The happy life of teacher librarians: Inspiration for your library is everywhere...

As I type this, I'm on hold to a major newspaper publisher (problems with our subscription).  Instead of hold music, they are advertising at me.

"Subscribe to [publication X]," the smooth tones of the voiceover guy says, "and you'll never miss an issue.  In both senses of the word."  (or words to that effect).

My ears prick up.  There is inspiration for your library everywhere.  That's a tag line/slogan that a library could burgle and adapt...

[brainstorming here]

Come to your library and you'll never miss an issue

Research at your library and you'll never miss an issue

Learn at your library and you'll never miss an issue

Ask at your library and you'll never miss an issue

.....

lots of possibilities.

Fancy it up into a sign, and you've got free promo material (it could go on bookmarks, too) that Big Newspaper Company paid good dollars for from a smart advertising agency... and you borrowed for nix apart from being attentive

(or being on hold for longer than one would wish, if I take the half-empty glass view, which generally I don't!)

What have you seen in marketing/advertising that could be adapted to use in a library?

The happy life of teacher librarians: inspiration is everywhere (and sometimes, being on hold can be useful!)

Cheers

Ruth

Film/Movie news: The Hunger Games

Tintin may be out at the end of 2011, but you'll have to wait till the end of 2012 for the film being made of Suzanne Collins' very successful book, The Hunger Games.  I have five copies of this in the library (and two or three of the sequels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay) and they are constantly either out or on reserev - it would be one of the most popular books in the library at present (five copies tells you that, doesn't it?).  Some of the kids are already starting to talk about the film.

Here's a glimpse of Jennifer Lawrence, who has been cast as Katniss:

Source is http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20493206,00.html.  She got great reviews in Winter's Bone.

There are several people on Twitter who are avidly following (and tweeting about) the film - casting, locations and more.  @HungerGamesExam is one of them.  She also has a website here with regular updates.  Filming has started, but I'm guessing any trailer is a fair way off.  But it will come...

Cheers

Ruth

HUGE MYSTERY - HAUNTED HOUSE - UNIQUE INSIGHT - WILLIAM ROSS RUST HOME

William R. Rust House - 

1001 N. I St.

Tacoma, WA, USA

This notable landmark, the Colonial style William Ross Rust House is a private estate built in 1905 (tax records claim it was built in 1907) in North Tacoma, Washington, USA, and it has quite a bit of fascinating mystery and gossip surrounding it. The photo, right, is widely available on the Internet as a public document. And here's a high resolution photo of the William Ross Rust house (worth the peak).

WHY I DECIDED TO RESEARCH THIS HOME:
I first heard of this house a week or two ago and have continued to feel haunted by the stories surrounding it. Deciding I should investigate to learn more, I quickly realized that what's available through typical research means (e.g., common Google search) only created more questions for me when documentation about this house, and the family that lived here, didn't match either the stories I'd heard or messages I had gleaned, intuitively.

That's why I resorted to recruiting Doug Grimes, with all his skills and experience at researching family genealogy. Thanks to him, I am now fully engaged by the terrible stories affiliated with the William Ross Rust (1850-1928) family home and I now regard the rumors as being at least partly true. In the very least, the evidence suggests there has been an attempt by William Ross Rust to hide some of his family information.


The bigger question that remains is whether or not there was a larger attempt to cover up a horrid crime committed on the front porch of this home by the man who the locals treated as a respectable magnate. You'll have to read this posting to the end before you know all the fascinating questions, be fully entertained by how this story winds and twists, and then peruse my initial conclusion.

I first became fascinated with this house when another psychic told me just recently that she'd been inside this house with the mission of launching a house clearing effort. Without any visible remorse or embarrassment, she admitted the home became so filled with spooky paranormal events that she had to abandon the mission. Knowing that I often clear houses, professionally, she asked if I'd be willing to accompany her back inside this home, but when I admitted that I charge a reasonable fee, and guarantee my work or provide a full refund if the customer's not completely satisfied, she all but rescinded the offer (and I'm firm about NOT doing house clearings without being compensated - thanks to the personal risk involved and thanks to my ethical beliefs of always participating in fair trade practices). 

All the same, I felt the following story that psychic told me was at least partly true and very fascinating. Not only did I suddenly feel as though I instantly knew the victim in this story, but the young male involved was actually a fun-loving person who was simply trying to live authentically and his life-style conflicted with the conservative times and with his father's need to uphold a certain public image. 


Not having gone to the house myself, I reasoned that this house could legitimately be haunted and there might be an element of resentment that's still there in regards to disowning family members and abhorring controlling or severely dominant male-figures. Yet I cannot say who or what would be causing the current paranormal activity being reported there, not without actually being inside the home/experiencing it for myself. *Note: sometimes I can read a house without physically going there but this particular home is very complex/confusing when viewed from afar. 

