Fridays

What is it about Fridays?

They seem to go by so slowly sometimes. Today is one of those...I've been totally devoid of ambition, but have still managed to accomplish some things. Mostly things that could have waited, of course, like reorganizing my bookmarks (and I had quite a few dead links, thank you very much), but things that leave you with a feeling of satisfaction nevertheless.

It's interesting to go back and look at the things you've bookmarked over the course of time. Some of the links are used often; some I have not looked at since the first time I added them to my favorites. I got tired of organizing them after awhile (I have lots of them!), and since I use two browsers that means I'll have to go check Internet Explorer and see what links I have there that I don't have in Firefox, then export and re-import. It's a lengthy process...

I am not the only one suffering from lack of ambition today, either. Just before lunch, several of my colleagues and I rearranged the lunch area. A couple of file cabinets had been moved out this morning, giving us room to expand, and we took advantage of the opportunity! It is really going to disturb a few of the folks who weren't here, I think, who have difficulty with any deviation from standard practices. All the more reason to do it!

Procrastination

Mondays are never consistent. Some Mondays I come in and am inundated with phone calls, emails, people dropping by; other Mondays I would just love an email or two so that I have something on which to focus.

Actually, I guess that's true of all days, not just Mondays. It's the nature of the technical support person. Though I am not JUST a technical support person, so I do almost always have other projects to do.

I have one now, in fact, but I am procrastinating. And when you're in a mood to procrastinate, there are several things you can do:

1) Post to your blog. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment without really accomplishing anything important.
2) Stumble some sites. Have heard about StumbleUpon, but never tried it till last week. VERY cool, and somewhat addicting. It also can be very useful, I think - have found some excellent resources which I had never seen before.
3) Eat lunch. It's about that time, so I guess I will do that.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Success

There's nothing like successfully outwitting a computer, especially on a Friday.

Well, okay, I didn't actually outwit it. I mean, computers can't actually think for themselves, although it sometimes seems that way. So it was actually more like getting it to do something that I wanted it to do that I previously wasn't sure how to do. And I've actually done it three times today - once by getting the OPAC to display a new icon next to the bib records for a Playaway, once to get a computer that was stuck in maintenance mode (DeepFreeze) OUT of maintenance mode, and once to be able to edit this blog from my Infowench account instead of my other Google account. Probably all small, unimportant things, but they made me happy (and in the case of the OPAC icon, they'll make a librarian happy).

It's a good feeling.

Podcasting booktalks

I love podcasting booktalks.

It's all my friend Jill's fault. She asked me to do one for her middle school kids as an example, and now I just love doing them. I find myself planning them and when I read a book I think about what piece of it I might use to do a booktalk on it. I even want to do booktalks on books I haven't yet read!

It's really not all that unusual, I guess - booktalking was one of my favorite things in Youth Lit class when I was in grad school. I remember doing a booktalk on "Child of the Northern Spring" (Persia Woolley - it's the King Arthur story told from Guinevere's perspective) and I did it in the first person as Guinevere. Perhaps it's the theatre in me that likes booktalking so well.

In any case, I've done three booktalks for Jill so far and have gotten my friend John to agree to do one, too - he has a GREAT voice and will be Nicholas Flamel for a booktalk on Michael Scott's "The Alchemyst."

Last Friday I went to Jill's library and worked with some of her kids on the finer points of expression and performance when creating and reading their own podcasts, as well as some of finer points of editing in Audacity. We had a fine time, and they started a few new podcasts that I'm hoping to hear soon on their site. It's so cool - not only are the kids getting into this (and Jill says that the books that they podcast are flying off the shelves), but the teachers are getting into it, too, and volunteering (or in some cases, agreeing) to read booktalks. Some of them are interested enough to pick music for the background, and some of them are happy to let the group of sixth-graders who are the "podcasters" for the school do the editing and choose the music. What a great collaboration - and how great for the kids to be seen as the experts on this!

It's good to work with librarians. It's good to BE a librarian. What other teaching job allows you to study ALL subjects instead of just focusing on one?

Hmm, does that make me indecisive?