Titel ... Gut

The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish by Claudia Mills

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Keeping in mind that this is a children's book, this is a fairly sophisticated story.  Amanda's parents are splitting up (in a way that makes the mother at first look blameworthy) and her distress is paralleled by the class project: keeping a Civil War diary for Polly, a fictional girl her age who has one brother who supports the Union cause and another who supports Secession.  This is a careful distinction.  The younger brother does not necessarily support slavery, but does support the right of slave-owning states to determine their own regulations in this matter.  The older brother, not Polly's favorite which adds to the complexity, is against slavery.  And they all live on one of those border states that couldn't make up its mind either: Maryland.


The story lightly touches on attitudes about race and Amanda shows the typical attitude of someone who wants to be right-thinking, but still struggles a bit with her preconceptions while deploring prejudice.  She also parallels the conflict with her own behavior when her pain over her parents' separation causes her to avoid her friend, yet want her friend to pursue her, and then blame her when she doesn't. 
The message: I'm rubber and you're glue, if we go back far enough we'll find the problem was you.  In her fictional diary, the brothers reconcile, as she does with her friend.  Unless her parents can agree on an open relationship, that marriage is doomed and it looks like serial monogamy for Dad.  And I don't believe for five seconds that her dad didn't start that relationship with Caroline until after the split and I bet Amanda's sister Steffi doesn't either, cynical little slut.

This book covers so much in so few pages.  Amanda is confronted with the gamut of button-pushing situations: parental conflict, separation, adultery, pubescent sibling with attitude, shame, math homework, leaden political correctness, bad weather, racism, and a lost cat!  I cried and cried.  All of this is deftly written so that it doesn't seem like a ham-handed pulling out of all the stops, but just like normal life.  Good job, Claudia Mills.



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No Reality Here

Dating is Murder: A Novel by Harley Jane Kozak
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Contains serious spoilers - you have been warned.  This story was going okay. The previous book was better, but the author made the time-honored mistake there of relenting the sexual tension and letting the main characters hook up.  She had to undo it to free up Wollie in this next situation of date fodder for a reality show.  That's understandable.  And we were going along just fine until the earlobe business.  Yes, it was gruesome and I can tolerate a certain amount of that if we don't have to actually see it (it's just hinted at with the sausage-making imagery etc.), but no Martha-Stewartesque type person would be so inept as to let an earlobe, much less one with an identifying earring (!!!!!) get away from her.  First of all, she'd probably know better than to try to kill someone by cutting their throat.  That is way too messy.  You'd never clean that up, no matter how Martha-Stewarty you were.  If the M-S type were going to kill someone and dispose of the body, she would be much, much more organized.  Kill first and then cut up.  Much less messy.  And she just wouldn't let an earlobe get away.  An experienced cook wouldn't hack away like that.  I don't have an alternative, but this did make me set the book aside and put my head in my hands.
Also, the victim went to Pepperdine and I just don't see that type with that kind of earring, especially the son of a senator.
The characters other than that are nicely realized and likable.  The detecting stuff was delightfully screwball, but I didn't think much of the reality show stuff.  Then again, I haven't watched tv in a couple of decades now and the author is in the bidness, so I shouldn't judge that.


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Fun with Alzheimer's

Lunch at the Piccadilly by Clyde Edgerton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book was read by my book group a number of years ago when I was still caring for a parent (or maybe two - I've forgotten how long ago it was) with dementia so I opted to not read it.  I have my own painful and/or cute stories about elderly people and I didn't need more.  Then the library read Walking Across Egypt by Edgerton and that was so good that when I saw this book on display I decided to read it as well. 
Carl visits his aunt in a reasonably nice nursing home. She wants to go home, but he can see that she needs someone to keep an eye on her - and that she needs to stop driving, but he hasn't the gumption to bring it up. He also has his eye on Anna, the manager and is drawn into the orbit of a preacher who thinks churches/synagogues/mosques should merge with nursing homes so that old people get visited at least once a week.  Carl's life is enriched by these people, although caring for his aunt is tiring and writing songs with the preacher comes with the price of having to listen to the sermons.  Carl's aunt and the little old ladies get up to all kinds of mischief because of their memory problems and willfulness, which comes off as cute and charming.  The aunt's health declines rather quickly and her memory problems become more problematic and it was more depressing for me.  Of course, I cried.  I always cry all over books, but at least I didn't get angry like I do when I feel like I'm being manipulated.
I think maybe I like Walking Across Egypt better, although that book would easily turn into a tragedy if it went any further.  This book was good, though. 



