Road Trip - Elk City, Oklahoma

This was the first of our scheduled stops - The National Route 66 Museum. Really, you can't imagine a more charming mish-mash of Americana than the collection they have here.

There was a series of buildings re-creating the feel of Oklahoma over the century that it has been a state, with wonderfully helpful local women manning each of the museums we visited.






Perhaps the most terrifying piece in the collection is this permanent wave machine (used into the 1950s):

Road Trip - Winterset, Iowa

So this was the first stop - an unscheduled one - on the family road trip. Believe it or not, John Wayne was born in this tiny one bedroom house. And what I don't believe (I think it's part of the legend but not entirely factual) is that he weighed in at 13 pounds when he was born. Very unlikely says I. There were a lot of interesting things and Betty gave us a delightful tour of the house.

Thing 7 - Web 2.0 Communication

Well, communication is a very big thing...e-mail is pretty obvious, I couldn't survive without it, although the productivity hints had some very good ideas that I will try to implement. IMing is something I've never gotten involved in at a professional level. I did just participate in a webinar through Minitex about best practices for online reference, which discussed IM and text messaging in reference. I think it's great that libraries can offer so many points of entry for reference services, but I do worry about spreading ourselves too thin.

I think it's pretty obvious that better communication helps productivity and services overall. That is not to say that too much information/communication doesn't bog us down on occasion. The important thing to remember is that these are all tools for our use - we can not let ourselves become slaves to the machine!

Our library is a small branch in a big system. We use e-mail and some of us do chat (I currently do not). Many of our patrons prefer to stop by the library and we also have patrons who still use the phone (remember the telephone?). The key is to find what works for the patrons, and build the services around their needs. For our professional communication, we can use the same or different tools.

Flexibility is, imho, the key.

The Cast

So here's boy in cast. I made him turn it just so, so that we don't have to look at the obscene picture one of his classmates drew on it. Unfortunately, you can't see my message very well - it says, "Mea Culpa" because, as I told boy, you really can't blame this on anyone else...no matter how hard you try.

O'Reilly Maker - Thing 6 (yes, again)

Not perfect, but what the heck - My Book Cover looks like this:

http://www.oreillymaker.com/link/14761/maintaining-sanity/

these are fun, but I think I'd better move on...

Name Generator - Thing 6

My brand-new Roller Derby Name is Basher DaBlockHer.
Take MIA PSYCHO'S ROLLER DERBY NAME GENERATOR today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Behind Again

So I'm behind again - this week it was the Senate District Convention which I went to because my 18 year old daughter wanted to know how it worked at the next stage (after caucuses). We had a great time and she learned a lot.

I'm so glad my kids are interested in politics. I think that we are where we are in this country primarily because of lack of interest/participation. Girl-child decided that she'll volunteer for a campaign for her next activity; neither one of us will be going on to the next convention. Also, it turns out that you only have to be 16 to be an election judge, so Boy-child will be old enough to do that in November and he's actually considering it.

In the meantime, I fininshed knitting a chemo cap for the friend of a friend, I'm about to turn the heel on Kara's second sock and I started another plain cuff-down sock for Girl-child to take with her to school in the fall.

I'll try to get to the next of the 23 Things soon!

Things 4-6 Flickr, etc

Well, I do love Flickr and have been using it since I became a member of Ravelry. I've learned a lot about digital photography, lighting, backgrounds and angles. I love the fact that I can look at other people's projects to help me decide what I want to do next, how I might alter a project, etc.

Ravelry was the way for me to explore Flickr as I did not have a library application, but I must say the trading cards at Carleton are fantastic and I'll have to try that. I'm thinking of putting something together to use as a pseudo-business card.

The Library of Congress Flickr account is an interesting one, although some kinks will have to be worked out, like combining the various permutations of World War II as a tag (there are a lot right now). That is, perhaps, the biggest problem with tagging in general.

So now I've joined two Flickr groups - 23 Things on a Stick and Sock Knitters Unite - and I have the card to work on. In my spare time.