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!