Carolyn's IHCPL

Happy 60th Birthday to me!!

2009-03-28T13:57:00.001-07:00

I celebrated my 60th birthday with the help of my good friends and staff of the North Channel Library. See my smiling face on my profile!!

New Job as Branch Librarian

2009-03-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

On September 4, 2008, I was appointed Branch Librarian for the North Channel Branch of the Harris County Public Library, Houston, TX. One week later, Hurricane Ike hit--!! We survived with minor damage to the roof. We served customers by flashlight for one week until the power was restored!

Carolyn Dial featured in Harris Co. Kids Newsletter

2008-01-10T16:24:00.000-08:00

Meet the HCPL Children's Staff
Harris County Public Library (Houston, TX) has 26 branch libraries across the county. We have over 60 staff members dedicated to serving children in our community. Let's meet one of them!

Miss Carolyn
Carolyn Dial is the Children's Librarian at the North Channel Branch Library. She has been at North Channel for over two years. The children call her "Miss Carolyn" in that fine old Southern tradition!

What do you like to read?

I like to read all kinds of books!! New children's books, fiction books and biographies. My favorite new children's book is Ivan the Terrier by Peter Catalanotto. This is SUCH a funny story!

What was your favorite book when you were a kid?

My favorite book was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. There is a whole series of books about Oz and I eagerly read ALL of them!

What are your hobbies?

I enjoy music, both listening to it and making it. I am now learning to sing alto in the church choir. I also enjoy storytelling. I collect stories, learn them and tell them to children as often as I can. I especially like family stories. I present a program each summer for the kids entitled "Little House on the East Texas Prairie." I share stories from my family and show old photos, tools and clothes to enrich the experience. I wrote some of these stories for a book entitled, Trinity County: A Legend of Its Own. My book is now "in processing" at the Library of Congress! I am SO excited!!

What was your favorite subject in school?

My favorite subject in elementary school was Library Time--any surprise?? In junior high and senior high, I took advanced math classes and I really enjoyed these. In college, I was an English major and took many Humanities classes as I also love music and art, but I still found time to take calculus!

What do you like best about your job?

I love sharing tales with kids in Story Time! It is also fun to help kids and parents find the books, videos and web sites that they need. I also like to find good new books to order for our library.

Anything else you want to share about yourself?

When I attended Sarasota (Florida) Junior High School, the kids called me silly names based on my last name, like "Sun Dial" and "Soapy." Since I smiled all the time, they also called me "Smiley."

Miss Carolyn with a young Harry Potter.

Arrgh!! A pirate's life for me!

Week 10 - No. 23 The End

2007-11-19T14:45:00.000-08:00

At the end of the iHCPL experience, I will say that my favorite discoveries are the Zoho products, especially ZohoWriter. This will be a great resource for home use--and a way for library customers to save their work quickly if they want to continue editing, for example, at school the next day. I was surprised and pleased with the ability to make mashups. I liked Wowio for its ease of use for audios and for the way it lists other products of interest based on your search. This will be a great adjunt to reader's advisory services we provide at the libraries.

Week 9 - No. 22 Downloadable Media

2007-11-14T09:52:00.000-08:00

I explored the OverDrive materials. The home page gives a good variety of titles, both adult and juvenile,to choose from. Each title is available for a 14 day loan period. Titles include summaries and some include viewable excerpts. In addition to using the search box, you can also search by topics on the left-hand side of the screen, exs. eAudio, new eAudio. In terms of classics of literature, I did not find the poems of Emily Dickinson on this site, but I did find Moby Dick. I noted one title that will be of help to parents that I have worked with: Spanish on the Move for Kids. When I explored the free sites, I liked Wowio best. It has an attractive home page that draws your interest to new releases. Also, each book brings up a list of related titles that may be of interest. You can also search by category. Brave New World is included as a new title. LibriVox is less attractive from the homepage and on into the site. I did find the poems of Emily Dickinson and the classic, Moby Dick.

