Author: George J. Aulisio

Student TechCon Position Open

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August 17, 2010

10:39 am

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Interested in working at the library? At the Weinberg Memorial Library you can earn valuable work experience and enhance your skills in a variety of different ways.

Weinberg Memorial Library

Currently, the Weinberg Memorial Library currently has an open Student TechCon position:

Library Outreach TechCon

This TechCon supports the Library’s Public Services initiatives and reports to the Library’s Evening Public Services Librarian, George Aulisio.

Afternoon, evening, and some weekend hours available.

Job responsibilities for this position include:

  • Publicizing Library events and services using the Library’s social media presence (with regular postings to the Library’s blog, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter accounts).
  • Researching the usage of social media tools at other libraries.
  • Preparing informational slides, images, and video for the Library’s new television displays.
  • Photographing Library events and activities.
  • Assisting the Public Services Librarians in planning outreach activities.
    • Potential projects include gaming events and Earth Week.
    • Assisting the Digital Services Librarian and Digitization TechCon in promoting digital collections.
    • Assisting with other special projects as needed.

Preferred qualifications for this position include:

  • Knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite, and Powerpoint
  • Familiarity with Mac operating system and software
  • Experience with audio/video editing and graphic design
  • Excellent written communication skills
  • Familiarity with social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter, and with current social media trends and culture

Students interested should send an email to george.aulisio@scranton.edu with information on their interest in this position. Please address any qualifications or interests you have that match-up with the description. Also, if you feel that you skills that you believe would be relevant to this position, but are not addressed in the description please elaborate on them.

PaLA Awards Nomination Deadline Quickly Approaching!!!

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June 28, 2010

6:30 am

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Come August 15th it’ll already be too late to nominate your favorite librarian for an award, so it’s best you do it now!

Submission Deadline: August 15, 2010

Categories:

  • Distinguished Service Award: Highest award the associate gives. It may be awarded annually to one person in recognition of exceptional meritorious service to libraries of the Commonwealth.
  • Certificates of Merit: These are awarded to individuals making outstanding contributions during the last five years in Pennsylvania.
  • Elected Official Award: This award may be given annually to an elected official or officials for exemplary support of library service in Pennsylvania.
  • New Librarian Honors Award: Honors a librarian who has been in the profession fewer than six years. It recognizes the originality and inventive ability of a new librarian who devises new and improved methods in library service on a statewide or local level.
  • Trustee of the Year Award: Presented to a public library trustee in recognition of outstanding leadership and service to library development at the local, system, district, and/or state level.
  • Library Support Staff Recognition Award: This award is presented to a library that has consistently encouraged and supported participation in career development activities, particularly those of PaLA for the support staff in Pennsylvania libraries. Nominations should be in the form of a statement of the library’s activities. (A little clarification on this award: It is presented to a library not to a staff member. Does your library provide you with opportunities to develop your library skills through continuing education opportunities? Does your library allow you to attend PaLA conferences and Chapter Meetings as a Support Staff member? Does your library provide you with opportunities to take classes on library related activities or in areas which you can use on the job? Then tell us how that support helps you on your job and give a little recognition to your library.

Nominating is now easier than ever, thanks to the new online form.

2010 Award Nomination Form

Simply fill it out and click submit… It’s that easy!

Pennsylvania Library Association Award Nominations

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May 6, 2010

7:00 am

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The Pennsylvania Library Association (PaLA) presents six different awards to librarians and library supporters throughout the state at the PaLA Annual Conference. This is your chance to recognize that new librarian on the block, your outstanding public library trustee, an elected official who has advocated for libraries in hard times, or any individual who has made an outstanding contribution to libraries in PA during the last five years. You can even honor a library that has consistently encouraged its support staff to participate in career development by nominating them for the Library Support Staff Recognition Award!