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Growing Pains

We have a brand new library which is just fantastic and I thank people who come into the Children's Room to look everything over for the taxes they pay that helped build the new library and keep it going.  I'd say 99.999% of people are impressed and thrilled by the new library.
The Children's Room is the farthest point on the first floor from the entrance but it seems to be the first place people go.  For the first two months, the only copier available to the public on the main floor was in the Children's Room and it was around the corner from the desk.  We want to discourage adults from wandering in the Children's Room, but we couldn't help it for a while.  At last, the copier was moved closer to the entrance to the Children's Room so it could be networked with the children's computers.  Adults would walk right past it, though, if they had used it when it was around the corner.  That wasn't so bad, because it wasn't that much of an intrusion into the CR.  Now, however, there is a copier for public use next to the Circulation Desk.  It's not quite obvious - it's on the far side and against the wall.  Unfortunately, the people at the Info Desk who greet people as they walk in, don't seem to know about it. 
I help adults who want to make copies, but I let them know that for next time there is a copier next to the Circulation Desk so they "don't have to walk so far."  I'd consider making them walk all the way back without copies to be Bad Service and I hate giving Bad Service.
We seem to need something to update, not just the volunteers that staff the Info Desk, but all of us about changes.  We have the Intranet, but I don't recall seeing a message that there was now an operational copier machine for public use at the Circulation Desk.  This is something that everyone needs to know.  Volunteers don't have access to the intranet bulletins, so they need something on paper, perhaps in the form of a newsletter.  Our Volunteer Coordinator is good about keeping them updated, but she wasn't here today and two different volunteers directed patrons the length of the whole building into the Children's Room to make copies. 
We must do better.  Doing better, however, will not mean signage.  It seems the more signage you put up, the less they read it.  They still aren't reading the one that asks them to turn their cells phones off in the library.  [Patrons who were in the middle of asking me for help still answer their ringing phones and expect me to wait until they are done with their call.]  I think we need to update staff on the intranet about each change and find a way to alert volunteers as well. 

"Paradoxides" Bwhah-ha-ha-ha-haaa!

Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don't want to give away who dunnit.
This book made me want to get a little hammer and go out looking for fossils. Okay, I've always sort of wanted to do that, but this intensified that feeling! Fortey might try just a bit too hard to be humorous which might go over well in a class but just made me groan.  It is plain that he has had a balanced education he's not letting go to waste, despite the childhood obsession that became his life's work.  Fortey weaves literature, personalities, and scandal into the trilobite story.  It was hardly necessary; trilobites and all the minutiae involved fascinate me.  Oh, and the eyes, their eyes!  I have two more Forteys in the stack to read.  They take such a gosh-awful long time to digest, but are worth it in the end.
I am also delighted that I too now know that Paradoxides is the "genus of the trilobite of the Middle Cambrian" just like Tim Brooke-Taylor.  You have to follow ISIRTA to find that funny.


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Bride of Frankencozy

Dating Dead Men by Harley Jane Kozak

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I counted 60 characters, all requiring their own names. Well, except the Vons bag lady. The main characters' names are a bit contrived (mostly the Shelleys), but this was a good read.  I will definitely continue with the series.
There is a certain amount of amusement with the rush to date 50 men, but mostly this is a Cozy Thriller - if there is such a thing.  Wollie is pursued by the mob, assassins, all in the week where her greeting card shop is being evaluated by secret shoppers to see if it's upgrade material, giving Wollie the chance to buy the franchise ... with the down payment money from the dating study.  Can she keep up appearances at the shop while her schizophrenic brother, the mob, an attractive ex-con, her funkily dressed assistant, and all her dates conspire to undo all she's worked for?  Oh, and let's not forget the ferret.
Good fun and romance. Can't imagine what is left for a sequel.



