The SurRural Librarian

I’ve always thought it would be really cool if you could hum into a search engine and it could recognize the song. I also really doubted it would ever happen.

Wrong again. midomi (beta) is a search engine based on a database of user-submitted recordings (just register and start singing). You hum or sing into your computer’s mic and it tries to give you back recordings of other folks singing the same song.

I heard that some who’ve tried it couldn’t get a match, but after playing with it last night, my whole family was able to make it work. It seems that the more a song has been recorded into its database, the greater the chances it’ll be able to match you up (makes sense).

Try Beatles tunes, or Happy Birthday.

Frankly, I can’t yet see the benefits of this beyond what’s the name of the song that goes… But it’s fun, and I think the technology’s pretty out of this world.

This you’ve got to try.
Boing Boing helped me and my young un pass a little time on a chilly day with this great find.

Pictaps is a web-toy that invites you to draw a stick-figure and then creates a delightful, gigantic animation of your figure, multiplied into a cast of thousands, doing a joyful, Busby Berkeley show-number, with dancing and cavorting and so forth.

Here’s one of our creations.

It’s things like this – free, fast and wonderful – that make me question the existence of the terrible programs for kids that schools and parents pay for. Would it really be so hard to develop a graphically interesting, fast, dynamic and educational game?

I just got back from the Post Office where I mailed off an application to one of the ALA awards.

I’m still in a twist over their submission guidelines. Not only do they insist on paper applications through snail mail – and ten copies at that – but they only provide an un-editable .pdf file of the application. For those of you under 35, this means that I have to find something called a typewriter to fill out the application. And for those of you over, I’ll let you know that the handwriting instruction just wasn’t up to snuff by the time I came along to school. The idea of submitting a hand-written anything to anyone makes me cringe.

Well, I worked my way around that little conundrum, let me tell you.

I grabbed a screen shot of the .pdf Then I inserted the image into a Word doc as a watermark. Heh, heh. It took a little tweaking, but I got the words to line up with the blank spaces just well enough to pass muster.

Tricky enough to deserve an award, don’t you think?

The ever-inspirational Bionic Teaching points to the groovy new Dashcode Widget Maker at Apple. At first I was a little wary that only the Beta version is available for Tiger, and only until July – but what the heck. I’ve got between now and then to see if I can come up with some fun widgets for my Dashboard crazy students.

The timing is perfect. I promised them a Dashboard day if they did a good job on their Wiki project. Since they’re excelling, I’m going to have to come through. But I want any new widgets they use to relate to school. So now I’m off to see what I can come up with. Making one for the school feed is nice and simple. Not so sure about a look-up for the library catalog, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Actually, I’m just hoping someone with mad skills comes across this and does it for me. M@, are you listening?

I just stumbled across this great list of reports from the Pew Internet & American Life Project Reports.

I especially recommend Social Networking Websites and Teens.

Some of the statistics that are most interesting to me appear in Teen Content Creators and Consumers. Seems that girls outnumber boys when it comes to sharing creative content online like web pages, stories, etc.

And the percentage of Rural teens sharing their work online is greater than the percentage of suburban kids.

My morning coffee moment has just been ruined by opening the latest American Libraries to an opinion piece about unequal treatment of support staff titled, unbelievably, Jim Crow in Our Libraries. No, it’s not about racism, just about non-MLSer’s right to call themselves librarians.
At least it’s finally prompted me to send a letter to the editor.

American Libraries Editorial Staff,

I am hard pressed to think of a more ridiculous analogy for Sandy Puccio’s Opinion piece in January’s “On My Mind” column. Having spent five years as support staff in a large University Library system, I share her disdain of our profession’s protectiveness of the title “librarian”. But Jim Crow it is not. Analogies like “separate drinking fountains” and “back of the bus” are not only hackneyed and overused, but show a level of ignorance and insensitivity to the Civil Rights movement that is painful to see displayed in my professional organization’s publication.

I open American Libraries hoping for inspirational ideas and thoughtful reflections on librarians and the work we do. Sadly, I am often disappointed. Please encourage articles that move beyond the unimaginative and offensive, and provide us with a magazine that reflects the excellence I hope we are all striving for.

On the bright side, just when I’m despairing I’ll ever read anything interesting in AL they go and sign up Meredith for a column. Someone there must be on the ball.

