Felix hanging out.

What I have been doing for the past few months…well, here he is hanging out in the Baby Bjorn. I have been back to work for only a month and am now adjusting my schedule to a new full time job as Adult Services Librarian/Teen Programming at the Woodburn Public Library and a mother of a two month old. It’s amazing how fast life can change. So as much as I would like to get to write posts, update my resume, and scan and upload my photos, expect these things to take a lot longer. My free time at home is now on demand by a 24.5 inch 11 lbs baby boy. I will try and break free, but who knows when that will be

So wouldn’t you know, my husband’s position is fazed out and we lose our medical coverage, wouldn’t you know we find ourselves finally pregnant. After doing a home test I began searching around on how to get health coverage only to find out that no one would cover me because “pregnancy” is considered a “pre-exisiting condition” and insurance companies can leagally refuse to cover or cover only after 6 months of paying without services. The new law making this illegal doesn’t go into effect until 2014, long after this little one will be born.

I did find out that I qualify for the state medical plan for those who don’t qualify for health insurance at a lovely price of $427 a month. Unfortuantely, because of my part-time job (without benefits) and my husband’s unemployement, we do not qualify for any state aid because we make too much money. Isn’t that lovely, though when the unempoyement benefits runs out in December we get the joy of maybe qualifing, though I am not sure since my second part-time job may put me above that.

So much for making a professional wage without any benefits keeps us just above the low-income line, even though we have to worry about high student loan bills all for our wonderful new wages. And this would be why I have been a bit busy trying to figure out what we should do. This was definately not the way I thought starting our family would be like. C’est la vie.

Postmaster General James A. Farley During National Air Mail Week, 1938

My first position in an academic library was as an adjunct replacement for a semester and I was just maintaining the collection development for several departments. This meant that a preset list of books to be ordered was given in case the departments didn’t fill their quota. I did run into a few problems with this method as soon as I began having the student employees process these lists for ordering.

The main problem with this type of development was that many of the books on this list were added years ago and were never updated, so a lot of the books were out of print or unavailable to purchase through our vendor. Many books in the academic publishing have small print runs, making them only available for a short time period. Books that may be of valuable information after their print run may be unavailable through the normal library vendor. And finding them through other vendors like Amazon or Alibris, you may find that the book that was once a reasonable price has now skyrocketed.

The other problem is the fact that the information may now be out of date due to new academic publishing on the topic, the library may already own other books that now cover the topic, or that type of research may now be out of vogue.  For all of these reasons, the ordering from these lists took longer for the students to check the library catalog, other vendors, and then get approval from me for an inflated price or to verify if the information was still valuable to the library. This approach of keeping a list of books seems to only be valuable if the list is weeded through yearly and problematic if kept too long.

My priority became to find out what the departments needed and keep them on task at sending their requests over in a timely manner, especially for new classes coming up. I would also add books that I read about from Choice Reviews and other magazines that complimented the courses taught at the school and the collection had gaps in topics. Since I was only at the library for a short time period, I didn’t get a chance to really figure out strategy for building, but I did get to see into another librarian’s approach to collection development.

Football Dreams from a seven year old

Last Tuesday, the American writer Ray Bradbury passed away at age 91. I have always admired his work, but I had not known just what an influence on he was on my husband until this news broke. My husband admired three writers that have influenced his writing at a very young age, Robert Anton Wilson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ray Bradbury, and all of whom have passed away. I have to admit a bit of jealousy at him having found people to admire at such a young age. I don’t think people understand that finding people to look up to is not as easy as it seems and many go through life without such presences.

Why is this? I was looking back at some papers I kept from elementary school and ran across a few papers and a time capsule packet that was written in 1^st grade to find out if I had written down anyone to admire. I think if most of us still have the time capsule booklets created in most early schools, you’d have one or both your parents. Apparently, I had drawn a football field and stated that I wanted to be a football player with the Dallas Cowboys. Oh, such a Texan. Another paper stated that I wanted to be a teacher, though I distinctly remember when I decided this was not a good career move, since I had a bigger desire to own a Jeep Cherokee, and an elementary school teacher’s annual salary was less than the cost of a Jeep Cherokee. So that was out. And then in middle school I convinced myself that I wanted to be an engineer, mostly based on my older brother’s plans.

So I guess during my adolescent the true person I admired was my older brother, B.J., though I believe this is a common phenomenon among younger siblings. Once my brother left for college, my desires to become an engineer slowly faded into exploring a more artistic side in the theater and dance. Now I am pursuing a career in Librarianship, though looking back I have noticed at least a commonality to the career paths I have taken, teaching.