Beyond this home being rumored to be very haunted, a recent accidental death is now being blamed on the resident spirit(s) but I don't feel at liberty to go into much detail about that - not in a public way. 

JUICIEST RUMORS ABOUT WILLIAM ROSS RUST - "THE MAN"

A highly respected business man, William Ross Rust (hereafter referred to as W.R.) traveled quite often. During one trip to Europe, his grown son (as the story was told to me, the son's name was not given) was tired of conforming to social-standards-of-the-day and he hooked his horses up to a buggy and drove around Tacoma with his male-lover on the seat beside him. The two men kissed in public, which was something W.R. would never have endorsed or tolerated. The moment that W.R. arrived home early from his trip, having heard of his adult son's escapades while abroad, he reportedly shot his son point-blank and killed him. The "murder" is rumored to have happened on the front porch of the above mentioned home. According to rumor, death records listed the son's death as due to "natural causes" thanks to cultural homophobia and the fact that W.R. Rust was highly respected as an important citizen in Tacoma and able to launch a successful cover-up effort. *Again, this is current day rumor and no printed or published information clearly substantiates this story.*  (Read on.)

STILL A MYSTERY - OR PROOF OF A COVER-UP? 

Initially upon doing an Internet search, I learned that W.R. had one son, Henry Arthur Rust (Aug. 21, 1900 - May 13, 1936). Immediately this information seemed to completely dispel everything that I'd picked up intuitively and everything I'd been told via rumor because public record shows that H. Arthur out-lived his father by 8 years. (W.R. died in 1928 at age 78). 


Given this evidence ("proof") that W.R. had NOT murdered his son -- something just kept nagging at me about this house's story. I felt I could NOT just let it go. I felt as though a young homosexual male had visited me in spirit and wanted me to know the full story but all records documenting Henry Arthur's life not only suggested that he outlived his father but he had gotten married and had children ... So I dug a little deeper into the research to discover why I was feeling so inspired to tell this gay man's story - or "the rumor." 

A CLOSER LOOK INTO WILLIAM ROSS RUST's PERSONALITY:
W.R. Rust was born in Pennsylvania on August 1, 1850. Later, he moved westward and purchased the Tacoma Smelting & Refining Company, a business that occupied 67 acres, some of it was said to occupy ancient Indian burial grounds. W.R. purchased the company somewhere around 1890 from a cash-strapped business man. Today that smelting property is undergoing massive clean-up and environmental restoration work, thanks to all the toxic waste created by the smelter's smoke stack emissions and the release of heavy metals such as lead and arsenic into the local air, soil and water. It's cleanup is financed by an EPA superfund but experience suggests - since the company was shut down many years ago - most of the toxic waste has already been widely distributed (most of the damage has been done, irretrievably).

Yet I digress. Getting back to the story of W.R. long before he died, he did something very public that suggests he was either very unhappy or very controlling in regards to his marriage. In the 1910 Pierce County Census - 13th Census of the United States (see more details below) W.R. felt obligated to document that he was married and living with his wife, whom he's listed as 12 years his junior, but W.R. left her name completely OFF the record (did not acknowledge his spouse by name, not even when all other contributors to that same census did mention their spouses by name). Interestingly, W.R. did manage to list the full name of his servant woman (*who was closer in age to him than his wife was*) and he listed both of his sons by their names as well. 


Did you catch that? While most documents only mention W.R. as having one son, from the census we can see he actually had two. (The eldest son, Howard, is most often omitted from public records.) What's more, other legal documents reveal that W.R.'s wife was named Helen M. Smith, born in 1863. Yet, again, the Rust Family Papers and many other Internet sources list only W.R. with one son, and quite often no wife is mentioned.  


SO THIS IS WHERE I ASK YOU, DEAR INTELLIGENT READER:
When such a wealthy business man with strong political interests, finances much of the town's progress and he is so admired, politically, that the town Ruston was named after him, is it possible that he networked with the powers that be to hide a heinous crime he committed? Realizing that most readily accessible public documents have eliminated Rust's wife and son Howard from the record, is it not rather easy to jump to the conclusion that W.R. may have also committed murder (when his son was violating local laws and committing religious offense)? It's not too difficult to imagine how W.R. might have maneuvered his way through the police/local media mess by getting help to cover up his crime story.

CLARIFICATION OF THE RUMOR

Suggesting that the part of the rumor where W.R.'s son died at a very young age is true, on Aprill 11th, 1911, The Tacoma Times (local daily newspaper in operation since 1903) published the following article about young Howard L. Rust, who would have just reached 25-years-of-age had he lived two more days. 

     HOWARD L. RUST DIES SUDDENLY - The Tacoma Times (link to article)

• Howard L. Rust, son of W. R. Rust of this city ruptured an artery in the heart while conversing with friends Saturday evening at Ranford, Wash., and died almost instantly. He would have been 25 years old yesterday.
       His parents are on a return voyage from Europe now.
       Young Rust went to Hanford on a ranch to build up his shattered health. He seemed to be gaining until the collapse came Saturday night.
       He came to Tacoma with his father when four years of age. (End of article.) 

