Argh, some things are new. Lets all panic!

If I may quote the principal of this? school...
(emphasis is mine)

...It is time for every single member of the BF Community to take a stand!
There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site! Let me repeat that - there is absolutely, positively no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site! None...

Most students are part of more than one social networking site.
Please do the following: sit down with your child (and they are just children still) and tell them that they are not allowed to be a member of any social networking site. Today!

Let them know that you will at some point every week be checking their text messages online! You have the ability to do this through your cell phone provider.

Let them know that you will be installing Parental Control Software so you can tell every place they have visited online, and everything they have instant messaged or written to a friend. Don't install it behind their back, but install it!

Over 90% of all homework does not require the internet, or even a computer. Do not allow them to have a computer in their room, there is no need...
Have a central "docking station" preferably in your bedroom, where all electronics in the home get charged each night, especially anything with a cell or wifi capability (Remember when you were in high school and you would sneak the phone into your bedroom at midnight to talk to you girlfriend or boyfriend all night - now imagine what they can do with the technology in their rooms).

If your son or daughter is attacked through one of these sites or through texting - immediately go to the police! Insist that they investigate every situation. Also, contact the site and report the attack to the site - they have an obligation to suspend accounts or they are liable for what is written...

The threat to your son or daughter from online adult predators is insignificant compared to the damage that children at this age constantly and repeatedly do to one another through social networking sites or through text and picture messaging.

It is not hyperbole for me to write that the pain caused by social networking sites is beyond significant - it is psychologically detrimental and we will find out it will have significant long term effects, as well as all the horrible social effects it already creates.

I will be more than happy to take the blame off you as a parent if it is too difficult to have the students close their accounts, but it is time they all get closed and the texts always get checked...

Some people advocate that the parents and the school should teach responsible social networking to students because these sites are part of the world in which we live. I disagree, it is not worth the risk to your child to allow them the independence at this age to manage these sites on their own, not because they are not good kids or responsible, but because you cannot control the poor actions of anonymous others...

Sincerely,
Anthony Orsini
Principal, BFMS

I think I have already expressed the idea that schools should be about schooling and that if the teachers of my kids were to start intruding into our lives outside of school I would be expressing my displeasure quite bluntly.

There is some decent advice in this message in terms of being aware what your kids are up to, but there is so much stupidity that it beggars belief. I think it may be time for people to pull out their copies of On Liberty and see if they like anything John Stuart Mill wrote. What? Doesn't everyone have a copy of On Liberty?
Well, then go to a library and borrow a copy!

The tyranny of the majority shouldn't be what drives our decision making. Sure it is hard sometimes in a school setting to deal with the individual. I see teachers still using the cry "one of you is talking so you will all stay back" and I remember the mouthy young kid I was. I remember often wanting to get up and walk out rather than accept the punishment for the actions of others (and sometimes I did).

But, how can we think this is acceptable behaviour? Because they are younger than us, is this the only reason?

I know that some people (mostly on the left) have the idea that the real purpose of school is to create grist for the mill. We are all sent into these factories to be indoctrinated in order that we become good plebs and live our lives in the role society hands us. I hate that idea and don't believe that is what modern schooling should be about. We are not creating cannon fodder for the frontline or mindless drones, we are here to help small humans to become the best adults they can be.

So, perhaps "...the school should teach responsible social networking to students because these sites are part of the world in which we live..." but even if that is not our role, it is certainly not our role to prevent them engaging with that part of our modern world.

Do I teach responsible social networking. Well, not exactly. It comes up when I talk to the kids about online research, but the social networking sites are blocked by the NT education department. Perhaps it is logical to ensure there aren't too many shiny things to distract the kids but it does mean we are not engaging with the kids through those networks. There is no twitter back channel displaying school news (although, I am hoping I can get one up and running some time soon). There is no library facebook page with research hints, I would like there to be one but even if there was the students would only be able to access it from home. And any parents who listen to a Luddite like the one quoted above would be preventing their kids from joining the conversation anyway.

To quote Mill "over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign" this includes the freedom to hold an opinion and the freedom to publish it (I'm not sure Mill would have used facebook as his medium, but I strongly suspect he would have supported your right to twitter inanely and blog without censorship).

Goodhart goes to school

Are you familiar with Goodhart's law?
No, not Godwin's Law of NAZI analogies. While that may have some impact on your school or library (teaching kids how to debate or write signs for a teabagger rally), Goodhart's law is the one I was wanting to think about today.

