Tag Archives: Summer Fun Library Tour

Day Ninety of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

https://youtu.be/Xf3mRZ7SHu0

This is our final day of our CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!!

It has been so fun to explore all kinds of fun and interesting stories across the library world.This was an outstanding way to spend the summer! And we hope you had fun too. (Review over our entire series here!)

As a library multitype system, our focus is always on the ideas that cross all library organizations – and we find this is almost everything. We are here to provide information for all, and to help build and facilitate connections across the system and across the profession. We are utterly unapologetic in our belief that libraries (and archives, and history centers, and museums) are the most amazing places – and the most valuable parts of their communities! So this summer has been fun, valuable, and possibly educational for us all.

(Let’s not get too carried away with high-mindedness. This whole thing was based on the Phineas and Ferb cartoon – so “fun” was always at the heart of this project!)

To wrap it all up (for now!), I am concluding with a short blurb and photo that seems excellent to me! I was born in Omaha, and I’ve always wanted to do roller derby (those girls are TOUGH!); so seeing Omaha roller derby girls come to the library was just too cool for me!

(Check out the blurb with this photo here!)

 

Day Eighty Nine of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

http://www.hooverlibrary.org/sites/default/files/styles/portfolio_slideshow_view/public/page/frontlibrary.jpg

I’m a scifi and pop culture fan (and I’ve watched all the Project Runway shows!), so this was right in my interest area!

Could your library do a fashion and fun festival?? It is an increasingly common program for us!

Women rule costume contest at Hoover Public Library’s 2017 Sci Fi Fantasy Fest

“Women ruled the costume contest at the third annual Sci Fi Fantasy Fest at the Hoover Public Library Saturday night.

Jessica Collier of Gadsden walked away with first place among the 20 contestants, portraying the Sombra character from the Overwatch video game.

Second place went to Blythe Stovall of Trussville (dressed as Merida from the “Brave” movie, with a dose of Mel Gibson’s William Wallace character in “Braveheart.”)

Hoover’s own Illissa McGowin came in third, sporting a costume from another Overwatch character called the Widowmaker.

The judges picked three others as “judges’ choice” selections. One was Collier’s father, Terry Collier, who portrayed Negan from “The Walking Dead.” The other two were Suzanne Crowson of Gardendale, dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West in “Wicked,” and Ezekiel Addams of Columbiana, dressed as Javar from “Aladdin.”

The library’s Sci Fi Fantasy Fest is a three-day event that began Friday and ends Sunday. It includes sessions on gaming, TV and media, Star Wars, Star Trek, cosplay, writing, comics and the paranormal.

In the first two days, this year’s festival already has drawn a bigger crowd than last year, when more than 2,100 people came, chairwoman Krysten Griffin said. An estimate was not yet available and would need to come from the library’s automatic people counters, she said.

Some of the most popular aspects of the festival so far have been the prop building contest, live Dungeons and Dragons play, open board game play at the Hoover Senior Center, and a passionate debate about whether the Harry Potter series is better than the Star Wars series, Griffin said.

Saturday also featured John Anderson, an actor and comedian from Birmingham who landed a role as a ravager in the recently released “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” Anderson also appeared in “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” “The Case for Christ,” “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” “MacGyver,” “Being Mary Jane” and Tyler Perry’s “Too Close to Home.”

Activities on Sunday go from 2 to 6 p.m. and include two workshops at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on how to make a sheet of chainmaille. Chainmaille is a type of armour made of small metal rings linked together in a pattern to form a mesh-like material. The cost is $10 per person. Each participant will receive pliers and steel rings to make one sheet of chainmaille. Space is limited.

Other Sunday activities include open gaming, a breakout room, an Artemis Spaceship bridge simulator, a science fiction double feature of “It Came From Outer Space” and “Forbidden Planet” in the Hoover Library Theater, a session on epic failure sci-fi shows that never took off, and sessions related to Star Trek and Star Wars. Admission is free, except for the chainmaille workshops.”

(Read the rest of this article here, and see all the great photos!)

Day Eighty Eight of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

We have said before: digitization of resources is  a lot more work and time and effort than people may realize. So it is inspirational to see smaller libraries working to preserve their history using these neat tools! Sharing resources with their communities is always the mission of all libraries.

Derry Public Library efforts save history in digital form

“Many people have kept scrapbooks detailing life moments, special occasions and historical events.

Derry Public Library is now on the preservation bandwagon, taking on projects to preserve past memories, town and library history while keeping it safe on digital files for patrons to enjoy.

Library staff members recently discovered several scrapbooks compiled by past librarians and directors, filled with newspaper clippings, photos, letters, and special community programs that describe Derry’s history dating back decades.

Reference librarian Courtney Wason said it’s the library’s goal, as well as the goal of many libraries today, to preserve historical documents and artifacts in digital form and make them available online — making it easier to access the information.

The library’s New Hampshire Room, opened to the public in 1990 when an addition was built onto the original 1927 library building, is one space where much local and state history is already kept very secure in books, binders and on shelves. That includes town and state records, photos, yearbooks, news sources, books, and other periodicals that are often called upon when someone needs to do family research or other historical work.