My question to you, dear reader, is if Howard's death was truly due to a heart problem, as listed, then why did his father omit his name from all future public records? Would a loving father NOT want to keep his son's memory alive - forever? 

MORE SPECIFICS THAT DOUG UNCOVERED FROM CENSUS RESEARCH
#1 - William Ross Rust's Household according to the 1910 Pierce County Census - 13th Census of the United States

• William R. Rust, head of household, male, white, 57, married 25 years, born Pennsylvania, education able to read yes, education able to write yes, 
• wife's name completely omitted, wife, female, white, 45, married 25 years, born Colorado, education able to read yes, education able to write yes
• Howard Rust, son, male, white, 23, single, born Colorado. education able to read yes, education able to write yes, 
• Henry A. Rust, son, male, white, 9, single, born Washington, education able to read yes, education able to write yes, 
• Pauline Fredericks, servant, female, white, 51, born Canada-French, education able to read (answer erased/blank), education able to write (answer erased/blank). 

#2 - William Ross Rust's Household according to the 1920 Pierce County Census - 14th Census of the United States

• William R. Rust, Head, age 66, married, born in Pennsylvania
• Helen W. Rust, wife, age 52, married, born in Colorado *Note: Other references list her middle initial as M.
• H. Arthur Rust, son, age 19, single, born in Washington
• Marie R. Edenhuler (at least I think that's her last name/penmanship is difficult to read), servant, age 17 , single, born in Kansas, parents were born in Sweden

#3 - Son Henry Arthur's Household according to the 1930 Pierce County Census - 15th Census of the United States

• Henry Arthur Rust, house number 1020, head of home, male, white, age 29, married, vice-president/investments, NOT a military veteran
• Margaret Rust (wife), white, age 24
• Billie J Rust (daughter) white, age 3
• Margaret Rust (daughter) white, age 1-1/2
• Bertha Wyss (female, servant from Switzerland) white, age 43
• Dorothy Stubbs (female, servant from Washington state) white, age 22

MY CONCLUSION: 

I feel rather strongly that W. R. Ross was a controlling jerk at times. He definitely did not approve of his son Howard's homosexuality (religiously or politically). That alone would be reason enough for a dogmatic individual like him to disown Howard (we've all run into that type of obnoxious control freak who insists everyone in the family should dress, behave and move about just like him). 


Meanwhile, I feel like I've met the spirit of this younger guy, Howard, and he was rather fun to be around and his father simply did not appreciate him for all the sunshine and party spirit he brought into the home.


Yet I need to add a small detail to the above mentioned rumored story - where Howard was said to have been shot on the front porch. The psychic I spoke to said the home became so haunted after the young man's death that the surviving Rust family had to move into temporary shelter until a second house could be built over on Yakima street.


Indeed, I did find record of the family moving a year after Howard's death. Yet the reason given for the move, publicly, is that his mother, Helen, just felt the original home was much too large for her liking. She wanted a smaller home (one that W.R. rapidily built for her).


MORE SPECIFICALLY 

The Rust Mansion, 1001 N. I St., Tacoma, WA, USA, 98402, was patterned on the John A. McCall home in Long Island, "Shadow Lawn." The Rusts sold their home in 1912 after the death of their son, Howard. Since then it has had many owners and was divided into apartments in the 1920's.

DOES THIS PROVE THE RUMOR IS NOT TRUE? 
While modern thinkers might look at Howard's reported "cause of death" statement in 1911, which suggested he died of a weak heart, and observe that his brother Henry Arthur also died of a heart condition, years later, when he was 35 - and while observers might assume it's not too much of a stretch to think that both boys could have inherited the same genetic heart problem that killed them at such young ages - I'd like to remind my readers that both their father and mother lived 78 and 90 years, respectively. Their young deaths seem curious, at least.  

RECAP ON THE FAMILY TREE (Source: govdocs.evergreen.edu)

* Father: William Ross Rust - Aug. 1, 1850 - Aug. 17, 1928 (78 years)

* Mother: Helen M. Smith - December 18, 1863 -October 19, 1954 (90 years)

* Son: Howard L. Rust - Aprill 11, 1886 - April 9, 1911 (24 years). Cause of death: reported heart ailment.

* Son: H. Arthur Rust, born August 21, 1900 - May 13, 1936 (35 years). Cause of death: reported heart ailment, leaving behind an estate of more than $600,000 (a ridiculously large some money in the day). 


LOCATION OF THE W. R. Rust Home:

1001 N. I Street, Tacoma, WA USA, 98402
Location of the second, smaller home, where they moved after Howard died, 

521 Yakima Ave. This landmark is in the vicinity (see map) of N Yakima Ave and N 9TH St., Tacoma, WA. The Tacoma Public Library holds claim to this photograph of the Rust's smaller Tacoma home (click above TPL link to see it). 


