Thursday, October 22, 2009

Education and the Arts



Just some quick links on the importance of art and music in education.
 http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/tools/initiative/updates/040826.html
http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/11235.aspx
http://www.edutopia.org/cross-training
http://www.edutopia.org/arts-music-curriculum-child-development
Our children are not getting the socialization they need to develop
into well rounded individuals with good critical thinking skills!

Friday, October 16, 2009

Second Life

Second Life is not a "game", it is a virtual world. I am really thankful to San Jose State University, School of Library and Information Science for introducing Second Life in their LIBRARY 203 Online Social Networking: Technology and Tools (1 unit) class.

Second Life was developed by Linden Lab and launched on June 23, 2003. It is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid. Second Life is for people aged 18 and over.
Built into the software is a three dimensional modeling tool based around simple geometric shapes that allows a resident to build virtual objects. This can be used in combination with the Linden Scripting Language which can be used to add functionality to objects. More complex three dimensional Sculpted prims (colloquially known as sculpties), textures for clothing or other objects, and animations and gestures can be created using external software. The Second Life Terms of Service ensure that users retain copyright for any content they create, and the server and client provide simple digital rights management functions.

Did you know??:
SJSU is the oldest public institution of higher education on the West Coast and celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2007.

Friday, October 9, 2009

The Involved Library Administratior



I really liked the insights of StevenB on his blog.


http://acrlog.org/2009/09/24/the-involved-academic-library-administrator/

Allen County Public Library Shelving Hints

How does the Dewey Decimal system work?

The basic thing to remember about the Dewey Decimal filing system is this: file digit by digit - not by whole number. For example:

. 451
. 451.01
. 451.012
. 451.023
. 451.04
. 451.04217
. 451.1
. 451.136
. 451.3

451.04217 comes before 451.1 because 0 is smaller than 1. Take it number by number and stop when two numbers are different. So in the example of 451.04217 and 451.1, you would stop at the 0. That is the first number in the sequence that is different, and 0 is smaller than 1 so it will be placed first. Look at our example list again. Does it make more sense now?

. 451
. 451.01
. 451.012
. 451.023
. 451.04
. 451.04217
. 451.1
. 451.136
. 451.3


To learn more about the way the Dewey Decimal system works, read on!

What is a call number? Every book in the library is given a unique call number to serve as an address for locating the book on the shelf. The call number itself is composed of two parts - Dewey Decimal Classification and the Cutter number or book number.


Dewey Decimal Classification The Dewey Decimal system coordinates materials on the same subject and on related subjects to make items easier to find on the shelves. The system uses a combination of letters and numbers.

The Dewey system has ten main classes, as shown:

. 000 Generalities
. 100 Philosophy and Psychology
. 200 Religion
. 300 Social Science
. 400 Language
. 500 Natural Science and Mathematics
. 600 Technology (Applied Sciences)
. 700 Arts
. 800 Literature
. 900 Geography and History


Each of the above classes has ten divisions. For example, consider the 800's, Literature.

800 Literature & rhetoric
810 American literature in English
820 English & Old English literatures
830 Literatures of Germanic languages
840 Literatures of Romance languages
850 Italian, Romanian, Rhaeto-Romanic
860 Spanish & Portuguese literatures
870 Italic literatures Latin
880 Hellenic literatures Classical Greek
890 Literatures of other languages


REMEMBER: The more numbers, the more specific! Each class division is divided again. For example, English & Old English literatures, the 820's, are divided as follows:

820 English & Old English literatures
821 English poetry
822 English drama
823 English fiction
824 English essays
825 English speeches
826 English letters
827 English satire & humor
828 English miscellaneous writings
829 Old English (Anglo-Saxon)


These divisions continue on, narrowing the subject matter with each number added. This is how books are organized in the library. Each book has a number assigned to it depending on the subject matter of the book!


