SCLA Part 6 - The Dreaded Poster Session

I got started late because I again had trouble sleeping on the giant marshmallow with no audiobook to listen to - poor planning on my part.  But the poster session is just an hour of walking around looking at displays and listening to the spiels of the earnest creators.  Not everything is relevant to what I do, but some of the irrelevant is at least interesting!

Amanda was there trying to reach even more people with her StudySC project that was so wonderful.

 My av on her plot o' land - she had to wear the bunny suit for a month to earn money for charity. 

There was some poor gal trying to promote Second Life (which I know everyone is tired of hearing about) as an educational tool.  Her "poster" was pretty darn fancy, unlike the cardboard triptychs most had.  Curtis was there thinking it might be worth looking back into the State Library presence in SL, which is running better and faster than it used to.  I still think it would be helpful in these days of limited budgets to have SCLA running concurrently in a virtual space that people could reach without the travel costs or the commitment of time (you go to a distant location for one or two sessions and feel you have to attend other stuff to make it worth the time and expense).  However, SL is becoming more expensive, especially for non-profits who used to have it easier, so it may or not be worth it.  ALA, though, is having virtual conferences there (and charging for them).

There was also an unnamed library that was using certain e-book products probably outside the permitted boundaries as delineated by the suppliers.  It was very interesting.  They loaded them with genres (romances, Christian fiction, etc.) and were checking them out in-house - and only to people with good library borrowing track records.  They held training sessions on the devices so that those less familiar with the technology wouldn't get lost.  They found their employees were taking the training and that patrons were taking them just to get a feel for what the devices were like prior to purchase.  They will continue to do this until the suppliers send them a cease-and-desist order.  Very brave!   Anyone interested in me naming the names can come by the Children's Room and I'll blab in person.  I have seen an article online about Amazon allowing borrowing between Kindles ... here.  This indicates that the ante has done been upped in the e-reader race and perhaps the circulation of the devices might be coming in the future.

There was also some stuff on Teen programming (using recycled stuff - if anyone wants to do stuff with bottle tops, let me know because I've been saving them up for just such an occasion) and then my brain shut down.

SCLA Part 2 - The New StudySC Website

This session came just in time for what could have been a dull Homeschool program next Friday.  This exciting new site, StudySC,  (up "just in time" - AKA, Just A Bit Late - for the third graders studying the regions of our state) has links to information on South Carolina based point by point on the state's curriculum standards, the best information being chosen and evaluated by teachers.  Well, dang!
The site is organized by elementary, middle school, and high school levels, so that each group has access to age-appropriate materials.  Within the age levels, the sections are thematic and time-period based.  The site is still in beta (and the section on Government is not up yet), but they thought it best to put out what they have and add to it.  It was very exciting to see.  South Carolina patrons can access this at home - unless, perhaps, they have AOL, which make the site think you live in Virginia and then, of course, you can always drop by your local library.
All of the current material is existing, stable sources, such as museums, ETV, and college sites.  There may be a small amount of advertising content.   They hope to add their own content at a later date, such as lesson plans, the ability to search the site by the curriculum standards, and maybe a glossary.
Also on the site is a link to information about the current and past SC Book Award winners - some of them with related activities!
I can't say how helpful this is going to be.  The first day after the assignment, all our South Carolina social studies materials were checked out except the older reference book.  They all needed pictures and information about the regions - and here it was all the time!  This is another example of your State Library doing great things!  Full marks, y'all!