*I hope you enjoyed this very detailed *spooky* report and would love it if you take the time to leave a comment - share your thoughts.*


The author of this article, Tami Jackson, can be contacted through her website.

Trailer: Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn

What it says.  Out Christmas 2011.

URL for the YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X0tfWj24eVY

Found via Twitter

Cheers

Ruth

What does a writer do? (great sources on Twitter)

Photo:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License LINK

I have been a storyteller since the beginning of my life, rearranging facts in order to make them more significant.

JOHN CHEEVER

Found this excellent quote via @AdviceToWriters on Twitter.  For the teacher librarian, as having a place full of written stuff (in print and digital form) and English teachers (who teach creative writing), there are some useful people to follow on Twitter for information/ideas/inspiration about writing.  Microblogging (such as Twitter) = short snapshots of information, quick to read and investigate and use or skip over, depending on what interests you.

Some other folk who tweet about writing:

@elizabethscraig: check her stream of tweets for all sorts of useful links about writing eg.:
Elizabeth S Craig @elizabethscraig
5 ways to avoid an info dump: http://bit.ly/kvLUMo #amwriting


SydneyWritersCentre @SydneyWriters
26/05/11 4:43 PM
10 ways to completely screw up your novel: http://bit.ly/lm5fi7  #amwriting

This is not the only writers' centre (in Australia or overseas) with a Twitter presence.  Some post more about their centre's events, but others include writing advice tweets to, that you can use in teaching English.  Hunt for them on Twitter, or by googling their sites and checking to see if they are on Twitter.

OZ SF+F Writers Assc @awritingjourney
26/05/11 4:19 PM
The ASFFWA Daily is out! http://bit.ly/fzVIKj  ▸ Top stories today via @bloomsburysyd @harpernz @bothersomewords @shearersbooks

The Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Assoc regularly tweets useful stuff.  This tweet is one about their "Daily".  Some folk on Twitter use a site such as paper.li to collate tweets from their twitter stream (ie. tweets from people they follow and are interested in) into a digital newspaper.  So if you follow the ASFFWA Daily link in this tweet, you are getting pre-sifted/curated content focused on topics that tweeter is interested in; so if you're interested in what they are, you're getting the benefit of their twitter stream.

And of course many authors are on Twitter: their Twitter streams can be extremely various: as varied indeed as the writers themselves.  Best idea is to follow ones that might interest you, and if you're not finding their tweets useful/engaging, then unfollow them.  Some writers will tweet everything from what they had for breakfast (that Twitter stereotype) to stuff about their writing process.  Some will be more focused on writing.  Stephen Fry's tweets (he's one of the most followed people on Twitter and tweets often) cover an extensive range of topics, daily life, thoughts, ideas.  You can't make a writer write what they want, in books or anywhere else; on Twitter, if you follow them, you have to accept that they write what they do.  Neil Gaiman @neilhimself has a lot of followers and tweets on a range of topics: he was one writer tweeting about the interrogation of teacher librarians in LA.

There are writers whose books I adore and whose blogs I find unreadable; and writers whose output, in whatever form, I generally find interesting.  Nowt as varied as folk.

But am I finding good information about writing via my education/professional/teaching Twitter stream that I can use with students and share with English teaching colleagues?  Yup.  You can, too.

(OK, I'll admit it: this blog entry about useful info on writing is in fact a sneak evangelical moment for the educational possibilities of Twitter).

Cheers

Ruth

@ruth_skerricks on Twitter
I'm also on Yammer, but will only be found there if you work for the same employer as I do, because that is how Yammer works.

GIFSL* 64: Cheap Bookmark Week (Friday)

This is one of my favourite ideas.  It taps into libraries as places with facts and information: facts and information can can be fun and light as well as heavy.  It offers the opportunity for some fun interaction when you hand over the book and bookmark.  It recycles something you can find in op shops on a reasonably regular basis.

See that price tag?  $4.  The most I've paid for a box of Trivial Pursuit is $6.  And what's inside?

No, they're not question cards, they're bookmarks!  Lots and lots of them!  No guillotine work today, just some fun to be had.

It's probably a slightly pricier idea than some of the other ones from this week, but here's a comparison.  A commercial library supplier I checked had quite a few bookmarks which came in bundles of 200 bookmarks for $40.  In this box of Trivial Pursuit I got 200 bookmarks for $4.  A tenth of the price.  Still cheap as chips, and fun! (This idea is part of my presentation about Re-Imagining your School Library: I've presented it in Newcastle and south-western Sydney in the last month, so I know there are TLs in those areas scouring their op shops and garage sales for Trivial Pursuit!)

Links in again with a theme of the library being a place where you find facts and information (and fun, the unexpected, a happy moment) - oh, there are lots of ways you could tie this in to a wider promotional theme.