Goodhart came up with his law during the Thatcher years in Britain and it related to monetary policy. In brief it suggests that measuring something changes it (yes, that is similar to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle but that is quantum theory and I don't usually like the idea of assuming that what is true of waveforms is a universal truth to live my life by). But Goodhart goes further than that, to suggest that in finance or social policy the change makes the measuring unsuitable for its original purpose.
So...

A government decides to test all students nationwide to determine how well students are reaching certain educational markers (good idea).
but then...

Private schools work out that they can use a bit of game theory and teach specifically to the test. Thus improving their appearance of success (but not necessarily improving real world outcomes for their students).

So, our public schools follow suit (teaching to the test). Private schools must then raise their performance again, so poorly performing students are jettisoned before the testing date or given a convenient diagnosis of ADHD or dyslexia to allow them extra time on the test.
And...

Before you know it you have a test which measures nothing more than the ability of teachers and administrators to play the system.

As you may gather, I see very little of benefit in the information I as a parent can gain from the my school website that our wonderful Labour government has set up. It shows almost nothing which will allow me to work out how my child will perform in a particular school. Not to mention, if I am sending my kids to a public school, I have very little choice where they will attend (the nearest one is usually the rule). So, if I am well off (or willing to make sacrifices) I can send my kids to a private school. But if I am well off I am probably living in a good socio economic area and as such will be close to a well performing school.

This is old news I know. But the complete stupidity of thinking that you can measure the ability of teachers through standardised testing performed every few years is insane and it is about to happen again. Except, it seems a lot of teachers are now willing to take a stand and are refusing to administer the test.

Damn, I have come to the end of my post and have reached no conclusion.
umm...

Goodhart's law makes sense to me. There, done.

But, all I know of Indian burial grounds I learned from a Stephen King novel

Today my inbox contained an email which I had received via OZTL_NET (cross posted on six other lists) entitled "What does Neil Gaiman know about American Indians?".

This email was from a Professor of American Indian Studies and pointed to a blog post she had written concerning some remarks the Author Neil Gaiman had made in an interview about The Graveyard Book. It seems the professor had concerns that these comments were ill-advised in relation to the true nature of American history.

I shot back a reply to the list (but not to the cross posted lists) saying that I thought the comments made sense in the context of the book (and perhaps made a joke in there about reading comprehension of the original poster).
I considered sending @neilhimself a tweet to let him know there was a blog post out there in the world which seemed to be suggesting he was... ? Racially insensitive, culturally ignorant?
but I decided that I am not such a fanboy that I needed to do that.

A short time later I noticed via the Tweet Tubes that Neil was aware not only of that post, but also of another post which seemed to take things further and suggest that his quote (if not he himself) was racist.

Neil lashed out, using foul language like 'twit' but then recanted and apologised for it. But the damage had been done and internet white knights rode into battle, some defending their hero Neil while others rode in to defend the two bloggers who had called out this racist Brit.

All in all it was a wonderfully amusing internet sideline for me today, but it left me wondering a few things.

Why do people get so offended so easily, why do we all feel we know the authors whose books we read, is this all a storm in a teacup...

oh, and did the original blogger invoke the name of a literary celebrity beloved of many online folk just in order to ramp up some blog traffic? If not, why would she be emailing a list for Australian teacher librarians to mention her blog post?

Apparently there are follow up blog post on the issue, but I don't believe I care to read them. I think I'll read a book instead but if it has Indians in it I will make sure I consider the cultural implications. Ohh, seems spaming newsgroups and bagging authors may be a good method to get your point across?
I wonder if anyone out there in academia is looking at the representations of Indigenous Australians in children's books? I know that Biggles in Australia is appallingly racist but I don't know many kids these days who read about Biggles and his chums. And if I were to come across a kid with a love of the hero of the Camel Squadron, I think I would be able to have a nice conversation about outdated British imperialism and ideas of racial superiority.

Don't ask "can I" ask "how can I"

I have noticed during my long career as a school librarian (almost an entire term now), that school librarians seem more likely to ask the question "can I?" when dealing with technological or legal issues.

As in "Can I use this youtube video in class". This is problematic (it seems to me) as the answer that is easiest to give to that sort of question is "no". A no answer is completely safe from a legal standpoint. However, from an educational standpoint it is a crappy answer. Especially as most of the people who are going to answer your question for you are not specialists in the field you are interested in.

