Open World Cat

Check out this service, which individuals can use for free to find books in libraries in your town and region: http://www.worldcat.org/ This comes from OCLC, and libraries that want to download records or ADD their records must do so on a fee basis. But open access to seeing what's in near by collections is free. And you can use it, I hear, to look at catalog records from any participating libraries, if you need some data. Link to this on your webpages.

Cat is Tater, of Asheville, NC. He can't help you with your books or catalog records, but he enjoys sitting on a book now and then, when he can't find a box.

Swimming in a Sea of Possibilities

It's been nearly a month since I posted here and sent the link out, and I apologize to anyone who came here looking for inspiration. The truth is that I'm in that stage of research where you're delving into all sorts of wonderful material but haven't wrestled it into shape. I've decided to prepare a slide presentation for our faculty giving an overview of some of the new technological tools we should be using with our students. The current TIME magazine cover story is my springboard. I emailed a mention of it, with the image, to the faculty yesterday, suggesting that we all read it. Our head asked for a photyocopy of the article, and I know he's interested in bringing our curriculum and teaching into the 21st century. So my next task is to summarize some of what I've been reading and prepare an overview for the school. Call it Internet 2.0, or Library 2.0 if you're talking among librarians, or School 2.0 -- it's all the same conversation.

Here are a few of the best sites/blogs I've discovered so far. In some cases, the writers have a larger site and then a blog within the site. Here are some blog titles and where you can find them:

2 Cents Worth http://davidwarlick.com

Blue Skunk Blog http://doug.johnson.squarespace.com

Infinte Thinking Machine http://www.infinitethinking.org

Joyce Valenza's Never Ending Search http://joycevalenza.edublogs.org

Stephen's Lighthouse http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com

and one more site,

Webblog-ed http://www.webblog-ed.com

I'm using Google Reader for my blog subscriptions and am replacing less useful ones with better ones as I find them. So these are some great places to start exploring. But you'll get to the point, as I have, where your head is swimming and you need to sit back and decide on a starting point for local action

Library 2.0, or no?

It's time to start thinking aloud on this blog and to share in dialogue with other librarians who are thinking about the future. So -- for some weeks now I've been reading blogs and articles about Internet 2.0 and Library 2.0 and thinking of all the cool things we could be doing here -- blogs, wikis, podcasts, and all those things. And tonight I'm brought down by Christopher Harris's piece in the current SLJ, p. 24, in which he says that we can't actually break loose in our schools and public libraries and let kids use these tools without a lot of moderation. Obviously, there's a difference between high school kids and younger ones, but my first reaction to Harris's piece is dismay and discouragement. There's too much going on tonight here in study hall for me to give this any more thought now, but I'm just putting it out for a start.

Dunstan Too

Dunstan Too

The music master, an educated, intelligent and thoughtful man, says he was asked only one question in the planning of the new chapel.  That was, “How many seats did I need?”  Otherwise, the planning was “outsourced,” he says, and before he could beat out 32 bars  the plans appeared on paper.  And now the chapel is nearly built.

For months now, from fall, through the winter, and into the spring a large crew of men has been working daily to enlarge and rebuild the century-old chapel.  Now in the last days before graduation there is suddenly a fleet of white trucks, bearing different insignia, converged along the roads.  A furniture van was unloading large boxes today, presumably the seats for Sunday.  Tomorrow at 5 there’s to be a bell rung, inviting people to gather briefly in the chapel for some minutes of appreciation and looking around.  The school community, at least those there at 5:00  will be able to meet and greet the workers, and vice versa.

This brings me to thoughts of the next big project, or vision, the big and impressive academic center, which will house a variety of vaguely hinted at functions.  I will attempt to articulate what I see as desirable, but talking with the m.m. today does not encourage me to think that I’ll be listened to.  Certainly a preemptive strike is called for.  After that, well, that’s existential.