Hope you've enjoyed the Cheap Bookmark Week ideas on the blog this week - do comment, your feedback is always appreciated.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries, an ongoing series on this blog.

More on the interrogation of teacher librarians in LA

In case you missed it, please check out the link in this tweet.

ruth_skerricks Ruth Buchanan

A TL's spirit broken by prosecution from LAUSD & lawyers: http://t.co/YcfgtMp #savethelibrarians via @_capedcrusader #yam #austl #APPALLING

It's the same mizzmurphy blog I cited as giving a TL's view of the interrogations: Are teacher librarians teachers?  The same teacher librarian whose phrase, "the nuanced beauty of pedagogy" I admired, and shared this week with one of our seniors who is planning to be a high school history teacher.  What happened next?  Read and find out.

I don't think I can blithely type, Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 63: Cheap Bookmark Week (Thursday)

Kids have an ongoing fascination with name definitions - hardly surprising, as they are, as in the subliminal story of Possum Magic and a gazillion other books, discovering and refining who they are in the world.  I myself as a teacher librarian have had enormous fun solemnly assuring Kid A that the name of their best friend/ boyfriend/girlfriend could well mean "Viking vomit", but if they looked up this wonderful book it might be able to reassure them..... Oh miss, it DOESN'T mean that!

Parents have an enthusiasm (or used to, maybe most use the internet baby name sites now?) for baby name books, which become ripe for the culling when their baby-naming days are over.  Which is why you don't have to hunt extra extra hard to find a baby name book in an op shop/charity shop/garage sale.

This one cost me a whole $3.  571 pages.  Two bookmarks per page for most of it, four for others.

 That's over 500 bookmarks for peanuts (571 pages is of course half that number of actual paper pages) with a bit of guillotining.

Find New Characters At Your Library

There's a theme to which this could be tied, easy-peasy.  Book promotion ideas based around characters.  Have you met Severus Snape?  What about Harry Crewe?  and on and on with book characters as a way into encouraging students to try reading something new.

I know some teacher librarians prefer to laminate bookmarks - yes, it's more durable, lets you have two different sides stuck together and so forth.  I mostly don't laminate our bookmarks, for several reasons.  One is cost - we hand out hundreds of bookmarks in any given week, and laminating each would add significant cost; I'd rather be able to hand out as many as possible without worrying about how much they're costing, as I'm on a tight budget.  What I save on laminating can buy more books/resources.  Another is time - running the laminator, guillotining/trimming the results etc. all takes time.  A third is value - kids are kids are kids, and even if we give them a precious lovely laminated bookmark, I'm not so sure that most of them would treasure it as they ought.  Better a shorter-lifespan item that I don't have to stress about and they don't either (much easier to get a new bookmark with a new loan than have a 'dragon in pearls' interrogate them about the lovely bookmark they got last time, where is it, they should have brought it, well OK here's another but you take care of it this time, etc etc).  As I said in my first post, these are bookmarks I can hand out like confetti with a cheery smile on my face, and ones that can bring a smile to a kid's face because they're amusing/quirky/unexpected/fun.

I did have a couple of girls who were enquiring about when our next 'new' bookmarks would be out - and nobody was more surprised than me to find that they had a complete collection of the themed cardboard bookmarks I devise - Valentine's Day, Harmony Day, ANZAC Day, thrillers, holiday borrowing, winter reading etc.... It was heartwarming to know they liked them that much.  But for most of our kids, a bookmark isn't valued/collected like that.  But they do use them and appreciate the gesture/convenience/courtesy/kindness/fun of them, and that's the most important thing. 

These bookmarks aren't just on a stand on the counter, we put one with every loan - wand the loan, stamp the due date, dezap the security tag and add a bookmark, that's our loan routine, whichever of us is doing it.  It's an active gesture.  Here you are.  Enjoy.  Here's a bookmark to help you (and amuse/interest you too - I've never had one that just has the name of the library on it and no more.  It's too valuable real estate not to make it work harder and smarter).  These bookmarks are part of our library's PR.

Tune in tomorrow for one of my favourite cheap bookmark ideas (if you know about it, you'll be able to jump the gun on your colleagues who don't....)

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 62: Cheap Bookmarks Week (Wednesday)

From an op shop/charity shop/garage sale, find the right sort of dictionary, with pages of reasonably thick paper, and a size of book/column width that lends itself to bookmarks:

...like this one, and you have hundreds of bookmarks for a few dollars.  Just some slicing with the guillotine.  (Or do you have a suitable dictionary that is overdue for being culled?)

Libraries Define Your World:
there's a theme you could tie in with it.  I think definitions have a lot of scope for use for display purposes in libraries.  A department store book section featured this, in big print, high on the wall:

And they used definitions on their lampshades:

There's an idea worth adapting/borrowing: how could you use definition decor in your library?  Think of the rich (and amusing) words you could define.  Not just Book, or Reading.  Student.  Work.  Study.  Learn.  Adventure.  Discover.... lots of potential there, isn't there?

