23 things or 2 or 3 things

Jennifer will be guiding us in what has been termed a 23 things program of learning about web 2.0. It is a voluntary 12 week program with 9 weekly activities that you can do on your own. Each week the activity consists of 2 or 3 things that take 15 - 20 minutes to complete. You will post the things you learn on your very own blog. That way we all learn from each other.
For those who participate in the project you will be much more web 2.0 savvy. For those who complete the program, you will receive a iPod shuffle.

She will be sending us more info but look to start around mid May or early June.

Neat low pressure way to learn new things.

Team Reorganization

I sent out a draft of a reorganization plan for teams to reach their FY08 goals. I have not heard any feedback yet.

Wmpl rotating meeting

After our wmpl rotating meeting today and learning how the select and distribute rotating materials, 2 improvements will occur. The DVDs will be shipped on a 2 branches at a time instead of 6 branches at a time. Each month 2 branches will get their collections. So the rotation period for each collection will be 3 months. We hope Carol will no longer be walled in during the arrival of rotating DVDs.

Thing 2. due to low circulation, we will no longer receive books on cd that are composed of 20 or more cds.

1036 Lbs

I received a phone call from the Director of the Western Maryland Food Bank and we collected 1036 lbs of food for the food bank during food for fines day. Congratulations and Thanks

Avoid overdue fines with a library basket

From Parenthacks.comn

Avoid overdue fines with a library basket

Megin of GNMParents on keeping track of library books:

We go to the library almost weekly. Between the 3 kids and myself our library bag is overflowing when we leave. For a long time it was common to lose track of the books- they would get mixed in with the books we owned (all 9 gazillion of them!) and left in every room in the house. This made returning books a bear and we almost always had late fines.

Enter the library book basket: I bought a special basket that stays in the living room. This is now the home for all things library. The kids learned very quickly to return books to the basket- even the 2 year-old. Now when it's time to return items, we just dump them back into the library bag and we know we are returning everything we borrowed.

The same idea would work for movie and game rentals, although we avoid the late fee problem altogether with Netflix.

Carson Scholar's advice

Yesterday I heard a past Carson Scholar and freshman at Harvard talk about being a Carson Scholar. She said that was very nervous about applying to college and her nerves caused her to be hesitant about acting. So she put up little notes that reminded her of what she really wanted . And that she wanted to go to college more than she was afraid of it.

I think her advice holds true in lots of situations, to overcome "the resistance" you have to want it more than you are afraid of it.

A-ADD

A link in www.43folders.com mentioned that the recent Blackberry failure brought to light the condition of "acquired attention deficit disorder” A condition of people who are accustomed to a constant stream of digital stimulation and feel bored in the absence of it. Regardless of whether the stimulation is from the Internet, TV or a cellphone, the brain, he said, is hijacked.

It goes on to say "

An article in yesterday’s New York Times suggests that the upshot of last week’s BlackBerry outage may be about more than just an annoying communication outage — for some, it was a flop-sweat-inducing night of cold turkey.

“It’s random reinforcement,” Mr. Katz said. The fact that you don’t know when important news will come, he said, “means you will quickly engage in obsessive compulsive behavior.”

These social needs and yearnings may drive the use. But at some point, that use becomes an end unto itself — a physical ritual that can take on some of the qualities of actual addiction, said Dr. John Ratey, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard, where he specializes in neuropsychiatry.

Several years ago, Mr. Ratey began using the term “acquired attention deficit disorder” to describe the condition of people who are accustomed to a constant stream of digital stimulation and feel bored in the absence of it. Regardless of whether the stimulation is from the Internet, TV or a cellphone, the brain, he said, is hijacked.

Sure, I kid the BlackBerry addicts, but I do sympathize. Left to my own devices, I’d check email a hundred times a day and can still half-ruin a vacation with the constant need to “just check in.” Electronic fiddling is a lot like tobacco addiction and a lot easier to get away with nowadays.

Darth Vader Balloon

see http://starwars.com/community/event/celebration/news20070417b.html

Credit Cards ?

Do we need to start accepting credit cards for payment at the circ desk? or for stuff on our web site/

Waiting

We hope to hear from the County about our budget request by the end of April. Then we can start looking at things all over again, based on updated info and assumptions.

MLA conference

Regina, Lisa and I will be going to Ocean City on Tuesday May 2 for the Maryland library Association conference. The theme is web 2.0 and John V put a lot of the program together. There is a neat pre-conference on Wednesday entitled "Can the KKK meet in your library?' I will attend the legal ramifications and policy side of the discussion, while Lisa will attend the discussion of how you as direct line staff can and should react when this type of thing comes to your door.
See the conference proceedings at http://www.mdlib.org/conference/index.htm.
Place your taffy orders now.

WMPL rotating meeting

We have a meeting on thursdya with wmpl to observe how their rotating collection department works. So far, we have not been able to come to a mutually agreeable understanding of how it shoudl work, so we are going down to watch and maybe get a better understanding of how they do it. Topics should range from what is included in collections, to when it is shipped, ho wit can be processed, can a predictable pattern and quantity of material be devined so we can adjust work flow and volumenb fo work, and why does wcfl get a copy of everything that ACLS and Garrett has to share. Any helpful comments would be appreciated.

West Renovation update

Met with Nancy and Andrea (interior designer) at West this morning to review ideas and the floor layout. We talked about how to brighten the place up and our ideas for the new children's room. Andrea mentioned some irridescent tiles she had used at the new office of McCagh Roberts and thought they might be used on the circ desk as a front panel. If you have seen these or are going to see them, take a picture for us. Renovation to take place in November or December and plans should be ready by mid summer

Perf evaluation time again

It is time to start to schedule the annual performance evaluations. While there is no way to avoid the anxiety associated with them, try to think of them as an open and honest dialogue with your supervisor about what is working and what is not and what you need from the organization and what the organization needs from you.

Comments please

I think i set this thing up so that you all could comment on any one of my posts. let me know if you have any trouble.
thanks

Kudos to LaVale meeting room

A non-biased person (Suzanne) mentioned what a nice facility LaVale was to hold her meeting last night. She iked the way the kids could come in and go out. I was pleased because she bought me an ice cream when she was finished.

B&T Adult Non Fiction processing ok

I met with Carol on Tuesday and we reviewed a sample adult nonfictionorder. The items we received were processed as she wished them to be. The next step is to make sure we get the communications links workgin so that we don't pay for stuff before we receive it. I will work on that on Monday after the branch manager meeting.

Computers in Libraries 2007 conference

Rats. I went down to the CiL conference on monday to see the vendors and they did not open until 5 PM. From what I have heard, the vendors and programs did not change despite a fancy new conference title.