And then there were these uplifting stories on some of the area’s schools. No word here on what it might mean for school libraries.
Again from The Reformer

The Bellows Falls Union High School Board slashed almost $300,000 from next year’s proposed budget, leaving the administration the difficult job of deciding what programs will have to be cut.

and…

The (Rockingham) school board unanimously approved a $9.1 million, K-8 budget, for the 2007-08 school year that shows a 3.7 percent increase and will mean steep cuts to schools in the district.Bellows Falls Central Elementary School stands to lose 3.7 teachers and 3.5 para-educators, while Bellows Falls Middle School will cut three teachers, two para-educators, a dean and a part-time maintenance person.The Saxtons River Elementary School administrators will have to find two para-educators to slash from their payroll.

The cuts to the Middle School will reduce the staff from 35 to 32, serving a student population of 276.The Central School staff will fall from 30 to about 26 for its 205 students.

January is the season for budget cuts.
The largest public library in my area is facing large cuts which were reported recently in the local paper. Since then, there have been some lovely letters to the editor in defense of the library.

Details on the Cuts From the Brattleboro Reformer article:

The Selectboard is considering $43,000 in cuts to scale back overall budget increases and lower property taxes.
…
For the library, it would mean cutting back on the amount of books and magazines it buys, slashing operating hours and increasing fees and fines.
…
Out of 250 magazine subscriptions, 60 of them would be eliminated — many of which are used by low-income residents — along with two databases
…
Reducing staff hours by 15 hours a week would force the library to cut back the hours it is open
…
To generate an additional $12,000 in revenue, the library planned to also increase nonresident annual fees from $40 a year to $48 a year and daily late fees would increase from 10 cents to 15 cents…

Get a load of this letter, it’s poetry:

Editor of the Reformer:

When I have a child, I want to take her to the library.

Here, I want to tell her, is our history. Here is “Harry Potter” and “Goodnight Moon.” Here’s Ben Franklin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Beethoven’s Second, Satchel Paige.

Your homework is here, and the beginning of poems. The cover letter you’re trying to write? The chance to check e-mail? That political blog? All here.

There is no advertising here, no logos on carpets, no babes swilling beer on the stairs. Here you can sink to your knees in the stacks and get lost in Thurber.

You can cry over Naylor. You can take Shakespeare home.

Every world becomes possible here, I want to say, but also on cold days you can rest in a chair with the paper, even when you’re broke, staying warm and informed.

People love books here. They are the keepers of our evolution in megabytes and ink.

Inside a library I decided that if I would defend anything, I would defend this. I want my child to know this American place.

The Brattleboro Selectboard is considering cutting $43,000 from Brooks Memorial Library’s budget. The library directors have said that this would reduce magazine subscriptions, new titles and hours of operation, and potentially make it harder to receive state grants. Even if Brooks raises its fees and fines, fewer people using the library may offset that revenue.

I know Brattleboro’s budget is pinched on every side. I ask all involved to find a way to protect the library for the great and general good, and for my someday child.

and this…

Editor of The Reformer:

Excuse me — Who, exactly, determined that the Brooks Memorial Library is “non-essential”? Certainly not a library user.

Anyone who has tried to get a reservation to use one of the Internet-accessible computers must realize that many town residents are dependent on the library to give them necessary access to the world.

Brooks library has a top-notch professional librarian, a trained and skilled staff who knows where to find what you want, databases you cannot afford to buy on your own and a reputation as one of the best libraries in Vermont. The main room, the childrens’ room, the meeting room, the local history room are crowded. The First Wednesday lectures are packed.

Why are libraries always the first to be cut or eliminated? Such easy targets they are — it takes no thinking to dismiss their many benefits which are not as obvious as items like dump trucks. Only when they’re gone do you realize how much you need them.

“Knowledge is the most important asset an organization can have” (Wall Street Journal). For “organization” read “town,” and believe it.

In a frenzy of “oh my, vacation’s over and I haven’t done half of what I wanted to”, I have done the following today.

Set up new rules and mailboxes in my Mail.
Created practice pages for each student on their wikis.
Made a template wiki page for them to copy & got together some instructions for them.
Downloaded and edited the lessons in this free typing thingy (simply webpages and javascripts) for the 3rd graders first typing class tomorrow.
(It’s kind of wacky, but delightfully simple and now completely under my control, just the way I like it.)
Decided on the next unit (Early Readers and Chapter Books) and first book (Catwings) for the Primary class.
Registered with a hosting company (and got an amazing deal!) for a new site.
Installed Wordpress.
Found a new skin, but I have to wait for the DNS to resolve in order to install it, sigh.
Checked in on the status of my free books from JLG.
Upgraded Cyberduck.
Blogged.
Got some new sneakers.

ahhhhh.