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries, an ongoing series on this blog.

GIFSL* 61: Cheap Bookmarks Week (Tuesday)

Before you cry, "VANDAL!" let me point out that this hardback copy of Harry Potter fell to bits after being loved to death by our library borrowers.  Pages falling out all over, irreparable.  But not useless.  Oh dear me no.  Because every left hand page of the book has the header, "Harry Potter".  The pages are a reasonable weight of paper.  And the knowledge of Harry Potter among children is extensive.  And J.K. Rowling created with these books a world and vocabulary that is highly recognisable.  Character names, spell words, place names and more.

So if you take a page with Harry Potter as its header, and slice down either side to a bookmarky sort of size, you'll get, pretty much every time, some bit of recognisable vocab on the page (as well as the Harry Potter cue at the top).  Lupin.  Hogwarts.  butterbeer.  Expelliarmus.  And you will also get a bookmark that kids like and which hasn't cost you a bean.

And there are lots and lots of pages in Harry Potter books, so you have lots and lots of bookmarks which you can share generously and without a qualm.  It's recycling and it's useful and fun.

Tune in tomorrow for another cheap bookmark idea!

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries, an ongoing series on this blog.

Final Report: School Libraries and Teacher Librarians in 21st Century Australia

The final report has been released today.

The full report pdf is here:
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/ee/schoollibraries/report/fullreport.pdf

Here are its recommendations:
List of recommendations



2 Impact of recent Commonwealth Government policies and investments on school libraries


Recommendation 1


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government partner with all education authorities to fund the provision of a core set of online database resources, which are made available to all Australian schools.


Recommendation 2


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government work with the states and territories to develop a discrete national policy statement that defines the importance of digital and information literacy
for learning in the 21st century, which can be used as a guide by teachers and principals.


3 Potential of school libraries and librarians to contribute to improved educational and community outcomes


Recommendation 3


The Committee recommends that the Australian Curriculum, Assessment  and Reporting Authority include statistical information about the breakdown of all specialist teachers, including teacher librarians, on the My School website.

Recommendation 4


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government support additional initiatives to promote reading, such as a National Year of Reading. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace
Relations should collaborate with the Australian School Library Association, Australian Libraries and Information Association and other education stakeholders in developing these initiatives.


Recommendation 5


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government initiate an Australian-based longitudinal study into the links between library programs, literacy (including digital literacy) and student achievement, including their impact on improving outcomes for socioeconomically disadvantaged students.


Recommendation 6


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government support promotional activities undertaken by ASLA and ALIA that demonstrate to the school community the valuable work that teacher librarians are doing in respect of e-learning in their schools, including those that highlight their leadership capacity.


4 Recruitment and development of teacher librarians


Recommendation 7


The Committee recommends that the rollout of the new national curriculum, which is to be made available online, include a component of training for teacher librarians.


Recommendation 8


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government commission a thorough workforce gap analysis of teacher librarians across Australian schools.


Recommendation 9


The Committee recommends that the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, through the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs, establish a national dialogue, including with tertiary providers, on the role of teacher librarians today in schools and into the future. The dialogue should include an examination of the adequacy of the pathways into the profession and ongoing training requirements.


xx


5 Partnering and supporting school libraries and teacher librarians


Recommendation 10


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government, through the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood and Youth Affairs, discuss ways to enhance partnerships with state and territory and local levels of government to support school libraries and teacher librarians.


Recommendation 11


The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government partner with ASLA and ALIA to produce a document that showcases some of the successful partnerships and programs between school
libraries and other libraries, and joint-use libraries. The document should be made available to government and non-government education authorities and school principals.

The whole report is 180 pages plus.  Haven't yet had time today to read/digest, but certainly will.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 60: Cheap Bookmarks Week (Monday)

We hand out a bookmark with every student loan at our library, for all sorts of reasons.  Because kids like to know what page they're on.  To make it easy for students to know what page they're on without bending book corners (to make it easy for them to do the right thing).  As a freebie.  As a promotional item promoting the library and our current theme.  Because we can.

If you follow the tag for bookmarks on this blog, you'll find a bunch of the ones we've made using Publisher and coloured cardboard (click here or over on the tag cloud on the right on the word 'bookmarks').

With a limited budget (but a confetti-style approach to bookmarks) I'm always on the lookout for inexpensive and clever ways to create fun bookmarks.  By and large, I don't go for laminated-precious, but ones we can hand out with generosity and enthusiasm: so they need to be inexpensive.