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The Ordinary Man

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


An ordinary man's life cannot really fit into a paragraph - and Ramsay sets himself to fleshing out a tossed-off tribute in honor of his retirement that offended him by its lack of depth and revelation.  He writes his life history to the headmaster of the school for boys where he taught all his adult life.  Ramsay is what Davies refers to as "the fifth business": not the lead or antagonist, but a character in dramatic works who carries an essential piece of the plot.   
In essence, then, Ramsay's narrative is a tragedy from this fifth business's point of view.  He became obsessed with a neighbor's wife as a child because he dodged a snowball that caused a premature birth and the woman's descent into a gentle madness.  All his life he is burdened with the responsibility for her child, Paul, and for her.  In his eyes she has worked miracles and he comes to think of her as a Fool-Saint.  This leads him to research and write hagiographies, although he was brought up as a dour Scots Presbyterian. 
I didn't find the saint business that interesting, but Davies does a wonderful job of depicting life in a Canadian town, the horrors of the trenches of WWI, and developing characters.  Ramsay is self-deprecating in that stereotypical way we associate with Canadians.  His antagonist/best friend, "Boy" Staunton, becomes rich and influential from the most mundane of businesses: sugar.  He also takes Ramsay's "girlfriend" away from him, saving him the trouble of dumping her himself - but he is unable to disentangle himself from their friendship.  Even amid the tragedies there are some laugh-out-loud moments.  I am tempted to continue the series, if only the third book which may pick up where this left off.





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Words of One Syllable Dept.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A light-hearted romp through the study of life's most serious business.  I picked this up because I enjoyed Stiff so much.  Roach writes the same way people chat about things, with wry humor and personal anecdote (Boy, is her husband ever game), which is engaging and yet she manages to keep it informative.  I am amazed that these researchers let her anywhere near them, considering the official opinion on their research. 




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Oh, Gawwd, Nooooo!

Ghosts by Paul Auster

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


[Just tossing words out] This must be one of those deconstructed, existential, minimalist detective stories for people who consider the genre beneath them.  It spent a whole lot of time going nowhere, which I suppose is the point, and then ends suddenly and Spillainely.  Perhaps it is just a send-up of the genre in an artier form for the cognoscente, but the observer/observed and writer/reader confusion was done to death by the 1960s and done by much better writers (Borges, for example). I kept hoping Mr. Blue would get the point sooner and ask Caleb Carr to help him with that Mr. Gold conundrum so something interesting might happen, but alas it was not to be.  Mercifully, the book was short, however it took me two weeks to read 96 pages. 



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Pre-School Storytime Pattern

I've been asked to detail my storytime pattern - which is pretty fluid but usually goes:

Opening song (Usually "If you're happy and you know it")
fingerplay/flannelboard
book (the more difficult one)
fingerplay/flannelboard
book (the easier one)
this spot reserved for puppets, creative dramatics, music making, major movement stuff
closing ("Now's the time to say goodbye" or, currently, my goodbye couplets: "See you later, alligator" etc.)
[Handout of some kind]

It's not hard-wired.  The usual rule of thumb is Lead with the most difficult. 
I've done three books or one book.  I usually have more than two books available on various levels so I can adjust by what age I've gotten.  Sometimes it's mostly 3s, sometimes 4s.  And, if they're particularly squirmy, the whole thing can get thrown out the window.  And sometimes I let them decide - for Halloween they had the choice of the funny book or the scary one (and, of course, they almost unanimously went for scary).

Sometimes they want to do something more than once, which is okay for fingerplays but I don't like to do books twice in a row. 

There are some flannelboards that I also have Spanish versions of, so I will do it first in English and then repeat it in Spanish, such as "Juguemos en el bosque."  As the lobo gets dressed, kids learn some Spanish vocab. These materials were prepared for our foray into bilingual storytimes ... which went nowhere.  We might try to revive them as more of our Spanish-speaking population discovers the new library.

The puppetry and creative dramatics go towards the end because they have a tendency to get the kids wound up.  The creative dramatics will often follow or be within a particular book - acting out part of it.  With the puppetry (I'll have some little story I can act out), it's just hard to put the puppets away.  The kids don't like it.  And they want to hug the puppets, so it's best to do it at the end when they can get up and hug a puppet on the way out.  Puppet can be used anywhere in the storytime, but this spot is reserved for a whole story.

More on puppets: I don't like little hands up my puppets' bottoms.  I'm just that way.  Yes, they can hug them, but they are characters, not toys.  There is a puppet theatre just outside the storytime room that has puppets for them to use. 

