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Karen
I'm a small-town part-time librarian with a husband, 3 kids, a dog, a fish and a rabbit.
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    Saturday, September 19, 2009

    Library Mural

    About the Artist:
    Lisa Nicoll resides in Avon and has been Elementary Art Specialist at Albany Area Schools since 1987. She spends her free time with her family of four or in the garden. She pursues many forms of art – drawing, painting and mosaic. She researched and did an action research project centered on creativity in pursuit of her MSE degree. Through that study, she was most struck with the concept that creativity is not a special ability only a few people enjoy, but that all persons hold the capacity of creativity given a rich learning environment and the desire to achieve a meaningful goal.

    About the Mural
    In 2009, Friends of the Albany Library chose to celebrate the Summer Reading Program theme “Be Creative at your Library” in a special way, by hiring an artist to paint a mural. They spread the word and asked for artists who may be interested in helping with the project. Lisa Nicoll’s design was chosen by the group. Her connection to the community helped draw a lot of interest during its creation, especially from her students who visited the library during the summer.

    Lisa’s ideas for the mural were born of the SRP theme with a special emphasis on the gift of creativity and divergent thinking. She wanted to play with the idea of the library and the act of opening a book as a doorway or portal to other places. Three-dimensional pieces were created from old books painted by children during two special craft sessions.

    More photos of the mural can be found here.

    Friday, July 24, 2009

    Twitter world

    Twitter seems to be catching on. Best Buy is now requiring Twitter use as for some of their new hires. I guess it pays to stay on top of the new web 2.0 trends. Here's the article I read about Best Buy.

    Thursday, July 16, 2009

    Digital TV Conversion


    A couple of weeks after the digital conversion my husband and a friend were complaining that we couldn't receive any real channels. I had watched this youtube video that was linked in a comment to a Star Tribune article about the conversion. I had them watch the video and they were instantly in the garage with six wire coat hangers. We needed to make an emergency run for the coaxial part, but this antenna actually does work really well in our house and only took about 15 minutes to make, not counting the run to the store. It's pretty ugly, but we've never had so many channels. Most are public television. Unfortunately, our friends live in northern Minnesota, and it didn't work at all in their house. So for those of you who don't think satellite TV is worth the cost, I'd recommend giving this a try.

    Friday, June 12, 2009

    Thing 46: Webjunction Minnesota

    I have been a member of Webjunction for some time and a sporadic user. I have used the message boards as part of a Rural Library Sustainability workshop I had attended a couple of years ago. I also have taken a couple of the courses that were offered. I haven't seen website since design change, but find it much easier to navigate.

    As part of this Thing, I updated my profile and discovered that at some point I must have established two different accounts. I am not sure how to delete one of them, but will need to figure that out.

    I really like the idea of connections among Minnesota librarians, especially different types of libraries. The biggest hurdle is finding time to participate.