Miraculous Day

The Assistant Principal's nephew is helping around the school, and is going to clear out the disassembled pieces of old card catalog, old 50 year old light bulbs to some piece of obsolete equipment, old maps, and heaven knows what else. I didn't think any of this stuff would go away. Every parent work day has enough work assigned to it, before I ever weigh in on what we need here.

Half of my book order came in from the "Reading is the Way Up" grant. Now to see if we can get some of these kids reading together.

When the computers are moved out of here, we might be able to set up some sofas and make a comfortable sitting area for teen readers. It would be so nice to get this place looking a little more modern and inviting.

Busy Week of Tasks

Some weeks just seem to disappear with lots of little pieces of work filling up time. This last week has gone to finishing up book orders for money awarded from a grant, doing another application to submit later, classes coming into the library to do research projects on the computers, and the attempt to create a Google calendar that everyone wanting computer time can view for availability before contacting me. Besides this, a monthly library meeting, cataloging of books, and updating of records. I have signed up for a cataloging class, and am looking forward to learning some new material, and now have an operational computer that I can use.

A book fair is located in one of the schools at which I work, but I haven't been participated in that because I want to finish up the Lexile level project. I have a couple more days' work adding levels to spine labels, and have some books that could be covered, if I get to them. Once the labels come and I have the printer cable, I should be able to do the labels, provided the printer cartridge is operational.

Outside distractions include needing to look for a new rental. I am ready for a change, and just wish it were easier to find something affordable. I want this settled so I can get packed and ready to move and do other projects and do some writing.

Just Another Week

The year is coming to an end very soon, and all the teachers are trying to reserve the computers for class projects.

Monday was spent printing out more information on my research the previous week on textbooks that didn't come back. A bare minimum of $7,000 worth of books from last year's 6th and 7th graders did not come back, and we have no money to buy more.

Tuesday and Wednesday were taken up with STAR testing, which was a paper and pencil matter, until the students were through with it, and then some went on the computers to play games. Skills are incredibly low, and more gang graffiti signs were on the tables than writing on the books.

Today was spent with a class doing research on a tourist site they wanted to visit in a foreign country. Low skills were evident again, with someone not knowing how to begin with an encyclopedia. Some people checked out books on their country of choice, and some people were denied that privilege because of the failure to return textbooks from last year. I hate to do it, but something needs to happen.

Meanwhile, I had a visually-impaired student with some ability to read print asking for special library services that send books to the house. She might qualify but the teacher is reluctant to have her do anything because the parents will probably just put the stuff away and she probably wouldn't be able to use it. She's from a middle eastern country, and there are truly at least fourteen people living in the household. She will probably have to do home schooling after 8th grade because they don't want her going to high school with students from here, as it will make her an undesirable on the marriage market back home. She'll be married before she's 18 years old. She does want to read and learn, but also seems happy with her situation at home from what her teacher says.

The Count and the Amount

I'm wearing my invisible textbook hat, trying to "guestimate" how short we will be on particular textbook titles, which will be fun because we have no money anyway. All of this takes me back to my middle school days and after school rituals.

We didn't even have television at home until I was in middle school so I had to go to my grandparents, which is where I watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. I was so young for that event and didn't go into screaming fits or quite catch the significance of it. I think my parents wanted an environment without the television until I was in middle school. All of a sudden it seemed like the reception had picked up enough that out came the television and the antennae. No cable in those days, especially out in the country with your closest neighbors a mile away. If you didn't like those half dozen channels that you could pull in, tough. Go read a book or do something.
After school and on hot days in the summer, I'd come home, turn on Channel 2 Oakland, and watch "Dialing with Dollars," hosted by Pat McCormick who received these post cards from viewers with their phone numbers. He had this count and amount system, and he'd call homes and say with his very distinctive voice, "Pat McCormick, Dialing for Dollars, calling. Are you watching? What's the movie, and the count and the amount?" If you could tell him, you won a prize, some money and maybe some restaurant coupons. My mom was so uncool because she didn't send in a post card. I guess she thought we lived too far away for someone to call long distance.

Pat McCormick must have been the equivalent of a babysitter for latchkey kids because he also broke up the movie screening with little puppet intermissions, and he had two of the greatest puppets I ever saw; Humphrey and Charley. One was a bull dog, and the other was a horse. McCormick was always off screen when the puppets talked, and he did a great job with his voice. I would forget McCormick was behind them, he was so good.

Anyway, the count and the amount is the name of the game with textbooks. I'm almost afraid I will have to go dialing for dollars to meet the needs of starting the next school year.

The middle-schoolers today wouldn't take to Charley and Humphrey, but television, even if it was black and white, had such better shows then. I cancelled my cable last year- I just can't deal with 100 channels of nothing, half of which are scooping me on the tabloid issues of the day. Back to reading those books because I don't like what comes to me on 100 plus channels.

For Librarian Entertainment

After weeding books with ridiculous sounding titles, I found that a prize exists for books with the oddest titles. I was listening to National Public Radio when they ran a story about the Diagram Prize list of winners which British trade magazine for the publishing industry, The Bookseller publishes annually. If Wikipedia is at all credible, the list and the prize originated as entertainment during the 1978 Frankfurt Book Fair.

This list is a short seven titles, up one from six because I guess someone just couldn't decide between two terrible tomes. I am not going to take the time to give you the scoop on all of them, but the titles are "must reads" even if the books are not. I am going to share a couple of my favorites, and then you can go to the link to The Bookseller.

"The Mushroom in Christian Art" by John A. Rush and "A Taxonomy of Office Chairs" by Jonathan Olivares are titles that just make you want to cuddle up on the sofa and read.

Read on:

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/diagram-prize-shortlist-revealed.html

If you want to see the whole history of Diagram Prize winners, go to the Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookseller/Diagram_Prize_for_Oddest_Title_of_the_Year

Bambi-Eyes are Smiling- and Laughing for Now

This is our Rite of Almost-Spring when the school counselor brings the 8th graders to the library, has them calculate their GPA, and helps them do a reality-check on where they are with their grades and test scores, and where they need to be at the end of the year. All the little Bambi-Eyes are laughing now, but in 3 months or less, I'll be seeing a lot of these little faces in here crying because someone doesn't want to promote them to High School.

I had a teacher send two students down last week to see if they had an English Handbook that they needed for homework, and of course, they had sworn that they never received the book. My system shows they did, and it is amazing how their stories change 3 times within the same conversation, and the parental part of my brain is screaming neither of these students has done a lick of homework in months. They probably haven't cleaned their rooms since before Halloween, either.

