Choose Your Own Movie Showing

"Good gosh, Nick! You're talking more about movies than books these days."
"Well, uh....yeah, I've got nothing to say."
Our Choose a Movie Showings have been pretty successful, so I figured we'd talk about them a little. Typically we've held these (we've held about three) as one of our Summer Reading events, but you could do it any time of year.

Our basic thought was, "Wouldn't it be fun to have a movie premiere at the Hayden Library?" Now the licensing fees and logistics of making that happen are a little bit difficult, so we figured we would show a movie that had already come out.

But how do you get middle and high school students to come to something like that? Wouldn't they just watch it on Netflix? Promise them pop, popcorn, candy, and the chance to choose the movie they want to watch! Want it to be even more special? Hold it later at night (say 11pm), so it feels more like a movie premiere (well what a movie premiere used to feel like. Why is it that midnight showings are more like 7pm or 8pm showings now?)

The way I figure it, you could choose the movies in a couple of ways:
1) Ask your members to bring their favorite library appropriate film, and have your attendees vote for their favorite favorite.
2) Choose five films that you think they'll enjoy and have them vote for their favorite.
3) Do a mixture of both ideas (what we do). Have some pre-selected films for the group, but leave it open so someone could bring a suggestion if they wanted.

P.S. Here are a couple of suggestions: The A-Team, Back to the Future, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Dark Knight, Divergent, The Fault in Our Stars, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Maverick, Oblivion, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Princess Bride, Star Trek Into Darkness...just to name a few.

P.S.S Make sure you have the rights to show the film. Even if you aren't doing it for profit, movie companies (and the law) don't smile on organizations that show a company's work without permission. We use Movie Licensing USA, and you can purchase a one-time license, or a subscription to show available movies for a specified amount of time.

Flipster: When You Need a Free Magazine

I recently joined the modern era by getting myself a smart phone. *Gasp* "Nick, don't you know that those have been a necessity for, like, several years now?" Very true, and now that I have one, I'm never going back to a "dumb" phone hehe. I bring this up because there were a whole bunch of pre-loaded apps that came on my device, and I'm nervous to try many of them because I figure they are just previews of services that will very quickly want my credit card information.

Its a bummer, because some of them might actually offer some free content, but I don't want to risk it. But, I have some good news for those of you who are like me. The Community Library Network has just subscribed to an e-magazine service that comes at absolutely no cost to you now, or later. 

The service is called Flipster, and I just put the latest issue of Consumer Report onto our office's iPad with very little effort, and at no cost. "Now, Nick, didn't the library have a subscription to a service called Zinio that did the exact same thing? In fact, didn't you do a blog post about it?" Very true again. Our network has replaced our Zinio subscription with Flipster. But, many of the same titles are available on the Flipster platform, and the ease of use on Flipster is fantastic from what I've seen. 

Flipster lets you view current and past issues of magazines on your internet-connected computer or mobile device. Its as easy as having your library card and going to CommunityLibrary.Net/eStuff. If you have an iOS device (Android as well at the end of the summer), you can download the free app and download full magazines onto the app for offline viewing. 

So if those pre-loaded apps are looking a little spooky, but you'd still like some free content, try out your library's free e-magazine service and let me know what you think. 

3D Printing: Guess What We Just Got!?!?

At the beginning of last year, I put up a post about 3D Printing. Now, I'm so excited to say that the Community Library Network actually has a 3D Printer!!

As I mentioned in our Cardboard Robots post, the Community Library Network has been a part of a Makerspace pilot project with the Idaho Commission for Libraries. The final piece of this pilot was each library (or network) taking home a 3D Printer to call their own.

Now, there are a lot of different 3D Printer models, and there are also a ton of 3D Printer vendors. For our printers, the Commission decided to contract with an open-source building community called RepRap, and more specifically a Boise shop called the Reuseum.

RepRap is based on the idea of self-replicating manufacturing machines. So, each of our printers was hand-made, and many of the elements were actually printed on another 3D printer. Pretty cool, right?

Obviously there are multiple ways of manufacturing things using 3D Printers, and some of the industrial grade operate slightly different than ours. But, ours basically melts a plastic filament and then uses a nozzle to lay it back down layer after layer until a physical object is created.

