educator at the Discovery Place (still teaching science) in downtown Charlotte.
When I graduate in May I would love to just have a job in a library. Period. I am not that picky, but if I did have a choice I would love to combine biology and librarianship either in a college or university library, a medical library, or a special library.
My practicum this semester is with the Family Support Network of Mecklenburg County. They are a small nonprofit who helps to provide information to families who children have been diagnosed with a medical condition or illness. Essentially I will be setting up a resource center for them. I forsee my main goals of this semester being choosing a good open-source ILS for them to use, learning how to use the ILS myself, and then cataloging all of their resources and putting them into the ILS.
My first main goal is to choose an ILS that meets the needs of the Family Support Network. I essentially have no budget for this ILS, therefore we (Dr. Bird and myself) were thinking along the lines of an open-source ILS to manage their collection. Dr. Bird suggested emailing Dr. Oguz, which I have done to ask for his advice about open-source ILS systems. Next I forsee myself doing some research and reading reviews to try to determine what ILS would be best to use.
That is about all I have for right now. I will be writing down more about my first week there later!
published by Michelle Bridges on Wed, 01/19/2011 - 20:24
I really wanted to complete a blog post, because I have been at my site twice now (I am going onsite about once a week and then doing more work from home as well). The first time I went was technically before the semester started, on January 6. I am going to combine those two trips into this one blog post.
D. On January 6, I have my first meeting with Kelly and Sandra from the Family Support Network. Essentially our meeting was an interview of me and my chance to understand the project that they wanted accomplished. Our meeting was about an hour long and we discussed what they wanted in their resource center, what had already been done and what resources they had available. Also they gave me some backgroun on what FSN is. To fill you all in, Family Support Network (FSN) is a tiny (4 part time staff) nonprofit that serves families of children with medical diagnoses or illnesses. They serve these families essentially by providing them with information - information about what services they can receive, information about the disease or disorder their child has, information about support groups, camps, other agencies that can help them, and also information about other families whose children have the same disease or diagnosis so those families can talk and help support each other. This resource library they imagine will be a way to keep better track of their information and how they lend out their resources to families.
The following week I had a second meeting at FSN, this meeting was included Kelly from FSN, Dr. Bird and Dawn from UNCG, and Tami from the Children's Developmental Services (who owns the building FSN is in and will also be a part of this resource center). During this second meeting we further clarified roles and objectives of what this resource center would be. Also on this day I worked out my schedule with Kelly that I will be coming in to FSN every Thursday morning and I got a pass card to enter the building myself (so I don't have to be buzzed in every time).
E. Essentially my first meeting with Kelly and Sandra was scary, not because they are scary people, but because they were looking at me like I was the expert, like I knew what I was doing. However I feel that I presented myself well and Kelly is especially personal and friendly so I felt as if she was really excited to have me on board. I left this first meeting though still confused about my exact role, because Dr. Bird is spliting up part of this project with another student, Dawn, and therefore I was not sure exactly what portion I was to be doing.
The second meeting I felt much more comfortable, because after that meeting I came away with a very clear expectation of my goals. I am still somewhat nervous about the project because ILS systems and cataloging are two things that I know very little about. (I haven't even taken cataloging yet, I am taking it concurrently this semester). I am looking forward to learning as I go.
AL. Because my contacts at FSN look to me as the expert, I am not sure what I learned in those first two meetings. The learning that I think I took away was not necessarily LIS related. I learned a lot about how services are given to children and families with diseases or disorders in Mecklenburg County and a lot about FSN. I think I also learned some about meeting etique and professionalism in terms of how things are done in the public/non-profit sector.
Overall I am looking to going in tomorrow to start my research about open-source ILS systems.
published by Michelle Bridges on Thu, 01/20/2011 - 14:22
Today was my third visit to the Family support Network (FSN). I stayed for about 3 hours or so.
