University Librarian, who me?

I am very excited to be working in the newest University of California Campus at Merced in its Kolligian Library. It is a state of the art facility, with 90% of its holdings online. The students aren't virtual however, and many of them hang out in the library! It gives me a sense of 21st century learning and libraries, still need to have a place...the library as a "place" has not disappeared and become virtual, they are very real!

American Library Association Conference

Attending the annual ALA conference in Anaheim was exhilarating, meaningful, and very enriching. To be surrounded by 20,000 library people, authors, and vendors was confirmation that the world of information and resources is alive and well, and my profession continues to flourish despite what the budget-cutters may believe.
Sessions were available for school, academic, museum and other special interest librarians, often held at the same time to make us choose which excellent session to attend. The publishing vendors gave away thousands of books, perhaps galley proofs, but still giving us an opportunity to read something new by a favorite author before it hits the shelves.
The musical performances were outstanding, I really enjoyed the Rock Bottom remainders with Steven King, Amy Tan, Mitch Ablom, Dave Barry, Max Groening, Roger McGwin and many others who continued to play long past closing time. Betty LaVette, the closing performer was moving and has a great voice. Yes we all know Motown, but she was Motown before it became popular. I thought it interesting that she saw the British Invasion of the 60s to be a competitive threat to her career, as they took so much attention away from the R&B singers.
Well organized, excellent services and many opportunities for collegial sharing, I am thrilled to have a chance to attend, and I thank AkASL for the financial help as well as ALA for the experience. I am going next year, if I am able, Chicago is a favorite of mine!

Thing #9 - Week 4 - Finding Feeds

I found feeds in a variety of places, including those that are familiar, such as ALA or by searching terms such as educational technology or school librarians. The links from Edublogger Awards to other sites, provided on the RavenAboutLibraries (RAL), were very extensive. I found those easiest to subscribe provided the orange logo for RSS, or those that asked me to subscribe via Google, with the icon in an easily discernable location--usually at the top or bottom. Those sites with extensive advertisements were very distracting, and I tended to navigate away from them. While I respect Joyce Valenza and her ideas, the blinking ads and opportunities kept me from subscribing. While i know RSS feeds may leave the ads off, i disliked the clutter of some commercially supported sites that some educators use.

From the awards list, I found 2 that were suberb: Edublogger with several extensive sites, linked together, and her observations about US culture were humorous--Sue Waters has her own personal blog linked to it where she comments on everything from high fructose corn syrup in Coke to improving the looks of your blog. I subscribed to her RSS feed as her tips are timely and useful. Recently she has an excellent piece on "The 4-Cs of Social Networking". In addition this site hosts blogs for students, teachers, and librarians.
Another useful site I found was a Brit named Jane Hart who publishes "Social Media In Learning", "a FREE resource aimed at all learning professionals who want a quick, easy-to-use, structured introduction to social media for formal and informal learning as well as a practical guide to using social media tools." The links from this site, never end!

Viewing various blogs is beneficial, to compare and contrast layout, ease of use, friendliness, etc. and help me to try to emulate these professionals as I develop my Librarian blog. I appreciate having a choice of spots to recieve the feeds, and I chose the Education page of my iGoogle site, so that, like the Anchorage Daily News, or New York Times, I have the latest news from Edublogger at my fingertips! Very cool.

Thing 8 Week 4 - RSS Feeds

Using Google Reader and igoogle as my home page has allowed me to subscribe to various RSS feeds, and have them available through those two sites, rather than clogging my email. I went to various news sites, adding some to the igoogle news page, and others as Google Reader, both of which eventually end up on the igoogle site--as I linked the Google Reader to the igoogle news page. I love the fact that I’m given the choice of where it’s delivered. I now understand how it's all tied together, and the simplicity of it is overwhelming!
I appreciated the tutorial provided in this lesson, and learned a lot about ways to increase use of RSS. Because I'm working on a blog for the local quilter's guild, many of whom have no idea what a blog is, let alone an RSS feed, I appreciated the help found on Problogger - How to make your RSS feeds pop!, specifically, "If your blog is on a non techie topic with a readership who doesn’t have much awareness of RSS write a post that explains what RSS is and how it can help them follow your site. Then add a link to that post under your RSS button to help educate them." This is great.
Providing simple ways for the library aides in our district to follow a library blog is important, and I found several useful hints on this site, and others linked from this lesson. I can forsee providing inservice instruction on how to use and get involved with such a blog.

Motivational Posters Made Easy-Week 3-Thing #6

I spent some time touring around the various tools that work with Flickr. Ah if only I could remember my html a bit better. I created this motivational poster with fd's flickr toys, part of bighugelabs products that are great tools for the developer. I only wish the formatting didn't have so many spaces around the photos. like this photo: I want this text to wrap around it without the space to either side, but it isn't behaving!! It's an ongoing tweaking process.
I was amazed how many tools bighugelabs offers, one could play all day! I love the poster-making and playing card-making tools, and see that the use of these tools very useful in the librarian's teaching, Battle of the Books, curriculum planning, and communicating with students. Many possibilities exist. WOW is my reaction. I found a site that posted the trading cards made by librarians, with various projects profiled. One caught my eye, a local history project in New England, in which students took photos of local sites then wrote a paragraph about them and posted them on Flickr. when I search "librarians" on Flickr, it returned over 76,000 hits...some very funny posters, like Librarians in showercaps...who has all this time?

n.

AASL conference coming up

Going to Charlotte? ALA |
I just wanted to try sending this to my blog, cool tool


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