Feel free to check out the video, or join us for our 3D Printer Demos we'll be doing to start off the new year =D

Zinio: Best Magazines, Digital Format

Typically speaking, I don't read a ton of magazines. Typically speaking again, the times that I do are when I'm waiting for an appointment to start, or when I have some time to kill at the library and my book is at home or something.

But, if those magazines that I browse through at the dentist's randomly showed up in my email's inbox, I might start to read them a little more lol. Basically, that is what Zinio has been doing for about 10 years apparently, and now the Community Library Network has got a subscription to their library service.

If you bounce over to our network's Zinio browsing page, you can see all the magazines that are free through our library's subscription. If you don't see one you're after, just let us know and we'll see if adding it might be an option.

When you find one you'd like, you can register with Zinio (with an email address, username, and password), and they'll notify you by email when a new issue comes out. Like the cool service that it is, your issues don't expire, and you can view them as often as you like. Another nice piece of this service is that you can either read it online or offline on your computer, iDevice, or Android. That means you can read it whenever you want to, wherever you want to, on whatever you want to.

So the next time you need Car and Driver, Billboard, or US Weekly, sign up with Zinio and get it for free!

Idaho Careline: Information and Referral Services

While I was bopping around my email, I found some articles on Digital Inclusion (They were very interesting, btw). One of them mentioned a service that sounded familiar but I wasn't completely sure about, so I decided to look it up and talk about it today.

The service is Idaho 211: Idaho Careline, and it is a free statewide community information and referral service. Ultimately, it is a program of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, but there are a lot of services in the database. The goal is to have information on health and human services in the local communities of Idaho, whether they be government, faith-based, or community resources.

As it turns out, 2-1-1 services are available in pretty much every state in the Union, but Idaho was the fourth in the nation to implement the service statewide.  In Fiscal Year 2012, the Idaho Careline helped 162,500 people. I was curious if the Hayden Library was included as one of the resources, and it turns out that we are. The information was obviously given some time ago, but it will still get you to the right place =D

So the next time you need a referral, try called 2-1-1 and see what they can do for you. Or, you could check out their Helpful Links. If you do, let me know how it goes.

Show The Hunger Games Movie!

Through the month of October, the Hayden Library was involved with our area-wide program called North Idaho Reads, and one of the programs we got to do was show The Hunger Games movie.

North Idaho Reads was a collaboration between Community Library Network, Coeur d' Alene Public Library, East Bonner County Library District and West Bonner Library District to promote one book (Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury), and then offer programs to support people talking about it.

Fahrenheit 451 is a classic dystopian novel, so when our committee considered what kind of programs we could offer, we thought a Dystopian Movie Festival would be really cool. So, we made sure all the libraries had a projector and a DVD player or compatible computer, and showed some movies =D

The Hayden Library chose to show Fahrenheit 451, Children of Men, Serenity, and then finally The Hunger Games. While I don't have any pictures (I'll make sure I do that next time), we decorated the Bookmobile garage with rugs, tables, and Christmas lights, and made it feel like a movie theater.

In addition to watching the movie, we ordered some pizza afterwards and chatted about what we thought about the movie, how it compared to the book, and what other dystopian stories we had heard.

Obviously, The Hunger Games is under copyright protection, so to legally showed it, we purchased a license from Movie Licensing USA, which is also going to let us show The Amazing Spider-Man in December. I'm stoked already!

Koha: Your New Library Catalog

It has finally happened! The Cooperative Information Network (CIN), the bigger network that the Community Library Network is a part of, just got a new catalog, which means we have a new catalog :)

The system is called Koha, and it is taken care of by ByWater Solutions. But, that isn't what you are interested in. You would probably like to know how it is different. "Koha is the first free and open source software library automation package (ILS). Development is sponsored by libraries of varying types and sizes, volunteers, and support companies from around the world."

What does that mean for you? It means you have more control of your catalog experience. Koha allows you to create lists of books you want to check out, put holds on, or just keep track of. It allows you to create RSS feeds on new books, and also to keep a reading history of what you have read. You can create a private list of things you want to read, or make the list public so others can see your suggestions.

