One City, One Story 2012

This year is Pasadena Public Library's (PPL) 10th year of One City, One Story with Geraldine Brooks', People of the Book. If you are interested in checking out this book, you can download an ebook, listen to an audiobook or get a print version with your PPL library card. Also, the Shatford Library at PCC has multiple print copies available to borrow as well.

If you have not had a chance to participate in any of the One City, One Story events, it is not too late to do so. Tomorrow Geraldine Brooks will be at Pasadena City College from 2-3:30pm at the Creveling Lounge. She will be discussing her experiences in writing historical fiction with a Q & A session following. Brooks will be signing books at this event as well.

Tomorrow at 7pm is Conversation with Geraldine Brooks at All Saints Church which is located at 132 N. Euclid Avenue. The director of PPL, Jan Sanders, will talk with Brooks' about her experiences writing People of the Book. A Q&A session will follow in addition to a book signing.

If you cannnot catch Brooks tomorrow night, she will also be at Caltech on Friday, March 23 at 3pm. in the Baxter Lecture Hall in Bldg. 77 which is at 1200 E. California Blvd.

Other events include Flavors of the Book, a cooking workshop presented by Old Town Cooking School at the San Rafael Branch located at 1240 Nithsdale Road on Saturday, March 24 at 11am.

For those interested in old manuscripts, Sara S. Hodson, Curator of the Literary Manuscripts of the Huntington Library, will be giving an illustrated talk on medieval manuscripts using examples from the Huntington Library's collections. This will take place in the Donald R. Wright Auditorium at the Central Library at 285 E. Walnut Blvd at 2pm.

For those interested in participating in a book discussion, check out the La Pintoresca Branch Library which is located at 1344 N. Raymond Avenue on Saturday, March 24 at 1pm or the Lamanda Park Branch Library which is located at 140 S. Altadena Dr. on Monday, March 26 at 11am.

If you had a chance to attend any of the One City, One Story 2012 events, feel free to share your experiences. I will be attending Brooks' talk at PCC tomorrow and will share my experience in a future posting.

Preservation Week

If you haven't checked out the Preservation Week display in the Rotunda of the PCC Shatford Library, it will be up till April 29th. The west side of the Rotunda is dedicated to a glimpse of Pasadena City College history from how the campus went from being a high school to a community college. Memorabilia from the Archives can be viewed as well. The east side of the Rotunda focuses on the preservation and repair of materials. A slide show is also set-up showcasing pictures from PCC's history.

This display is in conjunction with the Pasadena Digital History Project which has been a collaboration between Pasadena Public Library, Pasadena Museum of History and PCC Shatford Library.

The American Library Association has more information about Preservation Week on their website. If you stop by, don't forget to grab one of the cool Preservation Week and Pasadena Digital History Project bookmarks.

One City, One Story 2010

If you haven't heard yet, this year's One City, One Story taking place in Pasadena is Alan Drew's novel, "Gardens of Water." There are various events taking place this month all over Pasadena. Even though we're partially done with this month, there are still many events left to catch. Take a look at the Calendar of Events to see what's happening. One can catch a Turkish cooking demonstration on Saturday, March 20 at the San Rafael Branch Library at 11am. If you're interested in participating in a book discussion of Gardens of Water, check the Calendar of Events for various dates and locations. You can also see a compiled list of all the events on the Shatford Library's website as well.

This Sunday, March 14, you can spend An Afternoon with Alan Drew at the Pasadena Convention Center from 3:30-5:30pm. Unfortunately, I probably will not be in attendance but I highly recommend going if you can. I was in attendance for last year's One City, One Story 2009 final event, An Afternoon with author Luis Alberto Urrea. I thoroughly enjoyed that afternoon listening to Luis Alberto Urrea talk about writing "The Hummingbird's Daughter."

In addition, Alan Drew will be on campus tomorrow, March 12 at 9am in the Creveling Lounge located in the new Campus Center. For other related events to be held on the PCC campuses, check out the schedule on the Shatford Library's website.

