Category Archives: Librarianship

Graduate School, Librarianship

Thoughts on being an adult learner

Just a quick post today, since I’ve got a lot of homework to do…

Earlier this week I was talking to a friend of mine who’s not too happy in her job, and she mentioned that she is thinking of going back to school.   I told her that going back to school is the best thing that I’ve done for myself in recent years – that being in school has been amazingly fun and validating.  I actually surprised myself with the enthusiasm of my response to her, and it got me thinking a bit about what it means to be an adult learner.

The first thing that I’ve had to come to terms with is that the majority of my fellow students are far younger than I am.  This is both a negative and a positive for me: the younger students are extremely enthusiastic, and most of what we are learning is new and exciting to them.  They also have more flexibility in the way they approach new topics in class; let’s face it, they are more open to change than an older student (even a fairly progressive one like me).

But then there is the positive side to being an older student, which for me greatly outweighs any negatives.  I’ve got several years of work experience in my favor, so that as I learn new topics I can immediately apply it to my career – a younger student who has never worked as a librarian cannot do that, for obvious reasons.  I love that the breadth of my experience allows me to consider our assignments from a higher starting point than if I had never worked in the field.  And for the technology class that I am taking this semester, I have the distinct advantage of having grown up alongside personal computers, so I have direct experience with some of the things that we’re learning right now.  For instance, this week’s video lectures are on the command prompt, and as I’ve been viewing them, I’ve realized that my classmates grew up using computers with a mouse, whereas I grew up using commands in DOS (ah, the good old days of the C prompt!) with VAX machines for email in college (I learned all kinds of cool tricks for using the VAX machines!).

And then there is the most lovely part of being in school after years of being in the working world: the immediate and definitive gratification of being graded on your assignments.  In the real world, I get formal feedback once a year at my job, in the form of my annual review.  Obviously, there’s also less formal verbal feedback over the course of the year, but it’s not written and precise in the way the annual review is.  So it’s been really cool doing assignments over the course of each semester and getting written feedback from my professors on those assignments.  And it’s even lovelier to get grades on classwork, something that just doesn’t happen in the real world.

Last but certainly not least, I love learning new things.  I love working my brain in ways that it hasn’t been worked since I got my last master’s degree.  Admittedly, this mental fitness program hasn’t left much time for my physical fitness program, but I’m working on adding physical fitness back into my daily routine (there just aren’t enough hours in a day, are there?).

Long story short, it’s pretty fantastic being in graduate school as an adult learner who is already established in the profession.  I’m learning so much, and loving the experience more than I can ever say.  My only regret is that I can’t take any classes in person, but rather am pursuing the degree online, since it would be fabulous to be in a classroom with all of these smart classmates of mine.  But that’s a small regret, and perhaps I’ll be able to squeeze in a face-to-face class at some point.

Yay to education!!!

Blog administration, Graduate School, Librarianship

Year Two, and Year Fourteen

It has been quite a while since I’ve posted here, but there is a good reason: in September 2018 I started graduate school in pursuit of my second master’s degree, and since then I have been trying to master the balance of full-time job, part-time graduate school, and living my life to its fullest.

Happily, I survived my first year of school, and on Tuesday I will be beginning my second year of graduate school. As these things tend to go, I’m hopeful that my second year will be less stressful and more manageable (one can hope, right?), the theory being that after surviving one full year’s cycle, then I’ll have the skills to better anticipate challenges and scheduling conflicts.  Stay tuned to see if that theory proves correct…  🙂

It’s been interesting going back to school as a middle-aged, mid-career adult, especially since most of my classmates are in their 20’s and 30’s and are new to the field.  I’m attending Simmons University as an online-only student, and I am working towards a Master’s in Library and Information Science.  As the title of this post suggests, I am about to reach the fourteenth anniversary at my job as the head children’s librarian in a public library, so some of what I am learning in school is not new to me.  The Simmons program is quite challenging, though, and I am being exposed to many new ideas, theories, and practical concepts, which is making this degree more than worth the time and energy (and money) that I’m spending on it.

