This is the video that made me want to start making my own. It’s about eating haggis; it’s interesting, short, decently made, and shows anyone can make a video! (Don’t worry, no preaching…)
I should also mention that today Sean showed me an easy way to shoot myself on video while walking. Simply attach the camera to a tripod, hold the tripod up with the bottom of the legs wedged into your hip, and go!
Yesterday as I was shelving books at the Dupont Branch, I found a copy of Halo: the Ghosts of Onyx by Eric Nylund, which I set aside to check out for my 13-year-old son, who is a huge fan of the Halo video games. It came as no surprise that my bright, creative, ADD-riddled son who performs poorly in school picked the book up and read the first 35 pages within a few minutes.
My friend Christi was telling me about a book she’s been reading: NurtureShock : new thinking about children. She is a children’s librarian and she told me about some particularly interesting chapters which describe why teens rebel, why they lie about it, and why they are bored all the time. This book is definitely on my parenting reading list now!
Then today I found an interesting blog post from Stephen’s Lighthouse with twelve reasons people read:
Why Do People Read?
I also think we need a better discussion on why people read. It seems basic but do we really understand why people read? Here’s my modest unranked list of twelve reasons off the top of my small noggin (add to it in the comments):
1. To learn
2. To engage in hearing other’s opinions (to agree or disagree or just to understand and be empathetic)
3. To develop more knowledge about myself and develop as a whole person
4. To be entertained and laugh, to engage and interact
5. To address boredom and the inexorable progress of time
6. To research and keep up-to-date
7. To participate well in civil society (everything from news to voting)
8. To be informed (and maybe smarter)
9. To understand others (individually and culturally)
10. To escape our day-to-day lives
11. To stimulate the imagination and be inspired
12. To write and communicate better through reading others
13. To teach
14. To have something to talk about
15. To connect with like-minded people
My son was complaining the other day about how bored he was, so I’ve been trying to find ways to engage him. He’s also recently become intensely interested in classical music, mostly because that’s the elective they’re studying this quarter at school. Bless his little heart. He’s bored out of his mind, but he fascinates me when he really gets into a subject.
I’m going to keep the Halo books coming, and when he’s done with those, we’ll find some more equally captivating books to read. How do you engage your teen(s)?
ACPL’s Deb Noggle, manager of the Tecumseh Branch Library, appeared in Sunday’s Journal Gazette in an interview about vampire fiction! Check out the 5 questions and a podcast of her interview.
Check out this article that the newspaper ran about promoting services on YouTube. It’s great to see our local media talking about what we’re doing to promote the library!
Region starring online
Video makers find audience on YouTube
Stefanie Scarlett
The Journal Gazette
Libraries and tigers and UFOs – they’re all stars on Fort Wayne’s various YouTube channels.
Here, you can watch a tiger enjoy hydrotherapy and see whether a convention morphs into an episode of “Librarians Behaving Badly.” Listen to a local chanteuse belt out her version of Beyoncé’s “Halo” and follow someone’s driving tour of downtown.
Besides those cats who just want to have fun, some local residents are using the wildly popular site (www.youtube.com) as a marketing tool. Their efforts haven’t gone viral yet, but you just never know. Read the rest of the article
Check out this page that describes in further detail what Anythink means. Anythink is the new brand of the Rangeview Library District in Colorado!
I was able to re-tweet their post to our followers. And the relationships formed and grown between myself as an individual and other individuals in my community–not their institutional personas–those are gold. Because of these relationships, I’ve helped arrange a book signing with a book editor and I’m filming a video with a library user this afternoon.