Last year was the first year I ever participated in a One City, One Story event and it was exciting as a sideline participant. This year, I will be an active participant in a One City, One Story event of the adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet" based on Alan Drew's novel, "Gardens of Water" here at Pasadena City College. When I started getting back into theatre again, little did I know I could and would be able to combine these two passions of mine together. I'm very honored and excited to be a part of this year's One City, One Story. Show times are at 8pm, Thursday, March 25-Saturday, March 27 and at 2pm Saturday, March 27 in the Little Theater (C-106). Admission is free but seating is limited to about 100 people. Free tickets will be distributed starting 45 minutes before the show starts on a first come, first serve basis.

If you haven't yet read "Gardens of Water," I highly recommend it. Alan Drew captured my attention from the first page of his novel. Right now, most of the copies here at Shatford Library are checked out. If you attend this Sunday's event, you can buy the book and meet the author as well. A win-win situation that I'm still considering myself. If you've never taken part in a One City, One Story before, you're missing out on a great series of community events. So take the plunge, and dive into an incredible experience awaiting you.

COLT - Is It Too Late? Can We Offer Assistance?

I feel very odd about writing this. I've earned my certificate but I am unable to find a paraprofessional job that would provide for my living and continued educational expenses. In my day job I use some of my skills. My writing and other activities also draw upon all what I have learned in the program.

I haven't worked in a actual library in many years. I'd love too but no one could have predicted this financial insanity that is before us. I have kept the Counsel of Library Technicians Listserv active to keep an eye out for positions and to find out what folks are talking about in the profession.

Let me cut to the chase; there will not be a professional association if library workers, clerks and paraprofessionals and interested others don't step up and lend a hand. I think there are a number of things that could help the situation. But I am not a member.

It might not be appropriate for me to stick my two cents in but sometimes an outside perspective can help. I don't have magic up my sleeve. This is my opinion, not the LT program, the library or anyone associated with PCC.

This is a extract from a post:

It's great that you've been a member for over 10 years, but I must comment that this is the first time I've seen a posting from you. So - if the end result of the unwanted posting is to get people commenting, I find that a good thing.

The COLT web site is still active, but I just tried it also and couldn't connect. Possibly where it's being housed is down. The COLT Board will look into it. (It seems to be ok now.) I'm going to take this opportunity as a last communication before our July Board meeting to state COLT's needs.

Basically, we need a Board -
a.. Vice/President/ President
b.. Secretary
c.. Treasurer
d.. Members' Registrar
e.. & 5 Regional Directors
The current Board has stayed on for an extra year trying to work on things. We've asked for input from the membership and have received NOTHING. Tricia, that's was annoys me - the continual silence we've received. I can tell by your response that not hearing anything didn't sit well with you either. Yes - we've received messages about how it would be a shame for COLT to end, but it cannot keep going without members getting involved.

The current Board recognizes that for COLT to be viable, changes to its mission and way of doing things need restructuring. We need members who will take on the challenge. COLT will be holding a Board meeting in Chicago on July 10. ALA hasn't assigned our room yet, but when they do, we will post it to the list. This meeting is open to all. If you are going to be in Chicago, please attend and give us your ideas, your minds, your bodies!!! Keep posting to the list,

Jackie Lakatos
COLT Past President
Members' Registrar

I know how hard it is to find resources pertaining to library paraprofessionals and library workers. It is an old/new concept. From Pages, to Clerks to ??? who are we and what is our identity?

Many of us would like to be full time librarians but some of us would be happy pushing carts and sniffing book dust. What if we would like to just help out? Is there a place for us at COLT?

When I look at the listserve it is mainly job listings. I don't get a sense of community. Every once in a while a question will pop up or an announcement of interest but I don't know the members of COLT or have the same sense of community like I can get from the INFOLIT or FARLTR listservs. Those folks ask questions, pass on information and have wonderful discussions.