Your principal is not a digital media specialist.
Your IT guy is not a copyright lawyer.

I would like it if School Librarians (and teachers themselves) started phrasing their question "How can?"

As in "How can I legally use this youtube clip in a mashup". That way, you are forcing the person you are asking into a different mindset. They may have to answer "I don't know" but they are then admitting they don't know rather than giving you a default "no".

From there, you can move onto finding out the real answer.

You can create mashup works using videos covered by a creative commons licence or of “insubstantial portions” (the words of the act) of a copyright work.
You can get permission from the copyright holder to make use of their work, you could be covered under your educational licence.

Parody and satire do give you another exemption. You can use copyright material for the purposes of parody and satire without permission, provided your use is fair. This would include things like the Hitler videos which were all the rage on youtube recently, where the use of the original work was necessary for the parody to succeed.
(It is worth noting that the act does not define parody or satire, but that probably doesn't mean you can invent your own definition).
You can also make use of an original work without permission if you are doing it or the purposes of criticism or review. So a student could make a video where they analyse works as examples of film making or style and could extract examples from the work they were discussing....

I've been watching this mindset online in the questions TLs are asking each other, but I suspect that the same passive questioning is being used when we ask for;
new shelves,
bay ends,
a bigger budget,
money for a visiting author
a week off to go to a conference...

And that is my thought for the day.
Thank you, come again.

My reply

Seems most folk want to reply to me privately on this issue, rather than add any support for me via blog post or on the original e-list.

I wonder why?

Anyway, this was my reply. It took me a while, and is as considered as any of my opinions ever is. And perhaps more thought out than most.

I paste it here unedited.

OK,
I am going to take the rope you have given me and use it to hang myself.

Yes, it is a non-issue, I made that statement and I stand by it. It is part of a modern day version of reds under the bed driven by a media who either does not understand the issue or deliberately misrepresents it to the public. This is not trivialising the issue. And I am sorry if it appears that way, however I take the issue very seriously. But no matter how I look at it I just come out with a different conclusion to some of you. Or perhaps it is just because I have looked at the statistics and read the studies, rather than relying on the investigative journalism of Today Tonight for all my fearmongering needs.
Why is it a non-issue?

Because it is part of our current societal belief that we can make the world safe by eliminating risk and danger.
Because it is so statistically unlikely that the fear we put in these kids is more problematic that the danger.
Because the worst case scenario should not be the driving force in all our decisions.

You have personalised the debate, so allow me to personalise it myself. When I was about 13 a very good friend of mine was killed while cycling out to a river for a swim. I often cycled with him, that day I didn't. However, cycling was not to blame. Nor were rivers. It was an unfortunate confluence of events which lead to his death.

What the hell am I talking about? I am talking about the fact that a week or so after his death I cycled the exact same road on my way to the exact same river or a swim. Yet somehow I did not die.

Likewise with your student, there is a horrible confluence of events which no doubt lead to her situation. Yet does that mean that we need to ban metaphorical bicycles? No, it doesn't. It means we do need to teach kids a few things about personal safety but these lessons will be laughed out of the classroom by almost all of our students if they are presented in the paranoid and overly simplistic fashion that some on here have demonstrated.

The idea that a school photo existing online has any parallel with the death of your student would be laughable if it wasn't so often the way the debate is directed. By creating this paranoid fear we are doing damage to our children, this is not just true of online paranoia but of the way children are taught 'stranger danger' or the way I meet so many kids who are too scared to climb a tree or the number of my 8 year old's friends whose parents are too scared to let them ride bikes or walk to school and as such these kids grow up thinking that anything which scares you slightly should be avoided.

There is a line between risk management and risk avoidance, and too many people today seem to have forgotten that kids need to be taught to manage risk rather than have us round off the corners of the world and send them around wrapped in cotton wool.

But enough of me riding my hobby horse. What are the facts? http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/CV194.pdf
http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/internet-crimes/factsheet_1in7.html Sure, these are American statistics, but they are the best figures available that I am aware of. Anyone here want to claim that Australian kids are less safe online than American ones?

To those of you who have watched me destroy my professional reputation on here today while sending me quiet messages of support off-list, here are a couple of things worth reading on the topic of over protective parents (which I think we can apply to school librarians).
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2009/05/04/free_range_kids/
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html

and, how to talk to kids about the issue (the sane way)
http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/internet-crimes/safety_ed.html

Yes, I continued the debate.

