photoplay is important, right?

So I've been playing this week. There are a million tools out there that I never even knew I needed. Looked at all the flickr toys imaginable, along with color sorting, bead pictures, trading cards, south park studios, reading cooking, library and other blogs. And I Hockney-ized my kids.

Here is an example from my life of how all this image-management is changing: When my first child was born 12 years ago, I took lots and lots of baby pictures. With a film camera. When my second child was born 8 years ago, we had lost the film camera, and so all his baby pictures are taken with disposable box cameras (I don't recommend this...). When my third child was born almost 6 years ago, we had a digital camera. I took tons and tons and tons of pictures of him. But there are no photos of him in my house. Why? Because they are on the hard drive of my computer. They're still there, and somewhere on Snapfish there's an album I went through and sorted and arranged of his baby pictures, if only I could remember my password... I feel like the current Mac/PC commercial where they're talking about how to organize photos. I fear this makes me John Hodgman.

Alone at the Library

So I know I'm supposed to be blogging about image generators and news feeds, but something has happened that hasn't ever happened in my 20 year library career before today. I'm alone in the library. I'm on the fourth day of a job swap, and instead of a bustling workroom full of staff and volunteers, I am all by myself this morning. This has me reflecting on the many functions we do at work, and how different our experiences are at different places. My most recent job was in a large downtown library, and I couldn't enter the building unless someone had already been in - I didn't have a key to the alarm. Most of my work experiences have been in places with circ/ref separation, and ne'er the twain shall meet. But here, this morning, it's just me. I get to do the pick list, unpack the delivery, unload the book drop, and lots of other jobs that don't usually occur in a normal work day. It's more in-my-body, up the stairs, down the stairs, lift the bin, etc. And definitely low-tech. Which is not a bad thing on this Friday morning.

Not really an update

This is just a test post - I don't blog and vacation at the same time... 27 things can continue tomorrow...

Lifelong Learning

I'm really excited about SPL taking on this project - I remember reading about PLCMC's project in LJ or something and thinking "Wow, I wish we could do something similar..." The library I worked at at that time did do some technologically innovative things (early adopters of Twitter, sending overdue and holds notices via text message, etc.), but there was no encouragement of all staff to be involved in the process. I think the power of the SPL version is that we all (staff at all levels and all agencies) get to take part, and it's led to some interesting discussions here at my branch already. It ties in well with the new service model, and our customer-driven approach.

So that being said, it's only gonna be as good as each learner makes it. So the 7 1/2 habits are important to keep in mind. I think #1 Beginning with the end in mind is the one that sticks with me the most (at least today). I think if I had had that piece of advice earlier in my learning lifetime, I would have made different choices, or at least enjoyed the process more. In my earlier days, I prided myself in being a good student, and learning quickly, only to find as an adult that I can't really utilize the concepts I learned. Rote learning and parroting back information isn't the same as internalizing skills and deploying them. Meaningful authentic learning is a whole different animal, and for me it takes lots of hands-on practice. So I guess the end I have in mind is to be able to USE the skills I play with here in a meaningful way.

starting 27 new things

...or actually maybe 18 new things and 8 or 9 old ones.

The problem with blog posting on the reference desk is the pesky customer service gets in the way. The posting begins in earnest tomorrow.