Please comment

I love Google Analytics!! I had added it to my blog awhile back but wasn’t getting any info (I thought no one was reading it)… turns out I missed one subtle detail. BUT, thanks to one of my classes this semester I got the missing piece. So, I’ve been able to see that Yes, Lots of people are visiting my blog and I can see what city they are in but I didn’t know I had friends in those cities.

Please, please, please, let me know who you are. Comment if you like. I’m really interested in your opinion (I think).

Reiki Healing Touch

Hands on or Distance? Is one more powerful than the other? I personally like hands-on although there are exceptions. Physical distance between client and practitioner certainly is a factor but in the case of face-to-face situations there are two major considerations. One is that not everyone likes to be touched and the other is that certain skin conditions prohibit touching, the most obvious, a burn, but also significant, a rash which may be contagious.

Burned skin will not feel good if it is touched, especially not when heat is radiating from the Practitioner, as it will when one has intention of allowing Healing Energy to pass through her hands. Even standing a few feet apart, using the Distance Symbolism to create the connection and then applying Power and Clearing Symbols will be most effective and most comfortable for the client.

I got inspired this week; I noted an ad for a writing contest in the Oakland Press. They want a 3-5 minute script. On impulse I clipped the ad and set it on the kitchen table. That’s an area that gets visited frequently and I need my visual reminders in plain view. A roommate once said that after we hung a curtain on a hall closet, the closet disappeared. Neither of us ever thought to look there when we were searching for something we knew was in the house, somewhere. If I can’t see it, I forget it. Makes for a mess in the bedroom but that’s another story.

So, I need to think of a story for the writing contest. I have a few of them, a few that I think about from time to time and know that I need to develop further, one that I’d like to expand into a novel, a few that would go well in a collection of short stories (maybe not too many of those), but the problem is what is right for a screen play.

I watch movies every day. I get no televised programming on my set… it’s for video only. I vary between Netflix, Blockbuster, Redbox, public library and whatever I hear of next. My current favorite is Netflix because of the streaming video. But that’s taking me off on another subject again.

I took a cinematography class last summer from Texas Woman’s University. It was a distance class but provided an excellent text book, inspirational discussion with classmates and many recommendations for movies I hadn’t yet seen. We studied color, setting, script, music, all sorts of interesting concepts related to film that we normally just process without awareness. I became more aware.

Plus, a friend of mine sold a screenplay and that really got me excited. I picked up a couple of books on how to write a screenplay – a little different than the novel or short story and started thinking about it. So, here I am with a contest requiring a 3-5 minute script. I just have to decide which story to create an excerpt from. I’m on the case.

The Library Game

When I was in high school a boy would not want to be caught learning to type. Today a teen boy would not impress his peers with an inability to find his way around a keyboard with more than one finger pecking. Today’s youth type rapidly, they text continually and socially communicate with friends and friends-of-friends via the keyboard.

Using the keypad and monitor to enter the library can bring youth to the library to obtain information, even if they don’t have a car to drive. They will do this, if entering the library and obtaining information is a skill similar to that of searching Google, finding a book on Amazon and learning the rules of the online games they play.

In our LIS requisite orientation session last August we played team games in the physical world. We warmed to it as a socially collaborative tool and because we participated in a collective intelligence (38) we performed better together than we would have solo. We will continue to have the opportunity to collaborate during the next two years in a way that will create a field of knowledge that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is the theory of knowledge and library access through the ‘third world’ of online gaming.

I’ve read some very good things about gaming and libraries. Currently I’m re-reading Nancy Courtney’s compilation, Library 2.0 and Beyond, in which David Ward talks about gaming as a “tool for collaboration”. References in the chapter include articles on Harvard offering law courses in a virtual world, games as a ‘third world’ in the information architecture of the future, games reshaping education and one titled, “From Dewey to World of Warcraft, Libraries and Digital Games”.

A Kurt Squire & Constance Steinlkuehler article in Library Journal discusses how, in the online gaming environment,"Participants don’t care about identity, age, race, gender, class or nationality" (39). He goes on to say that although no one is teaching the courses he describes as “affinity space”, those with expertise are recognized and greatly valued (39). The librarian in this role can function as a higher level character in the information seeking game (115).

Libraries are redefining themselves in the virtual world of the Internet, using gaming structures to create learning communities. Students can experience collaborative learning as the library avails itself of the technology which defines the world in which the student lives.