OK, I can be quite rude sometimes caustically sarcastic perhaps. But come on folks, "The stupid. It Burns"

I will avoid going into detail about the various bush lawyers who leapt into the debate, all with their personal ideas about copyright law

Dear John Regardless of the personal practices of particular photographers, international copyright law still vests the photographer with the copyright ownership of their images.

No, it doesn't! That is simply untrue under Australian law, there are just too many variables to make that statement.

It wouldn't surprise me if this is a breach of the Privacy Act if she hasn't obtained permission of all the people in the photo to use their image or name.

Ah for crying out loud. We are librarians folk, we have the ability to look stuff up. Two clicks later and I can confirm that the Privacy Act covers personal information gathered by " government agencies and private sector organisations."
Wow, the Privacy Act doesn't cover information 13 year olds put on Facebook? Who could have guessed that!
Even private schools aren't included in the act unless "they have an annual turnover greater than $3 million, or provide a health service"

OK, lawyers aside...

How should I respond to this;

John
I am deeply concerned by your trivialisation of an issue about which so many of our colleagues
have so justifiably expressed concerns.
Why?
Because one of our ex-students (aged 15 years) was stalked and murdered by a middle-aged interstate predator who "discovered" her via her social networking page (MySpace).
A non-issue? I don't think so.

I will await people's ideas of how I should have responded, then will put up how I actually did respond. Sound fair?

The internets are going to rape your children!

As a school librarian, I have of course subscribed to an email list of school librarians. This has opened the floodgates to a lot of emails, most of which I read the subject line of, before deleting; some of which I read and am grateful for but others which lead me to the conclusion that many in my profession are a group of reactionary old fools who should be put out to pasture before they create another generation of kids who think libraries are pointless.

Take today's example (one which got me up on my soap box in the forum and now here in my blog, where I can write without the "OMG paedophiles are everywhere" brigade having the right of reply).

The issue of school photos on facebook came to a head with an email which read (in part);

We have a Year 6 child who has scanned a class photo... to her Facebook page.
We now realise that we will have to put something in place in terms of
privacy etc. This was done at home with the child's own property. Do you
involve yourselves in this or is it a home issue? ... is it OK for her to post photos of other kids without their permission? Can we really do anything about this?

I replied in calm and measured tones;

I'm going to leap in on this one and say "do nothing"
As a parent, I would be appalled if my daughter's teachers thought they had any say in what she did on facebook. I am surprised that there are teachers who think that there is any role for the school in this. Aside from the fact that the photo was taken at school, what is the issue?
Is it OK for her to put up photos of the other kids without permission? Yes. There may be a copyright issue depending on who your school photographer is and how they feel about it, but that is not a school issue, it is for the photographers to follow up if they feel they need to. That aside, the kids will fill their albums with photos of each other. Photos from the school social, from the camp, from the swimming carnival...
As for teaching kids about their safety and privacy online, most of them know more than most of their teachers. At least, by the time they are 13 (the age when you can get a facebook account - unless they lie about their age).

Now, some of the folk took issue (and quite rightly too) with my saying the kids know more than most of their teachers by talking about how little protection many of them use online. It was a throw away line and while I still believe I could argue my point I will try to focus on the real issue. Such as the person who said;

there are also safety issues because any would-be predator now has enough stuff to start a conversation with either that child or one of her friends....
There could be repercussions from the photographer against the school....
If I were in your shoes, I would be contacting the parents and explaining the privacy issues and asking them to ensure that the student removes the photo.

Seriously? Arghhh
paedophiles?

Let me go out on a personal limb here and say that the world is mad. But that is no excuse for those of us who should be educated to believe this sort of A Current Affair rubbish.
Forget the paranoia and look at reality.

Slipping out of my School Librarian role for a moment and into my parent role, if a teacher was to contact me about my daughter's facebook profile I would be asking them why the hell they were looking at it, and questioning why they didn't have anything better to do with their time. If they added the paranoid OMG the paedophiles are everywhere rubbish I would be hard pressed not to laugh.

My eldest (13) is on facebook, her photos can be seen by her friends. If her friends are in the photos, then those photos can be seen by their friends. Who are those friends of friends? Who cares! As I said before, the world is mad. We have taken risk management and decided if there is any risk we will manage it by eliminating it. Risk can't be eliminated, nor should it be. Kids should be given the opportunity to learn how to accept risk and how to deal with it is a sensible fashion.
Remember folks, the reality is that abuse comes from those our children know. Uncles, grandfathers, friends of the family...
Yet, I don't believe the school has a role in telling parents not to let the kids visit their grandfather without a chaperone, so why should we be butting in on their online private life,
Unless your school has a particularly high number of students who are on the witness protection program, this is a non issue.

