Each day of our lives is a gift and a blessing. I write about the wonderful experiences I encounter during this journey. I'm thankful to my Lord for the countless gifts He has given me.
My daughter's labor started sometime yesterday in the afternoon. What an exciting time. She has been so good keeping up to date with the latest developments. I am thankful for that since she is not in our town.
Travis's phone call came in before midnight with the birth announcement. I was asleep; in the morning I found out that Tate Ezekiel had made it's arrival...Mother and baby are doing well. Now we'll just have to wait a little before we can hold this bundle of blessing from the Lord.
I worked on a Welcome Card for Tate which will be sent this morning along with a gift for baby.
Decorating my home for Christmas is not quite the same without my daughter. It's a lot more fun when someone helps put up the ornaments, lights etc...She was such a great help. My son is not at all into decorating; I did get Cliff to put some lights outside on the palms, icicle lights on the porch and today he even helped me put some greenery on the porch, at the door and we decorated the mailbox.
This is the second year I've done an artificial skinny tree. These trees do take lots less space, there is just not as much surface to hang ornaments. Carla, my cat has even ignored the tree this year. She used to get under the tree. She's not doing that anymore; I guess she is getting older too. The process of decorating the tree was done during the week. I have not decided what do do with the mantle....which should take lots less time to do.
Today was an incredible beautiful day - temperatures reached almost 70. Most people would say it doesn't feel like Christmas due to this warm trend. We joined our Lifegroup (small group from church) to help at this year's Hope Junction Christmas party. The Angel Tree gifts were neatly organized in rows by numbers/codes. At the end of the program which included a Christmas cantata, drama, refreshments the children would receive their gifts. Seeing all the children's happy faces was neat - and it did look like Christmas.
This week I attended the workshop "The 24th Thing and Beyond."
During this workshop all in attendance participated in groups. On the first exercise we had to list "E" words that described libraries. PLCMC's mission already contains three of them Enriching, Empowering & Expanding. Other words used to describe libraries were "energizing, excellence, educating, elevating, etc...
In the other exercises we were challenged to list strategies to continue putting to use what we learned doing the 23 things. We also had to talk about how technology could benefit not only staff but also borrowers.
Helene B. gave us an assignment at the end to choose our 24th thing to work on.
Knitting is my favorite hobby so for my 24th thing I have decided to create a blog to report what takes place during our "Stitch In" sessions. I think it will be good to communicate with other libraries which also offer these meetings and find out what everyone is doing.
I have already begun taking pictures and I am excited to jump into this new adventure.
I learned about Gabcast from another PLCMC Learning 2.0 participant and decided to try it. Thank you Questing Librarian. You can listen or read this post.
It feels good to enter this last post but at the same time I can say I'm going to miss doing the exercises. I do know that I will go back to spend more time learning and exploring the different sites, especially my favorites. I added Learning 2.0 as one of my feeds in my Bloglines account.
I want to thank all those who made this Learning experience possible. I hope I get to talk to you personally to tell you how exciting it was to go through the program. I appreciate the many hours that were put into it. I hope there will be more opportunities like this in the future. I had some help along the way; at work I got together with coworkers Cassandra, Amy and Trilby. Thanks for your insights, tips and for being there when I had questions. My son Kevin also helped and my daughter Andrea was always ready to encourage me and it was neat to get comments from her and some of her fellow bloggers.
I enjoyed almost every exercise; some were more challenging, and I spent quite some time reading the tutorials. Among my favorite sites: del.icio.us, Flickr, Bloglines,Rollyo, LibraryThing, ZohoWriter, YouTube and Writely. I will definitely go back to these sites to take advantage of all they have to offer. Each one is unique and offer powerful features and tools.
As I said I spent hours looking through the different websites, studying, reading, etc...I would not have been able to make the progress I made if I had tried to do the exercises at work. Just the reading alone took quite some time and this was all new material to me. Some people chose not to participate because the amount of work to do became overwhelming. Perhaps fewer exercises should have been assigned with different levels of complexity. I do hope that in the future training based on all these exercises will be offered. It's truly being an exciting experience that all should be given the opportunity to discover. I believe it is possible for someone to learn on their own, but some concepts are not so easily assimilated or understood.
So when do we continue with thing 24. Just kidding; I do need a break. I have to catch up with my knitting.
The tutorial created by Mary Kyle made it very easy to create myNetLibrary account. One of my favorite authors is Francine Rivers so I chose "And the Shofar Blew" for my first title. I don't have an MP-3 player yet so I downloaded the eBook radio quality to my computer. Following Mary's instructions it should be simple to download it to the portable device.