For the fall semester, I am taking my last required core class, Technology for Information Professionals, which is a little daunting but also very exciting.  I’ve heard rumors that the final project for the class is to build a personal website from scratch, which definitely intrigues me.  And given that this class focuses on technology of all kinds, this seemed like a particularly good moment for me to resurrect my blog.  I’m going to try to post at least once a week, perhaps more frequently, and to include posts about what I’m doing/learning in school and also posts about what is going on at the wonderful library where I work.  And, of course, there will be posts about cats…  😉

Librarianship, Summer reading

My 12th Summer Reading Program

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It’s really hard to believe, but I’m getting ready to host my twelfth Ice Cream Social, and then my twelfth summer reading program.  And this is the twelfth year that I’ve hosted the elementary school classes to tell them about the summer reading program.  How is this possible?

As I’ve shown the classes bookplates from past summer reading programs, I’ve realized that some of those bookplate-earners are now graduated from high school…or even college.  There is an entirely new generation of children coming to the children’s room, and an entirely new generation of parents who bring them to the library.  Most of the parents who come in to the children’s room now are millennials; there are very few parents from my generation anymore.

I like to think that I still look the same, though.  Haven’t aged a day, right?  🙂  And I’m still looking forward to summer reading, just as I did that first summer.  I can’t wait to introduce the sensory playtime, and to run our cool in-house programs, including an origami open house, science playground, and tape games.

I love that my job stays relevant, fresh, and challenging from year to year, and that there is never a dull moment.  And, most importantly, that it’s terrific fun working with the kids who come to the library, and getting to know their parents.  What a great career I landed in!

Librarianship, Library events, Pop culture

Nine years!

And the nine year anniversary of my arrival at the library has come (and gone) – happy anniversary to me!

A great way to celebrate this anniversary: the addition of a fantastic new program to the library calendar.   Book Buddies began last Wednesday, and is my most favorite library program ever.  Teen volunteers in grades 7 and up are paired with a younger buddy in grades 1 to 4 for shared reading and word games.  Last week, the inaugural week, everyone was having such a good time that I had to gently remind them that the one hour session had ended…five minutes ago.  The looks of complete surprise at a whole hour having passed already were testament to the fun that both big and little buddies had reading and playing together.

My greatest thanks to Jennifer for finding this awesome program.  In September, I said to her that we needed something new, could she see what she could find…and she came back with documentation and guidelines from other libraries that had already run successful Book Buddies programs.  Jennifer pointed out that this is exactly the kind of program that we need to be running, and she was so very right.

And one other new thing that we have added: a library Tumblr page.  I really like Tumblr for the library’s purposes – it’s much cleaner than Facebook, and you have more control over how your posts look (including fonts and such).  I won’t be replacing my personal blog page with Tumblr, but it has the right combo of hipness and accessibility for the purposes of the children’s room.  Here’s the link, if you’d like to take a look.

Librarianship

Nine years, almost

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As summer winds down and fall approaches, I am reminded that my anniversary date of starting at the library is in November.  As of early November, I will have been at the library for nine years – wow.

When he learned of my library job nine years ago, one of Jim’s friends made a prediction: “She’ll be at that job for the rest of her career.”  I think Jim’s friend is right – it’s a great place to work, with great coworkers, great patrons, and an awesome building, and I’ve finally gotten all the systems (storytimes, collection, etc.) to the level of excellence that I’ve desired.  Time to enjoy all that excellence, while I work on new cool things to bring to my job.  I won’t rest on my laurels, that’s not my style, but I certainly plan on enjoying those laurels while I add programming and increase the excellence of the collection.  Happy almost nine years to me, and here’s to many, many more!

Librarianship, Spare time - Culture

Dream

The other night I had the weirdest dream…a library dream, of course.