As you an imagine, my logical and reasoned approach was greeted well. Actually, that sounds sarcastic. But I did get a flood of emails along the lines of "thanks for not drinking to cool-aid" But those were all off-list. On list there were messages like;

...it is implicit in our duty of care that students cannot be tracked through FB, Google or anywhere else if we can prevent it...
I wonder what the outcome of a lawsuit might be if something happened and it was proven that I, as a teacher, knew about it and did nothing.

And the person who wrote that was lauded as

...a voice of reason in this discussion.

Seriously, that is a voice of reason? that is not a voice in the same vicinity as reason. That is a voice of paranoid insanity. If 'something' did happen. What the hell is 'something' and how is something prevention a part of my job description?
Some of the paranoia seemed also to be about students whose non-custodial parents must be avoided. OK, now we at least have a real issue to discuss. Yes, if there are problems in custody battles we don't want that student on the front page of a major newspaper with directions to their home. But, rather than go for an instant paranoid overreaction, how about we hope that the custodial parent is sane enough not to have their kid on facebook at all.

Trying to be logical in this, how many random facebook profiles of 13 year old girls would I have to search through in order to stumble across a photo of my own child if they were not on facebook? The odds are astronomical and I would have a much better chance of finding my child by randomly standing outside actual schools watching kids come and go.

Trying to be logical again, I decided to look at the other issue, copyright. Because the paranoid librarian quoted above made a good point in a later email;

It is part of our role as the school community's information specialist to inform the school community about the legal aspects of IP, copyright and acceptable use, including legal ramifications of possible use.

I called three school photographers at random and asked them where they stand on the issue.
Their answers were a unanimous acceptance that kids (and their parents) will put the school photos online. They all said that the only reason they would care about digital reproductions would be if the someone was trying to make a profit from them.
So, there is one less issue for everyone to cry "OMG people is going to sue us all ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" about.

None the less, the debate continues online and I am currently deciding whether to continue trolling the message board with my persistent and countercultural insistence on not being paranoid.

Girls are more mature: now with wings

Lunch in the library today was a quiet one; only about 65 kids in the place at any one moment. Yet despite the fact that I have a lot of kids in a fairly small library they were behaving quite well today. Seems my methods are working, certainly at the beginning of the year I was having about 50 kids in the place and it seemed like a riot.
However since then I have managed to learn classroom management skills (downside of not being a teacher was that I hadn't done this before. Although doing storytime for 60 pre-school kids in Penrith library had certainly provided me with some skills in crowd control at least.)
I have been trying to be nice to the kids, I know that trying to be everyone's friend is a bad plan. But I have a sense of humour, I don't try to take out my own inadequacies on the kids and I don't feel upset when the girls sit among the shelves and giggle about my hairstyle.

Still, I digress. A post on how I would make a much better teacher than all these actual teachers can wait until later (and is contingent on me not examining my thesis too closely for flaws).

So, today. In my quiet library...
A young boy, amongst a small group of young boys, was teasing a couple of girls. Nothing which would warrant my intervention. Instead I feigned disinterest and watched as these girls maintained the moral high ground. I was very impressed, they did not rise to his bait, continued talking quietly amongst themselves. I thought a bit about my own behaviour at that age and mused somewhat about the difference in maturity between boys and girls of the same age.

Until, with the sounding of the bell, the boy of our story rose from his seat and walked towards the door; with a feminine hygiene product stuck lovingly between his shoulder blades. Like some sort of tampax brand angel wings.

What is a school librarian?

Andrew, over at Librarian Idol has an interesting post on his first visit to an ASLA meeting. I find the questions he raises quite interesting. I think a librarian without teaching qualifications is a better fit in the school library that a teacher without library qualifications would be.
Sure as a librarian I may be biased in that direction but I would be interested in hearing what others think. Like Andrew I am a school librarian now, but I am not a teacher librarian. But hey, last year I did a guest lecture to some primary education students on making to most out of their librarian. So what difference does not being a teacher make to the skills I bring to the library?

