chatter from the Library Monkey

back home

Conferences are nice — great get aways, but I think you should be better prepared than I have been. I am not sure what I wanted to get out of this conference. Did I want to meet new people that could help me? not really. Meet old friends? not that I can think of — the people who I might be interested in meeting are not here, and probably wouldn’t be here.

Has anything in the world librarianship changed that I need to know about? I am sure, but nothing at this conference has showed me that.

Just had breakfast and listened to the SLMS meeting that people ate through, talked through, blogged through and zombi-ed through. Perhaps there were some good parties last night. I wasn’t invited to any, but then I didn’t care to be.

I was hoping that in my futility of my job, somehow tis conference might make me think — “being a librarian is the greatest thing in the world.’ Not really. Ironically my mentor/friend stated that in her speech. It wasn’t convincing enough for me.

I was glad to have a few people be nice to me. It was nice to hear that there are lots of teachers that are disrespectful to librarians at other schools and my school has not cornered the market. And that those same taechers tend to be disrespectful to their co-teachers and often don’t know about it…

I am not sure if the people who were nice to me, were nice because nice is right, or if they liked me. Or were perhaps interested in me romantic, if that was the case, they weren’t nice enough for that to be clear. Ironically I was thinking last night at dinner that there were about 130 librarians in the room and at best only six would consider sleeping with. And that is only on the superficial, visual level. Who knows what I would think if I actually talked to them.

There certainly has been enough time. Like the day starts with breakfast from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., after breakfast, the next seminar is at 9:30 a..m so I have an hour to hang. Those breaks range from 15 to 75 minutes. I have had some nap time and some typing time. Fortunately for the wireless some computer on line time.

I guess the time lag is great for those who would like to network.

The blogging thing kills me. There was a woman blogging during a gaming seminar (bringing educational games into the library and education). She spent time finding links to things he said and ended up writing a two paragraph blog. I wanted to lean over and say — “Why not just link to his site that he keeps saying has all the links.”

And that my friends is what is wrong with blogging: People what to repeat and take some kind of credit for it. I understand that you have become some kind of a guru and people are looking to you to educate them… Well put the links on and quite acting like you discovered something.

There will be a lot of ‘blog library,’ linking to ‘blog tech’ that is linked to ‘blog tech2,’ ‘blog tech3,’ etc. that are also linked to another site. So information x has 100 web sites related to it, BUT just says the samething over and over

the wonderful of being back

Two wonderfully sad things about my school dance in my face when I get back. First is I go to see the school play that ’star’ directs. It wasn’t the worse play I have ever seen, it is about #5. The first three worse would be the first three plays I saw the school put on…last year was about #7. #4 would be a performance of one of my plays that another school did.

There are two things that make these plays bad. The first is the kids don’t learn their lines (why should they, star stands on the sidelines feeding lines). The second is that it doesn’t seem to matter to the kids, community or star how bad the plays are. Theatre is the one place where our school could shine. There is the potential, not that I have seen any great acting…I think it is there.

The second thing was the ongoing e-mail from a mom of two jerks. It started out with son #2 who checked up a USB memory stick more than a month ago and did not return it. It was due the next day. I e-mailed the mom about it. The next day the kid came in and had it, but wasn’t going to give it to me. I should have written him up, after he accused me of stealing something from him

He told me that I had his…which his mother admitted he didn’t have one. I love it when the mother of Pinocchio wants to talk about minutia after she finds out her son accuses me of stealing his USB. She wanted me to rest at ease because she was going to buy Pinocchio one.

If that wasn’t enough, she also wanted to talk about her other son ‘ted bundy.’ The other kid is a psychotic. If we have had a serial killer in my school, he would be it. He totally can’t be trusted and his mother wants to know why I question things he does.

He had his computer use restricted because he got on a teacher’s profile and downloaded “How many five-year-olds you can beat up.” Since that time I caught him on a computer on another student’s profile and heard that he got on one of the computers in the office to change the background. I am not sure how many co-workers who would want to admit the kid is a jerk.

Here is a wonderful irony. ‘ted bundy’ is a jerk all the time — it is well known how reckless of a driver he is…and just general bad behavior in school. He was accepted into National Honor Society, which star advises.

What makes me frustrated about that, is not that ted bundy got on NHS, but that there is a kid who is really smart, insightful and trustworthy. He didn’t get on. He was in the crappy play tonight. I am sure he doesn’t like being in the play, but is willing to do it because ’star’ needs him. ted bundy is not in the play, he is not back stage and he is not in attendance.

Tigers, after sweeping the yankers, have just lost two games in Minnesota, which should not happen and could be swept by the Twins, that would be a disappointment

Gratitude (3)