D. When I arrived I showed Kelly and Sandra the goals and timeline that I had originally worked on. They both looked it over and had no additional critiques or comments on it. Then they showed me the two options I had for a place to work. We chose the second option as my workspace. So now I have a cubical with a computer and a phone where I will be working at when I am at FSN. It is a very open cubical and I only plan to be in the building once a week so most of my documents will probably be either on a thumb drive or on Google Docs and I plan to save my important websites via www.delicious.com. After I got settled in, Kelly logged me into the computer and I set to work. Essentially I spent the next few hours investigating a couple of different concepts: how to set up a small library, what is open source software and what are its advantages and disadvantages, and which open source ILS systems would be good for FSN. I started with the ALA fact sheet - How to set up a library and then jumped off on links that originated from there. A couple of different websites that described open source initiatives in libraries kept showing up, including webjunction.org. I thought the "Open Source Application Primer" by Eric lease Morgan from that website was especially useful for backgroun information.
From my research I today I took note about what features an ILS needs to have, how to evaluate an ILS and some top open source ILS systems and their pros, cons, and requirements. At the end of the morning I emailed supervisors to tell them about what I had found and warn them about possible issues with installing open source software on the Mecklenburg County server.
E. (I am still kind of confused about what exactly examine is supposed to mean, but here I go anyway.) To be completely honest I walked into this morning very confident and excited and walked out of this first research experience nervous and apprehensive. My research this morning, was yes somewhat unfocused and haphazard however I still felt what I discovered to be very useful. Since this was my first time really looking into open-source products I now have a much better idea of what is involved and I am nervous about it. I am not sure if I have the technical expertise to be able to set one of these up! I found an article (http://www.pakban.net/koha/tut/newbie.html) and it talked about how to set up KOHA, one of the most popular open source ILS products. Most of it sounds fine I am just really nervous about the initial installation onto the server. The server where we will be installing this is a Mecklenburg County government server, so I guess I am worried about all of the red tape involved. I am personally hoping that Dr. Bird will read this post and tell me that she knows how to do this, or that she can offer some great advise about how to install these types of things. :)
I still feel almost caught between a rock and a hard place, because Kelly and Sandra look to me as if I know exactly what I am doing, but I feel caught because I don't know what I am doing and I am not sure who exactly will be helping me. I feel a little like I am floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Perhaps I am overexagerating there, but I guess I feel a little bit alone at the moment. I know when I am done I will be immensly proud of myself though.
AL. Today, simply put, I learned a lot. Especially about open source software and ILS systems. I learned that while open source is free, that price tag comes with other costs, such as learning how to use and set it up. I will be trying to supply all of those things myself without going out and above and trying to find another contractor or consultant. I learned a lot of different open source software applications and programs, and especially learned the names of a good number of open source ILS systems (koha, evergreen, Openbiblio, PhpMyLibrary, Enilda, newGenLib, Learning Access ILS). I learned what modules to look for in an ILS (acquisition, cataloging, circulation, OPAC, serials). Finally the Public Library Association's website had a great article on criteria to evaluate an ILs on, which was another source of useful information that I hope to use to recommend on ILS above the others. (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/pla/plapublications/platechnotes/opens...)
So far my research is leading me towards the KOHA ILS software, and that is what Dr. Oguz also suggested, however I am still worried about the technological aspects of installing it. I plan to continue my research at home this week and then next week begin a presentation to present the best option or options to Kelly and Sandra.
This semester I am completing a practicum class (like an internship) at the Family Support Network of Mecklenburg County. Essentially what I am doing is setting up a resource library for them. I will post all of the entries made prior to today in this post. Future entries will be posted on the day they are written.
published by Michelle Bridges on Mon, 01/17/2011 - 21:17
Hello all!
I am Michelle Bridges and I (like some others) will be finishing my degree in May of this year. I am very excited to be starting my final semester. I am originally from the Washington D.C. area but I moved to NC to go to college. I went to Davidson College and earned a degree in Biology. After that I taught middle school and high school science for a couple of years before I decided to go back to school to get my MLIS. Now, I am an educator at the Discovery Place (still teaching science) in downtown Charlotte.
When I graduate in May I would love to just have a job in a library. Period. I am not that picky, but if I did have a choice I would love to combine biology and librarianship either in a college or university library, a medical library, or a special library.
My practicum this semester is with the Family Support Network of Mecklenburg County. They are a small nonprofit who helps to provide information to families who children have been diagnosed with a medical condition or illness. Essentially I will be setting up a resource center for them. I forsee my main goals of this semester being choosing a good open-source ILS for them to use, learning how to use the ILS myself, and then cataloging all of their resources and putting them into the ILS.
