Teen catchup

Long time, no blog. Summer ended, then we got right back into the whirl and swirl of the school year. We ended our teen summer programs with Anime Fest, a day-long mini-mini anime convention. 50 teens attended and everyone seemed to have a blast. As always we are so lucky to have the Friends of the Palm Beach County Library system who are willing to foot the bill for pizza, Ramune (Japanese soda) and Pocky (Japanese snack food) for 50 hungry teens!

October is going to be another busy month with Teen Read Week smack in the middle of it. We are participating in the Pimp My Bookcart (otherwise known here as the "Trick my Book Truck") contest for the second year in a row. Wish us luck, our Teen Advisory Group has submitted some bang-up ideas so far. The Teen Read Week theme is "Books with Bite" so we're hosting a Twilight trivia contest. And we're ending the month with a Japanese Storytelling session hosted by *gulp* me. (I learned to love storytelling when I took a class in it from Dr. Henrietta Smith, one of the best courses I've ever taken, hands-down.) We're also hosting our standard monthly favorites: creative writing, Teen Advisory Group meeting, Pizza and Pages book discussion, Anime Grab Bag, Game Night and Movie Night.

It makes me sad to see blog use tapering off now that 23 Things has come to a close. Hello? Anybody else out there?

We are gearing up for Anime Fest here at Wellington. Anime Fest is an all-day celebration of all things anime, kind of like a mini-mini con. It's difficult to find time to work on it in between story times and special programs and typical summer reading program craziness, but we've been planning it since January so we're good to go.

Summary

#23 Is this really the end? Or just the beginning...

The best thing about the 23 Things exercise was discovering that PBCLS admin is embracing Library 2.0. I look forward to using myspace, flickr, blogs, wikis, etc. to connect with patrons, with fellow PBCLS staff and with librarians outside the system for a multitude of reasons. In the past I would have assumed my proposals to use web 2.0 technology/methodology would have been shot down. Only time will tell if PBCLS is ready to embrace the philosophy, not just the technology, behind Web 2.0.

Yes, if another exercise like this was made available I would definitely love to participate.

Overdrive

One of the best uses for downloadable audiobooks is learning languages, in my opinion. In the past I have downloaded audiobooks from our library to learn the basics of new languages and brush up on the ones I already know. Unlike the CDs you can check them out over and over (whereas if there are holds on your CDs you must return them).

Podcasts

I went to the NPR directory of podcasts and found some about poetry, religion and other topics of interest. When I listen to podcasts at home I find them via itunes. I have never put a podcast on my ipod, however--I am too much of a music fan. I have friends who religiously listen to podcasts and learn a lot about new technology that way.

Youtube

Here is a video I made of my dog. She is obsessed with apples! She doesn't act this way with stuff like cheese or meat, but if you eat an apple she is your best friend.



I chose this video because, uh, I made it.

My favorite youtube video of all time is the sneezing panda!



Uses for youtube embedded videos on the library page . . . hmm. Maybe commercials? I would be hesitant to post videos of people at programs because of the whole privacy thing but if we got permission forms, that could be a good way to market programs and services.

Powerpoint is your friend

Annmarie and I have had great luck using Powerpoint presentations to jazz up our teen programs. We have done several movies a la Rocky Horror, using powerpoint to indicate when attendees should do something (wave a prop, sing something, make a gesture, etc.). We also discovered last night that teens love trivia games! We created a game based on the Worst-Case Scenario books and had them work in teams of four to come up with a multiple-choice answer as a group. We had 32 total and the room was buzzing with discussion during the game. We will definitely use this format again for other trivia games.