Dewey Yourself!

sarah campbell's Dewey Decimal Section:

013 [Unassigned]


Class:
000 Computer Science, Information & General Works


Contains:
Encyclopedias, magazines, journals and books with quotations.



What it says about you:
You are very informative and up to date. You're working on living in the here and now, not the past. You go through a lot of changes. When you make a decision you can be very sure of yourself, maybe even stubborn, but your friends appreciate your honesty and resolve.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

The Halloween Blog Post

Here is my costume! I slept in rollers to assure my hair was authentic. I am very proud.



Here is a link to information on haunted libraries

We held a "Librarians Go Goth" program as part of our Teen Read Week festivities. When the teens voted for the Teen's Top Ten, we added a spot to nominate a librarian to go goth! We took some before photos and the teens got a big kick out of this. Here were our results:
The winners:
Mrs. Valerie runs our Printz Club and works at the Youth Services desk.

She became "V", our angst-y goth.

Mrs. Honey is our Youth Services Manager.

She became our perky goth.


Mrs. Mary is famous for her family story time.

She became our sexy goth!



These ladies got into the part and did a fantastic job. I highly recommend this program idea.
I think it would have been a bit better if we had the teens dress up the librarians with their clothes, make-up etc.
This cost no money to do. The prep involved creating the voting display, finding victims, er, um I mean volunteers and arranging days for them to dress up.

I am at Dragon*Con!

Please read about my adventures here:

http://mommyndarkfaerie.blogspot.com/

The Ogre that stole my heart

One weekend morning, our YS Manager arrived to find a huge Ogre on lawn of the library.

Questions circulated as to why this Ogre found his way to the Library... A student art project? Trash? A prank? He was moved into our workroom while we tried to solve the mystery. Seeing him everyday, I have become quite fond of him...
Unfortunately, not all of my co-workers feel the same. They have discussed painting over him or throwing him away. They called him ugly and they called him trash.

We finally found our answer as to the origin of the monster on a local teens deviant art page. (it can be found here: http://www.beckeez.deviantart.com/)
This instantly made me think of the book P.L.A.I.N. Janes by Cecil Castelluci. (If you haven't read this, you really need to)

I feel honored that we were chosen to be a part of this teens artistic mission.
I am fighting to keep the monster in the library.
I would hate to see something happen to a piece of art that anyone worked on. It is about 7 feet tall and took time, tools, sweat and a vision to create. I think it would be disrespectful to paint over it or trash him. I am even more passionate about this because a teen made it. Not many teens really commit so strongly to an artistic mission like this one. I hope I can convince my library (or another library) to display this monster and I hope it encourages the teen who made it to continue with her art. I will certainly keep my eyes open for it.

I think this monster fulfilled his artistic destiny. He aroused questions and emotions. He confused us, angered some of us and even made a few of us giggle.

VIVA LA MONSTER

Steampunk

What is Steampunk?
It's a movement, it's a genre, it's so much more than you ever knew.

With a scene present in the local area, I thought I would experiment with a few ideas surrounding this underground phenomenon.

First I set up a display of Steampunk Literature. This included a booklist, books, a captains hat with goggles, some large gears, an old book from the early 1900s and a technical steampunkesqe drawing.


This actually attracted a lot of attention. One woman checked out a majority of the display moments after I had set it up. While checking out she mentioned that she was glad to see the display and get a booklist because she was having a discussion with a friend about the "Steampunk Genre" and her friend didn't believe that it existed.

I also threw a little steampunk into a program we were doing. My co-worker found a great program idea on another blog and we did our own version of A Great and Terrible Tea.
The idea is loosely based on the Libba Bray books A great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels and A Sweet Far Thing. I promoted the event with tea bags. I just stapeled our event information on the end of the string and put them out in a mug.

My co-worker also made a great flyer that a few teens mentioned caught their attention in the evaluation.

The event was a blast! We had a quiz on which Great and Terrible Beauty are you. I had a blast making the quiz. (Which I can email anyone who wants to have an event like this.)
We then talked about Victorian Calling Cards and the teens made their own calling cards using an assortment of supplies.