For this exercise I chose the Yahoo Podcast directory to locate AudioFile. This site is all about audio books which can be downloaded as an MP3 player file. I'm looking forward to learning next all about these neat players.
I listened to three sound reviews: The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Firefly Cloak by Sheri Reynolds and Night by Elie Wiesel.
The video I selected for my post is from Annekeanna, a YouTube member since 3 months ago. She lives in Jerusalem and already has 323 subscribers. To post this video on my blog I highlighted and copied the embed code which can be found in the box next to the video screen. I opened a new post in my blog and clicked on the insert link icon to paste the code.
In my opinion this site could be used to document programs or special staff ocassions which take place in the library.
Judy's Book is a website which was rated second in the Classifieds and Business Category. It's a fairly new site made up of members from all throughout the United States and the amount of information which can be obtained in it varies from city to city. For instance smaller towns have less members so I did not find as much information.
This site would be useful for a newcomer who is looking for general information about the area. The site offers local information about businesses, restaurants, salons, music.,etc... I think it's neat that the restaurant reviews are written by people living in the area. There is a place for sharing your own opinion/comment about the review. As I said I think that due to the fact that it is a new site, I only found two reviews about Mexican restaurants in the Charlotte area. Maybe I'll join and express my opinion about one of my favorite restaurants "Azteca".
Judy's Book allows members to meet other members and they can share their experiences, questions about any given topic, favorite doctors, restaurants, businesses, etc... in the blog feature.
Knitting for Baby to Be - My daughter's baby is due December 25th
I've been having fun knitting for my daughter's second baby who will arrive around December 25th. I don't know why but I think it's going to be a girl. Some of the things I've knitted would be more for a girl. I especially enjoyed knitting this baby bolero with matching hat. I don't think boleros are for boys. I went into Trendy Tots my favorite Baby Consignment store and bought two girl outfits....Ha...Ha...For every $20.00 spent the owner punches my card.
This document was created with the online wordprocessor Writely.com
I'll have to say that it was very helpful to do this exercise to understand how Wikis work. I followed the instructions and used the syntax:
[http://knittingAura.blogspot.com |knittingDiva] to add my blog address to the Peanut Butter wiki. I also edited the different pages to write about my favorites (restaurants, music, TV shows, websites. I have added this wiki to my Del.icio.us so I can easily go back to play around.
I read the article written by Meredith Farkas "Using Wikis to Create Online Communities." I found it helpful to understand how Wikis could be used in the library (to update subject guides, to enhance online catalogs by allowing readers to contribute their own book reviews, the creation of community wikis to post information of interest to the general public., etc...etc...)
The Library Wikis I visited required a password to edit or add information to any of the pages. I visited the Bull Run Library Wiki which has many nice features and easy to navigate format. The blue search box allows the user to search for items using a zip code. I entered 28227 as zip code and was directed to the PLCMC online catalog.
I thought it was interesting to read about PLCMC Learning 2.0 in "Charlotte Staff Learning Project Summer 2006." I left a comment in their guest book.
I decided to research the subject of Library 2.0 and read "Do Libraries Matter? The Rise of Library 2.0; a white paper by Ken Chad and Paul Miller. You can read it if you go to: http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/blog_detail.php?blog_id=95
Technology is advancing in giant steps and people looking for information no longer have to go to a library. Internet-based services such as Amazon and google offer information which people can access from anywhere. So how can a library compete with these technology giants in the future and survive? One of the ways Libraries can stay up to date is to be linked to the Web 2.0 applications. Web 2.0 brings us online resources such as Flickr, Google, Amazon, RSS, etc... In doing so, the Library can also become a preferred destination.
Technorati is for the serious blogger who wants other bloggers to find him. I'm not ready for that but it's been interesting to learn that by using technorati tags and claiming you blog you can expect more traffic (People reading your blog).
Using the keyword PLCMCL2 searching in blogposts I found 30 results; in tags I found 6 posts tagged PLCMCL2 and using the blog directory I found 3 blogs.
The results using the keyword Learning 2.0 produced the following results: In blogposts - 27,839; in tags 56 posts and in the blog directory 2 posts - including the PLCMC Core Competencies blog.
Technorati features most popular blogs which is an excellent tool if you are searching specific blogs. There are those who blog about cooking, shopping, hobbies, books, authors, life, food and drink, etc...Simply click on the tags button and you will find all the different categories. There's something for everyone in blogosphere.