Another cool feature is you can limit your searches to items that are available right now. That means you don't have to click on each individual record to see if you can actually go grab it on the shelf.

There are plenty of other awesome things, but there is one more I want to point out. With our previous catalog, you had to select a specific copy of a book to put a hold on it. Now, you can place a "Next Available Copy" hold, and no matter where it is in the network, the next available copy will be heading your way.

Even though change is always hard, and there are definitely some things I'm getting used to, I'm excited about this new system, and how it will be used in the future!

Puppet Tales: Local Puppet Awesomeness

Youth services staff have way too much fun with puppets! There is a husband/wife team in Sandpoint who have been doing puppet shows and trainings for a couple years now, and they just officially named their business Puppet Tales. Dave Nickodemus is the fella, and Beth is his beautiful wife.

Dave came in yesterday (kind of the reason you got some Monday Fun today), and did a Puppetry 101 training for staff from Community Library Network (the network I work for), Coeur d' Alene Public Library, and the Sandpoint Library.

Dave chatted about why, where, and how to use puppets, basic puppet positions and movement, developing voices, and how to utilize puppets in introducing stories and topics. Finally, he mentioned a lot of websites where he got his puppets, and let us play with his puppets.

Why do I mention puppets on Techno Tuesdays? Well I'm going to give you the websites that Dave mentioned, which is kind of techno-y, but ultimately Dave is a local resource for ideas, information on puppets, and actual puppet presentation, and I couldn't resist giving him some props. All twenty-five staff or so were really impressed with his skill, knowledge, enthusiasm, and general awesomeness. If you ever need a puppet guy, I would highly suggest him :)

This post is already getting a little bit long, so I'm going to give you the low-down on the websites next week, but in the meantime, check out Puppet Tales' Facebook page :)

E-Books: Here we Go!

Hey everybody :)
Amazingly, I'm posting a Techno Tuesday kind of post on a Tuesday. Oh ya!
This time around, I wanted to let you know that the Community Library Network at Hayden now has e-books available. That's right! The Cooperative Information Network, 23 public, school, and medical libraries that share information (the Hayden Library is a part of the network), are making e-books available to anyone with a CIN library card (for those scratching their heads, any Hayden Library card is a CIN library card).
So if you have a Kindle, Nook, iPAD, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, or any other number of e-book readers, you can check out your e-books today!
Go to communitylibrary.net and click on "CIN Digital Downloads" on the left hand column,
or click here.

Does Beta Mean Under Construction?

Howdy everyone.
So a resource that I haven't mentioned yet is our new Community Library Network website. We launched the website last month, and we're still working on it. Part of that process is figuring out what you think about it.
Do you like the way it is set up? Can you find what you are looking for? Do you like the colors?
This new website has all of the features from our previous website, just a little reorganized and repackaged. We have a list of databases you can access for free under On-Line Resources, a list of our network's social media under Social Networking, and book lists and information under Good Reads. There is information on each library's programs and events, and you can access your account and our catalog as well.
Take a look at it and let me know what you think :)

Whats in a Year?

How’s it going?

Apart from Ka-Boom on Monday, this week has basically been planning for future events. I had a weather theme for Ka-Boom this month, which meant we talked about rain, clouds, and made it snow in the library using Steve Spangler’s Insta-snow (the stuff it really cool by the way!).

But, the rest of the week was spent figuring out what my summer programs are going to look like. We’re going to be having a monthly teen program, and two weekly programs for Tweens. One will be Ka-Boom, and the other will be Tween summer reading where we will do games and crafts each week. We’ll get more into summer reading as we get closer.

As I think about our upcoming programs, I can’t help but think about the things I’ve been doing over the last year. About this time last April, I was just starting my YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Blogger pages. Since then, a lot of things have happened.

On YouTube, I’ve posted 13 videos ranging from a booktrailer on Rash to a Teen Read Week PSA, and 945 people have looked at my uploads! I was super excited when I looked at that number.