The community, not the technology sets that kind of engagement. Where is the Southern California library paraprofessional community? The national or international community? Outside of our LT program I don't know.

I do know about burnout. You can't keep asking the same people to pull the wagon and do the work without support. I've had that experience and it is not fun. Obligation will only take you so far.

What Can Be Done About It?

Yeah, I'd thought that might come up as a question. Well I'm going to take a risk here. I am going to ask a question on Twitter and some of the other social networking sites to see if there would be an interest in keeping COLT or being a part of it. I'm going to ask if there is or isn't a value could they drop a comment in the comments.

Not sure that I will get any responses. But if there are I'd like to know what they would want from an organization, what do they expect and what could the contribute? Not necessarily money.

I know one thing I'd change is the look of that COLT web site. No disrespect intended but it is so 1997 -ish. I bet it is hard to change information and have folks contribute if they don't know HTML. There are probably other constrictions as well.

I am bias, I think a monitored blog format works well for groups and it allows for updates when needed and not when the IT person can find the time to do them. A well designed web site could allow for easy uploading and changing of information as well.

Anyway, we'll see what does and does not happen. I certainly will pass on any comments to the organization. Feel free to put in your ideas as well.

Intellectual Freedom and Teens Video at YALSA Blog

Over at the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) blog there is a video about how intellectual challenges affect teens.

Joseph Wilk of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and Katie, a teenager who blogs at the library talk about how challenges to a book or material can affect teen patrons.



There are a few minor quibble with the video. It is not captioned. In this video, it would have really helped because it was hard to hear Katie. I had to crank up the volume to hear the good points that Katie made concerning access to book with subjects such as drinking, drugs and sexual activity.

One of the points that she made was that if a book is written for teens and it contains the kind of things that teens might encounter who are you protecting by challenging the book?

To be fair, this was the first video. I hope the YALSA blog continues to try video blogging. It can be a great way to engage their population about how the library can serve their needs better.

More Info On Collaboration Tools

The word for today is Collaboration. You will be collaborating with your peers, volunteer organizations and individuals you will never meet.

In the past, collaboration happened in meetings, phone conferences or passing documents back and forth via mail. It is now possible for groups, team members and activists to communicate and exchange information about a project and build a documents, process or create an event.

Look, All I Want To Do Is Shelve Books, Is This Really Important?

Yes it is. I support sniffing book dust but at some point you are going to be asked to participate in a project or presentation. If you haven't taken Library 104 yet this is your pre-warning.

You will find that your team members are time strapped. They have personal and professional obligations in addition to the one they just got roped into. The same as you.

Online collaboration tools make it easy to contribute, edit and present information with a reduction of time lag. The other thing about on-line collaboration is you find out real quick who is the slacker and who delivers what they have promised.

What Is A Wiki?

I'm going to let the good folks at PBWiki help explain this to you.



A wiki is a place where a group of people use software to make it easy to work together on a project. You can upload text, photos, maps or links to places that would support the team's goals. You don't have to be a techie to use a wiki, everything is set up for you to enter your information and put it out to the public or just visible to the folks on your team.

In addition to the ones I mentioned in the Library 101 presentation:

• PBWiki and there is an Academic version of PBWiki for educators, libraries and institutions.
• Backpack It allows you or a team member to organize a project, a work flow or anything else a group of folks want to work on. There are free and paid versions. Check out the video tutorial on the main page.
• GoogleDocs allows you to using an online word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software with other team members. So if there is a class report that has to be completed your team could set up the report and members could add to it any place where there is Internet access and at any time. You just need a Google Account and then sign into Goolgle Docs.

These are great tools but not the only one - there are all types of collaboration tools that would fit your budget (free to me) and the kind of resources required. Let's take a look at a few more.



