Community feeling

Yesterday I spent several hours with a group of women I'm proud to call classmates - we didn't all graduate at the same time, but we all feel connected to each other and to our school.  The reason for our gathering was to begin preparing for the bicentennial of the school, in 1814.  One of…

Back to the basics

Because so many of our 9th grade students are new this year (over half the class) and because even those that came from our Middle School have managed to forget anything they knew about library research over the summer, the 9th grade History Team and I have created a series of assignments that will get…

A tale of two Augusts

A little over three years ago, in August 2007, I was awakened with the news that Goodhue Memorial Hall, home to the Kaskel Library where I worked, had been destroyed by fire (thanks to a lightning strike). This past August I, and an incredible crew of workers (some paid, some volunteer) moved from our "permanent…

Time to start planning!

Turns out I have two conference presentations next year: At ALA11 in NOLA: From Gutenberg to Google and Glogs, From Books to Vooks: Imagining and Developing the Successful, Dynamic 21st Century Library, A Panel Discussion and Debate (led by Carla Bosco, co-presenting with Wendy Stephens and Angela Carstensen) At AASL11 in Minneapolis: Books, E-ink and…

Carrying a small stick

Over the weekend, a veritable firestorm erupted over this editorial calling for the banning of the books Speak and Slaughterhouse Five. I wonder if this isn't exactly what people like Scroggins want: people of relatively little importance and influence voice an incredibly stupid/wrong headed/conservative opinion and suddenly the Twitterverse and blogosphere are alive with the…

Blinders anyone?

Recently, Buffy had quite the twitter conversation regarding the etiquette of the automatic follow.  Karl asked a similar question yesterday: Twitter / Karl Fisch: Someone thinks I'm impolit ... My response was that if you follow someone expecting to be followed in return, that's nuts.  Some people have thousands of followers, and to expect them…

Paging Jeff Probst

A friend of mine recently shared an idea for a reality tv show, one I'd not only watch but volunteer to be on!  We could call it "Survivor: Classroom". Here's the idea: let's take a couple of investment bankers, a few politicians, some laborers and perhaps a lawyer or two and send them to teacher…

A slight rehash

Some of this I've said before, but check out my post on the YALSA blog anyway.

It’s not about me

Well, we've moved into the new space - and for the entire month of August I was filled with angst about the fact that the books weren't on the shelves properly, that bits and pieces weren't finished, that my pencil drawer was broken, blah blah boring blah. It was, clearly, all about me. Then Tuesday…

Nail on head!