YOUmedia was designed to be a space for teens to:

• hang out
• mess around
• geek out

These three enjoyable activities should, over time, increase teens technogological and information literacy.  The center is mostly used during after-school hours, although teachers can sign up to use the center during school hours. You can learn more at www.youmediachicago.org

Way to go Chicago Public Library!

So, I just created this blog. The set-up was pretty easy, the hard part will be figuring out what to put on it.  I have created a blog before, but found that without having any type of specific topic connected to my blog I was kind of overwhelmed with what to write.  Hence, I only wrote about 5 posts.

I have to admit I was kind of inspired to create another, more narrowly focused blog after seeing the movie Julie and Julia. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Julie and Julia is about a girl named Julie who decides to try and cook all of Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking in one year.  She also decides to track her progress on a blog. The movie is actually based on a true story.  In the end Julie got a book deal out of it, and eventually a movie too! Well, I thought while watching it that would not be half bad.

I have decided to focus this blog on interesting and inspiring programs, services, and technologies that are being used in public and school libraries today.  I am a library student and so these things interest me, hopefully they will interest you too!

Reflection on another blog

I checked out the blog “Alice in Infoland-Wandering through School, Library, Life” (http://alice.info.squarespace.com/blog) I really liked it.  Some blogs seem to go on and on about little details of a person’s life that you really don’t care about, such as what they had for dinner last night, how many of their kids are now potty-trained, etc.  Alice shares stories about herself, professional resources, and general items of interest without being tediously self-absorbed.  Alice is an educator and former librarian, and school librarian.  She is now retired from a full-time position, bus still teaches online as well as doing consulting work and writing.  Here is an interesting experpt from Alice’s blog about how blogs and other media may affect the school library media profession.

The following question was asked of Alice…

How do you see the evolution of blogging (i.e., the growth of online video) as intersecting with the job of school media professionals?
The Read/Write web is drastically changing the way our world functions.  School librarians are responsible for teaching students how to be effective information consumers and producers. We need to know how to use these new formats and technologies so that we can continue to be effective and vital elements in the educational infrastructure.

(Taken from http://www.aliceinfo.org/blog/category/brain-crumbs)