A New Thing -- e-books

It seems that e-books get a more enthusiastic reception from students than from the more, hmh, mature persons, but how is it in practice? The teens in our house, otherwise avid readers, spend no time whatsoever on e-books although they seem to spend huge chunks of their lives staring at the screen. And do interactive features change the picture at all -- publishers keep trying but -- ? Informational e-books seem to have some following, if forced sometimes. Are they being purchased at an increasing rate for school libraries?

Thing 10

Reading Thing 10 -- copyright and plagiarism -- is instructive and confusing at the same time, just like I remember it in library school classes, although there wasn't enough on copyrighting there in any consistent manner, only much about fair use, to encourage us to use material rather than not, I presume? Working at a publishing company opened my eyes to dangers in commercial use -- every scrap of text, drawings, photos could potentially be grounds for a lawsuit if improperly used, and much time and effort went on checking back to ensure that no copyright law was violated. This was an arduous process when dealing with Hollywood, Disney and such; say, you want to use production stills for a children's book and need to somehow contact Tom Cruise's people -- shudder, shudder--

Still, it had to be done and was done, and of course, it's really better that way in the end, unless the item is truly in public domain and that takes a long time--

In school environment plagiarism is certainly more of an issue and well worth watching for.

Burn, Baby, Burn

Now I think I learned a new skill the other day -- Marcia decided to burn a Discovery Streaming video onto a DVD for a teacher -- a learning opportunity because nobody seemed to have done it yet. With Jamie's assistance -- also a novice at this -- that video was burned onto the DVD after some trial and error experimenting involving segments. Apparently they have to be downloaded into the computer first segment by segment before dealing with the whole lot. We also learned that patience is a virtue -- need to wait quite a while for the DVD icon to appear before sallying forth.

Thing 4

Public libraries and I have a long, stable relationship -- when our children were little I practically lived in public libraries, visited several children's departments by turns and picked the best storyteller (that was in Ridgedale library at that time). These days you don't even have to rush in to sign up for storytime in person when the library opens up! That was exciting but stressful.
Ask librarian works great -- love that guaranteed response in 24 h that many libraries offer.
It seems that the step from a user of a school library to a user of a public library is a small one, so encouraging.

Hitches

1. Fines. Well, if you only have three measly weeks for books and one little week for videos & DVD's -- even if you follow up closely by whatever means necessary, like Libraryelf as introduced by Ann at the meeting, time just runs out, especially with children who borrow 15 comic books which you hunt down under couches and car seats --
A Solution: October Forgiveness Program -- before Halloween, remember to have all fines wiped out for anyone under 18 -- it can be done online, too, my teens just did.
2. Yes, you can borrow from any library in the 7 county metropolitan area, and I've registered my card in most systems, but it still pays to go and pick the items up in a library in a particular system rather than rely on the slow interlibrary loan system. Which takes valuable gas and time. Also, and this is yet another human failing here, but I lose my library card here and there and once you do, you have to go personally to a library in each system to have it changed -- it is not automatic at all. I just ran into it again.
A Solution: Hmm, can't think of any on my part --

Avatar and Rosetta Stone

Responding to the comment (LOVE getting comments!) about the avatar -- the dreamcatcher background reflects my desire to be another foot soldier spreading the good word about how our blogs, wikis, Facebooks, Beboes, podcasts, Google, etc. other "it" things of the given moments are really on the same literacy/communication continuum with books and how important and handy it is to try to have them all support one another, using them with common sense. -- I actually heard a teacher spell B-O-O-K one day to a student, slightly frustrated, but only slightly, I so admire teachers' patience. They and librarians work on the above every day! -- I forgot the spectacles, it must be possible to add them on the avatar afterwards. I use them to do cataloging at my new workstation here at Harding.

And if I go back, really back here to the real Rosetta stone -- I happened to take a look at it again at the British Museum in September on my way -- it is relevant all right. As a native Finnish (Finno-Ugric language) speaker I have had to learn the hieroglyphs of several (Indo-European) languages just to communicate in the world, and English is not the end all and be all although it functions fairly well as a lingua franca at this time. Then again when I attended my (Finnish) nephew's wedding in France, the working languages were French, Finnish, German and Polish. I google a lot in Finnish, of course, Google is so multilingual. Here at Harding Hmong and Spanish, e.g. function as working languages, with American English as lingua franca. But the automatic translations in Google - C'est horrible! Still, they do the rough work. Google works!

About the Required Things

Being shy about my physical appearance, it took a while to decide on an idealized, yet realistic avatar with unrealistic, but beautiful dreams, right. That and not having made one before -- What strikes me most about information literacy in practice here in a high school library vis-a-vis my library training background is how down to the wire one must go to have any impact. The students have plenty of exposure to sources of information, especially online, but a short attention span in general (exceptions abound, too) when it comes to conducting on organized search for a project on hand. Repetition works when few choice options are given; the number of choices is so overwhelming to students. Library school teaches appreciation of solid databases, like those by Ebsco, to find out about practically anything you want to know, but kids mistakenly think using them takes labor -- well no, and I saw some students using Jstor, great, it has pretty general stuff, not that scholarly or anything. Hey, somebody did go and organize information, one doesn't have to flail around so much on the web, what a revelation!

I like the Website Evaluation handout from the October 10th meeting with a clear set of questions, and short.

Start

My excitement at actually being asked to do a blog in a real blog community was somewhat tempered by minor practical glitches, but I shall not go there. The lingering jet lag is finally lifting, and I'm going onward full tilt under the tutelage of Her Majesty here in the library, whom I recently heard talking about Thing 14, reliable online resources, convincingly to a class, and Thing 13, subscription databases. They are, as usual, underused by students and it takes some persuasion to convert students to using them, as easy as they are and available. - Now, let's see if this comment actually posts before I go onward with pics and stuff.