12.8.10

I think that Badgerlink is an awesome resource to have in a library.  It would be a great resrouce to help students with their research projects.  It seems pretty straight forward to use.  I remember using it when I was in school and it was always pretty easy.  After playing around with it some more I've decided I really like the KidSearch function.  It would be especially great for elementary children.  Everything was very kid friendly and really easy to navigate around in while providing correct informaton.  Badgerlink would be great to have becuase a library could really cut down on the amount of newspapers that they subscribe to.  It would be nice to have a single copy of a few papers, but money could definately be saved by using Badgerlink for newspapers.  It could also be more cost effect to use almanacs or dictionaries with Badgerlink instead of having many copies in the library and having to update way to often. 

The school I am working in right now currently using Destiny as another one of their databases.  I'm pretty sure I've never used Destiny but after playing around, it seems like a realy neat thing to have in a library.  There are a ton of different links to go off and and gain information from.  From Destiny there are links for all sorts of other sites.  Some of the sites that are included that I found interesting are World Almanac for Kids, National Geographic for Kids, Create a Graph, Almanac-Fact Monster, KidPort Reference Library KidsClick!, and PBS Kids.  I'm not really sure on databases that would be helpful.  I'll look into other blogs to get ideas on what would be great to use.

After looking through a variety of selection tools I think I would love to use Capstone as one of my resources for my library.  I really enjoyed the layout of it and the ease of looking through it.  It was very user friendly and had so many options to choose from.  The School Library Journal is another one that I would enjoy using as a resouce in my library.  I liked the Starred books section at the end.  It seemed like a great resoures to know you were getting the best of the best.  I also liked that there was a vareity of book reviews as well as a bit of professional education articles throughout the journal.

After reading about formats that are found in the library and exploring a few libraries in the past few weeks I've decided that I really love the library that I am "working" with at this time.  Before starting this class whenever I would go into the library I always thought it looked nice and colorful and a happy place to be.  I never looked at what was really going on in it.  Now, I look at it and I see amazing displays for the "theme" of the month, toys and kits to go along with the books that are displayed, and a variety of posters and art work being displayed all over.  Someday I'm hoping to be in an elementary library.  I would love to have a library similar to the one that I am working with now.  I would love to encorporate more technology somehow into my library.  I think ebooks would be amazing to have in my library.  I don't think there would be a huge need for them in an elementary school setting, but it would be nice to have for older elementary school children.
Louis Question:
This week's activites have caused me to take a look at my "quiet" area in my after school program.  I've been paying a lot of attention to the book selection and content of the books, other materials that are present in the area and I'm currently updating a bunch of aspects of it to make it more "kid friendly" and appealing to be there.  I went through all the books on our shelves this week and did a weeding type thing of my own.  It was a bit refreshing getting rid of old books that I've never seen a child read before and replace them with one that that they want to read and enjoy reading..  This week I've learned that I need to put myself out there and ask for help when I need it.  I know I'm not in a library so I don't really know what is going on, but I have to ask in order to learn.  I have also learned that there are so many resources to help pick out books.  I talked to the librarian at my school and she provided me with so many resouces.  It was really fun reading through all of them and learning from them.