My first main goal is to choose an ILS that meets the needs of the Family Support Network. I essentially have no budget for this ILS, therefore we (Dr. Bird and myself) were thinking along the lines of an open-source ILS to manage their collection. Dr. Bird suggested emailing Dr. Oguz, which I have done to ask for his advice about open-source ILS systems. Next I forsee myself doing some research and reading reviews to try to determine what ILS would be best to use.
That is about all I have for right now. I will be writing down more about my first week there later!
published by Michelle Bridges on Wed, 01/19/2011 - 20:24
I really wanted to complete a blog post, because I have been at my site twice now (I am going onsite about once a week and then doing more work from home as well). The first time I went was technically before the semester started, on January 6. I am going to combine those two trips into this one blog post.
D. On January 6, I have my first meeting with Kelly and Sandra from the Family Support Network. Essentially our meeting was an interview of me and my chance to understand the project that they wanted accomplished. Our meeting was about an hour long and we discussed what they wanted in their resource center, what had already been done and what resources they had available. Also they gave me some backgroun on what FSN is. To fill you all in, Family Support Network (FSN) is a tiny (4 part time staff) nonprofit that serves families of children with medical diagnoses or illnesses. They serve these families essentially by providing them with information - information about what services they can receive, information about the disease or disorder their child has, information about support groups, camps, other agencies that can help them, and also information about other families whose children have the same disease or diagnosis so those families can talk and help support each other. This resource library they imagine will be a way to keep better track of their information and how they lend out their resources to families.
The following week I had a second meeting at FSN, this meeting was included Kelly from FSN, Dr. Bird and Dawn from UNCG, and Tami from the Children's Developmental Services (who owns the building FSN is in and will also be a part of this resource center). During this second meeting we further clarified roles and objectives of what this resource center would be. Also on this day I worked out my schedule with Kelly that I will be coming in to FSN every Thursday morning and I got a pass card to enter the building myself (so I don't have to be buzzed in every time).
E. Essentially my first meeting with Kelly and Sandra was scary, not because they are scary people, but because they were looking at me like I was the expert, like I knew what I was doing. However I feel that I presented myself well and Kelly is especially personal and friendly so I felt as if she was really excited to have me on board. I left this first meeting though still confused about my exact role, because Dr. Bird is spliting up part of this project with another student, Dawn, and therefore I was not sure exactly what portion I was to be doing.
The second meeting I felt much more comfortable, because after that meeting I came away with a very clear expectation of my goals. I am still somewhat nervous about the project because ILS systems and cataloging are two things that I know very little about. (I haven't even taken cataloging yet, I am taking it concurrently this semester). I am looking forward to learning as I go.
AL. Because my contacts at FSN look to me as the expert, I am not sure what I learned in those first two meetings. The learning that I think I took away was not necessarily LIS related. I learned a lot about how services are given to children and families with diseases or disorders in Mecklenburg County and a lot about FSN. I think I also learned some about meeting etique and professionalism in terms of how things are done in the public/non-profit sector.
Overall I am looking to going in tomorrow to start my research about open-source ILS systems.
published by Michelle Bridges on Thu, 01/20/2011 - 14:22
Today was my third visit to the Family support Network (FSN). I stayed for about 3 hours or so.
D. When I arrived I showed Kelly and Sandra the goals and timeline that I had originally worked on. They both looked it over and had no additional critiques or comments on it. Then they showed me the two options I had for a place to work. We chose the second option as my workspace. So now I have a cubical with a computer and a phone where I will be working at when I am at FSN. It is a very open cubical and I only plan to be in the building once a week so most of my documents will probably be either on a thumb drive or on Google Docs and I plan to save my important websites via www.delicious.com. After I got settled in, Kelly logged me into the computer and I set to work. Essentially I spent the next few hours investigating a couple of different concepts: how to set up a small library, what is open source software and what are its advantages and disadvantages, and which open source ILS systems would be good for FSN. I started with the ALA fact sheet - How to set up a library and then jumped off on links that originated from there. A couple of different websites that described open source initiatives in libraries kept showing up, including webjunction.org. I thought the "Open Source Application Primer" by Eric lease Morgan from that website was especially useful for backgroun information.
