Cycho Librarian

One of our administrators added a bonus challenge onto our 23 Things : Tell everyone 10 random things about yourself. That's wonderful, really. But I have 2 minor problems. First, I have an unfortunate habit of thinking that everyone already knows everything about me. After all, since I know it surely everyone else does too, right? The other problem is that I like to tell stories, so I've totally lost track of which stories about me everyone's already heard and which ones are new to people. So chances are I'm going to bore you with at least half of this post. Hopefully the other half will make up for it. 1. I was born in Cincinnati but moved to New Hampshire before I was a year old, so I'm a New Englander at heart if not by birth. It's a complete coincidence that I'm back in Ohio. 2. I've been a Red Sox fan since I was at least 6 (my favorite player was Jim Rice). My mother is a professional singer, and sang at an annual charity event where she w...

We have come to the end of the 23 Things , although hopefully not the end of Learn & Play @ CML . There's no question in my mind that this is one of the best things the library has done to train staff. Not only did it take much less time in the long run than it would have to bring every employee into a classroom to be spoon fed this information, it also brought so many staff across the system closer together. I constantly hear about how people felt like they got to know their co-workers better and felt closer to staff at other locations than they ever did before. Since CML has been battling some provincialism among the branches for years, this alone could have made the entire project worthwhile. I can't help feeling that there are a couple of things missing, though. Unfortunately, to get this project to work we couldn't make it mandatory. What sort of "play" experience is required? But staff who didn't participate have lost out in so many ways. Not...

After our video Thing , we come to our audio Thing : Podcasts. I don't know why, but for some reason podcasts make more sense to me than video blogging. Maybe it's because I was raised on NPR, so audio broadcast of information just clicks with me. I'm also used to listening to NPR while I'm doing other things, and podcasts let me do that as well. So I'm a big fan of podcasts, even though I've never used them in the truest sense of the term-- that is, automatically downloading them onto my iPod. Usually, I just stream them as I need them. Naturally, being raised on NPR, my most common source of podcasts is NPR . Not only can I hear articles that I missed and share articles that I especially enjoyed, NPR also offers other streams that I really like, especially their " Song of the Day ." This has helped me discover all sorts of new music that I might not have checked out otherwise. The other musical feature that I really enjoy is the full-length st...