Hey kids, it’s story time…

That We the People bookshelf that I won has books for grades K-12.  So I’m hard pressed to find good use for about half of them, even though they are gorgeous and informative.  I only have high school kids and grad students, so I was struggling with what to do with “The Ugly Ducking” and “Pink and Say”…

Solution:  I called the elementary/middle school across the street and we are going to do story time together next year.  The kids from the high school will read the books and create mini civics lessons and then walk across the street to the elementary and do story time and a class.  I see this as a win-win and I’m glad that the little kids will get a chance to use the books too.

I wonder if I have to get a field trip waiver for the high school students to walk across the street?

I can polka, but I can’t ChaCha

Well, I tried to apply to be a ChaCha guide, but didn’t pass one part of the three part test. So, y’know, I guess my MLIS isn’t good for all aspects of the information world after all. I can answer complex reference questions but lack the talent to answer cell phone reference questions in 160 characters or less. Sigh.

Hint to future Cha-Cha people – pay attention during orientation…and print out the guide book…they’ll be quizzing you on them. That’s what I get for trying to multi-task during orientation. Le sigh, le pout.

rebelling

I’m hosting an unConference in June – Friday the 13th to be exact.  We’re working on t-shirts…my buddy A is working on a shirt design, but they will say this:

we are rebels
we can’t be constrained by time and space
we are unlike any other librarians
we don’t follow any rules
we just show up, whenever we want

newbie librarians unConference
friday the 13^th, 2008
because we don’t need luck

lmao

Twitter Me, Baby…

Okay, so twitter. I think it has potential. I really do. But for the life of me, I don’t know what. It’s sort of like when you are in the modernist section of the art museum and you have to step back to look at the big-ass pieces of art that don’t look like much. You know, you have your hand on your face and you’re head is kind of tilted and you just don’t know what to make of the thing in front of you. But other people around you seem to get it. And once they tell you (more than once) about it, you get it. Sort of. Or you fake it well.

Yeah, twitter is like that.

The more I use twitter, the more I like it.  It’s the learning curve that’s such a pain.  I am trying to get my public library pals to create tweets that announce when the top selling book on the NYT Bestseller list changes.  Or for reminders for programs to those who signed up.  It will take a bit of tweaking of twitter to get that just right, I think.

And I love this popular mashup – http://twittervision.com/

Simple terms…

I had to come up with a way to describe PHP to my boss today.  (Boss wants to know why the website isn’t working, tech-dude won’t download PHP…you see my problem) No easy task, I discovered.  I barely understand it myself and then I had to tell the boss-person.  The same person who recently went into barely containable panic because the office computer monitor stopped working…because it was unplugged.

So my PHP explaination went something like this:

PHP is like…well, it helps with the website by…it’s a tool that…um, we need to put it on the server so it can help organize information.

That seemed to make the boss-person happy.  But really, I need to start hunting for a website that uses the most simple terms to describe tech things.  I mean, incredibly basic terms here.  I looked online for a good PHP explanation and it meant nothing to me.  Tech terms for first graders…yes, perfect.