The handouts can be as basic as coloring sheets or activity sheets, or I have created pages with one of the poems/fingerplays/flannelboards we shared that day.  They are either the Add To Your Traveling Flannelboard (the sheet of felt glued into the pocket folder) type where they also got some stick-on felt to make them hang on the felt sheet or the fingerpuppet generator: Five de-colored cliparts of frogs etc. and five strips to cut out and tape to the back of the clipart plus the poem.  Presto!

I used to have a Ning where I shared stuff like this, but they went capitalist on me.  Heh!  If anyone else starts one, let me know.

It's Impossible

Impossible Major Rogers by Patricia Lee Gauch

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Gauch paints a warts and all portrait of a figure from the French and Indian wars. Neither all good or all bad, Rogers is a fighter and determined, and for that much he can be admired.  The book is punctuated with the refrain of his impossibility.  By stressing this, Gauch also does not try to paint him too much as a hero.  She shows him as a man conflicted by his hatred and admiration of his chosen enemy and as someone at a loss when the fighting is over.  At least in war he could fight his way out of trouble. 
Although later forced to fight on the British side because the colonists viewed him as a possible spy, Rogers' style of combat (developed from his experience of fighting the Abenaki as well as trading with them and studying them) was what the colonists chose.  Rogers' determination could have been interpreted as unscrupulousness and he ended badly.  He was jailed, apparently for his enormous debts, for three years and eventually had nothing left but his braggadocio. 
 



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Dance, Dance, Dance!

The Animal Boogie by Debbie Harter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a gift from a friend. Just got around to listening to the cd that came with it and reading the text.  Oh so cute!  This will be a lot of fun at storytime.
Lots of movement and movement vocabulary.
Lots of animals.
This book can be used many ways: just read and sing along with movement, set the book aside and do it again hauling out the appropriate puppets, let kids hold up appropriate puppets (perhaps on sticks - I made a quick sheet of all the animals in a black and white format so they could be colored and either backed with something to use on the home/travel flannelboards (made with 9x12 sheet of flannel on the inside of a pocket folder) that we've given out fairly regularly at storytimes or had a loop of paper taped to the back to make a fingerpuppet, make flannelboard animals to point to, OMG!, and just dance, dance, dance!
Can hardly wait to use it!
The cd has 2 versions: one with Fred Penner singing it and then next one more like a karaoke format that you do your own singing, but will animal noises backing you up.  Cuuuute.



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Doesn't Live Up To the Title

Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter by Phoebe Damrosch

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I was living in Manhattan in the early 1980s, eating at diners mostly (or whatever foreign food took my fancy), but occasionally at a fancier place (one time at La Grenouille where I learned what good service is) so I was interested in this book. 

There isn't much of a story, except the one about her love life which seems to build up some tension, but in the end she doesn't get fired or anything particularly interesting.  I sympathize with this, having led a more-or-less uneventful life.  Yes, I moved on my own to Manhattan to pursue acting.  I ate some food, had some escapades, but in order to make things interesting, I'd have to embellish.  One is almost hamstrung if she has to confine herself to the facts. 

The food wasn't anything I would long for, but the service sounds outstanding.  [Now, if you could have that sort of dining service with Indian food or Thai or even Mexican (Oooo, think of all the moles!)]  I'm afraid I'll have to side with David Rakoff on this - as nice an idea that even the middle classes who are willing to surrender a couple of months' wages on a four-star dinner will receive the same deference as the absurdly wealthy or famous might be, I prefer the stories about exceptional chefs who use their skills in elementary school cafeterias to improve the eating habits of the less advantaged young in this country. 