I dreamt that a library patron called the children’s room and asked me to pull a large selection of DVDS – chosen according to some odd guidelines dictated to me over the phone – and then, once I’d pulled everything for her, that I deliver them to her house.

So I pulled  a large stack of what were now CDs (who knows why it switched from DVDS), and proceeded to open each CD case and take all the CDs out.  As each disk came out of its case, it turned into an ordinary green pea.  Logically, I put all of the peas into a bowl, then went to eat dinner with my family.  I might even have eaten a couple of the peas/CDs…that part is a little fuzzy.

A few minutes into eating dinner, my mother turned to me and said, “Don’t you need to deliver those CDs to that lady?”  Panic set in, and I rushed over to the bowl of peas and realized that before I could deliver anything, I needed to get the peas back into the CD cases.  But the peas were just green garden peas, and weren’t labelled like the CDs had been, so how was I to know which pea went into which case?

I contemplated eating the peas to figure out what they each were, but realized that would be counterproductive, so then I thought about gently tasting each one to determine what music was on each.  And I considered just jamming random peas into CD cases and delivering them that way.

When I woke up from this very very long dream, I still hadn’t figured out a solution.  Somewhere in my dream world, there are still green peas that need to be converted back into CDs and put into their cases and delivered to an imaginary library patron…

Librarianship, Library events

Stuffed Animal Sleepover

I first heard about libraries doing “stuffed animal sleepovers” a couple of years ago when one of my favorite library patrons told me about a library on the Cape that had done one.  And then the children’s librarian listserve started to be abuzz with librarians posting about their sleepovers.  And then a librarian posted a request for advice on how to run one, and later posted a compilation of all the advice that she had gotten.  Now I had no excuse: this compilation was virtually a guide on to how to run a stuffed animal sleepover.  It was time for me to schedule one.

But first, what is a stuffed animal sleepover?  Kids drop off their stuffed animals at the library, and after the library is closed, the stuffed animals have a grand old party together as they explore the library.  Some librarians make videos, other librarians print out photos of each stuffed animal to give to each child at animal pickup time, and other librarians take a ton of photos and post them on Facebook (the option I chose).  Basically, it would be tough to have a “real” sleepover at the library for real kids, so this is a fun option that carries no liability issues but still gets kids jazzed about the library.

Last night was the big night, and I am so glad that I chose a Friday night.  The library closes at two o’clock on Fridays, so I knew I would have plenty of time to take photos and then post them on Facebook and Google+.  I figured it would take me two or three hours…but I was wrong.  I finished posting the photos at eight-fifteen, and for that six and a quarter hours I was running around like a crazy woman.  At one point I was wheeling the book cart loaded with stuffed animals along the window-lined hallway on the top floor of the building, and as I looked out at the dark parking lot I thought that anyone out there in their car would probably think this was pretty funny:  a frazzled looking librarian pushing a cart of animals full-tilt along the hallway to the large program room.

Despite taking way longer than planned, I had a lot of fun posing the animals, taking their photos, and then writing captions for each photo (eighty-two or so altogether) as I posted them on Facebook.  Part of the set-up was that Pepper B. Collie, the storytime puppet, was taking the photos, since the librarians had all left for the day.  S. took a photo of three of us librarians standing outside the building waving goodbye to the animals (who were lined up on the window sill looking out).  So I had to be careful that I didn’t show in any of the photos (there are a lot of windows in the building that could catch my reflection), and when writing the captions I tried to write them in the voice of Pepper and the other animals.

Before the sleepover, Jennifer did a lot of brainstorming about places and ways to pose the animals, and yesterday morning I took her list, added some ideas of my own, and then typed up a two page bulleted list of locations, organized by area of the library.  This helped me to be much more efficient and ensured that I wouldn’t forget any of the best ideas.  Some of the ideas (I wanted a photo of the animals looking out the window at the sunset) were time sensitive, some were not; so in addition to areas of the library, I did have to keep the time sensitive ideas in mind as the evening progressed.