I should run a side business as a bookie, taking bets on their GPAs because I could predict fairly accurately who is going to rise above that comfort zone of a 2.0 GPA and who is going to be finishing near the back of the pack from what I see and hear in the textbook room.

I'm betting that one-half of the 8th grade is going to be saying special prayers, polishing apples for teachers, and trying to do a lot of work in the next few weeks, about half of which will be illegible, inadequate, and off-topic. Oh, well. They've got to learn sometime.

Programs and ebooks in the Library

Recent trends indicate ebooks selling more copies and publishers fighting less against the trend. I think school libraries should go more in that direction also because I seem to be spending more time hosting events in in the library than checking out books. If we have ebooks and train everyone to access them, we might actually have readers. Not to mention, weeding might be an entirely different matter. Perhaps after 20 years, the title just melts into cyberspace.

The Men to Boys program held a meeting in the library during lunch and 5th period about bullying. They had a speaker, a Mr. Hernandez, who did an excellent presentation, and even addressed cyberbullying. Mr. Hernandez mentioned how one of his sons got caught up in a gang. After the program, I had the opportunity to speak with him, and his story is truly one of extraordinary effort and love to remove his son from the gang, including sending him away from the Bay Area to Samoa for an extended amount of time.

While the program was in progress, I continued going through Destiny and eliminated more ghost records for books that probably haven't been seen in 30 years. I also found a number of books for which fast records had been created without including the copyright date. Most of those books had copyrights as recent or later than 2000, and I took them out and recatalogued them by attaching them to an entry with a MARC record. That should help the average age of the collection.

To archive or not to archive: my take on the school library is that it is not an archival institution, and more than one or two books of 20 or more years of age within a 100 span range of the Dewey Decimal system is too many. We all form attachments, and yes, some of these books still have good information, but let them live on in the classroom libraries of the history teachers. Too many titles are unappetizing, and when you open up the book, the copy is dirty and disgusting. A whole bunch of other titles might inspire a new generation of writers to reexamine the subject matter. Some subjects and persons would be better put into books more general in scope or into collective biographies. Single book titles devoted to each battle of World War II are about as necessary as a single book titles devoted to each of Napoleon Bonaparte's engagements. History moves on, and unless students are specializing in history at a university, they don't need that much World War II detail. Less shelf space devoted to some of this stuff is better for a middle school.

In my case, most of what I am deleting are ghosts; mere records in the system, and I really don't know why someone barcoded all these books from the 1940s through the 1970s. I guess we all get attached to these books.

I think I should do a book featuring all the literary shrines of my life, and it will probably have an audience limited to myself, but perhaps it will help me let go of library books.

Ghostbusted: Devils, Drugs and Doctors, 1929

The All-City Youth Leadership group is taking a break from discussing how to improve cafeteria lunch to eat some catered goodies that look a lot better than what I am eating today. I think they might be finishing up and leaving for the day. I have been cleaning out ghost books from Destiny while they occupy the library, and am working on the 600s of the Dewey Decimal system. So far, I haven't gone beyond 616, but I am about to send the ghosts out for radiocarbon dating.

Just a sample of delightful items not seen for a very long time, and if it were not for a print out of the title details, I'd have no proof that they existed. The winner, by far, has to be "Devils, Drugs, and Doctors: The Story of the Science of Healing from Medicine Man to Doctor" by Howard H. Haggard in 1929. Runners-up owe their lack of appeal largely to the publishing industry which should be sued en masse if sales were low. Take your pick: "Goodbye to Bedlam; Understanding Mental Illness and Retardation" by John Langone, 1974 and "Food Trips and Traps: Coping with Eating Disorders" by Jane Claypool (1983). Ms. Claypool should sue on the basis that alliteration has been taken to extremes to the point of obfuscation of the writer's intentions unless she was discussing eating disorders among amoebic Venus flytraps. Not to be outdone by private industry, the New York Public Affairs Committee contributed a real beauty of a pamphlet no. 507, written by Elizabeth Ogg (not to be confused with Egg), entitled "Voluntary Sterilization." I wonder if Ms. Ogg was proud of this contribution to a middle school library, and if she was aware of how many involuntary sterilizations went on among African American and Native American women during this time period.

Other ghosts: Titles for Herbert Zim and Sonia Bleeker. While I have a lot of nostalgia for these two authors as I read their science and anthropology titles in elementary school, and while their work was very good, I think if I read them almost 50 years ago, they don't need to be on the shelves or lurking as ghosts in Destiny. Their papers are housed at the University of Oregon, Eugene, and maybe someday I will pay a visit to the shrine of the authors of my youth

I'm tempted to send this list of titles off for radioactive carbon-14 dating.

Lexile Land in the Library

The district seems to have blocked just about all the computers from access to blogger except mine, which is fine. I just hope my Yahoo access to it continues. It would be fun to get the students involved in learning blogger, but unless some official approval comes through, I won't do it.

The computers in the library are going to be reduced as a computer lab will be reactivated, and only a few will remain in the library. The concern around that will be getting teachers involved to come to the library at all without bringing students to the library. They don't bring them, and given the behavioral problems, they don't come on their own, leaving before school, lunch time, and after school for individual visits. Students are locked out until the morning bell rings, and after school programs are in here after school, and that doesn't seem to promote other students coming in easily.

On the bright side, we were awarded a $500 grant which will purchase some books for mini-reading clubs with 6 students being able to participate in reading some titles with Lexile scores of 1000 or higher.
Titles include: "Begging for Change" by Sharon Flake, "Crows and Cards" by Joseph Helgerson, "Dawn of Fear" by Susan Cooper, "Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebra" by Wendy Lichtman, "Elijah of Buxton" by Christopher Paul Curtis, and "H.I.V.E: Higher Institute of Villainous Education" by Mark Walden.

Today we have some sort of all city youth council meeting going on in the library with students attending from other schools as well as a representative from our school. I'm hearing a lot of laughter so they must be enjoying themselves.

Further comment of Lexile leveling of libraries: If this trend in madness persists, I suggest that it be anticipated and outsourced on a private contractor basis over the summers, on weekends, or other after school hours. If it is done this way, at least a portion of the library could be completed quickly; the fiction chapter books, and then the picture books. The librarian could then run the library on at least a limited basis circulating those books without the whole library being off-limits. It is completely unfeasible to check out books while also trying to do the Lexile leveling. Someone working on a private contractor basis could save the district some money by not having benefits being paid for. I just think a way has to be found to have the library more accessible to children while this is being done, and to get better money value out of the process.