Thinkature - visual collaboration with drawings, outlines and short notes. Remember, not all good ideas arrive via words. Sometimes you have to show in order to tell.

Zoho Notebook - you can add video, photo or text to your Zoho Notebook and keep track of changes made to the project. Zoho has a whole range of free on-line applications such as word processing, wiki, e-mail client, planners and more.

WriteWith is specifically for team documentation. It allows you to set up your team members, the name of the document and the last update. Using WriteWith a team leader can send invitations to team members to review what you have written or edit and include a deadline.

WriteBoard - Place your idea on the write board and have others edit what you have written. You can have a list of team members and you can view comments about the changes in the document.

When you have to get something done with a group of people and there is no time to meet in person then consider using one of these tools to meet and work in cyberspace.

As always, if you have questions please send them in the comments. The comments are moderated so it might take a while to check them out and get back to you.

Medpedia Project - Verified Medical Wiki

File this one under "Well if you can't beat 'em join em." The Medpedia Project is a collaboration between four leading medical schools, Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School and the Berkeley School for Public Health.

The project is currently asking for content from health organizations, health professionals and others in the health care industry.

The goal is to provide open source but vetting medical information that would be available to all users around the globe.

According to the web site Medpedia will serve as "a catalog, database and learning tool about health, medicine and the body for doctors, scientists, policymakers, students and citizens that will improve medical literacy worldwide."

As always there are questions and the FAQ does answer some of mine. Unlike Wikipedia the editors will be selected and approved.

From the FAQ's:

Only M.D.s, Ph.D.s in a biomedical field and people with medical credentials will be allowed to contribute to Medpedia. Although only M.D.s can edit pages on Medpedia, anyone with an interest in health, medicine and the body is invited to be a Member of the Medpedia professional networking community.

The editors will not be paid, it is a voluntary participation. The site eventually hopes to support itself via text advertisements.

One of the questions that hasn't been answered in the FAQ's is whether alternative medical practices such as Acupuncture, Naturopathic medicine, Oriental Medicine practices and similar treatment options would be permitted on wiki.


My List of Questions

A question I have is what is to stop a doctor who has an relationship with a pharmaceutical company to write content in favor of a company that might provide a gratuity to support his/her promotion of certain treatment options? What mechanism is in place to find out if the medical editor's hands have been greased with "special consideration?"

Would the medical community rat 'em out or would it be considered free speech? What would be the controls on the type of content a doctor could or could not post? For example, if the information is counter to what the American Medical Association accepts but the doctor has verifiable information would it be posted or blocked?

My other questions involve reading and comprehension accessibility by average users. What about health care literacy issues? Is it going to be accessible for vision and hearing impaired users? Multiple languages? Video, is there going to be video of certain procedures? Captioned video of course.

Forgive me, I'm greedy. But if this is going to be a global information repository it has a lot of work ahead of them. Some of that work has been paved by web sites like WebMD

What will Medpedia bring to the party and why would library folks use this instead of PubMed or go directly to some of the medical school library/resource web site?

I look forward to having another tool to help folks make health care decisions. I hope it is up to the challenge. Time will tell.

EditGrid - Online Collaborative Spreedsheet

Picture this. You are working at a library that has Internet access but really old versions of Microsoft Office. Or you are working on a team project where you need data from a variety of people.

Those people maybe in the same building, across the state or across the globe. You've got numbers to crunch. You have Microsoft Office, Open Office or access to Google Docs but you need to be able to collaborate with other folks entering information. Google Docs does have spreadsheet collaboration but does it do it in real time or with an Instant Messaging connection?

You might want to take a look at EditGrid. If you know Lotus 123 or Excel you can handle EditGrid. Now when you need to share spreadsheet info with team members it is a lot easier.
You can upload an existing spreadsheet or create one from scratch.

The neat part is the options that are available to users. You can:

• Keep the spreadsheet private or set the viewing and participation rights to the spreadsheet
• Use Instant Messaging to communicate inside of the EditGrid about the spreadsheet
• Create a workspace for contributors for just their area of input.