Cutter Numbers
The cutter number for a book usually consists of the first letter of the author's last name and a series of numbers. This series of numbers comes from a table that is designed to help maintain an alphabetical arrangement of author's names within a subject area. For example:

636.73
B38R
Beauchamp, Richard G.
Rottweilers for dummies
636.73
B69C
Boyd, Lee.
Canaan dog: a complete and reliable handbook
636.73
B72B
Brace, Andrew H.
Dog owner's guide to the boxer


What if the library has several works by the same author? How do we keep the call number unique? To do that a work mark or work letter is used to distinguish the various works of a single author. The work mark is a letter that is usually the first letter of the title of the book. For example:

746.4320432
W43K
Weiss, Rita
Knitting for the pampered baby
746.434041
W43T
Weiss, Rita
24-hour crochet projects
746.46
W43L
Weiss, Rita
Little folks' quilts from big folks' patterns


REMEMBER: the cutter number is a decimal, not a whole number, and is also read digit by digit.

Friday, October 2, 2009

50 Years in 2006



John E. Fogarty, Lister Hill, Julia Bennett Amistead, Elizabeth Myer
and the Library Services Act. No.1.1.2006.1.

In 2006 the Library Services Act turned 50. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill on June 19, 1956. The history of the act provides insight into the political process.


John E. Fogarty, worked with Senator Lister Hill to establish the Library Services Act.


Julia Bennett Armistead, ALA Washington Office, another key player,
Washington Office Subject File, 1939-1996.

Elizabeth Gallup Myer died at 81 July 8, 1993. It was noted in American Libraries that she became the first woman to serve in Rhode Island’s governor’s cabinet during her 1964-1975 tenure as director of the Rhode Island Department of State Library Services.

Additional background on the Library Services Act.

Fry, James W. “LSCA and LSCA, 1956-1973: A Legislative History,” Library Trends 24 (July 1975): 7-26.

Healey, James S. John E. Fogarty: Political Leadership for Library Development< Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974.

Lipscomb, C. E. Lister Hill and his influence. Journal of the Medical Library Association v. 90 no. 1 (January 2002),p. 109-10.

McCook, Kathleen de la Pena, Introduction to Public Librarianship. New York, Neal-Schuman, pp. 65-70.

McCook, Kathleen de la Pena, Rocks in the Whirlpool.

Molz, Redmond Kathleen. Federal Policy and Library Support.
MIT Press, Cambridge, 1976.

Raber, Douglas. “Ideological Opposition to Federal Library Legislation: The Case of the Library Services Act of 1956.” Public Libraries (May/June 1995): 162-169.

Source: http://librarian.lishost.org/?cat=22

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Cotgreave Indicator




The Kilkenny Library Indicator
The City or Carnegie Library as it is known locally opened in 1910. The service acquired a Cotgreave Library Indicator that has survived to the present day. The indicator follows the conventional design, measures 180 cm X 120 cm. It contains a 100 slots vertically and 50 across. It thus can account for 5,000 book issues. The indicator seems to have being used from the opening of the library in 1910 up to the early 1940’s.
By the late 1930’s, Kilkenny County Library maintained over 103 centres around the County. These were deposits of books manned by volunteers. Issues for these are recorded but not for the City Library which would suggest that the indicator was still in use then. This was another disadvantage of the indicator system that usage figures were not readily available.

Thus Kilkenny differed from the trend in the United Kingdom in that the indicator remained in use for a long period. This was probably due to a variety of factors. The collection in the library was comparatively small; the library service had few resources so the Indicator probably represented a considerable investment and it also implied very limited access to the books by the public that was seen as desirable at the time.

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/heritage-towns/the-kilkenny-library-indi/the-kilkenny-library-indi/index.xml

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Callimachus

Callimachus (c. 305 - c. 240 BC) was a Greek poet and grammarian, a native of Cyrene and a descendant of the illustrious house of the Battiadae.

He opened a school in the suburbs of Alexandria, and some of the most distinguished grammarians and poets were his pupils, among them Apollonius of Rhodes He was subsequently appointed by Ptolemy Philadelphus chief librarian of the Alexandrian library, which office he held till his death (about 240). His Pinakes (tablets), in 120 books, a critical and chronologically arranged catalogue of the library, laid the foundation of a history of Greek literature.

According to the Suda, he wrote about 800 works, in verse and prose; of these only six hymns, sixty-four epigrams and some fragments are extant; a considerable fragment of the Hecale, an idyllic epic, has also been discovered in the Rainer papyri.