Library Weeding and Landscaping

I am beginning to think of the library as a garden, not meaning a library dedicated to botany, horticulture and gazebo plans but a garden as in much weeding of books. Also as in rumors of blowers being used by janitors to speed up the job.

I am pulling books off the shelves and computer as quickly as I can. I have not pulled the old reference books yet, but I hope to eliminate them by Thursday as well. The shelves look a little barer but a lot better. Some of the discards might find homes in classrooms or with students.

As to the blower rumor, someone who worked here as a janitor and moved to another school told me that blowers were being used in the library at other schools. I am seeing a lot of dust on books, and I do not know if this is happening here, and I will probably not know. If I were to run into the office asking that blowers not be used, I would probably be taken for yet another overly anxious librarian. Who knows? If I'm laid off, I will never know what else they are doing with these books; besides not reading them.

Ghosts in the Library

Completing the state library survey motivated me to do some more weeding, and I have been pulling books with copyright dates from the 1980s. I have also wondered how I could possibly have 11,000 books. Now that I ghost-busted some "ghost books," the sections I have completed are about 15 years old.

After weeding, I took a look in the library reports section at the Dewey Decimal ranges in detail, and I noticed average dates of 1942, 1955, and other years from long before this library was automated. I know the books are not on the shelves, and they never came up with subject searches because the MARC records for them don't have tags, I'm sure. Why someone bothered to catalog books already ancient by the time automation was implemented is beyond me. I am spending a lot of time deleting these "ghost books" from the system. Parliamentary procedure material from 1942 and McCarthy investigation materials for the 1950s are no longer phantasms in Destiny. A lot more remains to be done.

Student ghost: As if book ghosts were not enough, I have a student who came to the library, who seems to have a bit of a processing/expressive lag, and I can never really figure out if he's part of the after school program, or if he is just around. He came in to get a graphic novel, checked it out, was with the after school program, I thought. After school program leaves, and I go to the shelves to search for a book, and I notice a backpack, and go to talk to an after school program employee, who comes and picks up the backpack. About 5 minutes later, I hear a voice from the computer area in the dark "That was my backpack." He was sitting so quietly that the sensors have let the lights turn off, and I didn't know he was there. I might have left in 10 minutes without knowing he was in the library.

Now I am going to do a walk-through of the textbook room and the entire library before I leave every day, because I just don't know what might happen, especially if the library were going to closed for a long break. Every year I think I have experienced everything possible, but there is always a new student situation.

Kids, Writing, Blogging

All it took was one paraprofessional showing two boys how to set up a blog when they couldn't use notepad to display some website material they had developed at home to set off an interest in blogger. At least one of them comes in almost daily to scope out the policy on blogger, and that attracts two or three others to come over and join the discussion on cyberbullying and school district filtering policies. I have assured them if we ever hear that it has been approved, that I will help them start blogging. They all want to write about video games they play, ideas for new games, and hand-held game devices.

Personally, I'd love to read TechnoGeek's blog; he spouts forth the genealogy of the games in a Genesis-like session of begat, begot, begotten that is quite ironic since he's the self-proclaimed atheist.

If you were to hand them a piece of paper and ask them to write something on it in here at recess, you would clear out the library, but find out you can write on the internet, that's another thing. Writing in a word processing program is not all that cool; too much like a regular class assignment.

Do it in Blogger, click "Publish," and you're live in Cyberspace with fellow humans and aliens listening in for intelligent life forms.

Library Collections: An Eye-Opener about American Society

Weeding old library collections reveals a lot about what books were being written, sold, and bought for consumption by children through the efforts of supposedly well-meaning adults. Looking at the frightening titles of the dribble of the 1980s provides a view of tweens and teens as up to no good and quite menacing. Titles like "Vandalism: A Crime of Immaturity" brings to mind that this is just a teen crime, and not having bothered to read the book, in all fairness, perhaps the author said or suggested that some immature minds over the age of 21 do exist. I just know that personally I have removed so many of these books based on the fact that the title alone seems to promote poor self-esteem.

The book industry, and everything else attached to it, has a lot of power that while perhaps only subconsciously aware of its effects, exerts a lot of influence which is not always positive. I would hate to be a child with a whole social science section full of horrendous teen possibilities. I don't find nuclear warfare, toxic waste, global warming or terrorism comforting, but these topics seem less focused on a particular generation. It's a sad commentary on our culture and its interaction with our own youth.

Having said this, some of what comes up so disturbingly cannot be blamed on the book industry. A title that I would not have cringed at a month ago caused me great distress due to a recent local crime, which has been exerting its effect upon me more than Goldilocks smoking on my sofa. "The Ma and Pa Murders and Other Perfect Crimes," is thankfully old, and even though Lizzie Borden went on to jump rope ditty fame and has fascinated many, this book doesn't need to be here at this particular point in time.

On a lighter note: The unlocked display case outside the library has a display featuring my newsletter with the recipes to go with the Students Across the Seven Seas series. Given the lack of a lock, a little mild vandalism, if we need to use that word, has been going on, and it is starting to resemble an ofrenda offering of a Day of the Dead alter with delicacies like half-eaten energy bars and an occasional expletive directed to, heaven-forbid, the librarian, who probably said not to eat in the library. Could it be that vandalism is another form of free-speech protected by the Bill of Rights? I think so, even if my occupation is there as an object of derision.

Personally, I'm thinking of going with the flow, and making a multi-cultural ofrenda and just pile some more favorite foods in there, and open it as a snack bar. I even thought of putting in some incense sticks, but then I remembered Goldilocks.

Preparing for the End of the Year

Sometimes I don't know if I'm coming or going. With the textbook part of the job, which I don't officially do, coming and going are about the same. I just sent an email to the principal to keep me in the loop even if I am not budgeted for a job next fall, because I will need to know the projected enrollment to help the school be ready for fall.

Not only do I have to count the returned books to know how many we have ( I can't rely on the computer to tell me how many are here, nor the number of students we have now), but with school closures going on, I'm not even sure the enrollment will be similar to this year's enrollment.

Money is scarce, and I don't know that I will be here. That means I am going to try to clean out as many of the probably 600 excess students in the database before I go, and discard as many 1980s library books as possible.

Like I said, I don't know if I'm going away for the summer or not coming back at all. Just another year with less than desirable funding.

Older Librarians Make Libraries Look Younger

I brought my laptop today thinking I would use the wireless connection and work on my website. I'm hoping it will connect faster than my work computer. Between issuing new books to a student and getting involved with weeding some books in the morning, I never got beyond the weeding. I did some sort of inventory last year, but don't know if I completed it all, and I spent time deleting things that were not only from the 1980's but from earlier. There weren't even copies on the shelves for a lot of these items. I only went through part of the 970 range, and the sad thing is that this weeding still leaves me with copyrights from the 1990's. I am down to very few books on states and colonies, and if I don't scrounge up some money from somewhere, this library will be down to nothing if I keep weeding.

