Hollywood Librarian needs you!

Tammy Flippen has been communicating with Hollywood Librarian writer and director Ann Seidl about the Missouri premiere. She is very interested in YOUR feedback about the film. Did you like it? Did you hate it? Do you think more libraries in Missouri will be interested in hosting the film?

 You can provide valuable feedback and get involved two ways.

1. Respond to this post with comments. You can post annonymously because she wants honest feedback.

2. Visit the Hollywood Librarian website and join the forum discussion.

 Jennifer, Springfield-Greene County Library

Missing your conference program?

Conference program with lots of notes from some of the sessions.   A conference program was turned in at the hospitality desk on Thursday.  It contains a small quantity of Missouri State Library bookmarks and brochures and there are notes from conference sessions such as the ones the covered the Missouri Digital Heritage Project, disaster recovery for computers, Library 2.0, and Nancy Pearl’s afternoon session.

If you got home without this program that included your session notes, please contact Martha Love at marthal@mail.sgcl.org.  I will be glad to send it to you.

Louise Jackson ~ The American West in Recent Children’s Books

I was asked to post this to the blog for those that attended Louise’s presentation. Her website is: http://www.louiseajackson.net/

 Jennifer, Springfield-Greene County Library

Reaching Out with Social Software

Joy Weese Moll, librarian consultant, Washington University Libraries presented a program on Reaching Out with Social Software. It was a fun and informative class for novices and experts alike.

You can stop reading here if you like because her entire presentation is available on a wiki at: http://mlasocialsoftwarepresentation.pbwiki.com

Joy’s definition of social software was simply online tools for connection, communication and community. What I like about this definition is that embodies the best of what role our library should be playing in our community. She then broke down the presentation into five sections. My hyperlinking is not working so please excuse the listed websites, I’ll fix it when I get back home. I know, I know-it look’s totally 90’s.)

1. Wiki.
Defined: A website or similar online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively. Interesting note here ‘wiki’ means quickly in Hawaiian. If you want to put up a quick wiki or just want to try it out, Joy recommends using pbwiki http://pbwiki.com

2. Blog
Defined: Rapidly updated web pages with the newest content at the top. If you read a lot of blogs the best way to keep up is with a RSS feeder. Bloglines (bloglines.com) or Google Reader (reader.google.com) was recommended.

3. Instant Messaging
Defined: Real-time communication with typed messages. The hip form of communication for those under 25 (email is for old people!!). Meebo (meebo.com) is a web-based service that can handle AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, MSN.

4. Sharing Sites
Defined: Websites designed to allow users to share. Examples include del.icio.us (not delicious.com), Flickr (flicker.com), YouTube (youtube.com), Library Thing (librarything.com) and Good Reads (goodreads.com)

5. Online communities
Defined: Websites designed to foster communities of users around shared interests. Facebook (facebook.com), MySpace (myspace.com) , Live Journal (livejournal.com) , Ning (ning.com) and Twitter (twitter.com) were all discussed.

I did get a plug in for the conference blog and I know there is some action on Twitter. So, get out there and play around with these tools. It is so much fun and it is a great way to interact with your community. Joy had a few suggestions that really stuck out for me when it came to being a part of student’s lives.
-Be the person, not the institution.
-Be friendly and open. Do not overwhelm.

Jennifer, Springfield-Greene County Library

Vampires & Werewolves & Witches, Oh My!

Kathy Leitle, associate deputy director, St. Louis Public Library and Amy Brown, assistant manager of the Buder Branch, St. Louis Public Library presented a program entitled Vampires & Werewolves & Witches, Oh My! The Wild World of Paranormal Romance Readers Advisory.

As most adult services librarians know, paranormal romances are hot! Slap a vampire in the novel and you almost have a bestseller on your hands. (hmmmm!) The room was almost at capacity which made it clear how well librarians know our customers!

Paranormal romance was defined by requiring two elements:
1. Something not of the real and proven world. This can be magic, time travel, ESP, witches, faeries etc…
2. Happily ever after. No matter where in time you are or what powers you have-if you don’t have a happy ending it isn’t a romance.

An extensive annotated bibliography was discussed and provided. It listed each author with an annotation of their different serices and then an annotation of each title in the series in the order they should be read.

You can email either presenter to receive this information.

Kathy Leitle (kleitle@slpl.lib.mo.us)
Amy Brown (abrown@slpl.lib.mo.us)

Jennifer, Springfield-Greene County Library

Ellen Wittlinger ~ True Teen Advocate

Sometimes you stumble across a book or an author that changes your life. Suddenly, you are thrust into a world that challenges your every notion of what life is or it makes you realize that you are not alone in this world.  After I read Hard Love and Parrotfish  and attended the Young Adult Author Luncheon with Ellen Wittlinger, I knew that Ellen was one of those authors.

 This journey of self-discovery should happen over a lifetime but too often we limit our struggles and true defining moments to when we are teenager. We forget to keep exploring what Ellen calls the  basements of ourselves. We forget what it is like to struggle with who we are. As I listened to her coax us back to that place, I found myself wondering just how many of us stop looking inside and downstairs for fear of the monsters that are hard to face head on because they are not imaginary.

