Posts filed under ‘Uncategorized’
I Want you … to Drop DOPA!
Great!
[via http://www.tametheweb.com%5D
And, you can make your own about whatever you want here:
http://www.hetemeel.com/unclesamform.php
Great News: NJLA Job Hotline has an RSS FEED!
Some good news:
NJLA is now providing an RSS feed to the job hotline. For more information see here.
Whoo hoo! 🙂
DOPA Update
The results have been posted for today’s vote. I am not at all surprised by the outcome, but I am a little shocked at the final numbers on the vote. Only 15 Democratic representatives took a stand and said Nay while a whopping 410 gave it a resound Yea. This article posted a few hours ago on ZDNet sums it up better than I can at this late hour.
New on my blogroll
Too good not to share — interesting reading and a great way to promote the work done behind the scenes by special librarians in the publishing industry. Ask the Librarianshas the potential to be a great column on the always fascinating Emdashes blog!
Moved to Action…..
Thanks to the inspiring workshop by Michael and Jenny at Princeton Public Library, I have been spurred to some action:
* I’VE DONE IT! I have started the conversation about ending the complete ban on cell phones in our library…. the conversation has begun and we’ll see where it goes (my Reference Department is so far in agreement that there is no need to completely, automatically ban cell phones and/or jump all over people just b/c they have a cell phone open or pressed against their heads! We will be governed by the general idea of ‘no disturbance of other patrons’ and general tolerance/intolerance of noice level, but not just b/c there is a cell phone)!
* I have also changed a policy about our Internet use to try to make it more user-friendly – it is in a trial phase and we’ll see how it goes! Normally, anyone who is a “second-time user” of the Internet has to wait until ALL “first-time users” get on. We are trying an approach which lets any user go on in the order in which they have signed up on our sheet. It is a little bit hard to explain, but hopefully this will eliminate unnecessary and unending waiting times.
* I blogged a bit more (both here at Library Garden and over at my other blog, Pimp My Library) and I started a new blog Life in an Urban Public Library, where I will blog about my personal professional experiences as a Librarian in an Urban Public Library. I need to remember that my blog need not be perfect or formal!
* I plan to start a flickr account for the Paterson Free Public Library, and will post pictures there. I have been using flickr for personal photos for a long time now, but not so far for the library!
* I have plans in place to start a “No Log” at the Reference Desk, to record the services we repeatedly say “no” to, so we can reconsider them (item number 1 – PUBLIC FAXING!). You can read a bit more about “No Logs and No Wikis” here.
* Next up: Working toward IM in the library and going back to try to restart the wiki and/or blog I would like to see us using here at the library.
* Tonight is the last night of the Passaic County Fair and our library computer consortium, PALSPlus, has had a tent there throughout the week. Tonight it is our library’s turn to “staff” it – I am going, alongwith my Director and Assistant Director and I think it will be a lot of fun. We have t-shirts to wear and we have trivia questions and games and prizes. From what I have heard back so far, the tent has been a very popular place and a big success! I am going to be sure to share photos afterward! What a great way to show that the libraries are truly a part of the community!!!! I’m really excited about being there tonight and will report back!
Thanks, Michael and Jenny for all the inspiration! 🙂
Library Garden gets Tamed and Shifted
Some of Library Garden got “Tamed and Shifted,” as Janie captioned this photo, along with many others, at the workshop held at The Princeton Public Library, on Tuesday, July 19th, 2006.
Jenny, Amy, Robert, Janie and Michael at the end of the day at Princeton Public Library.
Shifted, Tamed and PUMPED!
A great, big, huge, grateful and very impressed thank you goes out to CJRLC and Princeton Public Library’s Leslie Berger (current ALA President!) and Janie Hermann for having Michael Stephens and Jenny Levine come to Princeton to present their workshop, “Conversation, Community, Collections, & Collaboration:Practical, New Technologies for User-Centered Services”!
Thanks Leslie for having the inspiration to invite Michael and Jenny to NJ and also thanks to Janie and CJRLC for all the hours you spent coordinating and making it happen.
This program was very well-attended and successful on so many levels!
I was very excited to meet Michael and Jenny for the first time in person, and to attend one of their workshops, and even all of my own building-up of these two and their “roadshow” didn’t result in any disappointment!
Michael and Jenny are fabulous presenters who share their information in measured, easy-to-understand ways, while managing to convey excitement and interest in the topics. Even though not everything in the presention was new to me, I was never bored or disinterested.