Well in my case it means I didn't think I had much in the way of behaviour management. But last Friday I managed to break up a fight (albeit between 2 year 7 nerds) and stop a case of racist teasing.
Plus I am managing 50-80 kids in the library each lunchtime. Initially I was doing this alone, but on the day I hit 80 I decided I would talk to the senior staff about a bit of help. Now I get an 18 year old who is working at the school for a gap year to help me at lunch time.

Like Andrew I am getting involved in things outside the library. I spent a day coaching an under 13s league team at a carnival and I ran the cross country. Both good things, and both have given me the chance to get involved with kids for whom the library is not the number one destination.

At the moment I am working hard to get the library up to what I consider a decent standard and I think that this is a librarian's job rather than a teacher's. Not that a teacher wouldn't have been able to do my job today, pulling off horribly outdated books. A books where Cliff Richard talks about teen culture (1973) a book on cinema talking about a new film called Star Wars. OK, those were spectacular examples and most of the books I am deleting are newer than that, but unfortunately not much outdated. Computer books don't have a long shelf life, books on teen culture or books on health issues need to have pictures which current students can relate to.

But I digress...

so, rather than try to clean up this post I will publish it and tell you to go read Andrew's post instead. He is being a lot more lucid on the topic than I am.

The new starting point

My new library is a secondary school library, I have one library to service the needs of about 500 students on two interconnected campuses.
I am told, that at one point there were two libraries and two bookrooms for distributing class texts. This is a Once Upon a Time scenario. These libraries each had a staff of two, the bookrooms were also staffed. Gradually however these processes have been centralised, initially because a former principal read an article explaining that libraries were useless and outdated and should be replaced by computer labs. Why the bookrooms were also folded into the library, I don't know but as is often the case with such things the budget and the staff did not follow the resources*.
So, for some years the library has been staffed by one (overworked) library technician. Last year a teacher librarian was added to the school's staff. However, with his teaching load, he was not full time in the library.

Enter me...

I now sit in a library which has been sorely neglected for some time and have a budget which I don't believe is large enough to turn it around. However, budget is not everything and I am convinced I can move the place in the right direction (while at the same time agitating for more money next year).

So, what do I need to work on?

• I have 2 compactus units in the middle of the library which take up space, prevent a clear view of the library and are plain ugly. They even obscure the view to a set of stairs which are 'out of bounds'.
  
• I have a octagonal library, painted six different colours.
  
• I have ugly furniture.
• I have no spare shelving units.
• I have no magazine racks (but then I currently have no magazine subscriptions).
• The average age of the non-fiction books is around 26 years.
• I have ugly, damaged and outdated materials.

There is more to it than that, I also have author authority files which are misspelt, some even contain ampersands? I have an OPAC which is not linked to from our homepage (or anywhere else).
There are other (minor) annoyances. I have no comfortable seating. The windows (which should look out at the botanic gardens) have bizarre asbestos 'things' which some mad architect (the same type of mad architect who would design an octagonal library) has placed there to prevent anyone seeing the view.

I think I will have my work cut out for me here. But I seem to be hearing the right noises from the senior staff in regard to them supporting my ideas, so I am not disheartened.
I am;

• Undertaking a massive weed of the collection.
• Waiting for new furniture to arrive (ordered prior to my arrival).
• Working out how to best use my limited budget (basic non-fiction and popular fiction only for now. Other collections, such as graphic novels or audio books, will have to wait).
• Getting wheels or my shelving, so I can make the library a versatile space.

Things like bay ends would help, as would turning the library backwards to make the out of bounds stairs my entrance. This would also let me turn my current entrance hall into a compactus room. The principal has had an engineer looking at the building in order to see if I can knock down a couple of walls and if I can do this, I may be able to create a quiet study room too.

How will it all go? Stay tuned, I may even blog about it.


*this is the story as I understand it, as has been told to me by several staff members. Albeit each time I hear the story there are some differing details.

ADHD (School) Librarian

An update on my (professional) life.

The ADHD librarian has moved from higher education and is now practicing his particular brand of librarianship for the Catholic school system. As a result of this new (and, yes, wonderful) career opportunity some of the old posts on this blog have been edited to remove my overuse of the 'Q' word. While some others were beyond redemption and as such have been moved back to draft status, where they will remain until I reinstate them upon my deathbed.
While I was doing all this, the blog has been offline but I am now here again. Am I going to be blogging regularly again? Well, did I ever blog 'regularly' in the past? I suspect there are more posts on here telling you I am back, than there are posts which actually discuss ADHD or librarianship.