Week 9 - N0. 21 Podcasts

2007-11-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

I looked at podcast.net. This yielded an interesting result that would be useful for libraries: Audio Literature Odyssey. This included professional readings of many well known authors and poets, including my favorite, Emily Dickinson.
Then I went onto Podcast Alley: it seemed more "hip," but required more steps that I was willing to do.
In contrast, Yahoo! Audio was VERY easy to use!! I found audio recordings of author/poet Richard Brautigan. These recordings were transferred over from LP records, so you can even hear the skips and hisses in the background--sounds of my youth!
When I looked at library uses of podcasts, I saw that one featured an exhibit and another introduced a new librarian. These are both interesting uses of this new technology.
Last, I added the Yahoo Audio feed for "Brautigan podcasts" to my bloglines rss feed list.

Week 9 - No. 20 YouTube

2007-11-12T16:42:00.000-08:00

I explored YouTube today. I watched the example videos on iHCPL. Youtube can be used in such a variety of ways!!! I searched for videos on my favorite author, Richard Brautigan. I found several, including a few that used recordings of his voice, reading his poems.
Library uses for YouTube and similar technologies are numerous. If an author gave permission, he could be videoed as he presented for us. That way those that could not attend would still be able to see and hear him.

Week 8 - No. 19 Web-Based Applications

2007-11-06T14:33:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, I created a Zoho account. I created two test documents. I learned the HARD way NOT to include puctuation or special characters in file names--doing this locked up my computer on the second document!!

Week 8 - No. 18 Social Networking

2007-11-06T11:47:00.000-08:00

I watched the videos, took the Facebook tour and looked at numerous social networking sites. It is good to see that there are SO many social networking opportunities! Linkedin.com looks like it would be the best for social networking with other librarians. I was impressed with the various layers of personal security provided by Facebook. Looking at these websites helps me to understand the overwhelming popularity of MySpace !!

Week 7 - No. 17 Technology

2007-10-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

When I began took classes for the Masters of Library Science at Emporia State University in Kansas 1978-79, we were told that libraries would soon be computerized to deal with the Information Revolution already in progress. It was actually 10 years after this when I worked for the Lee County Library System in Ft. Myers, FL, that we brought up the first DOS based version of Dynix to manage circulation. We still had separate stand alone computers that were only updated periodically to search for materials for customers. We have "come a long way, baby" from those humble beginnings. Even the sky may not be the limit for technology and its applications!!

I just finished adding my comment to beatlelover-nancy.blogspot.com. What is scary is that I can see the future she predicts where we are "all watched over by machines with loving grace" just as Richard Brautigan did. Will librarians be needed--or will be become lovable dinosaurs?!

Week 7 - No. 15 Wikis

2007-10-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

I looked at several Library wikis. What I found interesting is the quick way a community wiki could be mounted. This would help a great deal to have one place to add answers to questions frequently asked in the local community. For example, at North Channel, we could list the contacts for English as a Second Language classes.

I just added my blog to the iHCPL favorite blogs.

Week Six - No. 15: Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

2007-10-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

I read several of the listed articles on Library 2.0. I think that Web 2.0 and its offspring Library 2.0 have much to offer libraries. I also agree that as institutions, the best libraries are already user centered. I also agree that we should not rush to new technology just because it is available, but that we should review what's available and what these technologies can help us create. I entered this profession because it is customer centered. Library 2.0 gives us new and creative tools to link to our customers and serve them better.

Week 6 - No. 14 Technorati

2007-10-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

I created a Technorati account and claimed my blog. Using Advanced Search, I used blog posts, blog tags and the blog directory to search "Learning 2.0" and found results on all.
I also used "brautigan" as my search word for blog posts, blog tags and the blog directory. In blog posts, this yielded an article on the CIA--which made me wonder, but this article did include a quotation from one of Brautigan's poems. In Blog tags, only blogs on Richard Brautigan appeared; no CIA articles. I really liked the blog directory search as this yielded "the brautigan pages" blog for all fans of my favorite author.