His Coma Berenices is only known from the celebrated imitation of Catullus. His Aitia (causes) was a collection of elegiac poems in four books, dealing with the foundation of cities, religious ceremonies and other customs. According to Quintilian (Inst it. x. 1. 58) he was the chief of the elegiac poets; his elegies were highly esteemed by the Romans, and imitated by Ovid, Catullus and especially Propertius. The extant hymns are extremely learned, and written in a laboured and artificial style. The epigrams, some of the best specimens of their kind, have been incorporated in the Greek Anthology.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callimachus

After a class mate of mine, Maria de Alaiza, said "When I'm stumped, I'll ask myself, what would Callimachus do?", I had to find out just who Callimachus was!! And am I happy I did :-)


Monday, August 31, 2009

12 Ways Libraries Are Good for the Country

Most Americans know what they can expect from a library. And librarians know what it takes to provide comprehensive access to every recorded detail of human existence. It takes support.

Libraries are ready when they are needed, ready to enrich our minds and defend our right to know, just as other institutions protect our safety and property. Without sound minds, however, the American dream of safe streets and secure homes will never be fulfilled.

Libraries safeguard our freedom and keep democracy healthy. To library advocates everywhere—Friends, trustees, board members, patrons, and volunteers—American Libraries offers this gift of 12 ideals toward which we strive. It will take all of us, in a spirit of pride and freedom, to maintain libraries as a living reality in a free nation into the 21st century.

1. Libraries inform citizens. Democracy vests supreme power in the people. Libraries make democracy work by providing access to information so that citizens can make the decisions necessary to govern themselves. The public library is the only institution in American society whose purpose is to guard against the tyrannies of ignorance and conformity, and its existence indicates the extent to which a democratic society values knowledge, truth, justice, books, and culture.

2. Libraries break down boundaries. Libraries provide free family literacy programs for low-literate, illiterate, and non-English-speaking people. In addition, hundreds of librarians across America lead outreach programs that teach citizenship and develop multilingual and multicultural materials for their patrons. Libraries serve the homebound elderly, prisoners, and other institutionalized individuals, the homeless, and the blind and hearing-impaired.

3. Libraries level the playing field. Economists have cited a growing income inequity in America, with the gap between the richest and poorest citizens becoming wider year by year. By making all its resources equally available to all members of its community, regardless of income, class, or other factors, the library levels the playing field. Once users have access to the library’s materials, they have the opportunity to level the playing field outside the library by learning to read, gaining employment, or starting a business.

4. Libraries value the individual. Library doors swing open for independent thinking without prejudgment. Libraries offer alternatives to the manipulations of commercialism, from the excellence of public-television productions to the freethinking of renegade publishers and the vision of poets and artists outside the mainstream business of art and literature.

5. Libraries nourish creativity. In the library we are all children. By stimulating curiosity—parent to the twin forces of creativity and imagination—even the most focused and specialized library serves the purpose of lifting the mind beyond its horizons. Libraries store ideas that may no longer work but can serve as the raw material that, cross-fertilized in the innovative mind, may produce answers to questions not yet asked.

6. Libraries open kids’ minds. Bringing children into a library can transport them from the commonplace to the extraordinary. From story hours for preschoolers to career planning for high schoolers, children’s librarians make a difference because they care about the unique developmental needs of every individual who comes to them for help. Children get a handle on personal responsibility by holding a library card of their own, a card that gives them access to new worlds in books, videos, audiotapes, computers, games, toys, and more.

7. Libraries return high dividends. What do Gallo wines, the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt chain, and billboard-sign giant Metromedia have in common? Libraries made millionaires out of each of these companies’ grateful owners by providing crucial start-up information when they were no more than wannabe business titans. Libraries are there to help people with more personal goals, too. The seed money expended for these and other success stories? Less than $20 per capita per year in tax dollars.

8. Libraries build communities. No narrow definition of community will work in a library. Each community has its libraries and its special collections. Libraries validate and unify; they save lives, literally and by preserving the record of those lives. Community-building means libraries link people with information. Librarians have become experts at helping others navigate the Internet. Before there was talk of cyberspace, there were libraries, paving the way for the superhighway.

9. Libraries make families friendlier. The American family’s best friend, the library, offers services guaranteed to hone coping skills. Homework centers, literacy training, parenting materials, after-school activities, summer reading programs, outreach—like the families they serve, libraries everywhere are adapting to meet new challenges.

