This week's photo tools and Creative Commons posting

For our assignment this week, I went on a Creative Commons dive for an awesome library-related picture. What a find--now THAT'S a library! My husband and I will have been married 20 years in September. For our honeymoon we toured Ireland, and I will never forget the Old Library at Trinity College in Dublin. Home to the Book of Kells and many other rare books, it is an incredibly beautiful building. It is certainly not a modern learning commons though! I would love to return there now with a librarian's eye. Can you imagine performing a collections analysis...on a ladder? This library is really more of a museum. You can be sure the students of Trinity College have a full, modern library to use.

Hugovk. (2013). Old Library, Trinity College. CC-BY-NC-SA.

Our assignment was also to edit a photo in one of the many photo editing tools available online. I took this one recently, on one of those beautiful May days that almost force you to sit outside. I edited it in PicMonkey, adding a Focal Zoom as well as text to the bottom of the photo. This was an easy-to-use site and it must be a good one, because I know my kids use it and they know EVERYTHING. (Just ask them!)

The site is elegantly designed and very thoughtful of its audience, whether inexperienced or not. Everything is very well explained, with pop-up dialogue boxes to make things easier. The photo came out great, and I bet all teachers out there can relate to this one. I was in an elementary school today--it's Friday during SOL testing week and it's really hot outside. The kids are squirrelly and so is the teaching staff!

Nelson, W. (2015). If you need me... CC-BY-NC

I also played with ImageChef, which is a site similar to one I've used before to make memes. (I have a whole collection of memes of "advice from my mother," which you can see on my Pinterest site.) You can use a standard meme photo or one of your own and add text. But that is just one of the many types of templates on Image Chef. There are seemingly endless photo frames, animations (.gifs), text editors, buttons, and lots of "remixes" created by users. This site would be fun for students to use to enhance their presentations or for digital scrapbooking. The only caveat I can see is that it is difficult to focus on one type of frame or theme, because the site is disorganized and full of ads. But for those who like to play, ImageChef offers up plenty of interactive freedom. 

In terms of design and ease-of-use, BigHugeLabs seems to have an edge up on ImageChef. The site is a lot less ugly and seems to be better organized, and you can turn off the ads. The variety of options is extensive--there are 24 top-level categories with many internal editing possibilities. One pro: education accounts are possible. A con: BigHugeLabs is sales-driven and may entice students to want to purchase what they create in school. But overall, I'd point students to this site over ImageChef.

FoldPlay is one type of site I have never seen or used before. This one has me excited! First, in one of the school libraries I inhabit the most, origami is huge. This site allows you to create foldables from your own pictures, including origami, fold books, paper models and puzzles, and much more. What a fun thing for students to play with in a library makerspace. I want to try this right away.

Why library?

Before I add any of the posts that I am supposed to add this week, I thought I would post an explanation of how I got into the library field and, eventually, into grad school despite the fact that I am not a teacher currently.

I began at James Madison University as a music major in vocal performance. After quickly realizing I did not want an opera career, I switched to English, with a music minor. I established the goal of becoming an editor and dreamed of a bookshelf containing the books I had edited. After college, I went to George Washington University to obtain my publications specialist certificate.

I moved back to NJ, got married, and worked in various publishing enterprises in NYC and NJ. In 2000, I was working as a pet books editor (and doing community theater and choral singing as a hobby) when my son was born. Shortly after I returned from maternity leave, I was laid off. I stayed out of work, my daughter was born in 2003, and we moved to Virginia Beach.

In college and afterward, I had developed an interest in adult literacy. In NJ, I was an adult reading tutor for a while. When I learned about the Listening Ears program through the SPCA, I thought that sounded fun, so my golden retriever and I volunteered in our neighborhood school's library for about three years, doing one-on-one sessions with reluctant readers.

I loved the library and I began volunteering while also establishing a freelance editing career. One of the school librarians suggested that I get on the substitute list so they could call me for jobs. I did this in 2012 and began subbing in libraries around the district.

In search of a new career, I entered the Longwood University graduate pre-requisite program for speech pathology--a career that would use both my vocal and editing skills. I completed most of those classes and was thinking ahead toward the VERY competitive graduate school programs, until I had a serendipitous conversation one day. I was subbing and the librarian and I talked enthusiastically about various library issues for a while. Suddenly she said, "Why aren't you a librarian?"

The question hung in the air. I said I did not think the job market was very good. She said she had just exited the ODU program and most of the people in her cohort had gotten jobs.

This was big news. And I thought about it. And thought. Finally, after much consideration of all the options, I applied. That was last spring, in 2014. One year later, here I am...18 credits in.

Hello to all of my classmates and those who may be visiting this blog from elsewhere!

This blog was created for LIBS 602 with Dr. Sue Kimmel, for the Summer Semester 2015.
Notes on design:

• I chose the book template because it was perfect for a librarian. 
• I disabled the mobile template for now because they are difficult to maintain separately. 
• I made the column width a bit wider so the reader has less scrolling to do. 
• The page background is a very pale blue and the text is black to provide good contrast for reading.
• I chose the title font "Crushed," because it is playful but not too girly or unsophisticated. I like the mixed case. The title is white because that was the most readable color on the blue header.
• My post texts are in a font called "Trebuchet." I originally chose "Arvo" because it is a nice, compact serif font. It is contemporary and interesting but also readable. Then, when I viewed the blog again a few days later I felt that the serif wasn't working. Trebuchet is a good substitute. I also bumped it up to 16 px. I guess I am feeling like I need reading glasses today!

A library is...

(Created with Wordle)

Last semester I had a final exam question asking me to describe my ideal library. To create this Wordle, I cut and pasted my answer to that exam question into the Wordle text box. Then I took out some of the words that made less sense and bumped up the quantities of certain words I wanted to emphasize. I like how the word library is bolstered by the word students. That seems so appropriate!