Here are a few:




We then had tea (in our own favorite teacup)
and homemade scones (lovingly baked by my wonderful co-worker and amazing supervisor). I played my Sleepy Hollow Soundtrack and one of the teens borrowed it from me. We then played this amazing version of Mystery Date Gemma Doyle style that my co-worker created. Watch her blog for details about her fabulous creation!

We also awarded prizes for costumes. I love costumes and dressing up, so we have these at programs a lot. Here are the winners:

Animazement

We want teens to come to the library.
We get the books they want to read.
We hold events we hope they'll want to attend.
We go to the High Schools to tell them about these things.
But what else can we do?
Getting the word out and letting the teens decide on their own that it would be cool to go to the library is hard. How can we do effective outreach to teens?
My co-worker came up with a great solution... Set up a booth at an Anime Convention!

We not only promoted our library's collection and events, but we obtained other literature from cities within a days driving distance. We also handed out sheets on how to get a manga/anime collection started.
I must say this was an amazing experience. LOTS of teens came up to our table. A lot of adults came up to our table. We met librarians from all over and exchanged ideas and stories. We bonded with our local teen patrons who are anime fans and met new ones. People were excited to know about our events and anime clubs. Some we're excited to learn that libraries offered such things!

We raffled off a Ramune and bag of goodies every hour and one of the highlights was seeing the teens get so excited about their goodies.
Another great surprise was to see the teens I worked with at my old library in Boone. It was great to see them and hard to believe it's been 2 years and they are graduating and going to college!



I made a steampunk costume for the event because I love any reason to dress up!

I also met other people in the community who would love to donate their time and talent to the library. I must say that I left the event inspired and excited to come back in future years.

Eva's Next Top Libarian

Ha! My co-worker and I had a 'photo shoot' for our Librarian Trading Cards today. I was fooling around with them in photoshop and I really like this one.

Teen Tech Week!

This is my post about TTW 08

First of all, I just finished BEIGE by Cecil Castellucci. I enjoyed this book, but by far, the thing I enjoyed most was how each chapter was the name of a punk song. There were some great songs! Don't believe me? Here, listen for yourself:

I found a very cool website called Project Playlist (www.playlist.com) You get to create your own playlist and post it anywhere just like I did above! I think I am going to start making book playlists. This seems like a great way to market books to teens.

Here are some photos of my TTW display. I think it turned out great and I wish the pictures captured it better.




I also had a CD Swap Party. Teens brought in a mixed CD, we made cool collaged covers for them while listening to music and discussing our favorite songs. We then swaped them and had all new music to bring home!

Wow! Teens take the pictures for YOYA's covers!

It's true!
Here is a link to the info so your teens can send in photos.
I think I feel a program in the works.

Anti-Valentine's Masquerade Ball

This was, for sure, a very successful program. We had a large turn out, 40-something teens on a Friday night and I learned a LOT.


We had about 6 of the older teens arrive at about 7 to help us set up. These were teens who helped from the start... they brought cds of music to play, helped bake the cookies and hung christmas lights. The space looked really nice. I also had a co-worker score us some half-dead roses from the grocery store. We set up the cookies and drinks and dimmed the lights(just a little).


The teens wanted an old silent film to play on a projector as ambiance, but unfortunately, the laptap we were given wasn't able to play dvds. grrr. but i smiled and moved on.
We had 2 activities. One was to make a mask. we had plain white masks, feathers, ribbon, glitter and hot glue guns.

We also had a "vandalize a romance novel" area. This was a huge hit.


The teens danced and goofed off...





as you notice, the pictures have turned to black and white... this is because, just like the masquerade scene in Labrynth, it was a surreal. This is what happened...

Thankfully, they all cleaned up the majority before they left and a few older teens stayed to help even longer.


This introduces the biggest lesson I learned. It should have been divided by ages. The difference in behavior was obvious. The younger teens made a mess out of the crafts, one boy getting burned. They tore apart the roses and novels and threw them around. The older teens carefully made elaborate masks. Giggled and censored and drew in the novels.
Do't get me wrong... the event was still a success, and everyone had a great time.