The Librarian's Lounge

Dial-a-Story

This article set of an interesting chain of events. 

When I was a kid, my library system used to have a dialup storytime. Every 24 hours (except weekends), a new story would be read and recorded on the line by one of the youth librarians. I loved the storyline. I remember I'd call it several times a day, especially in the morning because I'd call so early that the librarians hadn't even had a chance to record a new one yet. I can see myself sitting on my sister's bed listening to the storyline instead of watching tv. I remember listening to it even while my mom was vacuuming - now that's dedication! I called it so often that it was the only other number besides my best friend's and my own that I knew by heart. Having that connection to the library as a child gave me a good feeling about the library and made it a place I wanted to go to all the time. Often, the storyline was my only connection to the library - we lived pretty far north from what was then on the main branch.

So one day, shortly after reading this article, I was working at the youth services desk at the main branch with one of my colleagues. We were both engrossed in our computers, but were chatting too. All of a sudden, as I was listening to her voice, something clicked. I asked her how long she'd been working for the system and if she had ever read stories on the old dialup storytime line. She looked shocked and said, "How do you know that?" I said, "I remember your voice!" Considering that this was about 25 years ago, it was a surprising recollection for me, but altogether genuine. She was so excited to hear this and we fell into a conversation about the service and why we stopped offering it years ago (it seems to be fear of copyright violation that keeps us from offering it now.)

For me, it was a definitely a moment of reflection about the things that made me love books as a child and what led up to me becoming a librarian. On top of that, I'm a librarian in the system in which I grew up. There's something that feels very special about that. And then to find out that one of my colleagues was actually a person who shaped my earliest feelings about the library through her work as a children's librarian - wow, I don't know how to explain how much that touched me. I hope that someday I, too, will have such a lasting positive impact on someone's life through my service as a librarian.

Newly Discovered

The Library of Congress has a cool website to go along with their exhibition, Cartoon America. You might also be interested in browsing through their webcasts on all sorts of topics and feature many well-known authors and other public figures.

A Ray Charles Library is in the works.

For more mashups of books and multimedia, check out VidLit and KidVidLit. I also happened upon Bookshorts today - so far, not a whole lot of content, but it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

Children's Books Stamps

I don't know if my post office is just really behind the times or what, but I found these stamps there today when I went to drop off some Bookmooch items. They're so cool!

Free iPod Download

Until January 25th, the first Choose Your Own Adventure iPod episode - The Abominable Snowman is available as a free download. This sounds and looks really cool. It makes me wish I had a video iPod with which to watch it. I wonder if it will work on other players.

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

As if it wasn't keen enough (get it? I'll be here all week.) for there to be a Nancy Drew graphic novel series coming out, we also have the movie to look forward to, next summer!

Sex Offenders Banned from Iowa Library

Unless you happen to be one who lives within 250 feet of such a kid-friendly place - then it's okay. And  it's only sex offenders who have a history of attacking children who are being banned. Oh, and the article says if the offender has a "purpose" for being in a "safe zone," it's okay too - the example given that they themselves are minors or with biological children.

Coloring book pages online

You never know when you might appreciate a link to some coloring book pictures. This one has pages from Alice in Wonderland, Batman, Dexter's Laboratory, Rainbow Fish, and much more!

A Cornucopia of articles

I saw so many interesting articles today that I want to mention:

First, there's this article based on a study done at the University of Chicago about emails in which the authors talk about why misinterpretation of email "tone" is such a frequent phenomenon. It's basically a problem with egocentrism and the inability to step outside of oneself to see how someone else might see things.

Then there's this post about a fiction writing workshop and related book titled Writing the Other: A Practical Guide. It's basically intended for writers who want to create believable multicultural characters. Whether we think authors are able to write outside their ethnic heritage is a topic we are discussing in class this week.

Speaking of multiculturalism, there's this interview with Carrie Young Costello, author of Professional Identity Crisis: Race, Class, Gender, and Success at Professional Schools .

Library students might be particularly interested in this article: Electronic Portfolios for whom? The author suggests that at this time, they seem to be more about meeting administrators' needs than students'.

And, just for fun, you might like to check out some info on Songbird, a new media player built on the Foxfire platform that works similarly to iTunes but has none of those nasty DRM files associated with it.

Wiki used for cheating

This article was written by a teacher who talks about an incident that happened in her class in which a student used the class wiki to give the answers to the homework assignment to all the other students. Although I don't know the student personally or his age and can't therefore comment on his intentions at the time he did it, I have to say that I think this is a very gray area, particularly with wikis. Here you have a class using a wiki as a tool with which to collaborate and then you accuse the kids of cheating when they attempt to collaborate using the tool. I would like to take a moment to give the student the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they didn't know what they could and could not post. Kids often take things quite literally - where an adult might know ethically not do perform a certain act, a child may not. Did the teacher explain her limits on how to use the wiki? Why just assume the student was unethical? If he was smart enough to post to a wiki, he must know how to use email. He could have just emailed all his classmates the answers if he really wanted to cheat and not get caught. Perhaps he really thought he was "helping" his classmates. By all means, this should be used to illustrate a point about ethics and plagiarism to students in the future and be considered a lesson in using new technologies in the classroom, but let's also give the student a little credit for using a wiki, in the general sense, as it was intended - to share information with others.