They managed to go over blogs and blogging, RSS (VERY important!), wiki, flickr and so much more! I think everyone was having a great time and learning so much, all while enjoying the comfort of the Princeton Public Library – and no, I’m not being paid by anyone to say these things! Though I did go out to a great lunch with Janie and Robert after the program! 😉
The event was really well managed and seemed to come off without a hitch – the catered lunch was terrific and the room set up was accomodating, despite the full house! Even the technology didn’t seem to hit any snags! 😉 It was so great to see so many people come out and take advantage of this great program.
There are so many points that Michael and Jenny brought up that are so important – maybe I’ll just try to mention a very few here! I hope others will either add to this post or post comments about what great stuff they got out of this workshop! Share what you’ve done since attending the program! I know of at least one person who went back to her libray and started a flickr account, and posted on some blogs (yes, I’m talking about YOU, Mary!)!
While the actual technology teaching was very interesting and informative, it was the more intangible lessons that I personally got the most out of!
THESE ARE FREE PEOPLE! FREE!!!!!! AS IN, NO MONEY OUTPUT FROM YOU OR YOUR LIBRARY!!!! You can be a “hero” here – lots of excellent results for no investment of money!
– Blogging is informal and doens’t have to be perfect (in fact, I am leaving that typo in there on purpose to remind myself of this and to try to personally overcome my “perfectionism” problems!)
– It is important to put a “human face” on the library: this makes it much more difficult to cut funding for the library for one thing! 😉 And you can use many of these new technologies to do this, i.e., start a flickr photo sharing account for your library (it’s really easy I promise!) and post pictures of your programs, your patrons (who agree to it), your staff, etc.!
– Celebrate and share your successes! When/where have you shared positive feedback from your patrons with your community or even wider? You can do this on a blog! This also really helps to humanize the library.
– Consider your policies – are they more of barriers between patrons and services/staff than anything else? Do they just cause more work for library staff? Are they “librarian-centered” rather than “user-centered”? I know *I* will be reconsidering some of the policies in my library after the workshop!
– Start a blog! Just start one! Open a flickr account! Just try it! Play with these things!
– Check out what other libraries are doing and how they are using these technologies! For example, Ann Arbor District Library has a blog (in fact IS a blog – can you imagine!?) with OPEN COMMENTS on it (gasp! the horror! the fear!) Guess what!? Nothing bad has happened!
DO NOT BE AFRAID!
Onward!
P.S. You can read more about the workshop on the NJLA blog where Jessica Unger has a great post!
Flickr’s "Tubes" are clogged!
I am sitting here have a good laugh — Flickr is currently down and they have decided to blame it on “clogged tubes“. Instead of just saying “we are down for maintenance”, they have chosen to do something that is both creative and funny for their users in order to make up for it. How cool is that? So, hurry over, print out the tubes and grab your crayons to enter the colouring contest! I would enter but I have zero artistic ability.
Social Networking and Online Safety–A Lot to Talk About
It’s been a very busy week, with new freshmen student orientations, library instructions, and all-day interviews for our new librarian position, but as I begin to relax and hit the blogs for some interesting reading, I notice a quick blurb on the July 14th Search Engine Forums Spotlight mentioning that MySpace has become (or least it was on Tuesday this week) the “No. 1 U.S. Web site last week, displacing Yahoo Inc.’s top-rated e-mail gateway and Google Inc.’s search site, Internet tracking firm Hitwise said on Tuesday.” This, of course, is not a huge surprise to me, as I have been following up on social networking sites a lot lately and will be presenting on them and personal information search engines at the Internet Librarian/Internet@Schools West Conference in Monterey later in October.
Whenever I do bring up MySpace, Facebook, and other social websites with my librarian, professor, and teacher colleagues, the conversations tend to lean toward online safety, lately. In case you have not read about the crackdown on social networking sites, especially regarding MySpace, you might be interested in browsing the MySpace may face legislative crackdown article by Declan McCullagh at CNET News.com from July 11th. It discusses how politicians this week have attacked MySpace and other social networking sites for their inability to protect minors, and that legislators need to become involved.
“MySpace and other social-networking sites like LiveJournal.com and Facebook have come under increasing pressure from members of Congress hoping to appeal to voters before the November elections. The school and library filtering bill–called the Deleting Online Predators Act, or DOPA–is a centerpiece of a poll-driven Republican effort called the ‘Suburban Agenda’.”
