Archive for March, 2007

Darn you Adrienne!

Thursday, March 29th, 2007

Non-Kid-Lit Blogs: A Rare Post of the Day

Adrienne tagged me on this meme that’s doing the rounds: Five Non-Kid-Lit Blogs We Read. She got tagged by MotherReader.
Okay. I can do this. Its my responsibility as a blogger to do this. I really can’t believe that this should be so hard since I’m on the internet EVERY DAY. Plus I get caught in the weird blog whirlpool. One blog after another swirling around me. I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot recently. There are so many good blogs out there and as I go into my blog trance, one flowing into the other, I lose track of time and space. Of course I also lose track of which blogs I really like. But like a trooper, I will push forward and take one for the team.

I also decided that I would put blogs that I actually read, not ones that would make me super cool… although I’ve decided that these are pretty cool. I mean my sister’s one of them, for gosh sake! Who’s cooler than that?

  1. My heart of Darkness – By day she’s a Physicist, by night a poet and all the time she’s my sister.
  2. Unshelved – Daily comic that guides me in my attempts at uber-librarian-dom, whatever that is.
  3. Alternative Teen Services – Teen Librarians of the world unite! I want to write articles for the blog, and they said I could. Of course that would mean that I should also write in my own occasionally.
  4. Momchops – I am a faithful reader, now if only she would post more often… of course I could say the same of myself. Feh, I have an excuse. I’m a very busy youth services librarian in a eetsy beetsy library. She’s just the assistant to the director of the Monroe County Library System.
  5. What Not to Crochet – Now that I like crocheting, I had to know what NOT to crochet… although the thong looked awful comfy.

Okay. Who’s turn is it now? Who actually reads my blog? Hmm. How about:

  1. Sam
  2. Patty
  3. Olivia – I don’t know that she actually reads my blog, but should she, TAG! Your it!

Egads.

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

I get so busy, I can’t believe that I’ve neglected the blog for so long! I’ve just been on the go so much! Umm, well mostly crocheting and playing with Jack, but those are important too, aren’t they?

I’ve been trying to take more pictures of the things I’ve made, so pictures will be up soon. The subject of my interest recently is felted jewelry. I made some pins, a couple bracelets and a necklace/belt (for my niece).

There’s also been a lot of work going on in my teen area. As I may have mentioned before, Jenny is my practicum student, and she just finished weeding my teen collection. A LOT of books disappeared. We then moved the graphic novels to a more spacious location. I am very happy with it, and it looks 20X better. I just wish that I didn’t have to get rid of anything that hadn’t gone out in three years to do it. Our library is so small (how small is it :)?) that we’re almost at a one book in/one book out state. That is really awful. Although what is worse is that some people think that we’re plenty big enough. 🙁 I’d love to have some more space to display things, and make it look more like a book store, which as current experts say, is the way to get more books circulating in the library.

Poop.

By the way, Jeff called me yesterday all excited because while Jack was sitting on Jeff’s lap, Jack started grunting, which is the sure sign of poopy. Okay so that’s not the exciting bit. Anyway, Jack looked right at Jeff and said “Poopy!” then got off Jeff’s lap, went into his bedroom, grabbed a diaper and sat on the changing pad. Jeff then had to call me right afterwards.
Awww. How cute is that? … Okay so if I wasn’t a parent, I’d wonder when the cute part was coming, but as a parent all those weird things suddenly become adorable. Parenthood is strange.

Poopy!

Committees

Friday, March 9th, 2007

Committees. A word that is ingrained in every librarian’s brain and will stay with them until the day they die.  A word that librarians can love or dread. A word slightly less scarier than “low circulation” or “low attendance”. Ohhh just the thought of it gives me goosebumps.

Every librarian soon learns after leaving the nest of library school and entering into the big bad world of the public library that they will be “asked” to join committees. Right now I’m on a couple committees for kids:

  1. scary books (list) committee
  2. technology program committee
  3. kids website committee
  4. Amerks program committee (now done)

I think that might be it. For some reason I thought I might be on one more, but I’m not sure. I also somehow was put on the teen webpage committee, which I think has one or two more people on it, but I’m not absolutely sure. I think it may be because I opened my big mouth and came up with an idea for the teen section of the website: have kids/teens draw caricatures of the librarians and then have people vote on the best which will then be put on the main page of the teen site with a link to each library. Some of the librarians were slightly disturbed about having a caricature done of them… it just occurred to me, maybe we could have teens come up with a library mascot or character that represents the library as they see it, instead of the caricature of the librarian… that might make them slightly happier.

Well anyway, as you can see I have quite a bit on my plate, which is probably why when at one of the meetings my boss went to they were talking about creating an emerging technology committee, she thought of adding me to the committee… but then thought better of it. Come on now! That actually seems like a committee I could commit to 🙂 LOL Yea. I know stupid, but its almost one in the am. You cannot blame me for stupidity this early in the morning.

So anyway, now my interest is piqued. I want to know who else will be in this group and what the group will be focusing on. COME ON! I need answers! I was afraid to sound too interested to Sally, because… well now I don’t really know why. I think that this would be something that I could sink my teeth into. I am all about libraries taking another step forward into the 21st century. We need to keep up with the Jones’ if we want to stay alive. Public libraries need to be more competitive if they want to get some of the funding that everyone else is fighting for, and I think that by taking advantage of technology and marketing ourselves to those who don’t know that we exist we will be taking a step in the right direction. At the moment we’re merely a place that “dirty men look at pictures of naked people” and a place to pick up tax forms. I, personally don’t want that to be our image. Sorry folks. I think its time for change. Unfortunately, I think that someone is going to need to rile up the chicken coop to get it going. Luckily, I think that there are enough librarians that are receptive to what needs to happen that it shouldn’t be too awful. Maybe they’ll just need a middle-sized fox to get into the coop, not an ex-large one. 🙂

Don’t really know where I’m going with this anymore. Time for bed. G’night.

Another Bag

Saturday, March 3rd, 2007

Yesterday I bought buttons for some bags I’m making for my nieces. I found this box of random buttons at Joanns, and I had to buy it. I found some REALLY great buttons in the box, and I just happened to have a tote bag laying around so…

orange flowers whole bag

zoomed in orange flower

red flowers whole bag

zoomed in red flower