From my research I today I took note about what features an ILS needs to have, how to evaluate an ILS and some top open source ILS systems and their pros, cons, and requirements. At the end of the morning I emailed supervisors to tell them about what I had found and warn them about possible issues with installing open source software on the Mecklenburg County server.
E. (I am still kind of confused about what exactly examine is supposed to mean, but here I go anyway.) To be completely honest I walked into this morning very confident and excited and walked out of this first research experience nervous and apprehensive. My research this morning, was yes somewhat unfocused and haphazard however I still felt what I discovered to be very useful. Since this was my first time really looking into open-source products I now have a much better idea of what is involved and I am nervous about it. I am not sure if I have the technical expertise to be able to set one of these up! I found an article (http://www.pakban.net/koha/tut/newbie.html) and it talked about how to set up KOHA, one of the most popular open source ILS products. Most of it sounds fine I am just really nervous about the initial installation onto the server. The server where we will be installing this is a Mecklenburg County government server, so I guess I am worried about all of the red tape involved. I am personally hoping that Dr. Bird will read this post and tell me that she knows how to do this, or that she can offer some great advise about how to install these types of things. :)
I still feel almost caught between a rock and a hard place, because Kelly and Sandra look to me as if I know exactly what I am doing, but I feel caught because I don't know what I am doing and I am not sure who exactly will be helping me. I feel a little like I am floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Perhaps I am overexagerating there, but I guess I feel a little bit alone at the moment. I know when I am done I will be immensly proud of myself though.
AL. Today, simply put, I learned a lot. Especially about open source software and ILS systems. I learned that while open source is free, that price tag comes with other costs, such as learning how to use and set it up. I will be trying to supply all of those things myself without going out and above and trying to find another contractor or consultant. I learned a lot of different open source software applications and programs, and especially learned the names of a good number of open source ILS systems (koha, evergreen, Openbiblio, PhpMyLibrary, Enilda, newGenLib, Learning Access ILS). I learned what modules to look for in an ILS (acquisition, cataloging, circulation, OPAC, serials). Finally the Public Library Association's website had a great article on criteria to evaluate an ILs on, which was another source of useful information that I hope to use to recommend on ILS above the others. (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/pla/plapublications/platechnotes/opens...)
So far my research is leading me towards the KOHA ILS software, and that is what Dr. Oguz also suggested, however I am still worried about the technological aspects of installing it. I plan to continue my research at home this week and then next week begin a presentation to present the best option or options to Kelly and Sandra.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Random Musings on a Snow Day
So today is Snow Day #2 here in Charlotte, so I decided that it has been forever since I updated my blog and therefore today would be an excellent day to write something.
I am entering my last and final semester of library school and I am looking forward to being done, although I have strong doubts about being able to find a librarian job in May. Moving is not an option since my husband just found a great job last October therefore limiting my job search to the Charlotte area. We are still feeling the effects of the "Great Recession" and therefore our local public libraries have not hired anyone new in more than a year and are preparing to perhaps lay off more workers in 2011. Basically I have very low expectations for this job search.
Just yesterday my expectations were met with disappointment when the first librarian job I applied for turned me down saying I did not have the required experience because I did not yet have my MLIS degree. I was hoping that since I am only 4+ months away they would at least consider my application. It is very hard to get library experience right now! Especially when I still have to work to keep paying the bills (leaving little time between work and school to volunteer at a library).
So I guess this is just a venting post to explain my dread for the librarian job hunt. Although hopefully there will be brighter days ahead!
I am entering my last and final semester of library school and I am looking forward to being done, although I have strong doubts about being able to find a librarian job in May. Moving is not an option since my husband just found a great job last October therefore limiting my job search to the Charlotte area. We are still feeling the effects of the "Great Recession" and therefore our local public libraries have not hired anyone new in more than a year and are preparing to perhaps lay off more workers in 2011. Basically I have very low expectations for this job search.
Just yesterday my expectations were met with disappointment when the first librarian job I applied for turned me down saying I did not have the required experience because I did not yet have my MLIS degree. I was hoping that since I am only 4+ months away they would at least consider my application. It is very hard to get library experience right now! Especially when I still have to work to keep paying the bills (leaving little time between work and school to volunteer at a library).
So I guess this is just a venting post to explain my dread for the librarian job hunt. Although hopefully there will be brighter days ahead!
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