Been gone for a while

I haven't posted anything in this blog for a long time. Through my research of new technology, I encountered many other blog apps and so I wrote on different sites. There were so many that I got tired of writing and tired of trying to remember all my sites; and yes I did use http://www.delicious.com to gather all of my bookmarks, but that even got tiresome. So I decided to close all of the other blogs, and my many websites and start from scratch again and concentrate on one only blog and maybe one or two new websites that I will be creating (one for professional development and another for my short stories). This site seems to be the most known and popular so I will continue with this one for my blog, although I think I have two more blogs floating around in this site as well. Oh well, what is a librarian to do when everything that has to do with technology fascinates me. I guess the answer is to not get caught up in information overload and concentrate on a few things instead of trying to encapsulate all. Since my brain is not a computer (well, it acts like a little tiny one, one that freezes and crashes all the time, but that's a discussion for another day), I must pick and choose what I really want to learn, teach and discuss. Information overload is not fun as I find myself remembering the oddest things and will forget where I parked my car, or how to finish a sentence or how to pronounce words (yes, I 'm weird that way). Anyway, lets go back to the subject of information overload and technology. Here's a site that I just love and it causes me much grief since it has so many applications and sites that I want to use http://www.go2web20.net/. It styles itself as the complete web2.0 library, well it is not true but it sure does have a lot of applications and I will spend hours clicking on each individual application to see how I can use it, learn from it and teach it to some poor soul who is unlucky to come to me for help or to listen to me ramble on about its application. Sometimes, all this technology and its constant changes become too much and I must absent myself from the computer so my brain can rest and be its old weird self once again.

The Battle for Teen's Attendance at the Library

My new job requires me to come up with ideas for teen programming. Well, I have a lot of ideas and no money to implement them, my library is poor and the friends of the library group is fairly new so not much help from them in monetary donations since we got some money for the summer programming from them. To top it off, the teens at my library are not receptive to our programming. It takes a lot of effort and work to get a good program going and they don't even care to show up. What is a librarian to do? Well, giving up is not an option so I've decided to do what librarians do best, research, research and research! I've concentrated on what they are into today, their reading material and what makes them tick. We'll see if all of my reading and researching pays off once I start my new web 2.o programming classes for teens. I just wish I had enough money to buy some flash drives to give them out to those who attend. I got the cupcakes covered as I'm baking them myself and I'm hoping that if there is some sort of snack after the classes, they will come, but it would be awesome if they could have their own flash drive after the classes end as a reward for learning new things. Not only is the library poor, but the kids are too, they are still using 3 1/2 disks to store the files, which is pretty sad. I tell you, Biblioteca Latinoamericana is a really nice library and I know that the neighborhood is happy that they have a library, but it could be some much cooler if teens went there to read, learn new things and not just to hang out and talk to their friends. Well, as the saying goes "We Must Prevail." and of course, "I haven't even began to fight!"