10. Libraries offend everyone. Children’s librarian Dorothy Broderick contends that every library in the country ought to have a sign on the door reading: “This library has something offensive to everyone. If you are not offended by something we own, please complain.” This willingness and duty to offend connotes a tolerance and a willingness to look at all sides of an issue that would be good for the nation in any context; it is particularly valuable when combined with the egalitarianism and openness that characterize libraries.

11. Libraries offer sanctuary. Like synagogues, churches, mosques, and other sacred spaces, libraries can create a physical reaction, a feeling of peace, respect, humility, and honor that throws the mind wide open and suffuses the body with a near-spiritual pleasure. But why? Perhaps it is because in the library we are answerable to no one; alone with our private thoughts, fantasies, and hopes, we are free to nourish what is most precious to us with the silent companionship of others we do not know.

12. Libraries preserve the past. Libraries preserve the record; a nation, a culture, a community that does not understand its own past is mired in its own mistakes. Libraries enable us to communicate through distance and time with the living and the dead. It is a miracle kept available by the meticulous sorting, storing, indexing, and preservation that still characterizes library work—work that will carry, in the electronic environment, challenges and a price tag yet unknown.

A 2000 revision of the list that originally appeared in American Libraries in December 1995. Adapted from “12 Ways Libraries Are Good for the Country,” American Libraries 26 (December 1995): 1113–19.

http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/resources/selectedarticles/12wayslibraries.cfm

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Official SJSU blog address



http://slislife.spartasocialnetworks.com/blog/ViewBlog.do?bc=a64f23737e72f85b8fc0eb8ad5b36458
I am officially a graduate student!!
Wow, I have made it so far. First back to school, once at WNC and once at AVC. Then on to Bakersfield College, College of the Sequoias, California State University, Fresno and TMCC. What a lot of school. This will be my 11th year in "higher education".

Thursday, February 19, 2009

SLISLife Blog Link

http://slislife.spartasocialnetworks.com/blog/ViewBlog.do?bc=a64f23737e72f85b8fc0eb8ad5b36458

Masters Program

I actually made it through Libr 203! Now I can register for my first class at SJSU~SLIS, provided I have enough money!! I am an out of state student in Special Session. So it will cost almost $50,000 for the degree.
In Libr 203 there were 10 Lessons. The first lesson was to log on and learn your way around ANGEL the learning management system, like BlackBoard if you are familiar with that one. Lesson 2 was about social networking at SLISLife, blogs and discussions. Lesson 3 was just to make sure we knew how to use a computer. Lesson 4 was Web conferencing using Elluminate. I enjoyed that lesson. Lesson 5 was a Second Life quest! I failed miserably at that and took a quiz instead, which I passed with only 3 points to spare. Lesson 6 was about discussion lists, RSS feeds, and LISTSERV subscriptions. Lesson 7 was about my page on PeopleSoft. They wanted to be sure I knew where to look for grades, how to add and drop classes, and knew how to pay my bill of course! Lesson 8 was a library tour and a linguistic test. Of course I passes with a pretty good score there. Lesson 9 was accessing a restricted reading from the library and writing a short blog about the article. And lesson 10 was a blog entry about what we thought our personal skills were and if we were ready to be online student.
The Second Life lesson was interesting. I actually have an avatar, her name is Libby65 and she has clothes and cool hair. She is "resting" somewhere on orientation island. I know how to walk and fly and get around. But it takes me so long to figure things out. I don't even know how to get off the island and onto another island. The lesson said, take the red pill and go on a quest, OR take the blue pill and a quiz. I tried to make a go of the first option but I couldn't get off the island....maybe I will go back later just to see if I can find the reference desk!!
More later..........

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Late Enrollment

I want to thank everyone who worked
so hard for me to get into Libr 203!
Debbie Faires, Randall Anderson, Gina Lee,
and the ANGEL Administrator!!
I think I will be able to make this happen.

Wish me luck!!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Well..................

It doesn't look good. I may have procrastinated
and left SJSU too long. I was supposed to take
Libr 203 the first semester and I was mistaken
in my belief that I had until May to finish the class.
I didn't have a job, so I couldn't pay tuition.
I was between a rock and a hard place.
So we shall see. I have until February 18th to finish this class.
If I can start Friday, I have a chance!!!!!

Wish me luck!!

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Happy New Year

I hope to start classes this spring at San Jose State University,
towards my masters' degree in Library and Information Science!

Wish me luck!!