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Rich As Kugel

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Many years ago, when I was young and willing to read just about anything, I plowed through A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.  I knew nothing about the movie, although I may have seen posters.  I read ACO because I had read one of Burgess's other books and enjoyed it so I was working my way through his ouevre.  The first five pages were rough going because he had invented a futuristic cant and it was difficult to read at first.  Once I got the hang of it, though, I went back and started over.  It wasn't until I reached the end of the book (in paperback form) that I found the glossary that would have saved me so much time.  I'm glad, though, that I had the opportunity to stretch my linguistics muscles instead.
That said ... this book pushed my yiddish to the limit.  It was worth it though.  Chabon's book is rich in what I can only call wordplay and sly satire of the hard-boiled genre.  There is the main character who is an overworked policeman whose new boss is making his life miserable and his job impossible.  He has a partner who is his complete opposite.  The powers that be are on their case to get off the case.  As the story goes on, the main character no longer knows whom to trust.  Time is running out.  You know the stuff.
It might be difficult for the average goyim (say, ones outside of urban centers) to wade through.  I spent a lot of time on this book just savoring the the little twists of language.  As far as plot goes, it's the standard hard-boiled fare if you just substitute some species of hasidim for mafiosos, inuit for palestinians, and imagine an almost all-jewish cast.  Not having read anything before that was so steeped in the chosen folkways, I was amazed and delighted by little details such as guns being referred to as "sholems" [ha ha! peacemakers!] and phones as "shoyfers" [get on the horn to someone].  And if you are well-versed in yiddish, you might be a few paragraphs ahead in places.  Most of the characters are speaking yiddish to each other, but it's expressed as english.  "Woe is me!" says Landsman and the wisenheimer can retranslate it to "Vayz mir!"  There are many little treasures in this story.
The premise is that, post-holocaust, the jews were unable to take over Israel and instead were offered a temporary homeland in, of all places, Alaska.  The time is about to run out and there are some who have made other arrangements, some who listlessly do nothing, and others who have deep, dark plans.  Deeper and darker and sillier than you can imagine - but all of it drawn from contemporary headlines with parallels to history.  No, really. 



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SCLA Part 7 - What We Were All Waiting For: Music and Movement in Storytimes

Although I let Karen and LeVerne go to the Bouncing Babies session and I did something else, I had to go to this.  And we had so much fun, even though I was still yawning a lot.  LeVerne showed up with the pillows I'd "won" in the silent auction and the three of us cuddled together and prepared to have a good time.

Parachute for movement activities

It would be nice to be able to play the guitar for programming, but at my age I may have waited a tad too long to start.  So much for Strings and Stories.  But you can do the same stuff with just singing, which is what I do.  They use rhythm sticks (have plenty of those!), boomwhackers (OMG, don't have those!), shakers, scarves, and a parachute with beach balls on it.  They use some books we already have and I made note of a couple more I will try to use or acquire.

Boomwhackers (sorry, this picture seems to have disappeared)

This isn't the sort of thing you can describe, because there's not so much talking as there is doing.  We need lots more stuff like this going on to make it worth going.  Or maybe someone could upload inspirational storytime stuff to YouTube.

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 5 - Job Search Products on Discus

I had already been through one job-search-related session, but I figured another one couldn't hurt.  Also, my only other reasonable choice was the one on selecting Christian fiction for children.  Well, first of all, I don't purchase books and, secondly, I'm not a Christian, so I'm unlikely to do any programming using this genre.  Also, what passes for Christian lit for one group doesn't necessarily work for another group.  For example, there's the Left Behind series which is eaten up by one segment of the Christian population and derided vociferously by another segment.  In the past we've solved this problem in our area by putting "Christian" stickers on books from the various publishing houses, such as Bethany, and then hiding under the desk.

This was an excellent presentation, and also just in time for my Homeschooler program!   I couldn't believe my little eyeballs!  The presenter went over the products that we have available on our library's Discus* links that I was totally unaware of.

Ferguson's Career Guidance Center is a Facts On File product.  This seems to be mostly useful for those incredibly boring school assignments on careers, which they used to make kids do all the time but I haven't had a request for recently.  There is a cool "Career Interest Assessment" test that I'm dying to take.  It's 180 questions to determine where your interests lie: are you artistic? nurturing? etc.  I can't wait to find out that I should have been an Investment Banker.  I'll have to wait until I get to the library because I can't seem to access this from home - it's requiring a username and password.  Rats.  There is also advice on job hunting skills.

LearningExpress Library requires you to set up an account, but that's so it can save information for you and where you stopped on the practice tests.  It was suggested that you could use your library card number for setting up an account if doing this from outside the library - but, dang!, that's a really long number.  There is a resume creator and mini-courses on all those things you might be tested on, like math, the GED, ASVAB, SAT, ACT, all those acronyms, and some courses in Spanish to serve that demographic.

