I’m inclined to say there is no point…at least when it comes to these familiar little things–yes, the golf pencil, the mini-pencil, or the nubby pencil as Helene, a PLCMC collegue, told me she calls them today. Whatever you call them, I think they are a perfect little example of old ideas or practices that aren’t really serving us any more in libraries–at least not effectively. My point in their pointlessness is this: We pay money for these tiny little things that last perhaps for 2 or 3 usages and then wind up in the garbage can. You can’t sharpen them as they get lost or stuck in the pencil sharpener…they have no eraser and wind up being more of an annoyance than anything. As I was thinking about this, I looked at the pen in my own hand. It was a nice padded grip pen that I received free from a promotional products rep…I then I looked at the pencil cup on my desk and it is filled with dozens of unused pens and pencils… I look around the workroom in my department–dozens, perhaps hundreds of unused pencils and pens! And still we are paying for these tiny little bothersome yellow pencils! My curiosity deepened on this small topic, so I made a few calls and found out how much these items cost–for a box of them (114) retail = $14! Wholesale (a real steal) = $8! I can confidently say that the library where I work each day could easily go through a box or more of these a day! I’ll let you do the math. We’re talking thousands of dollars here folks. But how could anything replace our familiar golf pencils? They’re as Library as, say bookends? For starters, how about just bringing out some of those hundreds of pens and pencils floating around in all the drawers and cups and bins in our offices…or, hmmm, remember that pen I mentioned earlier that had the name of a product rep on it? Don’t you just know that they (or another local agency) would likely jump head over heals to have their pens with their logo and info used in a building that serves thousands of people daily. Even better, what if the Library took the thousands of dollars it’s spending on these short-lived items and had inexpensive pens or pencils printed. “Then people would take them…they’d walk out the door!”you say? My response:” Oh, no! That means we’d have pens with our logo and message floating all over the Charlotte region!” Not such a bad thing to happen, I say. This alternative has much more of a point than a $14 box of golf pencils. Get my point?
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What’s so special about this little VHS? And why are we waving bye-bye to it? Well, this little trooper of a tape has circulated 588 times at South County Regional Library. That’s at least 588 VCR’s–many with multiple viewings…it’s Spot the Dog, after all. Big deal, you say, perhaps? Yes, really big deal. This afternoon when Joy, a staff member, brought this to my attention before it was withdrawn–long past its normal circulation cycle–I was wowwed back into thinking about how special libraries are. How much joy they bring to kids, adults, and all of us in between. This little Spot video that has served so many houses with entertainment, TV babysitting, and all that is wrapped up in the adventures of any yellow dog and his special brand of showmanship…deserves its moment of applause….and with it I applaud all the hands that have shelved it, checked it out, searched for it on shelves, zapped it into “play” or “renew.” 588…it’s a golden number…now wave, bye-bye, Spot.

Why is there a question mark at the end of this posting title? Ideally, there wouldn’t be when we’re talking about trust–especially “radical trust” which has been talked about much in the past several months. And radical trust is what I want to talk about.
Just yesterday I read an article in SLJ called “A Matter of (Radical Trust).” Though I understand that the writer of this article was coming mostly from perspective of a public school setting, my reaction was one of “did he just say what I thought he said?” …and the sounds of a thousand balloons deflating could have been piped in as the soundtrack for the moment I read the last sentence. The writer begins his last paragraph by saying “…let me state very clearly that radical trust is just not going to work.” (Once again insert a thousand balloons deflating). If I recall correctly, the word “radical” is based in the word “root” which means foundation, fundamental, essential. So, essential (radical) trust is just not going to work? If this is the thougtht, then the brakes are pulled on 2.0, on building any type of deep relationship or partnership with library users and–perhaps more drastically–those who are not users (which we want to reach)–including the youth we serve.
I commented to Helene, a colleague, yesterday after reading the article that it made me think that the undercurrent of the message that is being sent here is like saying
“Sure, I trust you completely…well, except when you may have your own thoughts, or when you color outside the lines, or step outside of this little hermetically sealed bubble we’ve prepared for you…”
The authors suggested “moderated trust.” Isn’t this what has kept us at a snail’s pace while the 2.0 world blazed ahead?

Ultimately we can’t take leaps of faith (or trust) when we focus on what might jump up at us in mid-air!

