Classtools.net

I may have found the best thing ever.

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A job. Maybe.

I had an interview. My first in the library field since I was in college. This is exciting for two reasons:

1.) I really want to get into the field I think I was meant to be in.
2.) The job sounds like it will be loads of fun.

It is also scary for more than two reasons:

1.) It pays significantly less than my current job.
2.) It will be a huge change.
3.) I haven’t worked in a library for the last three years.
4.) It is in the field I THINK I was meant to be in.

I gave the interviewer, Jeff, a link to this page. I hope he is impressed not only by my ability to find cool shtuff to utilize in and out of libraries, but also by my witty repartee and mad blogging skilzz.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this position, but I know that – being the first job I’ve applied for – it is kind of a long shot. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high, but at the same time keeping a mantra in my head –

I’m perfect for this job, and it will be the chance I’ve been looking for.

Cross your fingers, toes, and anything else you have that is crossable. For me. Please?

Project Wrap-Up

So far, this blog has been about fulfilling the requirements of an assignment for one of my library courses. I've had fun clicking around from library blog to library blog finding new tools, often resulting in me shouting to the other room, "Honey - you have to see this! It's so cool!!" I've also learned that while the iPhone has "an app for that" the internet has an open source or free solution for that, too. I've also found that there are a lot of things out there that are less than workable - people create cool programs and then abandon them.

Still, there seems to be a lot of good, and I have no intention of abandoning this blog totally. As I come across more library-ish things that I think are awesome, I'll try to remember to bring them here. Because, seriously, I need to tell someone about this stuff, and my husband is probably getting tired of hearing of it all.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you come back and check out my random, intermittent updates!

Geek Tools - Part 10: Make it Snazzy

Our final tool of this little journey of discovery is one that I am particularly interested in. One of my hobbies is playing with my camera (when I have time), and since I’m only a part-time geek, my Photoshop skills are… not awesome. BUT – Photoshop just made my day. I give you Photoshop Online!

This one may not seem to have a readily apparent use for librarians, either, but you remember that newsletter? How about putting great, white-balanced and perfectly cropped photos into it? What about getting rid of MS Paint forever for simple editing? Maybe you could even add more recent pictures to the library website, without having to take home a disk to do some editing with your Photoshop tools at home.

The full version of Photoshop is expensive (and confusing, if you’re not familiar with it), so a tool like this is a great value to do-it-yourselfers like many of those in the non-profits of the world, libraries included.

Oh, and if you’re an iPhone junkie, try Photoshop Mobile. Free. How sweet is that?

Geek Tools - Part 9: Just The Facts

Wikipedia is great, but it’s very subjective. Being user-edited can create problems. Wolfram alpha, however, is not an accounting of every reference to Lord of the Rings in Led Zeppelin’s discography and interpretations, but rather a collection of hard facts. How big is the earth? How do you calculate the density of steel? What’s the number to Pizza Hut? (Okay, maybe that last one is more of a Google question.)

This could be a great tool for school media specialists, especially. Students often need to work from facts, things that can be proven – for math, for science class, and sometimes just to quell their own wild curiosity. And even librarians now and then just want to know some factoids about a given thing.

For instance, I entered my birthday and discovered how old I was in weeks. I learned that I was born on a Wednesday, and on that day there were 14 hours and 38 minutes of daylight between sunrise and sunset. Maybe these aren’t facts I was dying to know, but I have to admit it’s cool. It’s sort of the 21st century’s answer to the Farmer’s Almanac. Plus, librarians need to know random facts. Otherwise we might loose our street cred.

Geek Excursions

The Geek movement is growing. I geek the library – what do you geek?

Geek Tools - Part 8: For the Wordy Librarian

I think it’s safe to assume that, like Her Geekliness, most librarians like words. And because we like words, we like books. (Or maybe, because we like books, we like words.) Either way, as little researcher bees and curious cats (insect or mammal…) many of us have fallen in love with our dictionaries. I know I have one on my iPhone, a big desk reference at home, one next to the TV (you know, should Grey’s Anatomy hit me with a word I don’t know), and have added a dictionary search to my Firefox widgets. It’s an addiction for many of us, to know words inside and out. And I can think of no better tool than OneLook.

A search for the word “dictionary” in OneLook returns 27 links to definitions or other references. My personal favorite is the 1828 edition of Webster’s dictionary. The site is clean, very minimalistic, and has several handy little facets. For instance, the Reverse Dictionary allows you to put in a definition or description of a word, and OneLook returns possible matches to that definition. Very helpful for those moments when someone looks at you and says, “What’s the word I’m looking for?” Now you can tell them.

(Also, if you like words, I would highly recommend my favorite Word-a-Day service with weekly themes, and lots of interesting quotes and fun facts.)