I cannot miss the opportunity to praise Ellen Wittlinger for refusing to shy away from the tough and controversial topics of GLBTQ (Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning) for teens. She talked of schools that would request she not talk about her “gay” novels or places that would uninvite her when they realized she would answer any and every question a student might ask her. 

In her newest book, Parrotfish, Ellen writes about transexuality, one of only two books for teens on the subject. This is sobering considering the statistic she shared that as high as 50% of transgender youth are suicidal. When will we graduate to a society were humanity is the most important thing anyone can offer and love is simply love? Yeah for the librarians and authors like Ellen who are out there working with the youth and making a difference in their lives.

 ~Jennifer, Springfield-Greene County Library District

Librarians who lunch, dinner and watch movies…

The best part of MLA is meeting all the other librarians! What a fun group of people!!! So willing to share information and meet other librarians! I have really enjoyed making new friends and connections at this conference! The lunches and dinners where you have a great opportunity to talk, laugh and share—this is the heart of library collaborations and social networking!!! Thursday ended with the showing of the Hollywood Librarian—what a great documentary of librarians in film as well as the demonstrated need for library advocacy!

Thanks to everyone who made this conference so seamless, informative and packed with opportunities to meet others and make new friends!!! A special thanks to all the new friends I made (you know who you are)—who made a First Timer feel so welcome! I had a great time!!!!

—-Courtney Mlinar, Cottey College

Library Databases and RSS

All of the Computer and Information Technology presentations were really great, but this was my favorite! We learned so many practical applications for our library users and faculty members! We learned how to set up RSS feeds directly from EBSCO to our web pages or to an email address…what a valuable tool! One of the demonstrated uses was similar to a Subject Pathfinder—setting up the 5 most current articles about a specific subject—to display on a library web page! What a great idea! For example…having a pathfinder for medical research or even gardening…with the latest 5 EBSCO articles automatically updated as news becomes available…I thought this was an awesome tool!

—Courtney Mlinar, Cottey College

The Strong, Silent Librarian

I was honored today by the distinction of serving in the capacity of a table constructed from four male librarians.  You read that correctly.  Jim Snack, a magician and motivational speaker, used the four of us to demonstrate the importance of interdependence and cooperation. 

Mr. Snack is married to a woman whose maiden name is Treat.  He has many other important credentials, but none as impressive as this.

Motivational speakers aren’t normally my cup of tea just because of the unabashed narcissism of the whole self-help genre.  But Mr Snack won me over with what I thought were some good points about the success of a group being based on a shared vision and interdependent human relationships.  Shared visions, he said, are the strongest and the ones most likely to become reality.  Plus Snack is a magician too, and I do like magicians.  A card trick here and there softens the disappointment of being told you can’t always accomplish great things all by yourself.   

Anyway, he went out into the audience looking for men.  He had to walk around for awhile, of course, but did eventually find the four of us.  If you were a man in that audience and he passed on by where you were seated but didn’t pick you, we all know why.  He was going for a sturdy table.

He got us all up on stage, made some jokes about The Full Monty, and then asked us to take off our jackets.  Very funny.  I saw what was coming as soon as we were seated in that square.  We leaned back across each others laps as instructed and he pulled out the chairs from beneath us. 

Everyone admired the sturdy Man Table and the camaras flashed.  It was a proud moment.

To accomplish the shared vision of the Man Table we each had to give up our individuality and engage in an interdependent formation of entangled limbs and torsos.  I do get it. 

Still, we started with four, strong individuals.  And every shared vision begins in just one silent person’s thinking head.  So it might still be worth asking, in the words of Tony Soprano, “Whatever happened to the strong, silent type?”  We still need them in libraries.

 Seth Hershberger, Cass County Public Library

Snapshot: Marge Kudrna

I had waived to Marge in the State Library booth at the exhibition hall, and as I set down beside her before a session, we started playing that game. You know the game where you know that you know the other person, but aren’t sure precisely how. We ran through a list of state events we had both attended until finally it became clear. We met at the 2007 PLA Spring Symposium in San Jose. I had to go to California to meet this wonderful woman, but you can read about her right here:

Marge Kudrna, State Library, Youth Services Consultant
This is her first MLA library conference, but she has a long history of other conferences.

Favorite Book: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Best thing for her about a library conference: In her own words, “It gives me an opportunity to meet the person I talk to over the phone so much – just the personal contacts are wonderful.”

Ideas she is taking home with her: Marge says she has been gathering lots of ideas for the 2008 Summer Reading Program (BUGS!).  In fact we caught up at the program about Missouri Bugs.  A large part of Marge’s job includes organizing the summer reading workshops across the state that help librarians prepare for summer reading programming at their library.  So watch for those workshops to be announced and look for Marge’s smiling face!

-Elizabeth Moreau, Children’s Librarian, Kansas City Public Library