One thing we're about in the library is facts and information.  So, get yourself one of these:

...which isn't a tricky find in an op shop/garage sale for a couple of dollars.  Study the pages:

and realise that the column widths line up on either side of the page (in this edition: check if you have a different year's edition).  A bit of guillotine work slicing along the space between the columns and you have hundreds of bookmarks for less than five dollars.  Bargain!  Fun facts and information which the kids enjoy (and which can be tied into a wider library promotional theme if you wish).  The columns lining up means you can read front and back, and if a pic gets sliced, oh well - read the current entry in the current copy of the Guinness Book of Records, waiting for you at your school library!

Here's another facty-book find with equally good potential:

That one cost me a whole four dollars at an op shop.  Thick and full of bookmark potential, hundreds more for very little money.


Tune in tomorrow for another cheap bookmark idea. 

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = Good Ideas For School Libraries

Why teach?

...discovering the nuanced beauty of pedagogy...

Nice description of what teaching is about. It's from an article I referred to earlier this week.

http://mizzmurphy.blogspot.com/2011/05/settle-in-its-long-one.html

Cheers

Ruth






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

THERE WILL BE BLOO-OO-OOD! ("Rose Red")

Review Of Rose Red (TV Miniseries/Movie) by Stephen King

I watched Rose Red on DVD and felt thrilled by how the compelling main character is actually a house! Built in the early 1900s, this fictional mansion, which keeps building itself and expanding, eats people for breakfast, lunch and dinner (time of day seems to have no influence on the torture that this horrifying protagonist is capable of dishing out). 


BASIC STORY SET UP:
When Parapsychology Professor, Dr. Joyce Reardon, played by Nancy Travis, decides to organize a research crew comprised of gifted psychics, empaths, an autistic teenager and an automatic writer, she claims that Rose Red is completely safe as a "sleeping cell" for researchers to investigate. Meanwhile, secretly, she schemes to fast-forward her writing and research career where she'll finally be adored and celebrated, professionally. 


PHYSICAL FACTS:
The fictional story of Rose Red takes place in Seattle - and features a good amount of that city's scenic footage but Thornwood Castle, where the actual home stands and much of the film's footage was shot, is located in Lakewood, Washington (USA). If you're interested in staying in what is reported to be a legitimately "haunted facility" rooms can be rented since the castle now offers Bed-and-Breakfast services.


Here's the trailer.





While Stephen King's story claims the mansion was cursed because it was built upon ancient Native American burial grounds and three men in hard hats died during construction ... actor David Dukes (who played Dr. Carl Miller, head of the psychology department) really did pass away from a heart attack suffered during the film's shooting. That's why the series, Rose Red, is dedicated to him.


When Stephen King makes his signature appearance in this work (as he seems to do in all his films) he's delivering beer and pizza to a very frightened crowd of psychic researchers and unlike fans who want to massage King's feet -- fictional pizza customers treated him with utter disdain.


CAUTION:If you're looking for a horror film where you feel uplifted by the ending you may be disappointed. At least I felt disappointed when the house consumed my absolutely favorite character, Nick Hardaway, telepath and psychologist (played by Julian Sands) when he fights the demon-possessed carpet to save an automatic writer named Cathy Kramer (played by Judith Ivey).


CONCLUSION:
This is a very excellent film, one I will definitely watch again.

GIFSL* 59: Shhhhhhh! (in the senior study)

Accustomed (and happy) as I am as a teacher librarian to engage with the idea of 'working noise' (let's be real about it, very few school libraries are hushed temples of learning at all times), the senior study area upstairs in our library is a different matter.  There, seniors are expected to be doing silent, individual work; if they want to discuss work or work as a group, they must be elsewhere in the library so the senior study remains a haven of silence and academe.  At least this is my goal (and appreciated by students seeking silence and academe).  So while I wouldn't put this picture up in the main part of the library, it's handy-dandy and apt in the senior study.

Aren't I a clever pop-artist?  Um no, I'm a clever shopper.  It's from Ikea, measures a decent 50cm x 70cm, the item name is Solmyra and you can find it here for a mere $19.99:

http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/00177923

Bargain.  Looks good.

(the three other pictures you can see were from Ikea As-Is a couple of years ago at a mere five bucks each).

I'm tempted to buy two more of these Solmyra ones to reinforce the message (it's an ongoing work...!) and have them going down the wall as a nice repetition....

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = Good Ideas For School Libraries .  An ongoing series on this blog (and gee whiz, I'm up to #60???)

The happy life of teacher librarians: recorded

We're preparing for a debate, miss, and we'd like your help.
Sure.  What's your topic?
All we know are four general topics, and the one I am prepping for is politics.
So -
Excuse me, miss, before you start...
Yes?
(she produces an iPhone) Do you mind if I record you?  That means I'll have all of it and we can check back on it later.  If you don't mind?
No, um, OK.

