2 New Selection Tools Online

Today I received a new email newsletter entitled: Quick Tips from Book Links. If you haven't seen it, you can go to: http://link.ixs1.net/s/ve?eli=k160219&si=e182487167&cfc=3html to view it and sign up to receive future issues. In the newsletter, I found reference to the new ALSC blog from ALA. I haven't seen this before.

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), has launched an ALSC blog at http://www.alsc. ala.org/blog. The blog provides a venue for coverage and interactive discussion of time sensitive news in children’s librarianship, current issues in the field, programs, conferences, initiatives, resources and activities of interest to ALSC members and those interested in children’s librarianship. I found a great comment about displays that you can read in total on a post for Dec. 7, 2007 at http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/?p=139#comments: "I have to admit to putting books on display in libraries that I don’t even work in. Kinda like committing random acts of kindness – I commit random acts of display." Have you tried this?

Winter Fun 2.0

It's here! Winter Fun with School Library Learning 2.0. I'm looking forward to being a peer cheerleader, especially after finally meeting some of the Summer Fun bloggers f2f at the CSLA Conference. I'm also looking forward to learning some new tools and tricks as we continue this adventure together. If you are hesitating to get started, come on. We'll help and it's lots more fun than the after Christmas sales.

More later from the PageSpace

Life Goes On in High School Libraryland

The first month of school had passed and we were still literally up to our elbows in textbook boxes, with more coming in the door. I think we need to have a category on the annual library survey in this state to indicate how many of us have to process, store, check out and retrieve textbooks in our CA school libraries. I also want questions for how much space it takes up and how much time it keeps the library closed each year. Oh well, my rant is over.

We are finally open for regular hours and service, and all of the 9th grade English classes have completed the library orientation. Life feels normal now in the library.

"Shift happened. The librarian divide"

From Joyce Valenza at her blog on SLJ, "Shift happened. The librarian divide" for September 27, 2007 - if you didn't catch this already, here is some interesting reading describing our journey here in Library and School 2.0.

Thinking back - the last thing, week 9, thing #23

My favorite discoveries and exercises were the picture things, Flickr and all the toys, YouTube for education (and fun) and the mash ups we discovered. They seemed simple to use as I learned how to use them. I feel that one of the strengths of this program has been the way the lessons progressed and built on what I learned as I went along. Even when I was using a tool I might have tried before, I still learned something. I'm going to enjoy putting tools together for lessons. I think it was important for me to always be reminded to apply each thing to education and note a way I might use it at school. I think that by collecting these ideas on the wiki, it not only showed us one way to use a wiki, but it's building a great collection of ideas that we are sharing with each other and all of the other school librarians out there.

If I had anything to add to this, it would be some kind of "water cooler" where all of the participants could more easily communicate with each other and with the team. Maybe it could just be a page on the wiki where we just post a question or share an experience. The team has been great about responding to email, but we don't get the benefit of their answers to each other's questions. Maybe I'll go make a page for this on the wiki and see what shows up. I am looking forward to being a cheerleader for others who are participating.

I would definitely participate in another program like this and I have encouraged others to join us. There are so many additional "things" for us to explore and make our own, finding more of these new tools has truly become part of my life long learning. The entire "thing" was always fun for me and NEVER BORING! Harder sometimes than others, but never boring. (You can quote me on this, if you want to)

I plan to keep on posting on this blog and reading the other blogs. See you all on your blogs and at the CSLA Conference!

What about the next blog post?

As I come to the end of this adventure of the 23 things, a note of comic relief. Have we all had this thought?

eBooks & Audio eBooks - week 9, thing #22

I've looked at Project Gutenberg before, but I have never downloaded anything. Right now, until Aug. 4th, over 600,000 ebooks are free to download at the World eBook Fair. I went ahead and downloaded "Sense and Sensibility" and it's interesting to read the preliminary information printed at the head of the downloaded copy of the book. This would be a good resource for students to use to find copies of classics to print out and mark up, particularly for Honors and AP English classes. I don't particularly like to read the books in this format, but it is an incredible resource.

The link on the SLL2.0 page to the Best Places to Get Free Books is a useful link to have. I've put it in del.icio.us so I don't lose it and I can find it at school.

LibriVox is another great resource for books used at school. They have a lot of the classics that are read in English classes, so this would be a very useful site to put on the library webpage and encourage students to use.

I'm trying to provide audiobooks for checkout and/or download in the library. I recently received a grant from our local education foundation to purchase audiobooks and I think I will be spending it on some Playaway titles for now, as I explore the various other ways we could be providing audiobooks. I got a lot of information about ways to do this at one of the sessions at last year's CSLA Conference and at an Infopeople workshop, but I still don't have it worked out. I have paid for and downloaded some books for myself from iTunes to my iPod and it was easy. There are so many titles available there, but there is no easy way to pay for this from school, so again, I still have a lot to work out. I would like to take advantage of that equipment that all of the students are already carrying around, like MP3 players and now their iPhones! I'll keep working on it.

Only one more thing left to do.