“It’s a wide breadth of information,” Wason said.

Shelves are full of town and school reports, burial records, American Legion war records, Pinkerton Academy yearbooks, and histories of Derry and surrounding towns. There are also papers and documents on Alan B. Shepard Jr., and poet Robert Frost, and now digital issues of The Eagle-Tribune’s sister publication, the Derry News, dating back to 1891.

The scrapbooks, dating back to the 1920s, will also be put into digital format, according to Wason. Finding the added bits of library history in the classic scrapbooks was a great discovery, showing the effort past library staff took on to preserve history, Wason said.”

Day Eighty Seven of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

Digitizing materials is such hard work, both to do it and to keep them up to date and usable. But the access is so fantastic for those of us who can not visit all the places where rare, fragile materials are housed! So we appreciate the work done by libraries and archives able to do this good work.

One such library is The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts – ‘KTIV’

“With the rapid advances in the technological environment that significantly expand options for preservation, presentation and access to digital content, the National Library of Israel initiated the renewal of its collection of copies of Hebrew manuscripts. This enterprise, undertaken in partnership with the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society (FJMS) is designed to make Jewish manuscripts widely available. The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts will enable global centralized digital access to the complete corpus of existing Hebrew manuscripts. The images will be preserved long-term using state of the art technology, and the collection will be accessible to international communities of researchers and users from the comfort of their own institutions and homes.

The International Digital Library of Hebrew Manuscripts is made possible through the generous support of the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society (FJMS) and the Landmarks Heritage Program in the Prime Minister’s Office, created to preserve national heritage.

The Project’s Vision

• Open access to all Hebrew manuscripts, on the internet, on computers and on mobile devices.

• A quick and efficient search engine, enabling manuscript searches according to their physical attributes, content, historical and artistic context.

• A powerful viewer presenting the entire layout of the manuscript and single pages, enabling manipulation of high resolution images, and supplying links to the catalog record and to other related items or texts.

• A personal work environment, consisting of text- and image-related tools chosen by the user to create his or her own space according to individual preferences and needs (In the project’s second stage).

• Enabling users to share and consult with fellow users for research, education and personal interest.

 

The Project’s Process

• Contacting the libraries and collectors around the world and agreeing on the terms of digitization and presentation of the material.

• Scanning the manuscripts from the originals or from the microfilms. From the original, the digitization is generally done by the libraries’ teams, by local photographers or by NLI’s photographers, who take full color digital images, for long-term preservation, in the highest resolution possible. From the microfilms, the digitization is based on the negative reels of the manuscripts, which are scanned in gray-scale. The images are accessible in high quality in the website.

• Receiving and testing the images by the NLI team.

• The final outcome: high resolution images of the manuscripts.

 

Sharing Resources

Additional contributions will ensure the capacity to digitize the complete corpus of Hebrew manuscripts available worldwide. Designated donations can be made for particular manuscripts, for manuscripts belonging to specific communities, or for the development of educational activities and programming designed to promote engagement with this remarkable collection of manuscript treasures. The library will also welcome donations of digital images of manuscripts. ​​”

Day Eighty Five of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

Makerspaces!

Even the word sounds fun and action-oriented. Maker. Making.

You just think cool things will happen!

The future of many school libraries is anchored to makerspaces

The Future Ready Librarians initiative lends a framework to the transformation

“Not long ago the New Milford High School library in New Jersey was pretty traditional. It had tall stacks of books and old wooden tables that didn’t move easily. It was underutilized. Students weren’t drawn to it and, to a large extent, neither were teachers.

Today, it’s a different story. Students stop by the library during their lunch period and come before and after school. Teachers send students down to work on projects during class time or bring their entire classes. With far more people in and out of the library throughout the day, circulation is way up.

What changed? The library itself got a makeover, but school culture did, too.

Laura Fleming became the New Milford High School librarian during a time of transformation. In her first year, she got rid of some bookshelves and created more dynamic seating arrangements. She also started allowing food and drink in the library so students could take advantage of the space during their lunch periods. And she created a makerspace.

Fleming, author of “Worlds of Learning: Best Practices for Establishing a Makerspace for Your School,” says the maker movement has changed the face of school libraries, and hers is no exception. Now in her fifth year at New Milford High School, Fleming has a beautiful, well-stocked makerspace, but early on she largely had to make do with baby steps.

The space, in a corner of the library that wasn’t previously being used for much, took shape over time — old bookshelves were converted into high-top workspaces, an old table got a LEGO plate glued on top of it, and little by little, students had room to create. And it didn’t matter that they didn’t have all the latest tech gadgets at their disposal.

“Makerspaces are about creating a maker culture,” Fleming said. “It’s a mindset. It’s a toolbox at your disposal for reaching kids. That can be done in any space and on any budget.”

Fleming finds some of her most consistent visitors to the makerspace are students who are most disengaged from the traditional curriculum. The library now offers them a place for constructive, creative work.

Many school districts around the country are reversing prior decisions to cut librarians, realizing the school library can be at the heart of a broader digital transformation.”

Read the rest of this article here.

What is in your makerspace? How did you get started? Do you have suggestions for others, or questions from yourself?