Category Archives: General

Check this out:, General, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist

Minecraft Competition? Let’s do it!!

Spread the word about some fun!

Do you have patrons who like to play Minecraft? Let them know about a competition they might enjoy!

Welcome to the 2016 Learning Zone Minecraft Oceans Competition!

The goal is to build the best model of the Sentinel-3 or Jason-3 ocean-monitoring satellites, or get creative and design your own satellite and/or ocean monitoring system with buoys, automatic robots etc.

For the first category, we will provide you with 3D views of the Sentinel-3 and Jason-3 satellites, for you to recreate in Minecraft. Build one, two or both, the choice is yours!

For the second category, the sky is literally the limit! Go crazy thinking up an interesting design for your ocean monitoring satellite.

Show us what it can do and why and you can even design your own ocean monitoring system using the image of the Global Ocean Observing System as your inspiration.

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Academic, Check this out:, Communication, General, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Special

Animals and stress relief

Animals can be great antidote to workplace stress!

Watching fish swim, patting a kitty, walking with a dog – it can all help to reduce stress, lower blood pressure, and diminish the symptoms of anxiety. Ahhhh….what could be nicer?

If your library has a fish tank, or a resident cat, or a therapy dog who visits and wouldn’t mind taking a break from listening to kids read so she can listen to librarians talk about their day – you are set! If you don’t have one at hand, there are plenty of other ways to watch some relaxing fish. Many aquariums have live cams, where you can enjoy watching some fish swimming all over the world!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5YGSS5P8X0&ab_channel=MontereyBayAquarium

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Check this out:, CMLE, General

Ever read a whole book in one sitting?

Summer Reading
Must be a good book!

Librarians have SO much more to their job than just working with books (teaching/dealing with technology, customer service, information literacy, plus so much more) however, books tend to be very special to librarians! Most, if not all, librarians are avid readers. So hopefully you will be able to relate to this cute slideshow all about finishing a book in one sitting!

Have you ever been so pulled into a book that you literally could not put it down until you found out what happened? Or, on the flip side, have you ever raced to finish a book because it was terrible but you wanted to just get it done? 🙂

My most recent race-to-finish books:
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (because I needed a break from the intensity of the book, but also really wanted to find out what happened!)
A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee (because I didn’t really care for it)

Check this out:, General, Resources, Training

Stress-Busting Therapy Dogs!

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Fancy dog
clearly a hard worker, at being mellow

We have talked about the great work dogs do in libraries to help kids with their reading, and some of you already have these dogs hard at work in your library.

This month, as we look at ways to mange stress in our libraries and workplaces, we wanted to look at dogs again; this time looking at pups who work to help bust stress! An increasingly popular activity in academic libraries, especially as the semester wraps up, therapy dogs provide a tool for libraries to help their communities to be successful in their work.

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Academic, Check this out:, CMLE, General, Resources, Tech

Biking while working – at the library!

laptop-desks-at-troy-university
Read the article here – these look so fun!

In this article from American Libraries, Troy University in Alabama is featured because of their awesome new additions – six exercise bikes with tables for laptops that were purchased for student use!
Three bikes are available in the library’s student space at the main campus in Troy, and three are available at the university’s extension campus in Dothan, AL. The additions have been so popular and well-received that the university has ordered three more bikes and six elliptical machines that can be used under tables while students are seated!

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