| A rather daunting task - can you help? |
[25 Jul 2008|06:09pm] |
Greetings,
I've recently begun volunteering at the library of a retirement community. I'll be starting an MLIS program in the fall. The retirement community's library committee is really excited to have someone "with some knowledge of libraries" helping out. Of course, at this point I really don't have much knowledge of libraries beyond being a patron and a page, which I did point out to them, but they are desperate. So anyway, I'd like to get as much done for them as I can before my time gets swallowed up by school. Since I'm new to this and really don't know the best route to take, I could really use some advice and/or insight from anyone with experience cataloging small libraries, creating efficient systems requiring minimal work to use and maintain, and any other experience working or volunteering in very small libraries.
I will cut here since this is going to get wordy.
Here is the situation: ( Read more... )
crossposted to libraries, catalogers and library grrls
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[24 Jul 2008|10:01am] |
Hello all!
I am a librarian trainee in the public library system of a very large city. My boss is in the process of sitting down and planning out the programming for the upcoming months, and she has told me that she wants me to come up with a list of programs I would like to do in our branch. I'm excited but a little blocked. I (of course) want to come up with the best programs w/in the parameters I have to work with.
As a bit of background, I work in an urban library system but my branch is possibly the smallest in the system. It is left over from an earlier time and was originally just supposed to be a children's library instead of a neighborhood branch. Think "Little Red Schoolhouse" only urban and library. As a result I'm going to be cramped for space and it can't get too noisy or else I'll be disturbing the other library patrons. We also don't have a particularly large budget for the branch.
My boss and I would like to focus our programming mostly on YA and children, since they are the majority of our users and her background is in YA/childrens. Does anyone have suggestions for kid's programming that works in a really small setting?? Any good programs that pull in YA
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[24 Jul 2008|04:01am] |
7 Ways Your Public Library Can Help You During A Bad Economy
Reader MG is a fan of the site and a public librarian and has written a list of 7 ways that your library can help you during a bad economy. Libraries are an excellent resource and they're pretty easy to use. Don't worry if you're not a big reader, there's lots more stuff to do at the library besides just checking out books.( Read more... )
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| Oooooooo |
[24 Jul 2008|12:46am] |
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mood |
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impressed |
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music |
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Sixx am |
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This is a really neat. Ive seen something similar to this done before but never this well thought out or presented in such an appealing way. I think that while the central purpose and theme of a Library shouldn't change making them more user friendly is not a bad thing. Also look at all the pretty colors.
http://www.mysterywesterntheory.com/valeriemadill/index.php?/project/looking-at-libraries/
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| New York Historical Society |
[22 Jul 2008|01:50pm] |
This might be a bit of a stretch, but I'm hoping someone might know something -
Does anyone know anything (good, bad, stay the hell away) about working at the New York Historical Society?
There is a job posting on their website that I'm pretty interested in, but... I interned in a department there (not the same one as the job I'm interested in) about 6 years ago, and I remember it being a somewhat uncomfortable work environment - there seemed to be a lot of politicking and in-fighting going on among the various aspects of the place. I'm no longer in touch with the person I interned with, and I don't even know if she's still there.
Anyone know anything about the way things are now? Direct experience, hearsay, rumors from your third cousin's step-brother's pet chihuahua?
If you're not comfortable posting a response here, my email is available in my profile...
Thanks!
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| EB White, Anne Carroll Moore, The New York Public Library, and Stuart Little |
[21 Jul 2008|12:07pm] |
Interesting article up at The New Yorker about Anne Carroll Moore, EB White, the New York Public Library, the publication of Stuart Little, and the development of children's libraries, as well as children's literature as a genre.
Lives and Letters
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[20 Jul 2008|04:50am] |
Missing-girl case tests library privacy
Petite librarian stood her ground, and police settled for access to PCs
The Associated Press
RANDOLPH, Vt. - Children's librarian Judith Flint was getting ready for the monthly book discussion group for 8- and 9-year-olds on "Love That Dog" when police showed up.
