ALA 2011

ALA11 was completely awesome!  New Orleans is an interesting city, although I didn't get to see as much of it as I would have liked.  I got some great sessions in and attended my first committee meetings.  Here are a few things I learned at ALA this year:

1.  It's all about mobile.  Mobile apps, mobile web sites, mobile marketing.  Libraries need to be taking advantage of mobile technology and finding ways to use it to their advantage!

2. The user experience - It's all about the user.  Libraries are using various products to unify the experience that our users have.  Whether it's Drupal, LibGuides, Course Views, Library Ala Carte, or something else, this is a trend.  Something that we all need to be thinking about.  People want a seamless experience.  In addition to the digital world, our libraries should be thinking about how users want to use the space when designing & renovating their libraries.  If the users don't want to come to the library, then change the library to meet their needs.

3. E-books.  I don't think you could go more than 15 minutes without hearing the word e-book from somewhere at ALA.  Maybe if you were in a room by yourself and all your technology turned off, but what fun is that.  E-books are here to stay and we all need to be involved.  And libraries have to work with publishers to make this sustainable for them.  While we are not in the business of making money, they are.  And we need our publishers to stick around and be successful.  It's not us against them.  It needs to be us with them.

4. Transliteracy - I've heard this word a lot over the last year.  We need to all be doing more of this with our students and patrons.  They need to know how to use all forms of media, print and digital.  Students can't be successful unless they walk out the door with a well rounded experience.  If we don't give teach them how to use library so they continue educating themselves far into the future, then we've wasted their time and money and we're not doing our jobs.

5. Be flexible and adaptive - transform the library and library services to meet the needs of the students.  If this means taking the information to them or embedding ourselves into places we haven't been before, then so be it.  Our administrators say it's all about student success.  Make it happen in the library too!

6. Have fun. Working in a library isn't all about books.  Get out there and enjoy your career and remember why you went into libraries to begin with!

ALA New Orleans

Heading out for ALA Annual 2011 in New Orleans today!  Very excited!  I've never been to New Orleans so this will be a new city for me.  As an added plus, two of my good friends are traveling with me.  My friend Erin, who works in a public library nearby as an admin assistant.  And my friend Amanda who is my travel buddy.  She & I travel together all the time and it just works.

I have an insanely busy schedule while in NOLA.  This will be my first trip to annual where I have committee meetings to attend because I am on the committee.  Can't wait for all this fun experience!  Hoping to meet a few authors while I'm there, Mo Willems, Sarah Dessen, Mary Kay Andrews.

Radithor

What an incredible story.  So thankful that we have come so far!
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,743525,00.html

Radiation & Superheroes

I can say for sure that I know way more about radiation & superheroes today than I did 2 days ago.  I spent most of my afternoon yesterday reading about types of radiation for this assignment that I'm trying to work on.  Trying to find out what types of radiation each superhero was exposed to was difficult.  Most of their histories just say "radiation."  And some of the types of radiation they were exposed to won't work with this project that these students are working on.  BTW, their assignment is to look for radiation in items we use in everyday life and look at the impact it's had on our lives.

My goal was to have 3 superheroes with different types of radiation exposure so we could have 3 types of radiation being studied by students in this library instruction.  Then they could partner off and look at different  resources available that will help them find not only items with radiation in them but resources to help them move forward.

First I looked at the Fantastic Four.  They were exposed to cosmic rays when they took their spaceship into outer space. While fun & interesting, cosmic rays are not found in everyday items on earth.  If they were, as my husband put it, we would all be dead.  They're quite deadly these cosmic rays so I couldn't use that.

Then I looked at The Hulk.  Success!  Dr. Bruce Banner was exposed to gamma radiation from a bomb he invented which gives him his alter-ego, The Hulk.  Gamma radiation is used to irradiate food, as a way to do surgery, and in cancer treatments.  Perfect!!

Next I looked at Daredevil.  He was blinded as a child by radioactive waste while saving an old man from a truck barreling down the road.  Doesn't say what kind of radioactive waste.  Interesting, also incredibly unrealistic, but also not helpful.

On to Spider-man!  For this project, we're using the comic book version of Spider-man because he was bitten by a radioactive spider.  But there is no reference made about how this spider became radioactive or what type of radioactivity he had.  But considering the effect it had on Peter Parker, one can only assume that it was ionizing radiation since non-ionizing radiation is around us everyday and doesn't cause us all to be spider-people.  So after discussing with my physicist husband, we decided that I could use Spider-man and his ionizing radioactive spider and make that alpha & beta particles. 