And it all worked out, especially since Jim was willing to bring a fresh hot pizza to the library rather than me taking the time to run out and get the pizza.  After posing the stuffed animals with the pizza, Jim and I took ten minutes to eat our pizza dinner, and then we set up the animals for the final pose:  dancing under a disco ball (definitely a two person pose – Jim shone a flashlight on the disco ball and held the disco ball out on a ruler while I took photos).  Then we cleaned up and headed home, where I uploaded and captioned the photos.

If you’d like to see the photos, the best ones are on Facebook (I was too burnt out by eight- fifteen to put captions on the Google+ photos):  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Childrens-Room-at-the-Harvard-Public-Library/565116156844784

Children's book reviews, Children's literature, Librarianship, Storytime, Summer reading

Happy September

I actually love the month of September – even though we’re busy at the library after school with kids coming over from the elementary, middle, and high schools, the mornings are lovely and quiet and I get tons done.

Sometimes my storytime regulars ask why I take a couple of weeks off from storytimes in September, and I always reply, “So I can get some ordering done after the summer!”  Summers at the library are almost relentlessly busy, and it’s difficult to focus on reading book reviews in The Horn Book Magazine and Kirkus when kids are coming up to the desk every few minutes to redeem summer prizes or ask for summer reading book suggestions.  I need these next few weeks to pay some careful attention to ordering, and to make sure our shelves are fully stocked with the latest and greatest as winter comes around the corner.

But there’s another reason I take a couple of weeks off from storytimes in September: it’s vitally important to take a little time off from them so that I get refreshed and revitalized.  Yes, I could keep plugging along at the usual stiff storytime pace that I keep up the rest of the year (five or so storytimes a week), but we all benefit from me having just a few weeks off.  I actually love that I get nervous and edgy before my first September storytime, because it means that I’m coming back to storytimes with a fresh perspective.  If I’m nervous, then I’m fully engaged, and if I’m fully engaged, then storytimes are soooo much more fun for everyone.

One of my greatest fears is getting stale in my job, which is why I’m always pushing myself to do more and to try new and different things.  And by stepping back and taking a break, I can look at my storytimes from a bit of a distance and evaluate what I’m doing well and what I need to do better.  I’ll never go so far as to film myself doing a storytime, because that would destroy my self-confidence, but I’m very capable of being objective about my own performance.  I know that I overuse certain phrases, and I’m aiming to not say those phrases coming up in September.  I know that I’m a little afraid of using parent tips in my storytimes, but I need to get over that hump and start incorporating those tips more regularly.  And I know that by the end of the summer I was a bit tired and worn out, and I’m glad to take this breather and regain my enthusiasm.

So the next few weeks will be devoted to freshening my storytime perspective, and spending some intense time doing my absolute favorite part of my job: ordering books.  Yay!  Happy September, everyone!

Children, Librarianship, Spare time - Culture

Analog clocks

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I’m worried that analog clocks, which I personally prefer to digital, will be going the way of the dinosaurs.

The computer sign-in sheet for the children’s room computers is on the end of the librarian’s desk; I have thoughtfully provided a pencil and an analog clock for kids to log the time when they sign in.  Thoughtfully, because I like to encourage kids to practice their clock reading skills.  But I do get a lot of grief from kids about this clock, and they frequently ask me what time it is.  For the younger ones, I talk them through how to tell the time on the clock.  Sometimes I talk the older kids through, too, but most often I encourage them to think about it for a minute and they usually get it.

Yesterday, an eighth grade girl (a regular in the children’s room) was signing in for the computer, and she casually asked me “What time is it?”

With a smile, I replied, “The clock is right there…”

“I know, but…”  [heavy, heavy sigh]

Me:  “Well, think about what time you get out of school, since you just got out, and see if that helps you figure it out.”

Another heavy sigh.

And then the boy next to her whispered, “It’s 2:26.”

I may lose this clock battle, and, more importantly, the analog clock might lose – sooner than we think.