There isn't even one a good section in the library. My 000-099 section has an average copyright date of 12 years, and that is as good as it gets. If I were a 22-year old library clerk starting out on this job, I would be younger than the collection on an average. By my being older, the library looks good when compared to me. It took me all morning to do this, which, of course, is one of the things library clerks do to waste time.

The textbook side of my life is just as complicated. The school secretary calls and asks me about some kid owing a book at another school that she can see on Aeries, and I tell her that I don't use Aeries and that my system shows me less and less, so I don't see anything owed. Some of these kids went to schools that are now closed, and the books were never checked in. I have little ability to know if kids at this school actually took home the book checked out to them because the books were in the classroom when the Williams people came through to check on students having books, and when the teachers gave them out, many of them didn't get the book that had been assigned to them.

I am a smoke and mirrors textbook clerk, since I really am a library clerk and not a textbook clerk. The whole system doesn't work from the top to the bottom beginning with the principals borrowing books from each other without getting them off of the original site's inventory. Each layer down has its own problems, and a lot of books don't come back or get paid for no matter how much I growl or how many bills I mail. I am not going to stress out over it. I rather imagine that the ACLU wants kids to have access to an education, and next layer up can try charging for those books if they think they can convince a parent to pay.

Now that lunch is over and my little friends are off with their teachers, I hope to hook up the laptop.

Reading Chuckle: the little news item on Yahoo about the guy who got a $11,000 bill after letting his kids stream videos while on vacation from Canada to the southwest of the U.S. I bet he never spends a $1,000 on books for them, which is what he settled the bill for with the wireless carrier. He could have bought each kid a ton of activity books for a $1,000! I wonder if he thinks reading is an option now!

Iditarod Dog Sled Race Classroom Projects

The annual Iditarod Dog Sled Race that commemorates the 1925 emergency dog sled run to bring serum to diphtheria-stricken villagers in Nome, and the race's website offers a lot of instructional ideas and tools for teachers who might like to follow the race and help their children learn according to standards.



One option is to write letters and send them with the mushers (drivers). Read the instructions carefully and observe the deadline for mailing on February 12 if you want a musher to carry your class letter. I haven't done this in a while, but it was easy as it came with the requirement of one-page only since this stuff is going by dog sled. You should also tell your students that the letter might not get returned due to sled spills, driver's not sending it back, or it might get back, but not until late. You can follow the progress of the race which begins March 3rd this year. The race takes between 10 to 17 days for the racers.

My musher for the year I did this was great, and an interesting man who was born in Switzerland, married an American, lives in Alaska raising sled dogs, and fights fire in the lower 48 states during the summer.

The website has a very nice list of books for all ages that can provide you with reading that ties in with the race and the habitat.

http://iditarodblogs.com/teachers/iditarod-books/


This is the link to the website.
http://www.iditarod.com/learn/

This is a link specifically to the instructions on sending material to be carried by dog sled. Read carefully.
http://iditarodblogs.com/teachers/writing-to-mushers-must-read/

This is a great way for students to learn about different lifestyles and different habitats.

Yahoo! for bringing you my shout out on this dog sled race.

A Fairly Normal Friday

Working 4 days a week at one school and 1 day a week at another school is a challenging schedule to say the least. The one day a week school doesn't have much of a chance for me to do more than lexile level the library, and I always feel that I have dropped in to do my job, but people and occurrences are making it difficult. My mind feels like I have just woken up from a dream and can't quite decide what is real and what is a dream.

Today is fairly calm, and I handed out free RIF books to half the students, and will hand out books next week to the other half. As easy as this sounds, it, too had its challenges. The boxes of books were moved into a storage space, and the boxes were hard to access. I pulled out books for the older children and concentrated on them today because I could get to them. The shipping boxes arrived at school in very poor shape, and so many have come apart that I am hoping I will be able to fit the books on the tables back into some box at the end of the day.

Meanwhile, I continue to lexile level the library, and we will order the spine label and protector supplies on Monday. Eventually, this library will come together. I still have quite a bit of work to do on the non-fiction and some odds and ends, but I think progress is being made. I will be off the system and cleaning up around here at 3:30 pm when the district shuts me out while it maintains the server. I'm looking forward to the weekend.

We Need a List of Computer Skills for Students

We need to come to some list of say up to 10 skills or types of programs our kids can have access to through the internet and computers and find ways to allow it without all the filtering by the district. Many of the kids are starting to use this stuff at home, and probably with varying skill levels. Many kids have lots of little clever things they have learned to do such as make pictures and then post them to the desktop but at the same time they are lacking a consistent set of realistic and reasonable skills. For instance, they don't understand the word processor program to a middle school level of competency. They are not familiar with flash drives and how to use them.

A paraprofessional brought a seventh-grader into the library during lunch today, and said that the boy was making a website at home with his uncle. The boy didn't seem to know where to go to get to the website which might not be hosted at this point. He wanted to show his content to us in notepad for some reason, and the district doesn't allow notepad to be utililzed. We are worried about kids writing programs and being hackers probably..

The paraprofessional helped him set up a blog on blogger( which the filters didn't him even though sometimes I get a message saying it isn't allowed in the district, and then I do another search and login to with sucess.) The only thing the kid was typing was a list of character names, maybe for Pokemon characters. There weren't really any sentences that I could detect. I am not sure if this kid is resource or if there are some special needs. I seriously doubt that much of his website is really being done by him rather than his uncle. The kids want to do this work, but we are not teaching them even the most basic of skills.

This is my suggested list.

They should have a flash drive and know how to save to it. The district doesn't allow saving anything to desktops. Some kids seem to know a way around that, I think.

Basic parts of the computer: the hard drive, the monitor, the keyboard, the printer. A lot of our students think turning off the monitor is turning off the computer.

Keyboarding: I know of only one teacher who has had students work with the free online games for keyboarding.

Open a free email account, send emails, save and delete mail and contacts.

Microsoft Office Word proficiency: Insert dates, select text, cut and paste, apply bold, italic, underline; spell check, bullets, lists, page alignments, do a simple table, save and send a document by email, print.

Microsoft Office Excel: Know about worksheets, columns, rows and cells, change the name of a worksheet, change the color tab of a sheet, make a list, sort alphabetically, be able to enter amounts of money, and generate a sum, and do simple pie and bar graphs.

Microsoft Publisher: Students should be able to do a simple newsletter, and design an event poster, be able to upload clip art into their documents.