References

Courtney, N. (Ed.). (2007). Library 2.0 and beyond: innovative technologies and tomorrow's user. Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited.

Foster, Andrea L. “Harvard to Offer Law Course in ‘Virtual World.’” Chronicle of Higher Education 53, no. 3 (September 8, 2006)

Hinton, Andrew. “We Live Here: Games, Third Places, and the Information Architecture of the Future.” Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 32, no. 6(2006)

Kirriemuir, John. “From Dewey to World of Warcraft, Libraries and Digital Games.” Presentation at TICER course Digital Libraries a la Carte: New Choices for the Future, August 25, 2006

My new use of the library

Last night I visited the Lake Orion Public Library to return a DVD – I’m jumping out of the 24 series I’ve been viewing – too much continuous stress to watch those episodes back-to-back. I decided to find a few movies that would enable me to relax in the evening before attempting sleep.

While there I decided to browse the CDs and a Norah Jones album caught my attention. Since I have that particular item and didn’t see more in the rack under her name, I searched the online catalog.

Pleasant surprise! She’s been featured on a number of CDs, mostly in the JAZZ section, both solo and in collaboration. I borrowed five CDs and imported them to iTunes on my laptop this morning.

The experience is new to me since my quest began to utilize more services at the Public Library. I needed to find Dictionaries in the Reference Section for a class assignment. There’s a lot more than Oxford! The Lake Orion online catalog is one of the best that I’ve found in that is relatively easy to limit my search (not all libraries’ catalogs are efficient).

While I was there I also learned a professional photographer, Paula Kurzawa, will be in the library this coming weekend to provide her service for a mere $10 and the proceeds benefit the library rather than the photographer. Nice Gift.

The ~New~ Library

Stories and history were taught orally. Children and community listened and learned the stories. Later, books came to be the location of the histories and we valued the volumes, we treasured them, perhaps we owned some, often for a life time.

The idea of a sharing books, a library, was first put to the test in this country by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, the same city where today, a bookless library is makings its debut, thanks to the closed locations of the available stacks.

When I was a child I loved books and the libraries, where there seemed to be an endless supply, as I ventured into the world of my Junior High School Library, a natural stepping stone for me from the Public Library where I had a library card from as early as I can remember.

Today people communicate via short bursts of consciousness; we speak out to the Universe and see who responds, not necessarily within walking distance but a much larger radius, via Twitter, IM, FB, text, chat, cell phones, and emails. We are creating and sharing content, this time it’s creating a wave of collaboration to create a Universe book, a Resource of information and knowledge beyond our wildest dreams.

With a world population that has tripled since my childhood years, I know we’re more crowded. But between the overwhelming addiction to constant connection/constant stimuli/immediate gratification, where we know we are part of the universe, we keep talking and someone somewhere is listening (I’m not just talking about big bro today).

We collaborate. We create more knowledge by sharing all of this information we dream up, stuff from the collection consciousness.

Library

Libraries are alive and well in 2009. The cornerstone of my youth, brick building on the corner, housing an unlimited number (it seemed to me) of mysteries that kept me awake at night, under the covers, flashlight in hand. They’ve changed a bit.

My current enrollment at Wayne State University in the Library and Information Science Master’s Degree program is giving me quite an education. Libraries are Information Access points. The librarians are Information Access Specialists.

Want the answer to a question? Google it or Ask a Librarian. What’s the difference? Google will provide you a list of websites that have a pretty good chance of providing the answer to your query, if you searched correctly and if you choose a reliable source from that list Google gave you. However, the librarian will probably ask you a few questions to make certain that the question they hear is the one you truly are asking. Then, they will tell you where they found the answer and what it is. Chances are very good it will be an accurate answer from a reliable source and current.

How’s that for an information source? No charge of course. Public Libraries are funded by the municipality, so you paid for the service when you sent in your taxes. There are no charges for the information services, or the movie rentals at the Public Library.

So, why do we hesitate to ask our questions or use their services? I think we don’t know what an excellent resource is available to us. The center is usually close in the neighborhood, but you can talk to them via live chat, or telephone. Just ask for the Reference Librarian.

Get online and find out if the movie you want is available or the music CD and then reserve it online. You can drop by and sit in a comfy chair and browse any of many magazines in all sorts of interests and take home the movie of your choice, free of charge.

Check it out.