homeless in libraries

There is an excellent commentary in the Los Angeles Times from yesterday about homeless folks in libraries.

This reminds me of a woman who came up to me at the reference desk last month and told me there was a homeless person in their car in the parking lot. "Are they doing anything wrong?" I asked. "No" she said. And I told her to let me know if they were, and I would be happy to deal with it. I hope I made my point nicely enough. She mumbled something about them all coming over from Seattle (as if Bellevue would never create the circumstances that put people on the streets) and got on a computer.

Cities that have tracked chronically homeless people estimate that a typical transient can cost taxpayers $20,000 to $150,000 a year.

I wish more people could understand that if we take care of each other better to begin with, it will save the communities (both dollars and heart) in the long run.

LibraryThing exploration

I've been resisting trying this out, as I was afraid I would lose hours and hours of time to it. Will have to see how the weekend plays out ;)

It certainly is really easy to use, and I could see it being a great book recommendation tool, since you see what other people who have your books like, too.

But at the same time, I've been trying to limit my possessions, and cutting down on books is a big part of this. I really feel that I don't need books I can easily get from the library...especially when there are always at least 300 books on my list of things I'm interested in reading! In a way, LibraryThing could be helpful here...because it could make me question if I want to be recognized as the sort of person who owns particular books ;)

I'll have to play with this one more at home, for sure.

Oh...I forgot to post my mini-catalog

Del.icio.us exploration

I'm excited about del.icio.us, but a bit nervous to dip my toes in, too. But I do like the idea of using this with groups of kids for specific purposes...the most immediate one to my life would be in posting a booklist of everything discussed by my bookgroup, so the teens could refer to them quickly. I could even do this during the meeting!

I like the idea of using it to organize recipes, but I will resist using it for this purpose in my own life, as I have WAY too many recipes floating around already.

Some of the articles were very helpful for imagining new uses too. I'll definitely have to play with this more.

a very exciting teen area

I would love to see something this exciting done at our Bellevue Branch!

MySpace and I

I've had MySpace accounts for some time now...I won't claim to be an early innovator, but my branch was one of the first to have a space for our TeenZone, and I've had a private account before that. I find MySpace to be kind of fun, but I confess there are a few issues I have with the whole social networking thing. First, I find it dizzying how quickly the trends occur, and how frustrating it can be to try and keep up! Also, I find the whole collecting friends thing to be a bit weird. I have no problem friending people I know, or adding local teens to my branch's page...but when total strangers try and friend me, I find that just weird! And that makes me feel old ;)

Here is the Lake Hills TeenZone MySpace page.

how Wii works

Does your branch have a Wii as part of their Game On program? Ever wondered just how it works? Popular Science has an explanation here.

Voluntary Mortification - teen diaries read aloud!

My co-worker Darcy shared this article about adults who are voluntarily stepping foward to read from their teen writings...diaries, letters, etc. Nowdays teens often post their diaries on the internet for everyone to read, so it is interesting to think about what used to be our darkest secrets, and how they look now.

Did you write much as a teen?