Even when I was exploring the idea of an engineer career I used to fantasize with my father getting a degree in aeronautical engineer, but continuing onto my masters, working for a few years, then getting my PhD so I could teach on the college level. As I was pursing theater at Hollins University, I really enjoyed training younger students in backstage design and operations. And one of the reasons I obtained my MFA in photography after deciding against a life in New York theater, it was because my photography professor, Robert Sulkin, had told me that he had received written compliments about my helping in his classes from his students. He thought I would be a good teacher and would need an MFA to teach photography.

My life choices seem to always veer towards teaching others whatever skills I have, from photography, working on a computer, creating art, helping with research, of how to find the next best book. I just found my 15-year-old time capsule from 1988, with an essay of What and Where I want to be in 2013:

Hopefully by 2013 I will have already visited many countries and accomplished many things like, to act in a play, dance, or teach others to dance, and feel the music.

I will say, I forgot how much I liked dance at this time, since the only dance classes I had taken were when I was eight. Luckily for me, I have visited many countries, acted, directed, and stage designed a play, taken many modern dance classes, designed lights for a dance company, and maybe I haven’t taught any dance classes, but I have taught many other things to people.  Maybe if I had a person to admire I would have patterned my life off of theirs, but then again I wouldn’t have had such a great adventure finding my own path.

Chicken in garlic sauce

2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken, dark meat
1 TBS sweet paprika
2 TBS olive oil
8 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1/4 cup fino sherry
1/2 cup chicken stock (though vegetable stock works well too)
1 bay leaf
2 TBS chopped flat-leaf (Italian) parsley

I usually buy my dark chicken meat already diced from a meat market, but you can also debone chicken thighs or drumsticks and cut the meat into 2 inch pieces. Place chicken in a bowl, add paprika, and salt and pepper to taste. Toss chicken to coat and set aside.

Heat 1 TBS of olive oil in a large frying pan over high heat and cook garlic cloves for 1-2 minutes or until brown. Remove from pan. Add remaining tablespoon of oil to pan and cook chicken in small batches until browned. Return all chicken and add sherry, boil for 30 seconds, then add the stock and bay leaf. Reduce the heat and simmer covered for about 10 minutes.

While cooking, squeeze garlic cloves from skins and mash into a paste using a molcajete (mortal and pestle) with parsley. Stir into chicken. Cover and cook for 10 more minutes, or until tender.

Untitled by Thomas Smillie, cyanotype, 1890

I have recently been asked the opinion from a young writer on some of there writings. While reading through their stories, I began to ask my husband, who id a writer, what advice did he wish was given him when he started writing. So here is some advice he would pass along, and a few other tips to help in the writing process.

• Learn about writing and the writing process. Check out, “Zen and the Art of Writing” by Ray Bradbury and “On Writing” by Stephen King. Here, you will get advice from master crafters of stories, learn what inspired them, and what has helped them be successful writers. There are many more books out there on writing, but these are highly recommended for the young writer interested in speculative fiction.

• Learn about story structure, specifically the three Act story arc. A great place to learn this is through books on screenplay structures. A long standing basic is “Screenplay: The foundations of Screenwriting” by Syd Field written, in 1970. If his writing is not to your liking, there are many others, like “Secrets of Screenplay Structure: how to recognize and emulate the structural frameworks of great films” by Linda J. Cowgill, or “Story: Substance, structure, Style and the principles of Screenwriting” by Robert McKee.

• Expand your understanding of stories by reading different genres and styles of writing. Even though you may want to be a romance writer, you should also read outside the genre to understand what elements all stories have in common.

• Don’t limit yourself to only modern writers. If you do want to write in a specific genre, read those authors that have stood the test of time and figure out why people are still reading their stories.

• After discovering the structure of a Three Act story, read plays to see how it works. Some suggestions: William Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Neil Simon, or Arthur Miller.

• Read poetry to understand the rhythm of words. Some suggestions: John Keats, Edgar Allen Poe, T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Christina Rossetti, or Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

For more inspiration check out Teresa Nielsen-Hayden’s blog posting: A simple four-item formula for turning story into fiction.(Teresa Nielsen-Hayden is an editor for Tor books and created the blog Making Light.)

Write, all the time, and constantly. Set yourself a daily writing quota and try and meet it, no matter what. Writers don’t wait for inspiration they work at finding it every day. Good luck!

Elizabeth Sabin Goodwin (1902-1980), Washington, D.C., artist and illustrator.

Libraries are changing. This change is driven by new technologies that are changing the materials and resources libraries offer, the methods of access by which we offer them, and all in relation to how these technologies are becoming more affordable and prevalent in mainstream society. In the academic world, adaptation in the libraries has been more experimental as they try to stay in the forefront of the latest resources offering their faculty and students the best possible advantages in the research world. These changes have included the digitization of parts of collections, such as thesis, archival materials, and special collections. Others have been creating digital depositories, checking out e-readers, and offering online reference sessions.

