Living in a post-school world

I'm done. (With school anyhow.)
I finished up in early May, and it's taken a little while for me to readjust to life without school. I've been reading all of the novels and comics I've had to put off in favor of text books and articles. (I heart Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Anansi Boys.)
So what does the post-MLS world look like for me?

• I'm training for and working at DCL's public service desks at library branches across the county.
• I'm coordinating DCL's library stories project, which aims to boost library support and funding using real-life narrative, video and images of patrons, staff and volunteers. This finds me studying up on videography and interview techniques, and becoming a pro at using flip cameras and camcorders.
  
• I've got a research project going about leadership and trends. I get to interview Front Range library leaders and local elected officials, and help my organization spot trends and prepare for the future.
• I'm preparing to speak at graduation in August. (What to say? What to say?)
• I'm gearing up for a very fun speaking engagement at Internet Librarian in October. I'm also excited that my mom and aunt (who has always dreamed of visiting Monterey), will join me in CA. They'll take a gander at the sea-life and tree-life while I geek it up. Here's the description for my program:

We're All Marketers Now

Experiments in marketing: using patron stories and 2.0 social tools to spread library awareness and support in hard economic times.

In 2008, three groundbreaking works challenged library marketers and advocates to rethink their approach: OCLC's "From Awareness to Funding," Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody," and Seth Godin's "Tribes." Discover how one public library is making the most of pointed, people-powered marketing to increase library support on the cheap. Efforts include patron library story sharing, an ongoing and growing online conversation about the essential community role libraries play, and a new library marketing campaign based on OCLC’s findings. Tools include inexpensive flip cameras, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Word Clouds and more.

• I'll be serving as the publicist for the Indian Park School House Association's summertime fundraising melodrama once again. I also get to design the poster and exercise my artistic urges.
• Working on some new websites for my husband's guitar school and a local history organization.
• Above all, relishing all of the extra time I have to spend with family now (they are the very best, and I sure am glad I get spend life with them).
  

Wordle wordle.

Do you Wordle?
Now you and your buddies can make free and pretty word clouds with a quick ctrl+c and ctrl+v. Paste the text of your choice into Wordle, and boom! you've got a cool and customizable word cloud.

Here's a cloud I made from the words on this very blog:














Tip: if you're a mac user, use the selection tool in Grab to make a quick .tiff of your word cloud. You can do something similar with Print Screen on a PC, but be prepared to do some editing in PhotoShop or the like. Instead, you might try SnagIt.

I used Wordle for my M.L.S. portfolio, to showcase how my school projects match up my school's MLS outcomes and professional values statements. At Douglas County Libraries, we also plan to use it to map patron opinion. For example, what would you learn if you asked patrons to tell you what "library" means to them, and then mapped their responses in Wordle? What would emerge if you wordled recent keyword searches?

We're currently using FaceBook, Twitter and email to poll patrons about their individual understanding of the word "literacy." I can't wait to see what emerges from the cloud of words.

I'm a 2009 Shover & Maker

Check it out.

M.L.S. Portfolio Goes Live

It's true. Check it out here.

iWeb, Hostgator & AspenWalker.info

Mac users take note... if you've created a website using Mac's iWeb, and you want to get your site to upload successfully to your non-Mac web hosting service (I use Hostgator), be certain to use the CyberDuck FTP uploader. Avoid the WebDisk upload, it's not your friend.

You only need to upload two files, and two files alone to CyberDuck: the folder you published your iWeb site to, and the file called "index.html".

After gnashing my teeth for a while trying to get my iWeb pages to work with Hostgator, I discovered this article. It was a big help.

Anyhoodle, my new website is in the works at AspenWalker.info.