I continually talk about the brighter, creative aspects and rewards of participating in and using social networking sites in my seminars and courses, and you have heard many others mentioning these as well, I am sure. In fact, I just read a column yesterday from the informative and entertaining Stephen Abram about this topic entitled, “What Can MySpace Teach us in School Libraries” that just came out in the July/August issue of http://www.mmischools.com/magazine (note: I subscribe to their free site for multimedia tools and resources for K-12+, and you can, too, or wait for the issue to become available fulltext in EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier or WilsonWeb’s Wilson Omnifile any day now). Abram asks quite a few questions about these special sites and believes, and I agree, that we can learn a lot from them–including what they are doing right “with respect to institutionalizing social networks” and in “their efforts to create ‘safe’ spaces.”
Well, let’s talk about online safety. If you have heard about the safety aspects surrounding MySpace and other related sites, and especially if you have read anything in the traditional news lately about this, you know that one serious suggestion or answer to the problem is to block access in the schools via filtering systems. Believe me, this will not work, as many savvy students will find ways around this even at school, not to mention at home. I don’t recommend that you rely on these if you do choose or must use them. I am not saying to do nothing, however, as I do believe in Internet safety education, especially since our youth (and university students) are extremely attracted to these online environments, inside and outside of school (Abram in his article states that one estimate of MySpace alone suggests that it could “account for 40% of Web traffic by the end of 2006”).
So, if you are like me and are looking for some additional help in that “safety and education” area, especially because you are a school library media specialist, librarian, or parent who does not want to wait for politicians, legislators, the library & education community, and the general public to finally agree on solutions that might actually work, I would suggest reading Nancy Willard’s second “Social Networking” article, also in the July/August MultiMedia & Internet@Schools magazine, for her update on the concerns and issues surrounding safe and responsible Internet use (Nancy is actually the Director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use and also has a detailed, free “Briefing for Educators” article available online at her cyberbully.org site as well.
You will notice, too, that MySpace itself is doing a lot more to help with safety issues, especially with all of the publicity it is getting. McCullagh’s CNET News.com article mentioned earlier states that…
“For its part, MySpace–now owned by Rupert Murdock’s News Corp.–has taken steps this year to assuage concerns among parents and politicians. It has assigned some 100 employees, about one-third of its workforce, to deal with security and customer care, and hired Hemanshu (Hemu) Nigam, a former Justice Department prosecutor, as chief security officer.”
I think that is a step in the right direction for them, and MySpace does have a Safety Tips link at the bottom of their main page that has recently added more material for youth and parents, including links to several suggested useful online safety resource and education sites. I think you will find the following to be useful:
Netsmartz.org
WiredSafety.org
GetNetWise.org
SafeTeens.com
Anyway, this blog is getting long, and I did not even get to talk about ALA’s stand on DOPA (they and many others believe that it needs serious refining), but I think I have given you a lot to read and talk about concerning social networking and online safety, right? Besides, it’s my wife’s birthday and I need to go celebrate it with her at the New Jersey Shore this weekend; in fact, we are leaving right now if you want to join us, Library Gardeners and visitors–yeah, I know, giving too much personal info on the Web can be dangerous, but I do live life in the fast lane. I am an infomaniac/librarian after all! 😉
The Power of Online Community
Warning: This post is going to be a bit on the personal side. I know that many feel it good practice to keep posts of a personal nature in a separate personal blog (most notably Rory Litwin over at Library Juice) and I tend to actually fall in to this camp even though I blog a lot about MPOW. So, if this is too personal for a professional blog, you can all blame Karen Schneider. We had a great conversation at the Blogger’s Bash in NOLA and she encouraged me to share a bit more of myself on Library Garden and (in specific) this story. Since I can make this somewhat library-related I am posting it, albeit with some trepdiation.
It was two years ago today my husband and I stood before a judge in a Russian court and were declared to be the legal parents of the most precious nine-month old boy who was then living in an orphanage in the City of St. Petersburg. We were finally a family and it was the best moment of my life. As I sit here writing this I am misty-eyed at the memory. I am still in awe 2 years later that this amazing child is our son.
Where does the library connection come in? I have spoken at length with Chrystie Hill about the Libraries Build Comminites project she is doing with Steven Cohen and next week Michael Stephens and Jenny Levine will be in Princeton to deliver a 5 hour hours session to a standing room only audience of their popular 4C’s Roadshow — the C’s stand for Conversation, Community, Connection, and Collaboration”. The words community and connection being key here.