PowerPoint or other slide show type program: They should be able to put together a short slide show, and include video clips if our filters allowed them to do it.

Blog: They should be able to start a blog, select a template, write some text, and upload some pictures and widgets if our filters allowed that.

Google docs: Our students need to be familiar with these documents and know how to share their work with their teachers or other students working on collaborative projects.

Google website or other free website program: The google website tools are not that easy, but they are not that hard either. Students could do a simple 4 to 5 page website on some topic.

Noodletools citation generation: Students should be able to use Noodletools to produce papers and generate a bibliography at least in the simplest format, share work with teachers.

Those are 12 skills I would like students to learn. I hear statements like we don't know what to teach them because we don't know what they're going to need. Technology changes, but if they learn these basics they will adapt to whatever comes along. As it is, they know a fair amount, but it isn't from a taught curriculum and its just bits and pieces. They don't need to be experts but they should have some knowledge, and I think why we don't do it is that it isn't tested by the State of California. I think by the end of eighth grade, they could know these skills, and know about cyber issues.

Gotta Go, Gotta Go, Goldilocks and To Build a Fire: In My House!

I just issued textbooks to a new student in my unofficial textbook capacity, and we have been getting more students coming in than going out. That is good news for the school. Of course, I might find later that a whole bunch of students left without coming through the library first, and change my assessment on that trend.

Remedial math happened in here this morning on the very few functioning computers, and AVID students will be here doing something later in the morning. Otherwise, I am cataloging and processing books with a somewhat distracted mind. The office is calling with calls that when I try to pick up the line, I get no one. Finally, the RIF contact got through to me, and I am going to fax off a UPS shipping bill to them because I'm being billed for shipping which we don't have to pay on RIF. Most of these calls are probably sales calls.

There's a book, or two, for any occasion, and the distracting dramas of my week have included numerous trips to the bathroom, which in our district is never in the library. My doctor has my water pipes under treatment, and I look forward to less locking up and trekking during the day. I guess that book is "Gotta Go, Gotta Go."

If there were not enough distractions to my days, neighbors and the Lake County Fire Protective Services informed me on Sunday that some young male, who probably answers to "Goldilocks," took up residence in my house. Goldilocks must have liked the feel of Mom's old sofa (which I put in the house only out of filial duty, because I hate(d) it). I suspect Goldilocks was reading "To Build a Fire" while he sat on that sofa, and was inspired to cause $25,000 in damage.

Maybe he didn't like the sofa either. I haven't seen the mess yet, but I will be taking off from work on the 15th of this month to talk to the insurance adjuster.

That house needed repairs which were on hold, but with some insurance money, repairs might speed up to this summer.

No one was hurt, and the neighbor's property is fine, and if they convict Goldilocks of anything, maybe he can do community service reading to senior citizens, tagging bears, or cutting weeds as part of fire abatement. I think he already did me a service, and I am not going to say a word to my mother about her sofa.

How Appropriate are Genealogical Research Projects?

Librarians are gatekeepers for student experience, and sometimes we have the opportunity, and I think maybe the responsibility, to intervene on behalf of students. Student assignments that concern me are genealogy-based research projects in which students research their family histories. I haven't heard of any students objecting to these, and I know that some instructors assign such work for a variety of good reasons, but I would intervene if I found a student uncomfortable with this type of assignment.

Despite the good reasons for doing the research, for some students there are reasons why they might find them uncomfortable and intrusive exercises. In pursuing a cultural family unit, a variety of research subjects should be presented without a child even having to first indicate that they are uncomfortable about talking about their family. For children who are adopted, in foster homes, had a parent die from violence or who are part of what some people refer to as "non-traditional families," these classroom assignments can cause more trauma than enlightenment. Some children are from families with low literacy skills, and might not be able to research the family history that easily. The documents necessary might be located overseas and the information might not be obtained cheaply and easily. A number of issues regarding birth parents, paternity, and relationships might come up that children were not aware of prior to beginning the project. No amount of learning value comes from some child having to deal with some of this information due to a school report.

Alternative study units might include a general culture report and might cover something like naming traditions, special ways in which new births are celebrated, and how mothers and fathers are recognized. A general report about the role of grandparents in a given culture without obligating a student to present specific personal examples would be another possible example. A general cultural and historical report on a country of family origin would also be something that I think an instructor should find acceptable.

The skills we want to teach do not need to come specifically from genealogical research, and if an instructor insists on genealogical research, that instructor should allow researching a historical person whose family background can serve as a substitute.

State of the Union Address on the School Library

Ten year old books are exciting just by virtue of having copyright dates that fall within the Twenty-first Century. I can't believe the happiness I get from adding these items to my collection, which in the 973 Dewey Decimal range has a 26 year old average copyright age, and an average copyright age of 21 years for the collection as a whole.

Granted, that collection age is skewed a bit by some reference items that I didn't want to discard probably because of some African American content that might be of interest to teachers. However, I suspect that the number of library books dating from the 1990s and some from the 1980s are the greater culprits.

The newly added books have been sitting in my office probably for several years. Last year was my first year at this school, and I spent a lot of time attempting to clean up the textbook room and weeding the library collection. Yes, the average copyright date of 21 years is after extensive weeding. If I did the weeding thoroughly, the shelves would be close to bare.

Sadly, these 10 year old books should have been circulating, but for lack of labels, barcodes, and interest to make it happen, they just sat here in an office to a library that wasn't functioning as a library. I am putting these books into circulation thanks to a mini-grant from the Parent Teacher Association for a couple hundred dollars of library supplies that I would not have otherwise.

I wonder how my library compares to the average for libraries in California on the average copyright date. I fear that this library is probably the norm, and possibly better off than some. At least we are automated and can get at the statistics.

Cleaning Day

Monday has me doing little odds and ends. I cleaned off the tables, the computer work stations, and set up RIF books which won't really happen until February 6th through February 15. I'm ahead of myself, and I will probably regret putting those books out on the table. The kids at lunch did a good job of ignoring them, and entertained themselves with the usual activities.

I have tried to access the new google-based website I started creating during Professional Development, and, of course, the system is timing out on me. I want to start a new version and delete what I started on Friday because I think I wasn't quite clear on what I was doing. I hope this doesn't turn into a soley weekend project because I can't access it from work.

I'm running some more spine labels and processing more books in my office, hoping to clear things out a bit. Some of these books have been sitting for probably several years, and before I gather any more materials, I want these made available.