The last bit was about the NetLibrary Career e-Book Collection which also requires signing up.  Each title only has eight spaces for readers ... so if eight people are trying to read the same book at the same time, the ninth person is out of luck and has to ask for a notice to be sent when a space is available.  That might seem to be an unlikely event, but I imagine that those eight spaces are available to the whole state.  We used to subscribe to NetLibrary and I had a username, but it got too expensive and the state later provided Overdrive.  Anyway, I imagine that username, whatever it was, isn't any good anymore.  It would be nice if these things were more dependable.

I think the Homeschoolers group will be very interested in LearningExpress Library and its courses and tests.  Okay, maybe the parents will be interested.

*Now with the exciting new SmartSearch which searches all the websites in Discus at once!

SCLA Part 4 - Advocacy Because That Was the Theeeeme

There wasn't much choice during this set of concurrent sessions, so I picked one advocacy session and Karen picked a different one.  I think she did better.  There wasn't much here that I hadn't heard before, I hadn't had enough sleep, and the caffeine was wearing off.  I hope I didn't distress the presenter with all my yawning.

The usual stuff on partnerships: with mutual benefit comes mutual responsibility.  If you're a librarian, you're used to being the one giving service - it might be your turn to receive.  Both parties are in it for something, even if it is only to get their logo on an ad or a handout.  Partner for a discreet (and short) amount of time the first time.  Then check to see if your partner is willing to continue or do it again.  [Yeah, we used to get ice cream coupons from Chik-Fil-A for our library card campaign in the schools - but after a while we started getting stories about changes in management, etc. and we let it drop.]
You need to weed programs the way you weed books.  Maybe something near and dear to your heart is no longer justified.  [Wha-at?!]  Demographics are easy to get hold of to assess the current needs of your population (although the most recent are not quite available from the 2010 Census, they will be soon).  But also think about other kinds of underserved populations - the invisible ones, such as businesses or tourists.

All library employees should have an elevator speech prepared, a three minute or less spiel about the library, its collections, or programs.  Just in case,  you know, you've got someone trapped.  [Me, I've been feeling trapped lately, by people asking me questions about the new library.  For two years it was, "Aren't you excited about the new library?" and now it's "Don't you just love the new library?"  It's hard to say the same thing enthusiastically again and again.  "Ohh, it's so big and beautiful and (sniffing) it's got that New Library Smell!"]  Now I tell people that they have to come see it.  I can't believe we have this huge new building uptown and there are people who "just haven't found the time."  You just want to smack 'em.

Oh, and I have this note that doesn't read like what I thought it was.  That you can put a virtual sign/bookplate on digital materials so that if some group has contributed a collection of materials (a garden club, or, at our library, the Mothers of Twins), the catalog can be searched for those items or when someone is browsing the digital catalog, they can see who donated the material.  Way cool.

So, in retrospect, maybe it was a better session than I thought.  I was just tired at the time.

SCLA Part 3 - Anatomy of a Library Job Center

If you're from a small library system like me, you can get pretty darned annoyed by what's going on at the Richland County Library.  Just when you think you have a brand-spanking-new library to be proud of, you see another over-the-top presentation and slink from the session dragging your tail between your legs.
Well, they're at it again.
They decided they needed to help job seekers and so they went about it with the relentless planning and enthusiasm we have come to know and envy.  They plan, they partner, they collaborate, they write grants, they totally redesign their reference area, they hire.  Then they make you sit through a mind-boggling power-point presentation and sit and wonder at what on earth you could possibly adapt to your 834 square foot branch in the middle of a massive job shortage.
Well, let's look at some of the easy stuff, such as the self-paced stations.  You put out a desk, a chair, and a telephone book with a little tip sheet telling them to look up companies or with a sample work portfolio.  You make tip-sheets specific for area companies on filling out on-line applications, which are apparently all the rage.
No money?  Partner with area technical colleges, public and private agencies.  Have speakers come visit.  Hold weekly job club meetings for mutual support.
They have three dedicated job specialists who can sit down one-on-one with a person and help them: create an e-mail account, fill out an online application, create a résumé, practice their interview techniques.
In the end, we were each handed the power point presentation ... on a 2G flashdrive, the same flashdrives they apparently provide to their customers with a completed résumé (and one hard copy on résumé quality paper).  
They have job-search dedicated computers, they don't ask to see library cards.  And for some reason it was thought necessary to say that the job staff don't answer the phone (but the reference staff helps with job search).  They aren't trained.  
There was more (and the power point presentation is available on request - but I want the flashdrive back), but - it was just too much to take in.  

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!