Submission Deadline: August 15, 2010

Download the 2010 Award Nomination Form

Categories:

  • Distinguished Service Award: Highest award the associate gives. It may be awarded annually to one person in recognition of exceptional meritorious service to libraries of the Commonwealth.
  • Certificates of Merit: These are awarded to individuals making outstanding contributions during the last five years in Pennsylvania.
  • Elected Official Award: This award may be given annually to an elected official or officials for exemplary support of library service in Pennsylvania.
  • New Librarian Honors Award: Honors a librarian who has been in the profession fewer than six years. It recognizes the originality and inventive ability of a new librarian who devises new and improved methods in library service on a statewide or local level.
  • Trustee of the Year Award: Presented to a public library trustee in recognition of outstanding leadership and service to library development at the local, system, district, and/or state level.
  • Library Support Staff Recognition Award: This award is presented to a library that has consistently encouraged and supported participation in career development activities, particularly those of PaLA for the support staff in Pennsylvania libraries. Nominations should be in the form of a statement of the library’s activities. (A little clarification on this award: It is presented to a library not to a staff member. Does your library provide you with opportunities to develop your library skills through continuing education opportunities? Does your library allow you to attend PaLA conferences and Chapter Meetings as a Support Staff member? Does your library provide you with opportunities to take classes on library related activities or in areas which you can use on the job? Then tell us how that support helps you on your job and give a little recognition to your library.

Nominating is easy! All you have to do is:
1. Complete the PDF form found at

Download the 2010 Award Nomination Form

(or include the information on the form with your email or mailed submission)

2. Email it to Erin.Dorney@millersville.edu or snail mail it to Erin Dorney, Outreach Librarian, Millersville University Library, P.O. Box 1002, Millersville, PA 17551-0302.

Have questions? Contact 2010 Awards Chair Erin Dorney (erin.dorney@millersville.edu / 717-872-3617) at any time!

We hope you’ll consider submitting a nomination before the deadline of August 15th, 2010.

Web Surfing Made Simple

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April 20, 2010

6:14 pm

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While surfing the Web I came across a website which makes focusing on your work all that much more difficult.

StumbleUpon is a website which leads you to other websites.

The webpages you stumble upon could range from Government Fact Sheets, National Geographic Images, YouTube Videos, Flash Games, News Articles, Blog posts, just about anything you can imagine.

My first result was a great set of images which help to scale galactic objects in comparison to one another… http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/9LspdV/www.rense.com/general72/size.htm

After that I stumbled on a game where you try to tranquilize sheep running from your herd. http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1F2W83/www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/reaction_version5.swf

Then an extremely interesting video from YouTube. http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1mWEMo/www.youtube.com/watch%253Fv%253DlUMf7FWGdCw

Lastly, a photo of Earth at Night from NASA. http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2hI6DU/antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights_dmsp_big.jpg

You do not need to sign-up in order to use this site, but for people who do a lot of surfing I would suggest making a free account. Account members can chose what kinds of websites they most frequently enjoy. As you are lead to a new site you can decide if you Like or Dislike the site. The more you rate websites the more likely you are to be lead to sites that you’ll enjoy.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Happy stumbling!

Wii Want you @ the Library

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April 11, 2010

10:27 pm

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In Celebration of National Library Week…

The Weinberg Memorial Library will be hosting its second ever Library Gaming Night on Monday, April 12th.

Due to the success of the first gaming night held on Mardi Gras, we have decided to expand. This time there will be more gaming systems and more food.

All students are welcome to join us in the Heritage Room (5th floor) to Play Games, Eat Food, Enter our Raffle for Gift Cards, and/or just come to hang out with your friends.

The event starts at 8pm and will go on til 11pm.

See you Monday!

Free Rice

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March 9, 2010

7:42 pm

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What’s more fun than playing a game?

Free Rice

Playing a game that matters…

http://www.freerice.com/ is a multiple choice website which quizzes your general knowledge.

People spend hours wasting their time on games similar to this one, but the difference here is…

When you answer correctly on FreeRice.com a Sponsor pays for a donation of Rice to the UN World Food Programme.

The more you play, the more you get correct, the more rice gets donated.

According to FreeRice’s FAQ section, FreeRice has:

Fed 27,000 Myanmar refugees in Bangladesh.
Provided take-home rations of four kilograms of rice for two months to 13,500 pregnant and nursing women in Cambodia.
Fed 66,000 school children in Uganda for a week.
Fed over 108,000 Bhutanese refugees for three days in Nepal.
Fed 41,000 children for 8 days in Bhutan.
Fed 750,000 cyclone affected people for 3 days in Myanmar.