One of the teachers had cleared out a whole bunch of stuff and had it in the hall. She tried to bring it into the textbook room for temporary storage, and I nixed that. ( I had a great uncle who worked for the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. who said that the most permanent thing in D.C. was a temporary building. Temporary storage scares me likewise. ) I also nixed her students making posters in the library. I think the posters were more likely signs concerning pick-up directions for all these materials, and the students have no problem using a floor if need be.

I put a note into teachers' boxes explaining that RIF involves providing at least 30 titles from which students may choose, and that I have about 60 titles minimum out. I am only using about 4 tables in the library to display RIF because we have after school groups using the library this year in addition to other staff and student programs that pop up. I let them know that I have put out all the copies of the hot titles and all the hardcover title copies, and once they are gone, they are gone. I included a suggestion that the classes who snatched up most of the hot Westerfeld series should think about letting other classes get a chance. The RIF storage room is off-limits, and I am not going through boxes looking for additional copies of hot items, because there will not be any more hot items.

The kids are never as much of a problem as the well-meaning adults who are afraid that something is being held back, and who think every copy of all the books should get hauled out. The kids don't try to turn the library into a storage room. I wish the teachers would think of bringing the students for library visits instead of coming here looking for a depot.

I read a great book over the weekend. I couldn't put it down. "90 Miles from Havana," by Enrique Flores-Galbis, about a young boy who comes to Florida in the Pedro Pan (Peter Pan) airlift in 1961 when 14,000 children were sent out of Cuba by their parents who were not yet prepared to flee from the Communist takeover following the Revolution. The author, who was a 9 year-old Pedro Pan flight refugee, writes of the experiences of these children in a wonderful fictional account without getting heavily into the politics of the Cuban-American community. Lexile 790L, in case some of you care.

Books, Bread, and Food for Thought

I walked the dog earlier than usual this morning, and he was in the mood to go down Lakeshore Avenue which I usually don't do with him because of the number of people on the sidewalks. We were out so early that hardly anyone else was there, and I let him go for it. I could walk and think without having to keep someone from stepping on him or having to keep him from marking something where someone was enjoying a sidewalk cafe experience.

City living offers so much, but I miss having 80 acres on which to walk and being able to think without worrying about traffic. Early morning walking is about as close to a quiet creative thinking experience as it will get here in the Bay Area.

KQED radio had a feature on Panera Bread Restaurants over the weekend, and I have noticed one of these in Hayward near the Southland Shopping Mall, but didn't know much about it. I am attracted to good quality breads, and had already made a mental note to check them out.

What I learned from KQED over the weekend fascinates me. This chain was started by Ronald Shaich a few years ago, and now operate some 1,500 cafes in a partly non-profit mode where people pay what they can. Some customers, the majority pay about 60% of the suggested retail value, while another segment pays about 20% more than the going rate, and then another segment averages about 20%. Some people pay nothing.

The restaurants are located where demographics suggest that that a lot of people can support retail pricing or more, and might be willing to donate more. Occasionally, someone pays $500 for their sandwich. I'm not sure what charities the restaurant supports, but the owner has a long history of food pantry support before starting the chain.

The chain offers catering, and I believe they have meetings rooms.
http://catering1.panerabread.com/Home.aspx

Panera Bread in Alameda is located at 2249 South Shore Center Drive. Phone: 510 749-9810 Fax: 510 749-9811

This morning's walk got me to thinking about how nice it would be to offer sabbaticals to a broader portion of society, and to us library staffers in particular, who are not eligible for many of teacher study grant programs. I believe school districts benefit from our interests and knowledge in a lot of disciplines and arts, but that our knowledge goes unrecognized and largely unsupported. How wonderful it would be to have little mini-grants that gave a little financial support to intellectual pursuits, not necessarily library skills but something that goes to our recognition as capable and valuable assets to the district.

Could we offer some services and trainings through Friends of the Oakland School Public School Libraries with a suggested donation and let people pay what they can or want?

We might offer a variety of workshops or opportunities to various audiences of teachers, students, parents, and the general public that might feature preparing children to be good readers (Mem Fox), teaching technology to a variety of audiences, day camps for kids during the summer, book events, and covering of book jackets for a suggested donation price.

A mini-sabbatical program might include some sort of brief template proposal application process, with awardees checking in to demonstrate that something is being done, and a requirement for sharing what they gained with other library staff, educators, or the non-profit.

I think such opportunities would encourage potentially good staff who are interested in reading, writing, the arts, and other study areas to see that Oakland Unified School District is a good place to work and find reward for mental pursuits.

I do have to go try Panera Bread now.

Lexile Leveling of Libraries

Someone might actually want some viewpoint on actual library practices. Any humor associated with this selection is purely coincidental and of the reader's perception. After doing this every Friday for the major part of this school year, I am not sure I have any humor available on the subject of Lexile scores and school libraries.

If an administrator tells you to lexile level the library, you should run like hell. If there is any chance that someone will listen to you, read the following considerations and try to redirect the administrator before investing time and money on the project. I am posting this information because I remember being a new hire, and having teachers come into the school library with all kinds of expectations that I did not know how to prioritize or accomplish. I remember very clearly going home in tears a few times. Fortunately, I had a great administrator with a very clear and appropriate idea of what was possible for someone to accomplish in the last few months of school for which I had come on board. Not all administrators understand library work.

If I were a new hire with little or no library experience, and someone asked me to lexile level a school library, I would not know how to start this process, and no pool of experienced volunteers would be rushing over to take on the job.

First of all, I do this in response to a request rather than a goal of my own and not because I consider it appropriate for school libraries.

Process: Some, but not many, books have lexile levels mentioned in their MARC records. If the lexile level is not in the MARC record, you can go to lexile.com, and look it up.

Observations on lexile.com: You need to do various searches to know for sure that the book is not in their database. You can search by using author, title, or series within quotation marks. Searching by one of these and not finding the item does not guarantee you that it is in there. You can search by isbn but if the title has been published without alteration under another isbn you won't find it.
How did lexile come up with those scores? Either the whole book or only portions of the book from the beginning, middle, and end were scanned, and if you want to do that yourself, there is a whole section on how to do it which involves the scanning the book or portions of it, and the scanning being in the right format, and conversions made. I think most of us are not going to be that ambitious.
Basically, the database was put together probably by many hands, and occasionally you find typos of author names and titles, and probably how the information was entered determines how easily a successful search proceeds. Sometimes you just find scores that don't make much sense when you compare a book to some other book with a similar score. Certain books are unlikely to show up because of their format: little or no punctuation, poetry, or graphic novels. Some of these have designations NP, BR, GR . You must take into consideration if the book you are trying to level is an abridged title or the author's original work. A title which includes a lengthy introduction to a classic work for older grades may have a lexile score that measures the introduction as well as the literary work. Older titles that are less popular now are less likely to be in the database. In general, multi-syllabic words frequency results in higher Lexile scores for titles.