For this exercise I decided to explore the popular bookmarking manager "Del.cio.us" to learn about tagging. Del.cio.us will make it possible for me to organize and store my favorite websites and blogs by the category I determine. For example the knitting websites I wish to keep will have a specific tag at the end (Knitting). The cooking sites will be tagged with the word recipes or food, etc...
This wonderful tagging system can be used from any computer once you create your own account. The neat thing about this system is that it connects you to other users who have bookmarked sites which you might also be able to use. You can view comments, other related tags by clicking on the number of users (highlighted in pink). The related tags can also take you to other sites which can then be bookmarked as your own.
Del.cio.us is not too complicated to use and the tutorial helped me understand some of its features. To set up an account go to www.del.cio.us.com.
Rollyo, I guess it is short for "Roll Your Own" is a site which allows you to create your own search tools (also called search engines) for the subjects that interest you. I chose to research "Staying Fit". I like to cook and I'm always looking for new recipes so I named my other search roll "My Recipes". It took me a little time to figure it out so spend some time learning about it. If you'd like to visit mine, just click on Staying Fit or My Recipes
I love to check out books about knitting. There are some great ones out there and libraries offer a good selection. I decided to explore LibraryThing and joined to find out what it's all about. It does not cost anything but you can pay to upgrade your account. The books you list will become your very own library. LibraryThing will provide you with a list of people who read the same books you read. You can click on their name and find out their interests, etc..and leave them a message. There's also a place to write and read book reviews. I definitely would encourage you to look into it.
I decided to try using the Dummies Book cover generator to create my own. I'm the proud Nana of beautiful Caleb who just turned 2. Soon I will have another grandbaby on Christmas 2006.
This really was fun so give it a try on: http://www.signgenerator.org/books/dummies/
I think Bloglines is terrific tool to subscribe to my favorite websites and blogs. The RSS feed icon which looks like this . When I visit a website I look for it. I visited the FoodTV website. At the bottom of the page I clicked on the icon which took me to a page that gave instructions to click the XML button next to the feed icon it read foodnetwork.com highlights. I was then taken to the page with all the computer codes and it was here that I highlighted the URL (web page address); choose edit to cut and then I went into my Bloglines account. Once you are there, click the add button. On the subscribe page paste the URL address. Don't forget to go to the bottom of the page to submit.
I explored Feedster the tool that helps you locate websites, blogs, news, podcasts to which you can subscribe. I got many results using this method and have added a couple of knitting and rubber stamping blogs to my bloglines.
Several attenders of the Mint Hill Branch Library Stitch In group knitted/crocheted 7"X 9" rectangles which were joined to make this beautiful blanket. It will be donated to a person or a family here in Charlotte.
Some library systems have created blogs for the different age groups. It's a great way of communication and keeping borrowers informed about all different programs.
Lansing Public Library has library news blogs targeted by age group. You can subscribe to 1 or all 4, it's up to you!
Hello everyone. This picture was taken by a coworker one morning as I was about to start checkin the morning bookdrop. At Mint Hill, it usually will take me around an hour if the bin is full. Sometimes we end up checking in these books while working on the circulation desk so the process takes longer. We empty our bookdrops 4 to 5 times a day.
This beautiful pond was created by my husband, Cliff this summer. Isn't it beautiful? Some of the plants in the pond are: Water hyacynths, water lettuce, papyrus. We have goldfish and they absolutely love their home. The pond has a small waterfall and the fish love to get on the shallow part above the stone and swim against the current. We had a frog (We call him Froggy) visit but he left and we found him on another part of the yard where Cliff had put some other water plants. These water plants are sitting on a water bucket. I guess he likes his privacy. This is a great place to enjoy at the end of the day.
Oops I missed my first assignment which was to write about the Lifelong Learning Habits. I'll have to say that the hardest habit for me is #3: View problems as challenges. I'm a fast learner and have taught myself looking at books but I don't like to spend too much time on a task or new skill that looks too hard. This is how I felt when I went to a tatting class. I don't like tedious, time consuming learning.
The easiest habit would be to teach and mentor others (#7) . I like to meet new people and share my interests and skills.
During the month of August I finished joining the rectangles for the "Warm Up America" afgan to be donated to the police department. Several knitters and crocheters who come to the Mint Hill Library contributed donating their own creations. The afgan has both crocheted or knitted rectangles and each rectangle measures approximately 7" X 9". The rectangles were joined using chains: Chain 5, slip 1,. This method worked well since all the rectangles have a different gauge and are not precisely the same size. For the border I used single crochet all around and a picot edge.
. When I visit a website I look for it. I visited the 
