Tales from a Loud Librarian

Outgoing NHS officers from the class of 2017 (that is me in the middle) NHS Induction March 16, 2017 I usually try to avoid writing blog posts where I explain why I haven't been writing blog posts. I believe that you should just get one written rather than waste time explaining why there hasn't been one in awhile. I created this blog in 2009. It was a way to document what I do in the library and share what I have learned. When I started, I had no idea where the blog would take me. Eventually, I decided that I would post weekly making it a goal to write 50 posts a year. I have not always met that goal and some years I have surpassed it. There are lessons that I am thankful that I wrote about because I needed the information to replicate them in subsequent years. There are posts that have been shared and shared again with librarians across the country. You can see below my all time stats for this blog since it began.  Click the picture above to read the all time stats ...

There are only a few hours left of summer break for 2016. I start back to work on Monday, and our students will start on Thursday. Am I ready to go back? Yes and no. This has been a wonderful summer of rest and relaxation. I did not attend any conferences this summer nor did I spend hours making preparations for the new year. However, when I do reflect on the summer, I realize that my mind was never very far from the library.  I read. I am always reading something and though I don't like reading two print books at one time, I usually have one print book going and one audio book. I review books for both School Library Journal and School Library Connection . This means that I don't always get to choose what I read, but I didn't review much this summer, though I have 5 books by my bed to review right now. I am on the committee for the state library that selects the books for Louisiana Teen Readers' Choice (LTRC). At the beginning of the summer, we narrowed our list ...

One of the ways that I like to use this blog space is to share some of the titles that I am reading and write about which books are my new favorites. So far this summer I have finished ten books and are in the middle of two books as I type this post.  I choose the books that I read for a lot of different reasons. I am a book reviewer for both School Library Journal and School Media Connection (formerly Library Media Connection) . That means that I am sent books to read and review. I get to choose favorite genres and age ranges, but what I get is a crap shoot. Sometimes I love the books but very often I am underwhelmed.  SLJ asks all reviewers not to broadcast to publishers or authors what books that they will be reviewing. I am also asked not to publish, like on this blog, my reviews until six months after the review has been published in the print magazine. LMC has never given me any such guidelines, so I just follow what I do for SLJ. By the time that my review h...

Finally, off the plane and on the road Going away for a week during summer break is something that is sacred to my husband and me. We live in a city that is hot in the summer so we try to find somewhere cooler and in a rural area where we can spend our time being outside and enjoying nature. This year we chose to drive through Vermont and New Hampshire so that we could end in Maine where my father lives.  Vermont is the land of covered bridges In years past, I would buy a guide book and visit the library to find more guides to where we would travel. My favorite publishers were Lonely Planet and Rough Guides. I loved reading about what we would see and looking for the most charming place to say. It was crucial to read a guidebook with a current copyright date because so much could change from year to year, especially prices. Now I don't even look at a guidebook. I use Trip Advisor (TA).  I love the app because I can save everything that I want to see ahead of ti...

When summer time hits, it is time for teachers and students to find a way to see the world. Maybe it is through books that they didn't have time to read during the school year or traveling to foreign places. I planned a trip for my husband and myself out west. To those of us living below sea level in southern Louisiana who deal with a humidity that hovers around 85-90% in the summer, going to the mountains is definitely foreign. We planned a trip that kept us outside on the hiking trails of the Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah and the Rocky Mountain National Park. I created the video you see below that tells the story of our adventure.