Distractible Librarian

Student Library Assistants Training

2011-02-16T13:51:00.002-05:00

Student Library Assistants: Training and Procedures

02/15/11

To check in magazines:

1. Place “library – Olney” label on cover, over or beside address area

2. Record month or date of issue on the correct card in “Periodicals Check In” book

3. Put new magazine on the rack, moving previous copy to pile underneath rack

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Tutorial “Order in the Library” on sorting, shelving, and re-ordering in Dewey:

http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valmstrum/s2s/utopia/library4/src

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To check books in for re-shelving:

1. Scan barcode in “item number” in check-in wizard

2. Does book show “not checked out”?

a. If yes, open “special circulation,” go to “mark item used,” and click on book title to mark it as used

3. Go to the next book

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To check cataloging of new books:

1. Scan barcode on book to open the catalog record

2. Make sure information on record matches information in book:

a. Title and author

b. Publisher and year

c. Page numbers and size

3. Also check information on pocket card in back of book

4. Go to the next book

"Witty Knitting" Five-day Intensive Info

2011-02-07T14:08:00.005-05:00

Here is a list of pretty good knitting websites with free patterns and more:
http://www.knittinghelp.com
• range of patterns
• great how-to videos
• Introductory reading: “Get Started and Learn to Knit”
http://www.knittingonthenet.com/
• good selection and the list includes brief description of each pattern
http://www.dailyknitter.com/
http://knittingpatterncentral.com/
http://www.knitpicks.com/
http://www.knitty.com
• online magazine, more interesting patterns (less basic)
http://www.freepatterns.com/
• I got the free membership required for pattern access
• not so many sock patterns
http://www.abc-knitting-patterns.com/
• has advanced search (e.g. knit/socks AND worsted weight yarn) but not so many patterns
• Standard yarn weights table with recommended needle sizes

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Witty Knitting Schedule

Location: Library and student lounge

Thursday 5th block: Pre-planning meeting

Websites handout, assessment/goals sheets

Discuss schedule

Monday: Project planning

Bring laptop if you have one!

Choose project

• Beginner: scarf or dish cloth

• Intermediate: hat or socks

Select pattern

From books or listed websites

• Print or copy pattern

List materials needed for project

Raid yarn box upstairs

Estimate cost of items to be purchased

Tuesday: Shopping

Shelley drives us to mall

• While riding: plan how to share with community

Wednesday: Starting up

Shelley sits in to help if needed with casting on, etc.

Movement break each hour

Thursday: Knitting

Movement break each hour

Friday: Reporting and knitting

Create any desired presentation tool

Program assessments

Movement break each hour

Vagina Monologues 2009 @ UNCG

2009-02-18T09:30:00.007-05:00

Last weekend I had the privilege of participating, for the second consecutive year, in the UNCG Womens and Gender Studies Department sponsored performance of The Vagina Monologues.

This play, by Eve Ensler, is based on a series of interviews with women about - you guessed it - vaginas. The play is designed to confront the audience with various difficult issues surrounding women's bodies and sexuality. By turns hilarious, shocking, tragic, and titillating, the play has become part of an annual "V-Day" event for many colleges and communities, serving as the focus for fund-raising and consciousness-raising to fight sexual violence against women. To help keep these performances both fresh and relevant, Ensler writes a new "spotlight" segment each year to highlight current issues. Last year, for instance, she focused on the plight of New Orleans after Katrina.

This year's edition, directed by Kaleigh Malloy with the assistance of Noelle Avina, was performed last Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 2:00 and 7:30 by a talented and beautiful cast of UNCG students, staff, and faculty. Kaleigh chose to include two spotlight monologues: "Hey Miss Pat," a different one about New Orleans, and "Baptism," which confronts child rape in the Congo war. The shows went well -- except for the fire alarm going off in the middle of the Saturday afternoon run. Very disruptive. One of the most emotional pieces was interrupted, and the girl doing it was so stressed by being jerked out of character to leave the building, mill around aimlessly for ten minutes, and then resume where she had left off, that she dissolved into tears on completing her scene.

I did the monologue about birth, "I was there in the room," as a dialogue with Noelle. It actually worked quite well as a dialogue. We imagined ourselves as mother and sister of the woman giving birth; we were in the hospital waiting room discussing the incredible event we had just witnessed. When our director saw me knitting at rehearsals she decided my character should knit. This was rather cool; however I was not very productive while in character because I was concentrating on my lines. For some reason actors in this play do not have to memorize their lines but read them from the script instead. I did memorize - for my own comfort level - but followed along in the script as backup.

Turning a monologue into a dialogue was one of Kaleigh's several directorial innovations. She also added a free-form movement piece as an introduction and used music to highlight transitions between monologues. Finally, instead of following the traditional red, pink, and black color scheme, performers were asked to choose costumes based on purple, brown, and dark blue and green. That's about as far away as you can get from red, pink, and black! I found it refreshing once I got over the shock.

Yes, the Vagina Monologues have come and gone. (Here I have to confess that all last week, I really wanted to go around saying "the vaginas are coming, the vaginas are coming." But that would have been unprofessional.)

Did you know ...

2009-02-16T19:18:00.000-05:00

Male pandas, okay, scent-mark trees with urine, and the height of the mark shows the relative height of the panda. And bigger pandas have an advantage, so pandas will stretch up real tall while peeing so their sign will "look" taller. Now get this: some pandas have been observed to pee standing on their front legs in order to place their mark even higher!

What was that about the purity and honesty of animals?

I learned this from my auto-didactic adolescent son just now, just after hearing that our two cats each have their own scent-spot on the corner of the wall in the kitchen, and that Remover's mark is the faint smudge about an inch higher than the one Vicki maintains. If you have cats, you will have observed the same behavior in which they will rub their chin and muzzle repeatedly on objects around the house. They're depositing pheremones, chemical signals that they associate with home and comfort. I just learned also that cats will not leave their urine scent mark in the same locations where they do the chin-rub thing. It's a different set of chemicals. And some products use the chin-hormone chemical in sprays to discourage urinating. That last fact is from Petspeak: you're closer than you think to a great relationship with your dog or cat (2000, Rodale).

Update from Heartbreak Hotel

2009-02-16T14:19:00.000-05:00

I know that like me, you all visit Heartbreak Hotel from time to time. I know that even those who intimidate me -- because they seem always to have it all together -- are carrying secret, broken places inside. Today while cataloging a website (http://www.fetzer.org) I came across this quote that makes me feel a little better. It reminds me that heartbreak is an opening, a crack in the pavement where a seed can grow: yes, a gift.

"A disciple asks the rebbe: 'Why does Torah tell us to "place these words upon your hearts"? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?” The rebbe answers: 'It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.'"
-Parker Palmer in Deepening the American Dream - Selections from the Public Forum: Reflections of the Inner Life and Spirit of Democracy.

Hello Universe ...

2009-02-13T14:30:00.000-05:00

... because "hello world" is such a cliche. This post marks the debut of my personal blog. I am also an occasional contributor to the blogs at Jackson Library, but like most of us, there is more to me than my professional life.
So at this very moment I am sitting in Lynda's awesome Web 2.0 class on blogging. She claims that nobody is making us publish a blog, but as a class exercise we are encouraged and instructed to create one on Blogger (a Google product, of course). In so doing we are joining a thriving, even bustling, community of library bloggers.
Next up: Twitter, a timely topic since it was featured on the front page of the New York Times today. Apparently Twittering makes little or no sense unless or until one acquires some followers. Does that mean that if I have no followers I don't need to Twitter?
Here we go!