Authors and publishers may have made a decision to put the book through the analysis and include it in the database. I do not know if they pay for this service. It might help them to market the books, if lots of schools look at lexile scores in the classroom or the library.

Preparation for Lexile-Leveling of the Library: If, after contemplating everything stated here, you still want to lexile a library, the very first thing you should do is weed, weed, weed. If you have a lot of old materials that are not in great shape, you should get rid of them for all the usual reasons plus the fact that you will probably not find them on lexile.com. I am not saying that you should weed everything for which a lexile level is unavailable. You will need to estimate time and costs. See the later comments.

What you will find as you proceed: You are going to have books with lexile scores and books without lexile scores. Some books without lexile scores will have reading grade level information in the MARC records. There many be more than one system of reading grade level and a range can be stated. ( Reading grade level and reading grade interest are not the same. Zoos may be of reading interest to kindergartners, but if the reading grade level is 9th grade, there is a mis-match.)
You might find yourself with a library with proportions such as 1/3 with lexile scores, 1/3 with grade level scores, and 1/3 without any reading grade level. The proportions could be completely different.

You will be sorting these out, and relabeling every book in the library if you want to find and reshelve these items as easily as possible, which will be a much more difficult process than with a traditional library system. Forget about elementary school children shelving, and adults will need a lot of familiarity with all the different sections in existence to be effective.. I am keeping the picture books and emergent readers together in one area, split out into the three groups of reading score possibilities ( lexile, non-lexile reading level, and no level at all), and books will be on shelves within their hundred periodicity (all the books with lexiles in the 500 range are together, not to be confused with a Dewey Decimal range of 500).

I don't want all the non-lexile scored books to be thrown away, so I use the reading grade levels to give some information. Some of the titles which will not have a lexile score or will be labeled NP will be a lot of the Dr. Seuss titles.

The whole set up has to be carried out in the non-fiction and fiction chapter books as well.

New spine labels must be made for everything with some sort of reading grade level, the shelves relabeled, and the books sorted out and shelved. Making new spine labels will mean scanning each barcode, entering the record, typing the lexile or reading level into each barcode before they can be printed. Printing the spine labels will mean scanning the barcodes to print the sheets of spine labels. Once you have the labels, it is easiest with the non-fiction to scan the barcodes again to assure you apply the correct label to the book. This is not a process to hand over to volunteer parents. Locating books that are shelved in so many sections according to type of reading score and by Dewey Decimal number within score ranges of non-fiction is going to be difficult even with the labels being applied to the correct books.

This means you will want to know how much money you need to spend to print all these spine labels (at this point, I am estimating a minimum of $500 for my 7,000 plus books), cover them with label protectors, and redo your shelf labels. You'll need to estimate the amount of time to do this, and I would say for about 7,000 books is a small library that has already been weeded, that you need to allow a minimum of 3 months full-time. This is an estimate, as I am still in the process, and progressing but not yet done. If you work in an environment where the internet connection goes down or the library is being using physically for something else that precludes you working, it will be longer.

What a child will see in the lexiled library: While school staff may be excited at the prospect of quickly guiding a child to sections of books at their current reading level, what the child might see is a relatively small number of books on a few shelves from which they are allowed to choose. Reading within a range is definitely limiting if strict adherence is the policy. Personally, I think the library is no longer a child-centered library under this regiment.

I do think lexile-leveling the fiction chapter books has some utility, especially if you have a good sized collection at a middle school, but I would not lexile level the non-fiction in a middle school. Most of the non-fiction has a score of a 1000 or higher. A future increased focus on reading skills in non-fictional format cannot bypass the fiction collection because the fiction books usually have a wider range of reading levels with which students can improve on their lexile level competency.

Shopping for New Books: Now you can select books with lexile scores, but you will be excluding many fine books just because they aren't in the lexile database. The books with lexile scores do not necessarily meet state standards nor are they guaranteed to be quality titles.

The public library is not going to have their books lexile-leveled, and they will not have the staff to be looking up the scores on many books, in case your staff or parents ask.

Cheer up. If you cannot talk them out of this library trend, things never last very long in education, and three years from now you, or someone else, will be putting it back the way it used to be.

This was written on Tuesday to post before Friday, when I will be learning about constructing webpages for the library homepage at Professional Development. I promise to not mention lexiling again. I know for many of you I am preaching to the choir and you are bored to tears, but someone needs to do disclosure about what this request involves.

How I Came to Work in Libraries

The calm before the storm really means I couldn't fully process what was happening and didn't quite know what to think about it. It took me 24 hours to realize that what was happening during the calm between the storms recaps my life and reveals how I came to work here in the first place; in some sort of mysterious route as opposed to a serious career search.

The usual groups of Yu-gi-oh players, graphic novel enthusiasts, and clandestine cellphone video viewers are present. Another regular from the previous year checks in with me to catch me up on her tumultuous family life that combines a very religious family and a parent with some serious issues. She alludes to the parent with difficulties without spelling it out in front of the two other kids sitting at the table because she has told me all about it previously. Religion is mentioned in the conversation, and Beaver Cleaver, who is the self-identified technical geek brings us up to speed on how he also identifies as an atheist.

Meanwhile, another student pulls out some textbooks from her backpack to return them because she is leaving for "k-8" (obviously she hasn't focused too much on the details of the parental decision). I get up to go check in the textbooks, and by the time I get back, the girl who mentioned religion had left.

Probably just as well, because Beaver Cleaver is verifying information with me about STDs, condoms, and spermicides, which I am answering while also letting him know that the Teen Health and Wellness database can provide him with all this information if he ever wants to check it out in the privacy of his home. Earlier in the week, Beaver assured me that he was as innocent as he looked when it came to showing discretion about what video clips he watches on YouTube through his cellphone. Now I'm beginning to wonder, and suspect he is giving me a pop quiz to see if I know as much as his grandmother.

I'm worried about the girl who disappeared about the same time she learned a real live atheist was in the library. My antennae are sensitive to these student feelings in general, and having an atheist mother myself, I am fully aware of their extreme devotion to their own lack of faith and their strong need to share that with everyone.