The public sector is also affected, through offering e-book lending, e-reader classes, technology classes, and more. In both aspects, keeping up with technology and not being afraid of new methods of doing things is necessary for the success of modern libraries. This is where having a background in art comes in handy.

Artists are attracted to “shiny new things” all the time. This curiosity is a large factor in how we create. By keeping an open mind and exploring what others are doing outside our own circle, we are inspired, motivated, and challenged in our ways of thinking. Trying new technologies and techniques helps us get out of ruts, pushes the way we create, and actively reinforces the method we have been doing all along.

Act I - 05, gum print

I enjoy exploring both new and old technologies in my craft by creating images using plastic cameras, like the Lubitel twin-reflex camera, and Holga camera. I scan the images in, and mix them up digitally, then output a digital negative to create a print using an early photographic technique called gum printing.

This natural tendency to explore helps me in finding new methods or technology that can also be used in the library. Exploring technologies just to see how it works can benefit not just myself, but also the place where I work, especially if the technology ends up being useful for a project or program.

As I am always interested in digital libraries, I have been exploring the use of OMEKA in creating my own digital archive of my photography. I get to work on my skills of customizing the program and checking out benefits and problems associated with the program. This openness to new ideas is a benefit, not just personally, but in the changing world of libraries as well.

I have set myself a Reading Challenge for 2012 in GoodReads for 100 books. I know I can accomplish this since I read 105 books last year and I do read a lot of variety including young adult, graphic novels, fiction of all genres, some non-fiction, and listen to fair amount of audiobooks. Yes, I include audiobooks, though I have gone back many a time and read the book after listening to them in order to take a bit more time in enjoying the words. A few that I have done this with have been Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series and Shades of Grey and I already want to read Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy. Both of these series use the page and text formatting and play on words in their stories, which are lost in the audio version.

The bigger challenge is that I am trying to write reviews for the books that I read and not just rate them. At this time I am sorely behind on my review writing. I do not write truly in-depth reviews, but I do try to give at least a bit more than just saying “I liked the book” or “This was a fun read.” I have found that utilizing a waiting period after finishing the book to muse over the experience does help in solidifying my overall reaction to the book and I try to not be too hasty in my opinions.

Thinking about writing my own reviews helps me understand the difficulty many of our teen have in submitting their reviews for the Summer Reading programs. I have read through many of last years one to two sentence reviews that exclaim, “I like the story because the characters seem real,”or “I laughed a lot reading this book.”

This year I am in charge of designing the program and handouts and I have decided to create a review form for the teens to fill out. The questions that I will ask are the following:

• Summarize what the book is about in one to two sentences.
• Pick the genres that best describe the type of story this was:
• Mystery, Historical Fiction; Contemporary Fiction; Science Fiction; Fantasy; Adventure; Thriller/Spy; Horror; High School Drama; Romance;
• Describe at least one thing you liked about the book and why.
• Describe at least one thing you thought could have been written differently or you didn’t understand about the book and why.
• Overall, what did you think about the book?
• Who would you recommend this book to? (Example: readers who like Hunger Games, Anime lovers, people who like happy endings, readers who like Libba Bray books.)

I hope this will help and encourage our teens to express their feelings about the books they read better. I do want to make it an easy process and not be too reminiscent of homework. Hopefully this format will encourage more expression and help them in writing reviews. Let me know if you have any suggestions for this form, I am still in the process of creating it. I will publish the form here once I have it completed.

I currently have a teen that is a voracious reader and comes to the desk asking for book recommendations. They are fairly open to reading new authors and genres, but have an affinity for vampires and paranormal stories. So the challenge for me is keeping her favorite type of genre in mind is recommending new authors outside the genre while keeping her up to date with the latest young adult vampire series. Keeping this in mind, I began to ask which “classic” literature she has read and found what I suspected, large holes needing to be filled.

The preferred genre is paranormal/vampire/magic the selection is very large, I began by branching her reading out of the young adult section to find the same authors in the regular fiction and also series in the graphic novels and manga. Lately I have been slowly moving her into more classic literature building on the romance part of the paranormal with Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters.

I try to introduce to the patron how I find new books, such as searching for recommendations on GoodReads or Librarything.  I also show her how I find new books for her to read by doing a wikiwalk through the library catalog by selecting subject headings in favorite books to get more books with that same subject. And how making lists in her account to remember which books to get next time by showing her the list I created in Worldcat (the list for this patron is private, so this is an example of a public list) which I keep adding books as I think of to show her.

I enjoy the challenge of helping her find new books, but I also want to her to be able to continue her exploration of books on her own. My next step will be to introduce her to the other aspects of GoodReads and suggest she create an account to keep track of her reading and to get recommendations on new books.  I will entice her by showing her the giveaways offered by publishers; we all know how much teens love prizes