School Frustrations

How can a person conduct a 2 hour and 45 minutes class...a Reference class which is beneficial to every librarian...talking about nothing at all? Today we have discussed political issues which turned into a major catastrophe, blacks in general because the professor is African American, and more blah blah blah. This is my frustration with paying for a class and then spending time to drive a full hour and 20 minutes to be here for class...and then feeling like nothing was accomplished. I only had my time wasted.

Don't get me wrong, I am loving school...and loving the fact that I am getting closer to the finish line, but frustrations are still there. I am still paying good money for an education, and unfortunately I feel that my money and time is being taken advantage of. *sigh

On the flip side, I am even more convinced that I have done the right thing in taking 3 online classes next semester. I feel like no time will be wasted that way ... because the information is there for you to read on your own time and you can get right to the assignment. We'll see if I'm correct!

I love my workplace

Since leaving MUNPL, I have been a happy camper at my job in Frankton. I can now say that I will be an even happier camper during the Fall and Winter months...all because of this lovely fireplace. It just makes me so stinkin happy!...and warm (always a plus).
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Internet Librarian 2008

This weekend, many of the online library bloggers are attending the conference Internet Librarian. This conference is being held in Monterey and is the only conference for "information professionals who are using, developing, and embracing Internet, Intranet, and Web-based strategies in their roles as information architects and navigators." I would LOVE to be there! Bobby of Librarian by Day is attending as well as Iris from Pegasus Librarian.

Instead of being able to attend IL, I am in Gulf Shores, AL this weekend for my brother's wedding. It has been an adventure to try and find Wi-Fi access for submitting multiple school assignments. Our hotel just happened to have a down period of wi-fi access all day yesterday and today, so I am at a lovely Books-A-Million where I have to relogin every five or so minutes due to connection interruptions. This has been one heck of a trip to say the least! We travel home tomorrow and hopefully the weather will remain beautiful for the afternoon wedding today.

Endnote = Headache For Mac Users

One of my online buddies recently wrote an entry on her BLOG about the software Endnote. Her frustrations are from a research teacher perspective and stem from a lack of Endnote updates. My frustration with the software is from a Mac standpoint. My argument is as follows:

Endnote is primarily a PC software product. Even though there is a Mac version available, there is a steep learning curve.
I recently had an assignment that required me to work with Endnote. I was excited because of the bibliography convenience Endnote offered. It was handy-dandy in theory, but the work-arounds that I had to do with the Mac version was a bigger headache than it should have been. The same online buddy that wrote the blog entry, spent time with me online trying to figureout why I wasn't able to import a list from an online journal site intoEndnote. In the end, together we spent about 2 hours working andreworking the software, and tweaking it with her Endnote knowledge inorder to get the results I needed. Headache city!
After this assignment, I was in search of a better way for Mac users to get the same bibliography convenience. I found it in a Firefox extension called Zotero. Taken from their website;

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself.

I'm all about free and easy! It may not have the bells and whistles that Endnote has, but I am thoroughly impressed with its ease of use. For now, I am sold on Zotero and will be keeping all my pdf files right at my fingertips.

Google Reader Vs. Bloglines

A recent school assignment was to create a Bloglines account and start adding RSS feeds to it. I have been a blog reader for a very long time and currently have over 150 feeds in various categories set up in my reader of choice. So what reader might that be?

First, there are many debates out there about which reader is the "best" and "most user-friendly." One such posting can be found HERE.I must admit that I started off with an account at Bloglines, and I agree with the above post when Gina states:
I'm not exactly an easily-offended aesthete, but Bloglines' design mademe wince from the get-go. It's just plain ugly. The color, the font, the boxiness of it all - and after awhile a design youdon't like starts to drag on you, becomes work to look at and use.
In addition to the aesthetics, in my case, my work library got on a kick with filtering nearly EVERYTHING that had anything to do with social networking. Because blogs have a social aspect to them through the comment feature, bloglines was blocked. I could no longer get my feeds and read my daily library blogs.I was on a search for a new reader!

Enter Google Reader. Luckily, the title is pretty general and therefore wasn't blocked, but I knew it would be a pain to try and get all my feeds switched over. In my mind I thought I would have to import them one by one which I just didn't have the time to do.In my searching, I was happy to find a nifty tool that would allow me to export my entire "library" of feeds as an OPML file which I could in turn import into Google Reader. Fast and painless!

Overall, I don't have a love/hate relationship with either of the feed readers, but for my situation, Google Reader has done its job nicely. I am moving more and more in the direction of Google's many free tools and have been very happy with everything I have tried (Blogger, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Docs, Google Notebook, etc). The other cool thing about many of the Google tools is that there are usually Firefox extensions that will allow you to work with those tools right in your browser!

So which RSS feed reader is for you? Leave me a comment with your thoughts!

Cute Overload

One of my favorite blogs is Cute Overload where there are always adorable pictures of animals. This one in particular makes me want a puppy so badly! I even have the name picked out for the new puppy...

~What's that? You want to know the name?

Well...because I am a librarian, and I love books, one title that I'm reading currently is entitled Dewey: The Library Cat That Touched The World. I realize the story is about a cat...but the name could definitely work for a dog!

For more cute overload goodness, be sure to check out their blog HERE!

CYPD @ ACPL Fort Wayne

The CYPD conference is for Indiana children's librarians, which I just happen to be at the moment...however, I don't really want to stay a children's librarian forever. But it's a job for now.

The main attraction to this conference was illustrator E.B. Lewis. His work is amazing and it was so nice to be able to see his work displayed and talked about by none other than himself.







2nd on the list of presenters was Jim Gill who writes songs specifically for story time purposes. His enthusiasm and hilarious songs had us all up and participating and laughing so hard we could hardly stand it. Being that it was after lunch, this was much needed to keep us awake!









There was a special luncheon for those attending and another author was there to speak. 2 of my good friends were there...Mary on the left and Jody on the right. Mary is a coworker of mine in the North Madison County Public Library system...and Jody is a former coworker from Muncie. We had a blast!

Library Camp: Releasing the Digital Library

I posted about this unconference on my Tumblr account, but I'm a creature of habit, and I like blogger much better! Library Camp was held in Allen County with speaker David Lee King! I had "met" David online through Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook, but it was nice getting to really meet him and pick his brain a bit.



After lunch, there was a tour of the ACPL library and I was so enamored with this globe that I had to snap a picture. I even turned the picture into a business card using Flickr's Moo Card service!
Two of my buddies...Heidi who I met online prior to the conference, and Joe who I knew through attending classes with. It's amazing the collegues you can meet at these things!
Finally, Eli...a hilarious presenter on all things digital within a library and from Ann Arbor, gave a mini presentation that turned into a bigger session for the afternoon. Everyone loved Eli and his presentation and it became known as Eli's Stuff.

All in all, it was a great day spent with great friends and I learned tons. I will definitely be attending in the future...
OH...and I got a free t-shirt out of the deal!