They weren't kidding around: Five state police detectives wanted to seize Kimball Public Library's public access computers as they frantically searched for a 12-year-old girl, acting on a tip that she sometimes used the terminals.( Read more... )
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| Willing to answer a few quick questions about your library? |
[19 Jul 2008|10:10pm] |
Hello!
I'm a library school student, and I'm doing a research project on intellectual freedom in public libraries. I'm looking for a public librarian who might be willing to answer four brief (I promise!) questions about his/her library or library system's intellectual freedom policies. I think this is a really interesting topic--especially right now--and I would love to hear what your library's approach is to the issue. If any of you all would be interested, I would be so appreciative!
Thank you in advance for any help.
(Please excuse the cross-posting! I'm really hoping to find someone to help, so I've also posted to librarians and librarygrads. Let me know if this is inappropriate/a nuisance. Thanks again.)
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| New LJ user and public library employee |
[16 Jul 2008|07:39pm] |
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So I'm relatively new to the ol' Livejournal and looking to amass a cluster of swells, chums, and general e-compatriots to correspond with regarding this & that, the quirks of library employment, or anything else that comes to mind.
Let's see. I live in a suburb of Kansas City, MO and work the audio-visual counter. Due to proximity my main interest seems to be film, but I don't hold any grudge against books. Mostly I read history, cooking, and various how-to books, but have been trying to advance my knowledge of Science Fiction as of late.
I don't know. I have some other interests that I enjoy.
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| Job Search Advice |
[14 Jul 2008|02:32pm] |
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I have an upcoming interview for a Library Associate position at a public library, but have about 4 years of experience as a part-time academic reference librarian. The open position does not require my MLS, but I would kind of like to check it out since there are not many other suitable openings right now in my area and I'd also like to introduce myself in case there are any future reference openings there. Would a position like this be bad for my resume? The description seems to include more than circulation duties. How do I handle the interview without making them think I'm overqualified or not really interested in the job?
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| x-posted to personal journal and library_mofo |
[02 Jul 2008|11:01am] |
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Dear Everyone, It is with great frustration that I share with you all the following regarding the closure of one of L.A.’s greatest research facilities:
20th Century Fox’s Research Library is one of the last on-the-lot research facilities. I interned there as a book cataloger while I was studying for my Masters in Library and Information Science. Their collection is remarkable; there are few libraries that consider allowing patrons access to the types of fragile, information packed tomes, as their duty to users. This amazing resource has been used by local filmmakers, out-of-town researchers, and students. It’s a place on the lot where more than a hundred years of history is kept and collected to help produce historically accurate films and television series. Their clippings files, historical magazines and archived ephemera from FOX productions are overwhelming in their scope.
If there’s anything you can do to convince 20th Century Fox to keep this incredible resource on the lot, please do so! You’ll be doing current and future productions a huge favor!
Thanks for your support!
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[01 Jul 2008|05:32pm] |
Hey I'm new to this community, for two reasons, well obviously I. like reading but 2. I'm at a loss in searching for a type of book.
If possible could anyone recommend a novel set in the pre-war 1930's England. I'm open to any genre of book, brownie points if it can be from the viewpoint of young adults.
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| Librarian CVs? |
[24 Jun 2008|11:48am] |
I'm now at a point career-wise where I need to reformat my resume into a CV. I was wondering if any of you had CVs online that I could look at for examples.
Thanks!
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| USGS topo maps accessibility (cataloguing/shelving) |
[24 Jun 2008|11:01am] |
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Background: I work in a smallish, rural public library about an hour away from the nearest academic or major public library; so we serve some regional archival functions, but our patrons (even the ones doing research) are generally NOT skilled researchers.
A couple of weeks ago, I hit upon an interlibrary donation windfall - the complete set of 7.5 minute USGS topo maps for my state.