Boing Boing yielded a post on Creepy Michael Jackson fright masks. Neither Boing Boing or Lifehacker yielded any articles on author Richard Brautigan.

Week 6-No. 13 Tagging

2007-10-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

I explored Del.icio.us bookmarks. I tried to view the tutorial video, but it would not work and was blurry. I toured the iHCPL bookmark, looked at comments and tags. As a former cataloger, I am glad that the tagging is simple and does not use one and only one thesaurus for subject terms. The main use I will make of this is to create an account so that I can have my favorite bookmarks when I travel to other locations and use other computers.

Week 5-No.12 Library Elf

2007-10-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

I easily registered for a Library Elf account. I have overheard staff discussions about the security and privacy of this account. From what I read, it is best NOT to use an RSS feed on bloglines as even private RSS feeds are treated as public. I was pleased to see in the Library Elf FAQ that NO list of books read is kept for each account. I was also pleased to see that this is a Canadian based organization that will only reveal private information upon being served with a court order.

Week 5-No.11-Library Thing

2007-10-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

I used Library Thing to create an account and added 5 books by my favorite author, Richard Brautigan. This was easy to use--and makes me wonder if small, private schools might be able to use this as a cataloging tool.

Week 5-No. 10: Avatars, etc.

2007-10-08T14:51:00.000-07:00

I created an avatar for my yahoo e-mail account. I also used meez to create a dancing avatar and post it to my blogger account.

carolynsihcpl

2007-10-08T14:50:00.001-07:00

Week 4-No.8-Added iHCPL Blogspot: Kathy's blog

2007-10-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

I added Kathy's blogspot blog to my rss feed on blogger.

kcgsblog.blogspot.com

Week 4-No.9:Finding & Using Feeds

2007-10-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

I used Topix, Syndic8 and Technorati to search one of my favorite authors, Richard Brautigan. All produced results, usually referring to his poem, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace." Technorati took me to a link that includes indexing of most of his poetry. I enjoyed seeing his work and refernces to his work online.

Week 4-No.9: tried to use Feedster to add Widget

2007-10-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

I tired pasting the Widget code into this post, but blogger will not take it.

Week 4-No.8: Created RSS feeds with Bloglines

2007-10-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

I established RSS feeds on my blog, on fields of my interest, using Bloglines.

Week 1-No. 2: Learning Style

2007-10-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

I am a note taker. I do not learn well in classes where everything is online and you just click, click, click. I prefer to have handouts to look at that detail all the steps in new procedures. I can then make my own notes on the handouts. If you do not see me take notes, I have not learned the new skill--and I cannot replicate the skill at a later time.

Week 2-No.4-Online Safety

2007-10-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

Online safety is an important topic. I reviewed the materials linked to iHCPL. From personal experience, your info. can be "fished" off the Internet. I used YahooTravel to buy an airline ticket. This site is NOT secure.

Week 3-No. 5: added photo from Flicker

2007-10-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

I added a photo from Flicker that showed autumn fall foilage. Since this photo was already tagged--and likely copyrighted--the tag portion was grayed out and would not let me add my own tag.

Week 3-No. 6: Used TripPlanner & mashup FDToys

2007-10-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

I used TripPlanner to create a mock Caribbean cruise. / I also used the mashup FD Toys to create a card with a family photo and added a message to it.

Week 3-No. 7: used Picnik to add photo & caption

2007-10-01T11:02:00.001-07:00

I used Picnik to add a photo to my blog and add a caption to it.

autumn contrasts

2007-10-01T10:54:00.001-07:00

autumn contrasts
Originally uploaded by slider5

Week 3-#5: I posted this autumn photo from Flicker to my blog.

Trip Planner

2007-09-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

Week 3: Exercise 2-I used Travel Planner to put together my cruise plans.

John Dial and family

2007-09-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

Carolyn's IHCPL Blog

2007-09-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

Hello World! This is my first blog. I hope to learn lots of new techniques over the next two months.

Carolyn