Library & Literary Miscellany

This tale is a good old trickster tale in which the little rabbit uses his wits to overcome the great and mighty whale and elephant.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Share This

This is a retelling of an old, old English folktale about an old woman whose pig simply will not cooperate. As the tale progresses, she tries to enlist the help of many beings and/or things, the tale adds on to itself in good old cumulative tale fashion. This chain tale retelling is an adaptation of the version recorded by Joseph Jacobs.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Share This

Here are some links to a couple of projects that I completed in graduate school. They’re worth looking at if you want to learn more about:

Google Custom Search Engines (brought to you as part of Google Coop)

The Many Faces of WorldCat

Go forth and enjoy!

Share This

A Storytime Plan is a program combining read-aloud books, fingerplays, music, and crafts for children to get them excited about the world of stories, learning, and ideas. Stories serve many purposes such as enabling us to share experience, understand our world, and build community.

A good rule of thumb in creating a plan is to BE FLEXIBLE: Storytime involves a teller and audience interaction and the teller should plan flexibly enough to switch the order of the program or swap out the stories told and the books read based on the age and attitude of the kids.

Some quick resources for picking out books to use during storytime: story collections in the 398.2 sections, search catalog by subject, WorldCat, Novelist, Amazon, other librarians, online lists, and anything else that seems helpful

Many people have many ideas about how best to proceed with planning and implementing storytime. One framework that I have found useful was developed by Elizabeth Ellis a teller from the US. Her framework for creating a storytelling Program is the following: Haha!, Aha, Aahh, Amen… (now, to elaborate)

• Ha—start with short, funny stories
• Aha—follow with something clever, witty or with a twist
• Aaaah—continue with a longer interesting tale with some emotional depth
• Amen—end with a powerful or meaningful one (or continue for another cycle)

Now, this program framework, like everything to do with storytime, is flexible. For any given plan, the planner might instead decide it best to insert rhymes, songs, crafts, or otherwise. The most common types of of Library Children’s Programs are: Lapsit (emphasizing adult-child interaction and featuring songs and fingerplay activities. Ages: 6 months to 2 years old.), Toddler Time (like lapsit, toddler time also features interactive stories, picture books, songs, fingerplays, and crafts. Ages: 2-3), Preschool Storytime (more of the same, perhaps including longer stories or games).

Each library’s policies and age divisions will vary. From time to time, I will be creating storytime plans for various age groups, and putting them on my Storytime Resources page. Feel free to send me comments and to add your own ideas.

Share This

I’ve been working on creating and organizing (notice the disclaimer: very much works in progress) my Library Thing and Shelfari accounts with books I love and/or mean to read very soon. It takes quite some time to do the tagging, so I am pacing myself (goal: all books with tags by 2050…or possibly sooner).

Share This

RSS…yes, the rich site summary, the really simple syndication, the highly effective tool for keeping up with content. Any, yes, I do find it really simple to subscribe to RSS feeds, but, no, I did not find it so simple to create my own. However, it’s supposed to be simple if one can only follow directions such as are found in Stephen Downes’ “How to Create an RSS Feed with Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer.” It’s a great article, an article that has helped me to (almost) get my first RSS feed from scratch up and running. Now if I can only figure out how to get the picture to go with the feed…

But anyway, if you haven’t begun using RSS yet, then I’d recommend you start simple and check out some of the popular web aggregators such as Bloglines (my personal favorite), News Gator, or Google Reader. You’ll be up and running in no time. And if you are already using RSS, then you don’t need to be reading this post. Go read a feed.

Share This

Put your seatbelts on, wikis move fast (or at least wikiwiki derives from Hawaiian meaning fast or super-fast). Wikis are different from blogs in that they are designed to enable users to add and edit content collectively (versus one blogger contributing content that only the blogger can edit and other blog readers adding comments about that content).

I’m not going to pontificate about the many wonderful uses of wikis, but I will link to a few of my newfound favorite wikis so you can see for yourself some of the great ways they have been used (gasp, who knew there were wikis in existence beyond Wikipedia?)…

WikiIndex: what librarian doesn’t love an index that points to other good stuff?

LibSuccess: this is the one that I discussed on our own class wiki; it’s a wiki to share best practices among LIS professionals

Book Lovers: aah, a wiki dedicated to the love of books. The book that was showcased the day I visited was Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization (enough said)…

Wikiversity: I haven’t tried this one yet, but the premise is cool (I’m all about free learning materials)

Cookbook Wiki: a wiki for sharing recipes

World66: the travel guide you write (i.e., wiki focused on disseminating information about sundry travel destinations from those who have already traveled there)

And really I could go on and on and on, but, for fear of becoming as tiresome as Energizer bunny commercials tend to, I will quite there. I do reserve the right to talk about wikis again in a later post, so stay tuned :)…

Share This

I have a few posts from a blog I started in graduate school that I’m transferring over to this new one, beginning with beginning blogging. So here it is (originally written in January 2007):

Since this is a blog, I thought I might as well begin at the beginning of my journey into web information services by reflecting upon my current knowledge about some aspects of blogging as well as my current lack of knowledge about other aspects of blogging. So here are some of my thoughts on the information communication tool on the web known as a blog…

A definition and delineation is always a good place to begin when thinking about something. What is a blog and what is it not? A blog is a web site that contains a person’s online personal journal replete with his or her reflections, and/or anything else they care to share with the web community. A blog is interactive and dynamic. Blogs frequently contain comments (feedback or conversations) by other bloggers or blog readers as well as hyperlinks to other resources that the blog writer deems to be of interest. For novice bloggers and/or those who are reticent to venture into blogging, the thought of putting one’s thoughts out there publicly can be quite intimidating (or maybe that’s just me). A blog may be (depending on how the privacy settings are managed) but is not designed to be kept entirely to oneself.

Thus, the easy part is defining the blog, and the slightly more difficult (but still utterly manageable) part is beginning to blog. How does one get from a blank blog page to a page filled with sagacious reflections and other tidbits that others want to read? I guess just begin typing…

As for the mechanics of beginning to blog, one must first decide whether to get some blogging software and host a blog or to sign up at some blog hosting site on the web. Being a beginning blogger, I thought the latter sounded more appealing, but oh how to choose which blog hosting site to go with (other than of course the essential factor of their offering some sort of free membership option).

To assist me in my oh-so-important blog hosting decision, I visited a few sites such as About.com’s Blog Software and Hosting Page. In the end (after considering every blog hosting service known to mankind and almost being won over by LiveJournal), I decided initially to go with WordPress.com as the host of my blog. It seemed to be easily navigable and had a free membership option and that was good enough for me. I’ve since transferred over to WordPress.org which is perfectly suited for downloading the software and hosting the blog on one’s own server space.

Share This