The website defaults to English Vocabulary words, but you can click on Subjects at the top of the page to change it to something more to your liking, such as: Famous Paintings, Chemistry, Geography, Mathematics, German, French, Italian, and Spanish.

If you are going to burn time on the internet doing something similar, why not do it here? I guarantee if you spend an hour at this website you’ll feel a lot better than you would if you spent an hour at another website.

www.freerice.com

Indie Magazines for Everyone

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March 2, 2010

8:54 pm

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Issuu

One of my favorite websites to kill some time on is Issuu.

Issuu is a website which allows you to “Publish yourself.”

I think it’s pretty cool that you can publish your own work on this website, but that is not the reason why I enjoy it so much.

Issuu has a large collection of magazines which are all free for you to peruse. The only difference is that these magazines are not the ones that you usually see at the grocery store.

Because Issuu is free to publish on, a lot of magazines which are not mass-produced and are uber-popular in America use it to increase their readership.

The magazines are mostly Independent, Student run, or from outside the U.S.A. The content of these magazines ranges from Poetry, Photography, Art, Graphic Design, Film Reviews, Popular Culture, just about everything…

Issuu is a great way to get your daily dose of culture and to read something a little different for a change.

Check it out at http://issuu.com.

Compare and Contrast

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February 22, 2010

10:43 pm

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About.com vs. Wikipedia

About.com is a free information resource tool which shares a few similarities to it’s widely popular colleague, Wikipedia.

Some of the similarities are that they are both free resources and they’re extremely easy to use… Another one is that they don’t look great when citing them in a research paper.

Wikipedia is undoubtedly the more popular resource and almost certainly has more articles in its collection.

However, the biggest difference between the two is the way articles are written.

As most everyone knows, Wikipedia uses “group intelligence” to compile what many consider to be highly accurate and extremely accessible information; whereas others consider it to be riddled with erroneous information, typos, and consider it poorly written.

About.com has each article written by a single author. The authors of the articles are known as About.com Guides. These Guides are hired by About.com solely to be their resident expert in a given field. At first glance About.com sounds like it has an advantage over Wikipedia in so much as it could provide more reliable information. However, not all of the About.com Guides live up to the standards that are required in Academe. Most guides are not scholars, they do not have a Ph.D., and haven’t dedicated their lives to their given field.

Many guides on the other hand are very well informed and highly trained, so another similarity between About.com and Wikipedia is that they are mixed bags. You could be getting high quality information from both, but by the next paragraph you can be reading something that simply isn’t true.

The fact is that you are going to get information from website such as About.com and Wikipedia (I do it too), but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from websites like these, depending on the accuracy of information that you need, it’s OK to read these articles.

The important thing is that you cross reference the information provided with a more reliable source (i.e. encyclopedia, handbook, reference manual, etc.).

Please know that I am not saying its OK to cite Wikipedia and About.com in your homework assignments (I am 100% against that), what I am saying is that it’s OK to check information resources like these, but you should always check more than one resource to make sure the information is accurate. Lastly, make sure those additional resources are highly reliable — those are the resources you can cite!

Mardi Gras!

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February 16, 2010

5:35 pm

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Just a reminder…

Mardi Gras at the Library is Tonight!

Come to the Heritage Room between 8-11 to enjoy Wii games, Board Games, Pizza, Wings, Chips, Pretzels, Donuts, Soda, M&M’s, Free Beads, and Prizes!!

See you there!

Wolfram | Alpha

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February 14, 2010

9:58 pm

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By now Wolfram|Alpha might already be old news, but just in case you haven’t heard about it, you should really check it out…

Caffeine Vs. AspirinWolfram|Alpha is set-up to look like a Search Engine similar to Google, but it is actually a “computation machine.”

This resource is a good tool for finding statistics, socio-economic data, information on a date, figuring out equations, and has data on specific locations.

You’ll see on their Examples by Topic page that Wolfram|Alpha could be useful for the following Subjects — Math, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Education, Sociology, Criminal Justice, Engineering, Geography, and a lot more.

Just to get a feel for it, I suggest plugging in your Birthday to see what you get, then try doing a comparison, for example: Scranton, PA vs. Philadelphia, PA.

I’m sure you’ll at least find it to be interesting. Those of you who work with numbers, facts, and data might find this “computation machine” to be downright awesome.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/