They arrived late last week, in four boxes, and I got them unpacked yesterday. And... I'm just at a loss. My best guess is that there are between a thousand and twelve hundred map sheets. There's no grid indexing that I can find (i.e. northwesternmost map is A1, etc.) and the names of individual maps are not individually intuitive... I could sort them alphabetically, but then the local-ish maps that our patrons would use most would be scattered through the collection and hard to find. I think it would be much easier for patrons to use them if they were sorted by location, but I'm not seeing how to do that.
I've e-mailed USGS to find out if they publish indexes, but while I wait for an answer from them, I thought I'd throw this out to you all. Do any of you have big map sets like these in public libraries? How do you organize and shelve them so that they're accessible and useful to patrons? (I'm going to see about buying a set of archival map boxes; we'll probably invest in a flat file within a year or two, but I'd like these out on the floor before that.)
What about cataloguing? Individual records? One record for each box/drawer with copy records for each sheet? One (shudder) record for the whole set with copies for each sheet? I'm a mostly self-taught para; I'm out of my depth!
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[23 Jun 2008|08:45pm] |
Lately I've spent an inordinate amount of unpaid home time online looking up and printing MARC records unavailable in Bibliofile. My library in a California prison has no Internet access so we update Bibliofile I think it's quarterly with mailed DVDs. Thanks to a steady stream of donations and sporadic state funding there's no end of items to catalog, some slightly to very old yet useful to my patrons. No more than seventy to ninety percent turn up in Bibliofile. For a percentage of the remainder I find inexact but similar Bibliofile records I easily modify. But for the rest I mine the Web, primarily San Francisco Public (SFPL) where I maintain a library card, SFPL's "Link-Plus," WorldCat (also through SFPL), and the (often surprisingly incomplete) Library of Congress. (I can get really annoyed--hahaha--at public libraries that don't offer patrons the full MARC.) I'm becoming a fairly capable original cataloger but all the same a third-month novice librarian, so creating Dewey numbers, subject headings, and 520s even if copped from back covers or sleeves can take can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour per record, depending. Spanish slows me even more. Once or twice I've watched even my senior librarian who can rattle off dozen-digit Deweys, bog down for half an hour changing his mind over and over on a tough to determine Dewey. So this MARC mining homework often really is most efficient option.
Now, naturally the records I find are in a variety of fonts, with half a dozen various characters representing the double-dagger. Still, as MARC records, they have characteristics in common that must identify them as such. So I can't help wondering whether there exists some program, some shareware, open-source MARC-identify-and-grab tool, whatever, that would enable me to extract from Web pages and save MARC records so that I could take thumb-drive files to work instead of dozens of printer-cartridge draining printouts.
Does such a tool exist? Or is my situation just too unique for anyone to have bothered?
Surely neither WorldCat nor LC has a "record download" key I'm overlooking?
fg
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| book list question |
[23 Jun 2008|01:39pm] |
Do any of you know a good "read alike" list of books for teens after reading the alex rider books?
Thanks.
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[20 Jun 2008|05:12pm] |
Harper Woods library renovation wins environmental award
BY KIM NORTH SHINE • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
It goes without saying that the Harper Woods Public Library is full of information that can educate, but what's not so obvious is that the building itself provides a lesson.
The lesson here is how to renovate an old building without being a burden on the environment.( Read more... )
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| new community |
[14 Jun 2008|03:24pm] |
apologies for x-posting, and mods let me know if this is not ok and i'll take it down.
after a particularly upsetting incident with a regular library patron, i decided that it would be nice to have a community dedicated to this issue. just a place for library staff to support other folks who work in libraries after upsetting interactions. it is, for me at least, such a special breed of emotions when this happens that my normal support system isn't always really able to understand.
please come join us at ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) librarysupport!
thanks!
sharon
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| 6th and 7th graders |
[12 Jun 2008|10:59am] |
I have a question. What fiction are 6th and 7th graders in to these days? I was working a high school with older students so I feel out of touch with what the middle school age kids like. It's hard to draw the line at what is appropriate for a 7th grader vs. an 8th/9th grader.
Thanks!
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