What's your Favorite Holiday movie?

What is your favorite holiday movie? Is there something on your must-see list this holiday season?

Let us know! Lavery Library is considering adding to its Holiday movie collection. Email your suggestions to Kate Ross at kross@sjfc.edu

We already have:

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
The Nightmare before Christmas
A Christmas Story
It's a Wonderful Life
Home Alone
Jingle All the Way
The Polar Express
Elf
The Santa Clause
Miracle on 34th Street

UNYOC conference

I went to my first UNYOC chapter conference last week. It was in Ithaca, so I just went down for the day. Gorgeous time of year to visit. I was busy taking notes, learning new acronyms and feeling so, so green. I did meet two of the librarians from U of R, which was great and a nursing librarian from Canada. Hopefully, we can swap some lesson plans.

Above picture is the keynote, the room was very cold - hence the pink scarf.

Forgot my own username

So its really bad when you forget your gmail account so you can't even log in to your own blog. At convocation we had a tech guru come give a demonstration and she said something along the lines of how many people have blogs? How many write regularly? My hand shot down fast. Okay by me.

Just means that I have been busy.

On the road again.

Well it was a world wind, interview, wed, honeymoon, interview, resign, kindof of month. The last leg will be a apartment search, lease, move, start kind of week.

My Mom's online

My Mom got the internet again, so everyday I send her some stuff from the feeds I follow. She likes the ones from docutiker the best.

Art of Questioning in Instruction

Thanks to all who came to my interactive workshop at LOEX! I emailed participants the handout and all the questions that everyone came up with. If anyone has pictures of the session, could you please email me them?

LOEX was a blast

Still decompressing from LOEX - didn't take any pictures so I went on to flickr and found some (thanks carrie donovan)! The fire marshall could have totally busted me for too many people in a room - but how could I say no!

Now I am trying to find a home for my presentation to be a workshop. ACRL Themes just didn't fit this year.

Movies in Libraries

Entertainment Weekly list 18 movies with awesome library scenes: Atonement, Breakfast Club, Ghostbusters, Jumper, the Mummy, Beauty and the Beast, Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire, Seven, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Philadelphia, Desk Set, the Day after Tomorrow, National Treasure: Book of Secrets...too tired to type the rest..

Anime at its finest!

Anime about libraries of course. Library war is an "action comedy anime adapts Hiro Arikawa's popular novel about battles fought to preserve libraries when a new law threatens to clamp down on freedom of expression in 2019." animenewsnetwork.

Plagiarize and your salary will be cut.

So, another professor plagiarizes. Madonna G. Constantine from Columbia Unversity: In response to a hate crime incident, a law firm finds out that the vicitim plagiarized from collegues and students. Investigation is still on going, but sources say her salary has been cut.

In the Future Libraries Will Burn.

Today I did an English Composition class. As part of the class we discussed fee verus free resources.

The students had to draw a picture of what the campus library would look like if all information was free. Total count:

• Two burning buildings and one fire.
• Two tumbleweeds.
• Two brawls.
• Four dead bodies and a boy buried by a pile of books.

A Professor as Plagiarist

Two papers published in Science and Nature Chemical Biology by a South Korean scientists were fake. The biotechnology professor has been suspending from teaching and conducting research. Chronicle Article He even did research for Harvard for a while.

The Best Recommendation - from my Mom?

That's right folks - it's optional, but colleges are still giving Mom and Dad the opportunity to write a letter of recommendation to get their kid into college. Read More

TV for Free - HULU

Free episodes online! HULU http://www.hulu.com/ I can get Simpsons and King of the Hill? Awesome.

Spitzer News - Librarians track gossip best

Librarians do it best! Spitzer & Prostitutes. Couldn't get into the New York Times page, try the eight hundred other zillion sources that are writing about the scandal. My favorite tool? Google News .

It took me more than ten pages to figure out that if Spitzer resigns the lieutenant governor David Patterson becomes governor. He is legally blind and could be the first African-American Governor of New York.

Colleges Freak at What they don't Understand

So using a study group in the library isn't cheating, using a study group in a online Coursement Management System set up by professor isn't cheating, but using Facebook to build an online study group is? Whatever....http://www.thestar.com/article/309855

Julie Andrews is Heaven!

Julie Andrews is Honorary Chair of National Library Week - can life get any better. Practically perfect in every way....check out the video on YouTube.

No Librarians at a Presidential Library!!

So to continue my obsession with the the Truman Presidentional Library, checked their site and in the staff directory NO LIBRARIANS. Okay so its really like a museum/records storage so they need more archivists, but if they have a library technician, wouldn't it make sense that they had a librarian?

Bush Library - no staff directory

Clinton Library - no staff directory

Lincoln Presidential Library - awesome http://www.alplm.org/contact/home.html

Online Predators

APA Release: Online predators only pretend to be teenagers 5% of the time - 95% of the time they are themselves. I don't know which is worse. Press Release or Full Article "Online Predators and their victims"

Yes it can happen in your library - you would be stupid to think that it couldn't. Everyone should be trained about how to report suspicous behavior and/or lawbreaking. Even if you know what to do it's harder than it looks. I had to confront a patron looking at porn (against the law in Missouri) - I totally froze and a collegue had to take care of it.

You say Swastika, I say Swastika?

A New York Public Library is under attack because it has set up desks in the shape of a pinwheel, or is it a Nazi Swastika, or is it a left facing Swastika? Several parties are claiming that the desk resembles the Nazi Swastika and lodged a complaint. Article Link

Part of Definition of Swastika from New Catholic Encyclopedia:

The swastika, accordingly, was a symbol of good omen, a bringer of luck, prosperity, fertility, protection, and long life. It was employed also as a symbol of fire, lightning, and of the heavenly bodies and their motions. It has a prominent place in the various forms of Buddhism, and in Hinduism and Jainism.

Bush's Library? What about Eisenhower?

So the fight over whether or not to have the Bush Presidential library at Southern Methodist University ranges on....NY Times article (snap shot:) "Opponents of the project, including current and retired bishops and faculty members hostile to President Bush over the Iraq war and social issues, say church rules require that an agreement be submitted to the 290 elected delegates of the church’s South Central Jurisdiction."

But what if the past proves anything about the future - it won't matter one bit where it is. I got the chance to role through the small town in Kansas where Eisenhower's library was. Total reaction = sad. Off the thruway exits, poor signage to get there - ugly abondoned parking lots. Actual library - hidden, neglected. I couldn't even tell if it was open. Should have stopped, but didn't. It may be a wonderful place, but it lacked curb appeal and cars in the visitors lot.

Classroom configuration...

Tomorrow is my first class at Fredonia and it is 35 high school students. We have an instruction room with 21 computers....moveable tables that seat two kids a table, but only one laptop. This is math at is finest!!!!

Blankies are official!

As a geek I always loved dictionaries. The Oxford English Dictionary does monthly revisions and new words. Check out what just made it in December.

Blankie n.

The lexical innovations of children are often so short-lived or idiosyncratic that they do not gain widespread currency outside a particular family. Blankie, however, a colloquialism for "blanket" formed by adding the suffix –ie to the first syllable, has stood the test of time. Written evidence shows over 80 years of English usage of the word, especially in North America, but it probably has a longer, unrecorded history in the language of the nursery.

I want to work for Google!

So, if I didn't love my job I would definetely consider Google. I just ran into their Google Privacy channel on YouTube. Great videos.

For those looking, here is a the Google employment page http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/index.html