Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Off to a start!!

I've spent my first night trying out LibraryH3lp, and I'm very excited! I was able to create 2 users, a queue, an AIM gateway (although I'm not sure how to make that work yet) AND use the LibraryH3lp webchat feature to have a practice chat with myself:



My main problem is that my "30 minutes" easily turned into 45-50. I'm glad I waited until I finished other work, and I think that will have to be my M.O. until this becomes an "official" project.

Monday, March 30, 2009

New attempt...learning 2.0 technologies!

Well, I am going to try blogging once more, as I've come up with a way that it might possibly be useful in my work life. I'm currently working as an evening librarian at a medium-sized state university, and like everyone else, we are facing budget cuts. Our website and electronic access in general could use some updating, and the only way I think that can realistically happen is using open source/2.0 technologies.

I am NOT a techie, and I am not good at learning new technologies on my own. However, I think I need to get a basic working knowledge with many of these technologies before I present them to the rest of the library staff as ideas for our use. I'm therefore going to try to spend a short amount of time each evening trying to learn some of the 2.0 tools that I think we can use and both chronicle my attempts and ask for help here. I've already gotten some ideas from friends using Facebook and Twitter on how to better use Twitter, so we'll see where I can go from there.

My first two priorities will be Twitter, which seems to be in use all over library circles and non-library circles, and LibraryH3lp, a virtual reference open source software for libraries.

I'll try to update every few days on how my experimentation with these tools is going.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Not a blogger...

Ok, I've decided that, aside from not being particularly good at it, I'm not cut out to blog--at least not without a work-related reason. Especially considering how my life runs right now, it takes too much time away from other things I'd rather do. So I'm going to stop blogging for now--if I decide to come back to it in a few months or so, I'll need to have a better purpose in mind. It was a good idea for giving updates to those interested in my library school career and for classes, but now is basically defunct. Still, it was a fun chance to learn how blogging works! Now back to real life!

Friday, July 11, 2008

Job Searching and Gregor

Only have time for a quick post. Job searching for part-time jobs is a little complicated since I want to work part-time at certain hours. Still, I've turned in several applications and had a good (I think) interview this week...I'll try to write more later.

I just read the second book in the Gregor the Overlander series--it's been over a year since I read the first, and I forgot how much I enjoyed that world:

Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane (The Underland Chronicles: Book 2) Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins


My review


rating: 4 of 5 stars
I love Gregor as a low-key hero and I love his love for Boots (his sister) and his determination to do the right thing--now I want to go back and read the original.


View all my reviews.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Book Review trial

Attempting to include my most recent Goodreads review--of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz:

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz


My review


rating: 3 of 5 stars
Excellent portrayal of the Middle Ages--made me cry at some parts even though I don't think that's her aim. I think nerdy kids like me would like it and a lot of kids would like it if they got to play the parts, but not one of those that most kids will pick up from the shelves on their own.


View all my reviews.

Graduation and Other News from the Last 6 Months

So, I haven't posted in 6 months (doesn't truly matter, since I don't think I have any readers!). I've now graduated from library school. I am currently not employed (more in a minute). I don't have any glorious revelations about either libraries or life. However...I don't want to give up on this blog just yet, partly because I like playing around on the computer when I should be doing other things, partly because I like the idea of blogs well done--and practice makes perfect.

My last semester was good but busy, especially considering I was only taking two classes along with my master's paper. The biggest recent news, though, is not from library school, but the fact that my husband and I welcomed our first child into the world. We've decided that he doesn't need any sort of Internet life until he's old enough to do it himself (probably with arguments over what he's allowed to do himself), so I won't be sharing any pictures of him here. He's exceedingly adorable, and you'll just have to take my word for it! So, with his arrival in late April, the most notable aspect of the end of my library school career was finishing!

N decided to start making his appearance on the day of my last class, and did so in an amusingly library-related way. I had attended my very last class (YA Lit), then went to the library where I was working part-time to do my last desk-shift, with my last storytime scheduled for the following day. While at the desk, my water broke (several weeks before it was expected to)! My friend/colleague/fellow student had the presence of mind to call 911 before our branch manager (my first concern was that she couldn't staff the place alone--aren't I committed?--or maybe I should be!). Apparently, I gave the branch the most excitement it's had in months by going to the hospital via ambulance. Luckily, everything proceeded smoothly after that, and baby's early arrival made it possible for both him and his mother to attend SILS graduation two weeks later!

Now it's July and I am in the job search process. It's a little more complicated than my previous job searches, because I need to earn a decent amount of money (as in, more than minimum wage), but need to work at hours when my husband is not. We are not willing or able to do regular daycare, so we are trying to figure out how to pass the baby between our two schedules. I actually have an interview for next week, and several more applications out. In the meantime, I've gotten to be (and will be until employed) a stay-at-home mom, which is awesome and frightening at the same time. Awesome because I get to be with N all the time and frightening for the same reason--especially when I can't calm him down, as happened yesterday. Also frightening because I don't get much housework done, I'm not contributing economically the household, and the days just seem to slip by before my eyes (of course, wasting time online probably doesn't help...). Overall, though, I like that our son is always with either me or my husband in his first months of life.

One of the things I do a surprising amount of is reading, since there's not a lot else I can do while nursing, and this kid can eat a lot!! For my next post, I'm going to try to import on of my book reviews from my Goodreads account--so there will still be some library-related stuff in this blog after all!

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Personality Tests (for Management)

Well, when I first went to take these, my laptop's internet browsers (yes, browsers plural!) kept telling me that both sites "timed out" every time. Turns out it was something with the on-campus wireless. I don't know if my frustration with this reflects something about my personality, but there it is!

While I was trying unsuccessfully to get to the Myers-Briggs type test, I found another Myers-Briggs type that I took instead. It was interesting in that it didn't just give me one type. It said I shared 77% of the profile for both ISFP and ESFP, 76% with ESFJ, and 75% with ISFJ. One thing that doesn't surprise me about this is that I tend to be right on the line for I/E. I see this in my life: sometimes I just want to be left alone to read my book, but sometimes I don't want to be alone at all, even if the other person and I are just going to sit next to each other engaged in "parallel play" with occasional comments to each other. Apparently, this shows that I'm on the line for P/J, too, which is weird, because when I finally got to the "official" practice test for class, I came off as a very strong "J." I'm not sure what really defines the judger vs. the perceiver; however, when speaking about my overall type, ISFJ according to this test, it talked a lot about being concerned with propriety, and that definitely defines me.

Both the information from the Myers-Briggs and from the Enneagram, where I got the highest score in the "helper" type, talked about liking to help others, but more in a low-key, from the sidelines way. That is definitely true. I don't think I want to be the CEO. I don't mind the idea of being a branch manager, but I don't ever want to be the library director. This is partly because of the weight of responsibility, but also because I like to be a "big fish in a little pond." I like to help people in my little universe, fixing things that can actually be fixed.

One somewhat funny result, considering this is Management class and we're talking about Leadership this week, is that I got a 0 for the "Leader" type on the Enneagram. Granted, the description looks like it's talking about a more high-profile leader than some of what we've discussed in class, but I thought it was funny.

Overall, since I've taken personality tests before, I was unsurprised by the results. Still, it's nice to see that I tend to be consistent in different personality tests given at different times--seems like there may actually be something to them! :-)