E-Readers

When I was first asked if I wanted an e-reader I said there was no way that I would never own one of them. Now that I have one I can't put it down. I like the fact that my book is always at my finger tips and that you can do more than just read on it. I have downloaded many books from their free books, and today I downloaded my frist book from the public library. This was a different experience becasue I wasn't able to actually get on my e-reader to download it and will have to wait till I get home to see if it worked. If it did work I will have to down load somemore becasue unlike Amazon you can check out more than one book a month.

I can see how an e-reader could be an important tool in the schools because there is so much that a teacher could do on them. I personally have used an app. to help show students the cycle of the moon. As for letting a student check out an e-reader there would have to be strick guidlines in place for them to be used by the students. The biggest problem I see is how do you keep students from downloading things onto the e-reader that are inappropriate?

Automation Systems

I have had to chance to long-term substitute in one of the libraries here in town. During that time I used Alexandria. I found Alexandria very easy to use for the everyday task that I had to perform. These task included, running over due reports, checking in/out books, looking up books from other school/districts, add dropped books back into the system, charge and collect on book fees, adding/deleting student accounts. What Alexandria offers for the student use is a link to OPAC for finding books, and a chance to put books on hold. The drawback to this system, which I witnessed, is the books don't always check back in so the students are left with an overdue book until it is found. Alexandria also has a habit of switching users during check out, so one student puts in their information and when you check the book out it goes under another person’s name. These glitches mean that the librarian has to keep an eye on the screen while checking in/out books. I haven't had a chance to work with many of the reports on this system but some of them I have worked with are the overdue reports, inventory reports, inventory age reports, last time the book was checked out. I know there are many other types of reports that Alexandria can run but with my limited usage I haven't tried them out yet. Because I am not in the library on a daily basis it is hard for me to say how often a librarian should look at changing the system that is being used. I would think that about every five to ten years it would be looked at though just because by that time you have gained enough knowledge about the system and how it works to make a sound judgment about the program.

Top 5 items on my library web site.

1. School Name 2. contact informations/hours 3. Library mission statement 4. Links to databases 5. Link to Public library and school OPAC

My animals

Bandit Cinnamon Scrappy

PostSecret

PostSecret

RSS

I have used RSS before.  They didn't really make sense to me though, so I just stopped using them.  Now that I have a better understanding of them I can see how I will use them more to keep up to date on things.

Class

This is my first time trying my hand at a blog outside of the few things I have posted on Myspace or Facebook.  I could see how this could be very useful for teachers to share information with their students about upcoming events and class assignments.  I'm excited to check this out some more.