There is a buzz in the profession about libraries building and transforming communities and a part of the library 2.o movement extends that to creating connections online. But, there are still skeptics (I have met them and there are more than a few) who have yet to experience meaningful connection in an online community and have a hard time believing that the connections established virtually can be as meaningful as those established In Real Life (IRL).
I have a story to tell related to the adoption of our son and it is a story about the power of online community and of transforming that virtual connection in to something meaningful IRL. Perhaps my story will help convince the skeptics. I will try to keep this brief, but the story is long so forgive me.
In Jul 2003 my husband and I decided to make our dream of becoming a family a reality by adopting and after much soul-searching we felt that Russia was our destiny. One of the first things I did was sign up with several adoption-related virtual communities and online forums. I joined to seek information and in the end found the best support network that I have ever had in my life. If I had not joined these virtual communities and found suport during our long and arduous adoption process, I am not sure I would have made it — and I really mean it.
We received a referral for a beautiful baby boy in February 2004 and made our first trip to meet our son in early April. We were told we would be back in about 4 weeks for our court date. We got home and 2 days later, before we had unpacked, we got a call saying that we should come back in 10 days.
On April 19th we went to court and everything fell apart. The details are not relevant to this story, so lets just say that we got caught in the middle of a political struggle and our adoption proceeding was halted after one of the most confusing and agonizing hours of our lives. It was devastating and there was nothing we could do to it change before our visas expired, so we ended up spending our wedding anniversary flying away from Russia and every mile across the Atlantic was another mile between us and our son — a little boy whom with whom we had already bonded and who had a nursery waiting for for him back home in NJ.
It was then that I experienced the power of virtual community. My online friends, several of whom lived in NJ and had become IRL friends by this time, rallied behind us even though we had known them for but a few months. They understood in a way that no one else could what we were feeling. They knew the raw emotion of going to court in Russia where adoption proceedings can and often do go on for hours. They could understand like no one else the shock of despair at having the proceedings halted. They understood how this baby boy was already fully our son in our hearts if not our home.
Those that had made the journey to Russia or were in the middle of it understood the emotional and physical investment and were able to support us like no one else could. Our family, friends and colleagues tried their hardest and were a big help, but it was the online community that got me through some of my deepest moments of despair. Every single day without fail I got an IM, email or phone call from one of my “forum friends” — they made sure of this. When I was having a hard time functioning, they kept me going. One friend sent me the poem “Kisses in the Wind” and I ended up repeating that poem every night for it allowed me keep believing he would come home.
My husband and I did not give up, though some told us we should. We knew he was meant to be our son. We filed appeals, jumped through hoops, redid paperwork, and did everything else we could so that we would be allowed to go back for another court hearing. At times we were told he would never be ours, but we couldn’t give up. Finally, 10 weeks after we stood in court for the first time, we got “the call” that we had another hearing and a mere 9 days later we were on a plane to Russia for the third time.
Our 2nd court hearing was surreal and nothing like the first — it was like being in the twilight zone. I actually don’t remember much as I was just hoping I wouldn’t pass out from nerves, but I will always remember the moment when the judge returned after what seemed like an eternity from deliberations and declared us finally to be the parents to the child of our hearts. The sadness of our long months apart faded and only joy remained.
It is incredible to me that two years has gone by since that day — it seems like so long ago and just yesterday all at the same time. July 14th is a day we celebrate in our house as “family day” and it is now one of my favorite days of the year as we do something special as a family — just the three of us.
The friends that I made from a variety of virtual communities are some of my closest friends IRL to do this day. Many live in NJ and we get together frequently for special occasions and regular play dates. Two of the children in our group from NJ share an even closer connection with my son — all 3 were born within 3 weeks of each other and they all spent the first nine months of their lives in the same room at the same baby home. These 3 happy active toddlers were in a Russian orphanage together as infants and now they are growing up together in NJ thanks to the power of online community.
Okay, this is the longer than I thought it would be but I don’t how to shorten it and describe the impact that online community had on my life. I feel like I should draw some insightful conclusions, but at this point I want to mostly let this post stand as a tribute to power of community and connections — and to the little boy that I just kissed while he slept soundly in his crib… the same boy that I used to blow kisses to in the wind and whom I feel blessed every day to have in my life.
Library Garden 