By the next morning, I realize how I have spent my lifetime dog-paddling among the sharks of agnostics, atheists, Bahai, Baptists, Catholics, Christian Scientists, Lutherans, Mormons, and Russian Orthodox in the family arena of religion. I have managed to navigate between households in the extended family, endure comments made in reaction to my mother and her strong opinions and faux pas on this subject and a bunch of others.
I have kept my mouth shut and sought to be a peacemaker not only among the contentious religions of the world, but have kept my stamina among the Democrats and the Republics, the New Dealers and the Jeffersonian republicans, the rural and the urban, the physicians and the Mary Baker Eddy crowd, the war protesters and the military members, and the Giants and the Dodger fans. I am sure I am overlooking some other oppositional faction of family politics.

At my youngest, I enjoyed watching the rivalry and feuding over the World Series and all the other possible Coliseum entertainments. I even made table place cards for family holiday meals and relished putting the Idaho State police official next to the ex-car thief, waiting to see if something would happen. Great was my disappointment when everyone would just rearrange themselves. As time went by, I began to feel uncomfortable with all the bickering, and came to realize that religious holidays did not exist to get these people back together and talking in the same room. The only things they saw eye-to-eye on were Christmas trees and Easter eggs.

I could work it both ways, however. What better way to rebel against your atheist mother than sneaking off to Mass with your grandmother, who is a kleptomaniac and the mother of two nuns. (I always regretted that confession was a private rite. I really wanted to hear her tell her version to the priest.)

There is always a book to go with any episode of life, and I am not thinking of the Bible, but "Night Flight," by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This is probably the most influential book in my life, and I remember reading it for the first time as a young adult trying to figure out what my life was all about.

Saint-Exupery tells a story of early commercial mail flights in South America with a theme is finding happiness through fulfilling your duty. I saw it, however, as trying to balance the needs of individual with the importance of community. The book is beautifully written but emotionally difficult, and I am uncomfortable with the much of the thinking and decisions. I do think it did help me decide that reaching adulthood meant being able to figure out who I was and being comfortable with that among all the swimming sharks without feeling like I had to bite them back.

At this juncture, I am still trying to create a community, in the library, and am still taking care of individuals and their feelings who just happen to come together. I don't know all their quirks and beliefs before they show up the way I do with my own family, but I can sense when the sharks might be circling.

The Calm Between the Storms

There has not been much action in the library today other than the usual group of students who like to hang out in here watching videos on their cellphones and playing Yu-gi-oh cards. It makes up for yesterday afternoon when the after school students were making a lot of noise out in the halls, wandering in and out of here because they had left their backpacks. A couple girls came in 3 times supposedly looking for a textbook, Each time, I told them I didn't have a copy. Lots of drama, and I eventually closed the library door because I was working and was afraid students might be visiting backpacks of other students. A fair amount of thievery goes on in the library.

Today I prepared for tomorrow's Professional Development, looking for some websites to make into a webpage about Shakespeare and his world. I signed up for a free account on TeachersFirst, which has some interesting lesson plans and a section on Web 2.0 for the classroom. Now I'm continuing to catalog books in preparation for making spine labels for them. I want to clear this office out this year, and house a Professional Development section of books for teachers in here.

I went window shopping for Shakespeare materials, and saw some good graphic novels put out by Barrons and Classic Comics. I'd love to have some money for those.

College Career Track and the Three Little Pigs

Eighth graders are in the library all day today hearing a presentation helping them prepare for college and eventual gainful employment. It is first period, and I am sure from the giggling faces I see through my office window that not everyone is exactly interested in this hot topic. The same school who has sixth graders searching YouTube for SpongeBob Squarepants and Bugs Bunny is trying to excite these kids about college and some job in the future.

This takes me back a bit to the days when my step-son was much older than them, but a young adult we were hoping to engage in an employment experience outside the family. He spent a lot of time outside the house looking for a job, and I am sure I alluded to the quickly passed over message of Mrs. Sow in "The Three Little Pigs": "It's time you seek your fortune." If you read this book enough times to a young person, they will subliminally absorb the message to identify with the brick and mortar pig as a means of avoiding the proverbial wolf at the door. I also thought that with a young person that if they stumbled along in the dark long enough, they would eventually land a job. As some time was going by, and no job was appearing on the horizon, I began to investigate. While I had prepared myself for all sorts of self-identifications that might arise in relation to the Puberty Book, I was unprepared for issues arising from "The Three Little Pigs."

"Mom, I've been trying to find a way to tell you and Dad that I am a Wolf; I am not a pig. Better odds of eating as the wolf. Two out of three pigs end up as wolf chow. Not to worry about the pot of boiling water. I've worked that out, too. Just grab Dad's bankroll and snag my carnitas from the local taquerias."

" You're a WHAT?!" Okay, you're a wolf, and if you're not going to hunt, you need to find a way to generate some money of your own." (Parental Conference in the works.)

Parental Conference

Old Business: Report on Son's job search

New Business: Findings on Son's Job Search

Petition to change name to Wolf

Cost/Benefit Analysis of bankrolling his burritos

Prospect of his employment

It's not my fault I read him "The Three Little Pigs."

Tales from the Trenches: Library Life in the Big World of Books

We are missing YouTube videos of SpongeBob Squarepants getting blown up and Bugs Bunny becoming Bunny Stew after over 60 years of successfully evading Elmer Fudd all because the district is busy protecting you from questionable content over the internet. Don't worry! Just find your nearest middle schooler with a cellphone, and your learning curve can take off, too. While we're on the subject, eblogging is now a less subversive activity as the district filters are letting you read this.





Let's see, On this inauguration of "Tales from the Trenches," so far today, the door frame has swollen from recent rain thus preventing the back door from closing properly. When you have a problem, hand it off as quickly as possible to someone else, which I have done so successfully. (Those guys looked like they're happy to do it, too.) That should be in the Library Manual.





I'm putting together book wish lists for which I have no money, but I truly believe in the magic of making lists and thinking, and voila, in comes a solution. Example: Librarian Magic:I woke up thinking about how I needed to drop a note to one of the artistic-types around the school to unload the old card catalog, and do you know what happened? Before I even wrote the note, she came down with a student looking for information about Bahrain, asked about the card catalog, and I told her that the card catalog is the computer, and that the old card catalog is sitting around in pieces. "Can I have it? I'm an artist, and I love those things!" Sold! See how the universe works, and why we need more magical books in the library!





Productivity:I get so much done around here, even if no one knows about it, and never mind the methodology. Things do get done, in a lifetime of living magically.





Special Request of the Day: (something like Soup de Jour): Can I barcode Yu-gi-oh cards? Can I barcode Yu-gi-oh cards! You bet, and I bet we can get a Noodletools citation as well, but I think that is for someone with a more advanced knowledge of Noodletools.





Special Challenge to Librarians: Let's see you do a Noodletools citation for a Yu-gi-oh card.