Next up will be (perhaps) a nice introduction to my new school (which I will not be naming) and a discussion of the poor state of the library, followed by what I am going to do about it.
I do find it somewhat amusing that I am not the only former public librarian/blogger who is making the move across to a school library this year. Andrew Finegan is also chronicling his transition. And, to be honest, if you look for regular updates in your blogs, you'd be better off to add him to your roll.

What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?

A friend (the one whose actions convinced the teenage me that Christianity was worth investigating) pointed me to this article, which makes with eloquence some of the points I tried to make on this blog some years ago.

Things like:

"so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives."

or

"The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity... has become less and less fascinating... the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus."

and

"I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice.)"

Government policies are needed to deal with the Fear of Zombies

In other news "people are morons of the highest order" a fact I have been espousing for some years.

Today's Second Post - and a drug update

I don't know why it is, but I seem to develop a tolerance to drugs quite quickly. My wodnerful start to Ritalin has certainly plateaued. I have not plummeted into a black hole, nor have I forgotten how to do my job. No, I am still working, still producing, still contributing, but somehow the initial flurry of super productivity seems to have been a bit of a manic spike rather than a consistently achievable level of productivity.

But then, I have never been the unproductive type. Despite the ADHD, I have always done several things at once. At one stage I was working full time, studying part time, in the army reserve and the father of a newborn. So, I finished the study, resigned my commission and immediately started writing a rock climbing and abseiling training guide for a youth organisation. Plus I always seem to be on a committee (or two) or leading a bible study group or helping out at the scout hall (often both at the same time) and I play rugby, take my kids to their own sports (and training sessions).

Yep, I may lack a certain focus at times but as I write this I am beginning to see just how fantastic I am. I jest, I have always had an overinflated sense of my own worth.

Still, it may be time for a drug holiday. See if kicking the meds for a while will give me back the kick when I next take them (don't worry, I will research the possibility then talk it through with a suitably qualified medical person).

So in short...
Ritalin, the best meds for me so far but no magic bullet.

Don't Make me Restart

I hate having to restart my computer (ever). You see, I am not a clean desk kind of guy. I read something once that said ADHD types are less likely to put things away, because if they do they will forget they exist. And for me that rings true, but it isn't just my post-it notes. I do the same thing with emails. If they are crap I delete them, if I can I ignore them (open them, read them, perhaps drop them in a sub-folder by subject) but if I need to do anything with them then they will stay open (although minimised) until they are dealt with. If the due date is a long way off, then I will tag them for follow-up with an associated reminder.

The same is true of my browsing, sure I bookmark things, but some stuff isn't important enough to bookmark (otherwise my bookmarks folder would be huge, cumbersome and useless). For that stuff I want to read but haven't, I open it in a tab, with the idea of coming back later. This could be TED talks I plan on listening to, Seth Goden's Blog Posts, Neil Gamen's Blog Posts. Stuff, which is peripheral to keeping my head around all that is new in libraries. Now, I subscribe to a few blogs (and I contantly revisit my need for each subscription). Of those blogs I subscribe to, the library related ones are read as they appear (and I'll usually look a couple of times a day).

So, why not just mark the post and come back to it later? I currently have over 300 posts saved in my feed aggregator (almost 100 for Stephen Abram alone) but I so rarely go back to them. If I read it before I close my browser I will read it, if not it is usually not revisited.

The same is true of books, I have half a dozen open on my bedside table at any one time because if I put it away I will forget it exists and never realise I didn't finish reading it.

So, why do you care about this? Perhaps you are reading this blog because you ae an ADHD nutjob like this librarian, but if not I would like to suggest that the world is becoming like me. There is just too much 'stuff' out there, there are too many web pages to read, to remember, to bookmark. there are too many books, songs and TV shows to buy, watch or illegally rip from P2P. If you don't steal it now, you'll probably forget and if you do do it, you'd better watch it straight away.

Which leads me to cry, don't make me restart my computer. Every time I do I have to restart my life and if that isn't bad enough, when one of my work machines died a couple of weeks ago I not only had to restart my browser but I had to recreate my list of firefox plugins, greasemonkey addons, search engines, bookmarks.

It is hell. Or was until I realised that I never revisit those sort of things unless I am restarting from scratch. there are so many nice things on this new computer (and no, I haven't added them to my others, because that would involve remembering what they were. But next time they are upgraded...)