Interesting how self-conscious I feel launching into my spiel - terminology, definitions, general sources, specific sources.  Every now and then that sense of self-consciousness recurs.  Speech is a different beastie to the written word.  More sprawling, this kind of conversation certainly doesn't involve, as a formal speech might, neat tidy sentences.  So she goes back to her table with a satisfactory bundle of sources and ideas, leaving me reflecting on a new experience.  I'm not used to being recorded as I toddle about my daily work.  More than that, I'm interested in how this is her choice of method for 'making notes', like the kids who'd rather see how to do something on YouTube than read about how to do it.

The happy life of teacher librarians: recorded.  Well, today, and likely not for the last time.

Cheers

Ruth

Whose life is it anyway? - a transplant story

I subscribe to several free weekly newsletters from the New York Times - health, books, movies.  The health one this week included an article about one family's willingness to allow their loved one's death to become the opportunity for transplants for others.  And on Monday this week I'd had a senior English class in looking for material on medical ethics/issues in relation to their study of the play Whose life is it anyway?.  Serendipity?  Dunno, but I've joined the dots and the teacher is very happy to have an additional resource.

The article includes a video of the (unusual) meeting between the donor's widow and the people who received transplanted organs, as well as an illustration/graphic about transplantation.

Permalink to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/health/17organ.html

One to pass on to your English and PDHPE teachers?

Cheers

Ruth

Pecha Kucha: 20 web 2.0 tools in 20 slides

Pip Cleaves from the DET presented this PechaKucha at the MANTLE teacher librarian conference in Newcastle last week.  In the PechaKucha format of 20 slides, with 20 seconds for each, she covered a bunch of web 2.0 tools you might like to explore.

Mantle Conference 13th May, 2011

View more presentations from Pip Cleaves

Here's the link in case the above doesn't work for you:
http://www.slideshare.net/piphowell/mantle-conference-13th-may-2011-7938859

Cheers

Ruth

Horror Movie That Leaves You Laughing Ridiculously Hard

The Cottage: Sleeps Six Bloody Comfortably (2008) is a "must see" film for horror fans, even for those who typically don't like slasher films. I've never laughed so hard over horror ... usually HATE hack-and-slash. Yet I'm very glad I made this one an exception. (I bought the dvd used from a sale rack for $2.50.)


My spouse doesn't tolerate watching ANY kind of horror, so long after he went to bed, I sat out in the dark living room genuinely laughing my butt-off while the main characters depicted here screamed in bloody horror. I'm so glad I found this particular trailer, below, because it adequately conveys precisely why the film is so funny. The story starts out with brothers kidnapping a sufficiently intelligent blond woman, played by Jennifer Lesley Ellison, for ransom but Murphy's law really comes into play as even the most unimaginable things go wrong.





My only reservation (if I had any) pertained to the way Jennifer's character dies. She's the only starring female depicted in this movie and a farmer's huge blade severs her head through the mouth. For me, that represented suppressing the female voice and wreaked of male dominance and emphasized masculine hatred toward women. Not only did nobody else in the movie die that way but two males in this story blathered much greater stupidity than the self-sufficient female did. Whoever wrote that aspect into the film can kiss my plump female badonkadonk. (You suck.)


The rest of this movie though? Thumbs and both big toes are pointing up.

Director: Paul Andrew Williams

Writer:

Paul Andrew Williams
Stars: Andy Serkis, Reece ShearsmithJennifer Ellison

Isaac Asimov on libraries: a space ship & a gateway

In 1971, an enterprising children's librarian in Troy, Michigan, wrote to dozens of important people to ask for a letter to the town's children, celebrating the opening of the new library.

Isaac Asimov was one of the 97 respondents.  Isn't this great?

You can read more about the Letters to the Children of Troy here, a few on Flickr here and there are pdfs of all the letters here.  Some names I know, like Edward Ardizzone and First Lady Pat Nixon, and others I don't, but it will be fun to take time to read them and see what they say about books and libraries and reading.  And then see how I can use these ideas forty years later for the library here.

Cheers

Ruth

PS.  This is the letter from Dr Seuss.  Both letters are from the Flickr set linked above.

Found this via Twitter.

ANZAC Day display, 2011

Our ANZAC Day display for 2011.

Flags acquired around Australia Day, when they're plentiful and inexpensive.  Bunting is four sheets of coloured cardboard, cut into pennants and stapled to string.  Photos using Hipstamatic (Kodot Grizzled/John S.)

On top of the bookcase is this picture of ANZAC Cove:

and two great quotes related to the day, the ode and Ataturk on how our sons are now theirs too.

The bookmarks we use feature these two quotes - I designed the bookmarks a few years ago (using Microsoft Publisher, they are printed eight to the page on brown/green cardboard) and they work nicely each year.  It's good to put both those pieces of writing in the hands of our students each ANZAC Day.

The school, of course, has ANZAC Day remembrance assemblies for the students and staff.  The library's display is in support of this.  It's good policy and practice to work in with school/national events like this; sometimes libraries can be perceived as being islands/apart/disconnected.  Better to be at the heart of things.



Lest we forget.

Ruth