Biblionet - Modernizing Your Local Library

A Modern Library!

I would love to have a Book Queue a la the Netflix Movie Queue.

I like making a queue of movies I want to see.  There have been so many movies that I've wanted to see, but haven't because I forget about them.  Netflix has changed all of that.

The same thing happens with me and books.  There are so many that I want to read, but I run into some problems.  And I think a Book Queue could change all of that.

Here are the problems:

• Our library system is pretty big, and patrons are served by scattered, small branches.  We request most of the books that we get because the library system has the books, but they are scattered all over the county.
• There is a lag time between requesting a book and getting it, time that I could be spending reading.
• Once I get looking at books, it seems that I have a hard time stopping, and before long I have a pretty long list of books I want to read.  I usually just go ahead and request them all at once.  Then, I end up with a huge pile of books that I'm not going to be able to get to before they all have to be back at the library.
• I'm not that great at keeping lists up to date, or keeping track of the lists.  I tend to do better with things that I can set up and do minimal maintenance on.  

The Book Queue would work similarly to the Netflix Queue.  A library patron could get on the library's website or go to the library and put books on his/her queue.  When they are almost done with their current book, they would just need to log in and okay the request for the next book.  If they forgot to do that, then the next book would be automatically requested when the previous one was returned.  It would also be nice to be able to have some idea of when the book might be available so that a patron could move books around to keep books in a steady flow.  Also, I'd really like to be able to keep a history of the books that I've checked out.  I have such a hard time remembering book titles sometimes.

That's the simple idea, the hard parts well...

There would have to be some way for you to tell the library to quit requesting books in case you went on vacation, and also someway for the system to automatically quit requesting books if you aren't picking them up.

I'm sure there are more complications that would arise, but for me, a Book Queue would be the best thing to happen to my local library since the Dewey Decimal system.

Decisions

I've not ever really been happy as a Stay at Home Mom.  It's not that I don't love my kids or that I don't appreciate the time that I've spent with them, it's that I don't feel complete.  A few months ago we started talking about what I'm going to do when Seth starts kindergarten.  What started as well perhaps I'll get an associates in computer programming, turned into maybe I should go to grad school, and the process of figuring all that out, I discovered that renewing my teaching license is going to be easier than I thought, much much easier.

Getting yet another degree, even an associates, makes me feel like I'm happy being a career student, which I'm not, but schooling is a place that I feel safe and where I left off in my career aspirations ten years ago.  It's also pretty unnecessary considering that I already have two undergraduate degrees.  The idea came from feeling that I needed to do something to get back into the game and what scientist couldn't use some computer programming classes?

Graduate school has a lot of draw backs.  I'd be putting a lot of effort into getting in.  My grades were good, but not spectacular and I've been mulling around with the kids for ten years.  It would be five more years of school.  Five more years of homework and tests and then research which can eat up time like not much else can.  I don't know that I'm really that excited about working in academia.  I am excited about doing research, I love being in the lab and doing experiments, but the amount of work that is expected by some departments would be hard for us to do.

After learning how easy it would be to renew my teaching license the idea of having a job is sounding more and more appealing.  I'm not going to be shunned as much for taking time out for my kids like I have.  I would get summers off, and, if we are in the same school district, almost all of the same days off that the kids will have.  It'll be like having the best of both worlds.  It would be even more awesome if I could find a part time teaching job.

I guess that it's pretty apparent where I'm leaning.  I think the clincher for me with graduate school is that I'd do it and then I'd probably end up teaching.  I feel drawn to education and excited about it.  It's the thing that I'm passionate about.  I'm not excited about teaching under No Child Left Behind, but I'm also at the point that I don't think that it should be the only reason that I don't teach.

I think teaching is going to be the best way for me to have a job and stay involved in my family, and for me, that balance is the most important thing.

Today Was Good

I took my kids bowling today.  By myself.  And there were no major catastrophes that made me wish we had just stayed home.

Ah.  It feels so good.

I can't wait to see what other crazy adventures we can have now.  It's going to be awesome!

Uphill, Both Ways, In the Snow

My dad is quite a bit older than most of my contemporaries' parents.  He was born a few months before the stock market crash of 1929.  His stories about the differences between life during the depression, the war years, and the post war years, just didn't resonate much with me, until I was older and gained an appreciation for history.

I'm sure that to my kids, my stories about actually needing to set foot in a library, finding an appropriate book with pictures in it and making copies is akin to my parents telling me about walking uphill both ways to school in snow that went up to their waists.  But I can't help it, because putting something like this together when I was Bailey's age would have taken a few weeks:

It took us a few hours.  We put it together for Bailey's Blue and Gold Banquet:

Lucy also was excite to wear the Dirndl I made for Abby a few years back:

Blue and Gold Banquet is always a lively night, at least as far as having so many kids in one place at the same time.  This year's theme was Scouting Around the World.  It was a lot of fun to see the places that other people in the pack had lived (the members of our pack are wildly traveled).

I can't wait to see what it is that my kids will talk about with their kids about how things used to be.  And it'll be fun to have them realize that having so much information at their fingertips really is an amazing thing and needs to be appreciated, at least as much as I appreciate not needing to walk uphill both ways in the snow for miles everyday to get to school.