Happy New Year!

Wow! What a year 2008 ended up to be. We moved into the 21st century by joining the Montana Shared Catalog. What a load of work but really rewarding. I can see the enjoyment my patrons are having by finding items by themselves again.

The transition process is still happening. We will get things done.

We have kept reading some great books.

I am currently rereading "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien and reading "The Blind Side" by Michael Lewis.

enjoy 2009

I will try to keep up better this year.

MLA 2008

What a conference. There were great sessions and awesome folk. Thank you to all who made the 2008 MLA a rousing success. It was great to see friends and mentors from all parts of Montana. Every session had pearls of wisdom to share. The presenters knew their stuff. I appreciate the Library Commission for the work they do. It was great that they were willing to have a panel discussion and listen to concerns of librarians. I do have some more books to read now. Todd Strasser was great. I will have to read more of his books. "Hattie Big Sky" is the One Book Montana. I have been wanting to read that book. "Red Rover" by Deidre McNamer was the winner of the Montana Book Award. We have other books of hers, but not that one. I will get it and read it soon. One of the photographers that I really appreciate is Evelyn Cameron. What a wonderful story. There is a new book about her that I need to read.
Keep Reading!

Conclusional Beginnings

Wow! I have learned a lot during this "class". It was too fun to be called a class. I not only learned from the assignments, but I have also learned from my fellow participants. Great jobs, folks. You gave me many ideas.

I have looked up information on wikis, but it was fun to learn more about them. I have been podcasting for a while, but it was fun to hear others suggestions.

Yes, I would do another class in the future. I would also encourage other librarians to get on board. It is a fun program. I have done most of it at home. With students in the library all day, it is pretty difficult to do any kind of a class during the day.

We don't have a lot of staff to cover.

Thank you to all of our participants and particularly, our leaders and teachers.
Thank you!!

Wiki's and the future

I really enjoyed the wiki presentations. You chose some excellent presentations for us to explore. I have explored Wiki's a little bit before this exploration class. The Princeton Book Wiki is really good. I chose a couple of books from that Wiki to add to our collection at the library.
I still have a bit to learn about the wiki. I had an interesting discussion with my seventh graders today about wiki's. They had used them, but didn't really understand how they worked.
Sometimes, I have used the Wikipedia to begin research. If I need some quick info., I may access a wiki. But, I am still a bit of a purist, being a former World Book Encyclopedia salesman. The World Book Encyclopedia, or others, are good places to start research also.
I have also enjoyed exploring the Montana Librarians Wiki. I will probably register and input in the near future.
This has been an absolutely eye-opening class for me.

del.icio.us

Wow! del.icio.us is pretty cool. I can see patrons using this site when they are accessing public computers. They will still have their bookmarks, whichever computer is available. Plus, somebody else hasn't added to or deleted from the bookmark list. Thank you for adding this to our learning schedule. I have heard of del.icio.us several times and never had taken the time to explore it and see how it might work for me.

Happy Leap Year this week!