When I was in 6th grade the first computers were wheeled into our classroom. They were basically old black-and-white TV’s wired up to clunky keyboards. Honestly, it just seemed like an oddity back then. I remember being paired-off in groups of 2 and when your turn came up you could “play” the floppy disc version of “The Oregon Trail.” Anyone remember that? What I remember about all of this early experience with stepping into the high-tech world was a feeling of disconnection—how does this relate to anything else I am doing? How does this relate to my growing collections of pop music (Pat Benatar, Culture Club, Cyndi Lauper, ABC…oh, those were the days, huh?)? How does this relate to figuring out what life is going to be like when we move to the “big school” in 8th grade? How does this relate to all the composition books filled with diagramed sentences and history notes? Well, it just didn’t—for me at least. What has clicked for me as I’ve done a little reminiscing about those early tech days is that there was so little instruction involved. The teachers were learning (or not) the technology right along with us—but often not sharing the “meaning” or further applications of it. Sitting in front of a black and white screen and being told that this is the wave of the future just didn’t mean much to me then—hand me my walkman…now that had meaning!
That was then.
And now…now I am writing my 23rd thing blog about my Learning 2.0 experience. I’m not sitting behind a 200 pound computer, but working from a laptop in my living room. I’m not dependent on a teacher or anyone really to provide me an instruction manual. Within a few keystrokes I can find out virtually (now that is a word that wasn’t being used in the same context back in 6th grade) millions of pieces of information or connect with people I know or don’t know within seconds. And again, I find myself going back to the idea that it is the ideas behind each of these learning experiences—each of these tools—that have the roots, that have the power to move things forward, to create dialogue, communities, new ways of learning and exploring our world. Ultimately, we must move away from the monitor and the keyboard and tools that engaged us…but we take with us the ideas, the connections we’ve made.
So, now let me step into my 24th thing…what will that be? Not quite sure yet. But I’m sure it’s going to involve more work on the wiki I started last night…growing my del.icio.us account, blogging about our upcoming vacation to the far reaches of autumnal Vermont…
Boy, it’s a long way from the Oregon Trail…

First, I have to say something about the word “podcast.” Helene mentioned that in 2005 is was the word of the year. I can completely understand this. Even now when I type it into a Word document it gets the red squiggle of a misspelled word. It’s simply not one of those words that says much about what it really is just by the sound of it. Frankly, for me, the word “pod” conjures up the images of mushroomy things clustered together (and also the memory of those 1970’s “innovative” schools that were mostly just big open rooms with all the classrooms jammed together without walls…and no one could focus because there were people everywhere and no visual boundaries). So interesting how this word that was almost meaningless a bit over a year ago to most people and is now becoming a part of our vernacular. Perhaps, we’ll be playing with the language even more and within a year we’ll be saying “Let’s cast some pod together down at Starbuck’s later this afternoon?”
In my search through various podcasts (and there are many) I came across Denver Public Library’s podcast of nursery rhymes. Now how is that for partnering the past and the present?! NPR is also podcasting many of its shows, including “NPR Shuffle” which is a combo of many of its most popular daily shows. And who can get too much NPR?

NetLibrary…I created my account and conducted some searches on books and authors I’ve recently read. To my surprise, I only found one title by Kaye Gibbons–Divining Women, one I haven’t read. Lots of Lee Smith listed, but alas, only one Kaye Gibbons. What would Ellen Foster say about that?

It’s really quite revolutionary, I’d never view it in East Hampton…
Ummm, YouTube…I’ve known about YouTube for a while and have spent many a time surfing through the random, memory-jogging, sometimes pointless, sometimes wonderful finds on this site. Just today at lunch co-workers and I were talking about laughable movies that we watch again and again. Soon we were talking about Grey Gardens (the 1970’s documentary about the reclusive aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis). You just can’t talk about this film without going into character! I’d heard that there was a remix of Little Edie (seen here in one of her “revolutionary outfits” doing a bit of a jig to Madonna’s song “Hung Up.” Sure enough I later found it on YouTube with a very simple search (Hung Up Grey Gardens). If you’ve ever scene Grey Gardens (especially if you can quip and quote it) you’ll want to see this little ditty. I’m working on figuring out how to get the video embedded in my post…we’ll see if Little Edie comes dancing across the screen any time soon…stay tuned.

For discovery exercise #19 I decided to explore a bit more about wikis. I’ve been digging around in Wetpaint and created an account. I’ve even started mocking up a wiki. Good video tutorials and some nice templates to choose from. Overall, a friendly site. I want to explore a few more active wetpaint wikis to see what they look like fully fleshed out. I turn in tonight knowing my wiki is underway (say that five times fast!).

Yo ho ho
I discovered Zoho
I created a doc
web-based (no shock).
With just a little moxy
I tried out 30 boxes
Input a few dates
and I’m feeling just great
But it’s getting kind of late
And this rhyme’s begun to deflate………….