If that wasn't enough they are working on a version of EditGrid that can be used on a iPhone.

So What Is the Catch?

The spreadsheets are hosted on EditGrid servers. If EditGrid goes out of business and you haven't saved a local copy then you could loose your work. But you know to save a backup copy of anything you can't afford to lose, right?

EditGrid has three user options. The free version is for home and personal professional use. There is a limit of a 2MB upload however you can have a many spreadsheets as you want. You still can share and make use of the live chat options.

The other versions, Subscription and Licensed are fee based but allow you to have access to more features like a custom log in page, connection behind firewalls and account administration.

Twitter in Plain English by Common Craft

What is Twitter? Twitter is a free web based application that let you sent messages of 140 characters to cell phones, instant messaging program, Twitter pages or any other capable receiver.

Caption version can be viewed at DotSub

To be honest, I don't Twitter. Not yet. I have enough to do in my day. Some folks seem to think I run off at the mouth a bit too much anyway. That doesn't mean I dislike Twitter, it has multiple purposes but I'm just not there yet.

Library Uses of Twitter

Twitter can be used as a means to alert patrons - Jeff at Gather No Dust has a post on how his library uses Twitter with Google Calendar and RSS fees to notify patrons of events and new books.

Twitter can also be used to staying in contact with special populations such as youth, poets or mystery writers by alerting them to events happening at the library. Here is an example of how the Cleveland Public Library uses Twitter.

To learn more about Twitter for library use visit iLibraian there is a guide page on how to get started with Twitter, some of the uses and tools to up your Twitter level. Librarian David Lee King has a post on Twitter Explained for Libraries. You can always go to the source the Twitter FAQ for more information about the service.

Internet Archive Library Collection Development Blog

Oh the joy, the rapture! There is so much good stuff here I don't know where to begin. The Internet Archive main purpose is to record and display historical materials that are in a digital format.

If you start collecting items you have to have some kind of collection development process. Part of that process is to display the goodies that you have acquired so that your patrons have a reason to stop by and use the collection.

Hence, the Internet Archive Library Collection Blog. Here is just a sampling of what you can find at the collection blog:

• Tribute to Thomas A. Edison with links to videos of some of the first movies to be created.
• A September 11, 2001 television archive link to the events of that day using news reports from the ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC.
  
• Marriage as viewed from 1950's videos, videos from 2004 San Francisco Same Sex marriages and link to a lecture on the historical changes in marriage.
• There is a section on Airships and Balloon, the Archive has a collection of text and motion picture items on air powered flying machines.
• A collection was build around "Talk Like A Pirate Day" with examples from movies, audio, animations and text materials.

There is more but I have to pace myself. You on the other hand should dive right in and soak up the richness of combining our analog past with the digital future.

Backpack – Free Information Storage Locker

You are bouncing from your home computer, laptop and school computer. You have notebooks, textbooks and pounds of paper. There are team members and projects to coordinate up the wazhoo. Not to mention the ideas and brainstorms that you’d love to keep in some kind of order.

Backpack is cool. And for library students it is double cool. Here is the deal. You are given a free space to keep track of lists, research, shopping notes or whatever you want to monitor in you academic or personal life. Or, if you have team project, each member can post what they found in a simple centralized place.

You don’t need to know a lick of code or HTML. If you can type and get to a web page you can use Backpack.

You can keep your list private, only allow team members to view or contribute to a project or you can share information with all who stroll by your locker. It gets better. With Backpack you can send email that will appear on your page. Another option you have is to upload information from your cell phone or from a Personal Digital Assistant device.

What is the catch? There really isn’t one. You sign up at the web site. Then you are given space on the Backpack web site. For most people the free space is enough to manage a single project. If you need more space then, yes you would have to pay for it.

It really is a neat tool you can access anywhere - http://www.backpackit.com