beccablog, teacher-librarian

I came across this blog/wiki a few months ago http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/.  Librarians with blogs or wikis have been posting photos and narratives about their work.  Beginning in 08, the wiki provides a list of participants and their blogs.  They are now doing Round 4, 2010.

We decided to do this with our February library display.   Our typical display, Love your Library, includes pink and red with lots of hearts.  So this year, we added photos with descriptions – A Day in the Life of… Library Paras and Librarians.   While we thought posting to a blog or wiki would be a fun way to display the images, we also know that this could be a great advocacy tool for when we have administrators walk through the building, parent-teacher conferences, and students in the halls.

Flickr - Student creating Podcast

We have a photosharing account for the library, bvwestlibrary, on Flickr. Initially, there was a library group doing 365libs – posting photos of their library every day of the year.  We started strong with this, but didn’t continue.  Great idea for library promotion though!  Now as we post our newsletters to our blog – it is nice to be able to post on Flickr and then embed on our blog.  That way we are not using up space on our blog.

Also, Will Lion has a great Flickr account of photos and quotes.   Some relate so well to libraries.  I use his images a lot for presentations and such (creative commons).

Will Lion Photostream

Why can’t all meetings be online (or for that matter covered in an email)?  Yes, online meetings may take away natural conversation, but the pros far outweigh the cons.  An online meeting allows me to multi-task!

I have only attended vendor webinars in the past.  They can be quite painful.  I need to remember – if I were in the same building as this presentation, would I go to it?  If the answer is no, then I should probably not attend it online.  I become too easily distracted.

Although not officially an online meeting, I am going through the K12 Online Conference from December 09.   Although I missed out on the feedback and participatory portion of the conference when it was live, I am able to go back and discover new things when I get a few moments.  If it is something I have seen already, I can speed up the presentation.  Last year, I downloaded the video presentations to my iPod to watch while traveling over break.

Next year,  I am looking forward to Skype’ing with my colleague, Amanda Davis, as I go to Blue Valley Southwest.  There are many ideas we can share between buildings.

Will Lion Flickr Photostream

Love the idea of this and saw several links to blogs and flickr accounts with postings.  Not sure if I am going to attempt it yet, but wouldn’t it be interesting.  I think I would need to carry around a device to record everything.  Librarians are the best ‘multi-taskers’, so our lists/photos would show us doing five things at once (or more!).

http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/

http://libguides.bvwlmc.com/haiti

I appreciate LibGuides and all it offers our library.  See above link for a quick Haiti earthquake informational page with links, rss feeds, video, and more.

What Online Community did you choose? What do you like most about it?

I have a Facebook account along with a LinkedIn account.  I utilize several Nings including the TeacherLibrarian Ning.   I know several people use LinkedIn for networking, but as an educator, I am not sure its value for my personal or professional use.
I love the networking of the TeacherLibrarian Ning.  I can search the forum and other parts of the site for ideas and inspiration.

We created a library facebook page, but really haven’t done much with it after we created it.  It is a goal, but not one that we have focused so much this year.  With all of gale’s widgets that can be placed on facebook, it has great potential.

How have you used this Community? How do you see yourself using it in the future?

Facebook (personal) is great for keeping up with family and friends from all over the world.  I believe it will continue to be one that I will use to keep up with friends/family.  However, I am not a big one for the status updates – some people update every hour of every day.

Can you see your library using this Online Community? How?

Facebook – yes, once we figure it all out.    Things I want to do or find out about….

*Adding widgets

*Links to the libguides

*Meebo (can a widget be placed on the site for that?)

*LibraryThing – can it show up on Facebook

*Blog/Rss Feeds – can those be placed on the Facebook page?
Add a link to your blog to your Online Community profile so others can find you.

Profile on TeacherLibrarian Ning

Library Facebook Page

I saw another librarian (I wish I could remember who and I would post here) do a monthly report using Animoto.  I thought it was a clever way to provide information to an administrator.  I created a first semester report using Animoto.

(Disclaimer:  I realize what we do is not about numbers and statistics, but is can be a great tool to advocate for the library.)

This semester we did something I never thought would happen.  We rearranged the fiction shelves to reflect their genre.  I know – some people think I am crazy.   I was extremely hesitant when I heard the idea from a middle school librarian at the end of last year.  But as I thought more about it, I realized what this could do for the students.

Now, after a month of fiction shelves arranged by genre, I can’t imagine doing it any other way.  Our students love it!

However, it does not only take some time to plan and arrange, but we also had to create a way for us (the librarians and library paras) to locate the book when a student has a specific title in mind.

LibraryThing.  With librarything, we are able to tag the books by our genre and search just librarything for the specific title to locate the genre.  We then put widgets and a search box on our Find a Book site of our library web page.

We are currently keeping track of our check-out statistics to see if we notice a difference.    So as we prepare for the new library, I now have plan for the fiction section.

How we did it:

*Determine genre areas

Action/Adventure/Sports
Realistic Fiction
Romance
Mystery
Horror
College Bound/Classic
Historical Fiction
Fantasy/Science Fiction

*Purchase stickers for each genre (For us, we used translucent color stickers, placed on the spine.)

*Go along the shelves and tag each book with designated sticker.  (Of course, there are many that fit in multiple areas – we asked some students their thoughts and then thought of the type of reader that might pick up the book.  We have changed a few – but an easy fix with the stickers and librarything.)

*Arrange the shelves.  Include signs and a color guide.

*Take a scanner and scan the ISBN numbers of all books into excel.  (See librarything directions for importing books.)

*Import your books, tag them, create more lists, etc.

*Create widgets for your website and add a search box to search librarything.  (See librarything search box builder.)

I just read Joyce Valenza’s post about the ISTE Topic, Brick and Mortar Libraries.  Although it makes me angry to hear comments, I have to listen to the opposing side in order to understand what we are up against.

Next year, I will open a new library in a new high school.  Thankfully my administrators view libraries as I do – it isn’t about the books, the furniture, and so on.  It is about the things we do with those resources.  I am paraphrasing what I hear from a variety of sources – but a library is not a warehouse for books and computers. It is a place where students can be creators, editors, and producers of their learning.

So as Joyce suggested, we are not asking the right question.  Questions I am asking as I begin to design and think of this new library…

1.  What does it look like to have a “creative space”?

2.  What is my role as a teacher and information specialist in this environment?

3.  Where do books fit?  How does the collection look different from the building we opened 9 years ago?

4.  What things remain important?

5.  How can I be ‘virtual’ in my role as well as physically present?  How do the two work?

The list of questions continue and I will post more as I think and work through these questions.

Right now, I am ordering books – how does my nonfiction collection look now with Gale Virtual Reference Library and Follett ebooks/ereader?

Presentation Notes from Friday, October 16, 2009

I presented using CoolIris and then uploaded to Slideshare.  No audio this time.  My colleague, Amanda Davis, led the Widgets presentation – I will post the link below as well.  Look for “how-to’s” with widgets from Amanda soon!



Widgets http://prezi.com/ctt8owlrfx_f/

Links:

Library 2.0 Session

Widgets Session