School starts

WOW! August went fast. Have already had four days of school-without students. I am trying not to panic. I don't know what the standard is, so I don't know where I stand in terms of what I should have done but after working 4 days on Library stuff I feel like I have done nothing. Teachers are already trying to pull me in all directions. "Last year we had lessons on Fridays, we aren't going to have the same this year?" No one told me that until I had my schedule all made up. One teacher's comment that "I don't know what you do in the library, you just read to them, right?" I have three schools to juggle and three aides to meet. I am starting to freak. Luckily the administration has allowed me 5 days before I start lessons, so at least the aides and I can be on the same page. I am all ready getting "That's not the way we did it last year" Well that's last year! I have a particular teacher that seems to smirk to get their way. Sorry isn't going to happen. "Are the materials in that I ordered?I need them the first day." Not, going to happen I have the MARC records in the system, but I don't know about the rest of the processing. "I need to send my students to the Library the first day of school." Not going to happen. Libraries open the second day. My desk is already buried in catalogs and material. My predecessor kept everything on the computer. I have to have it in front of me on paper. One thing I do have down is the budgeting, I understand all of that, with the purchase orders and the packing slips. And I LOVE opening the boxes and seeing all these wonderful books. i hope to keep blogging now, I think I will probably use it to vent my frustrations and hopefully enlighten and amuse someone out there. Oh yesterday we had an inservice on Web 2.0, the teacher ask who was using del.icio.us and I was the only one that was. I now have a inservice topic. By the way, she mentioned all the web sites we used in class, but didn't really show them to us, SO people were confused and somewhat uninterested, because they really didn't understand.

What have I gotten my self into?

Good morning, Yesterday I went my new school district and visited with the former librarian. She is an awesome person and more than willing to pass on any information that she had ( and all her written lesson plans). When she started she was left with a less than desirable position. The district went from two librarians to her one. One of the librarian left nothing for her to work with, no notes no nothing. The other librarian left some notes. During this past year the new librarian did an unbelievable amount of work in organizing and cleaning up the libraries. And she spent eight hours with me , on her own time, helping orientate me to the libraries. This is were it gets sticky. How do I follow that? I am not even certified yet, she had four years experience in the library. She has a business degree, too. So she knows how to set up accounts and work spreadsheets. I don't.
I guess I just work towards my strengths, and that is analyzing the collections.

Mistaken idenity

Wanted to get the repeating podcast off the site and print the text, so went to look up the text and found that I was attributing the piece to the wrong person, as were many other people. In fact, so a web site says, Mandella never even quoted this text and it was written by Marianne Williamson. A lesson learned "Don't believe everything you read on the Web, even if it sounds authoritative. " It will be a very good example to use when teaching a lesson. Speaking of lessons. Anyone out there have some good lesson plans for elementary students?

Hi all,
I got a job! Not the one I thought I would get, but probably the one I need to keep me humble. It is in a small midwestern town. The logistics are not good, too far from home to drive home. So I have to board somewhere. That should be an experience in itself. I am the district librarian. Three schools. I have visited once, and will make a effort to get the lay of the land a few times before school starts.
I also want to talk about collaboration. As a final project in this digital media class we had to write a paper via google.docs. I found the process totally frustrating. My co-writers were very good writers and very precise. I however, am not and I always felt like I could not contribute in a positive manner. Now I know how kids feel on a collaborative project.
I am going to be blogging about my experiences as a new librarian, hope you enjoy!?!