That gave me two superheroes but I still needed a third.  And that was HARD. There are a lot of them out there that I have never heard of before and if I haven't then most likely lots of other people haven't either.

After lots of review with physicist husband, we settled on Dr. Manhattan.  The blue guy from the movie & comic books Watchmen.  According to the web sites I found on him, was disintegrated in an Intrinsic Field Subtractor.  A fictional science contraption.  So I kept reading and apparently his blue "glow" comes from Cherekov radiation, or electromagnetic radiation (according to husband). COOL, electromagnetic radiation is all over the place!

So my first hurdle is done.  I found 3 superheroes and 3 types of useful radiation.  Reading the stories of these superheroes is fun, they're all kind of ridiculous.

More Superheroes

After spending time thinking about superheroes and their jobs, one of our Radiation Protection Technology instructors came to me asking for Library Instruction for an assignment about radiation in everyday life. COOL!!! So many superheroes out there became superheroes thanks to RADIATION!  YAY!  So now I thinking my use of superheroes for this field.  I have a growing list of superheroes that I can use:

The Hulk
Daredevil
Fantastic Four
Spider-man (from the comic books, not the movie - that was a "genetically modified spider")
Insectasaurus and Ginormica from Monsters vs Aliens

Then we also have Godzilla, who was that large because of radiation and Homer Simpson who works at a nuclear power plant.

In the process of researching, I found this hilarious cartoon that is about the origin of Spiderman.  I really want to show at least part of this in this library instruction session because it is just too hilarious.

Any other popular superheroes I might have missed?  This one isn't until August but I'm already working on it!

Superheroes in Library Instruction

Had a conversation with my husband about Superheroes and jobs after doing the Jersey Shore session.  Surely everyone knows Superheroes.  I've found that most superheroes don't have actual jobs.  Most of them seem to scientists or have no job whatsoever.  Here's what I've found so far:

Spiderman - photographer
Superman - reporter
The Hulk - physicist
Batman - industrialist/businessman
Daredevil - lawyer
Iron Man - billionaire industrialist
Green Arrow - businessman
Flash - police scientist
Wonder Woman - army nurse
Green Lantern - graphic artist (although this seems to depend on the which version of the GL)
Captain American - soldier
Wolverine - soldier prior to becoming Wolverine
Spawn - soldier/assassin

These superheroes need better jobs.  Well more interesting & defined jobs I guess.  I'm thinking this could be fun with a Social Problems class.  How would they attack the problem?  I need to think more about this one.  How would you do it?

Trying Out Jersey Shore

I just recently read an article in C&RL News by Amy Springer & Kathryn Yelinek from February 2011.  Yeah, I'm behind on my reading.  Anyway, I was instantly enamored with the idea of using a TV show to teach Library Instruction.  GENIUS!  I am a TV addict.  There isn't any part of the year that there isn't something on for me to watch.  Duh, why had I not thought of this before.  So, I mentioned it to the librarian who does most of our library instruction and she was laughed.  Hmm, okay, I thought, then I'll find a way to make it happen on my own.

Not 24 hours later I get an email from one of our Business professors wanting library instruction.  Well, she really wanted a Blackboard orientation (because our Learning Resource Center covers both) but was intrigued when I mentioned library instruction.  I asked her if she would mind if I got creative and she thought it was great.  The students needed to do an Ad campaign throughout the class, a major project that involved actual research.  I got super excited.  I dived into our databases to find business resources of use and found ways to make it connect with Jersey Shore.

I started the class and not ONE student had seen Jersey Shore.  Fabulous.  They knew the characters of the show but none of them had seen it.  So we went with it anyway.  We went through all the resources that related to their project and I gave them each (all 6 of them) a worksheet to complete.  One of the students thanked me for the class.  I've never been thanked for library instruction in my 10 years of being a librarian.  Wow!  She said she needed that last semester for an assignment in one of her other classes.  And the instructor was over the moon, she loved it!  She raved to all 4 deans & most of the department chairs at a meeting about it and is already wanting to schedule her all of fall classes for library instruction with me!  YAY!

I was so bummed though that none of them had heard of Jersey Shore.  So I chatted with one of our work study students and she asked me why I just didn't try using a different show.  Did it have to be Jersey Shore?  Well no, I guess not!  So now I'm working on a list of TV characters & cartoon characters that have identifiable jobs that aren't law enforcement related that I can use in different library instruction sessions.

So thanks Amy & Kathryn!  This is fun!