Friday, October 26, 2007

Thing-ing in Real Life: CJCS style

Okay, so we've signed Sophie up for Hebrew School this year and as I'm staring at the wall of volunteer opportunities, a little voice behind me (aka Stephanie S.) says, "Why don't you sign up for the library?" And because I don't spend nearly enough time in a library, I do.

Lots of books in crates with nice little pockets and date due cards.

Step one: We need to organize! Since I'm not about to start looking up dewey numbers for everything, we go with genre-type categories and create stickers for each category.

Step two: I jokingly told the Educational Director that he should buy us a laptop and we could create an automation system. Yeah, he thought it was pretty funny, too. But I started thinking, wouldn't it be nice if the books were in some kind of catalog form? Wait a minute....What about Library Thing? I go online to look around and wouldn't you know? They recommend using it for small collections such as ours. Cool beans. So I set up an account and show the librarian in charge. She loves it! And since she's got a crate of books at home, starts inputting books. Yay! Way cool. (And sort of sad how excited I got about this!) :) One of the librarians @ Library Thing even told me how to show items are "checked out" (by using tags). The only bummer is that there is no wireless access at OMHS. But very exciting in the meantime....