On Twitter, I’m following 215 profiles, ranging from libraries to marketing gurus, have tweeted 270 times, and have 103 people following my tweets.

On Facebook, I have 24 people who have liked my Next-Gen Adults of the Community Library Network page, and I have 173 people who have friended my work FB account.

Finally on Blogger, I have 70 posts, which are made up of Book Blurts and Weekly Updates, and 1,163 people have looked at my blog! And not only in this country either. I’ve had people from Russia, Germany, Brazil, Netherlands, Burundi, France, Canada, Malta, and Argentina take a look at what this young adult librarian from Hayden, Idaho babbles about.

If you are reading this, you are one of the numbers above who has been supporting my efforts as I build Next-Gen programming at the Community Library Network at Hayden, and I want to thank you over and over again for taking an interest in what I’m doing.

Well, I’ll be back again next week for more fun, and thank you again for connecting with me!

Creating Successful Teen Programming...

Is it possible to create successful teen programming starting from the ground up? I think so.

Now, I won’t say that I have successful teen programming at this point. But I will say that I hope to create a successful teen program in the next few years. What do I base this confidence on? Well the first thing is that other libraries have done it. Other libraries, of equal size to our library and district, have created and maintained a successful teen program. I hope I can learn from their experiences and successes to help our success.

Another confidence booster is the budding success of Airband Awesomeness. I’ve contacted one of the families that came to the event, and they are excited that we are doing something similar with Jingle Bell Rock. They said they would be spreading the word about the event. I think this will be the biggest step toward a successful teen program; teens and families wanting to get involved with it. I can try to create great programs, post things on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, but if young adults aren’t being served and enriched, it is all for naught. I hope I can remain even more fully focused on serving our young adult patrons with everything I do.

Finally, I am starting to see interested educators come along side our efforts to start teen programming. As soon as I’ve mentioned teen programming to parents, educators, and librarians, they immediately get excited about it. There hasn’t been a lot done for teens in the library, so I think having somebody on that encourages people. Obviously, I can’t create a successful program on my own, and I thank everyone who has helped me to this point, and everyone who will help me in the future.

So, what is your Community Library Network at Hayden doing in the next few months? We will be launching a Library Next-Gen website. We will be involved in Teen Tech Week and our annual Three Minute Teen Film Festival. We will be continuing to get you new books, and keep our collection up to date. We will start posting book lists that hopefully you will enjoy. We will be starting a Next-Gen Advisory Group in the summer. And we will continue to find what you need from the Community Library Network at Hayden.

Hope you have a great week and thanks for reading!

Well Baby its Cold Outside

Here’s to a momentous occasion! I actually did all of the blog posts I was supposed to do this month! Since I’ve started posting twice a week, I haven’t actually posted twice a week for an entire month. Every now and again I would miss a Book Blurt or a Weekly Update, and so I’ve never gotten over 7 blog posts in a month. Well, here’s to the first time I’ve gotten to 8, and here’s to continuing this trend!

Well this past week has been a little slow (reasons will be forthcoming) so I decided to take advantage of that by getting some planning and tweaking done. The first reason for the slowness was the obvious fact that Thanksgiving was yesterday (hope yours was fantastic!). My colleagues took a few days off, and we didn’t have any of our regular programs scheduled. This freed up some time to spruce up the blog (hence the awesome new look) and to change the names of my social media to something more accurate. (The other reason was the insane amount of snow and cold that we got this past week!)

As I mentioned a little while ago, my library system’s name has changed to Community Library Network, and yet, my social media still said Kootenai Shoshone Area Libraries. So I’ve rectified that situation. My Twitter account is now CLN4NextGen (Community Library Network for Next-Gen Adults), my Facebook is Next-Gen Adults of the Community Library Network, and my blog is now cln4nextgen.blogspot.com. The only social media outlet that hasn’t changed is Youtube. Reason? They won’t let me! All of the other social media outlets allow you to change your name, but for some reason, my Youtube channel doesn’t have that option. I’ll have to think about what to do about that…

Well I also got some planning done this week. Coming up in December, we are doing Jingle Bell Rock! We had so much fun doing Airband Awesomeness that we decided we would do something similar for December. But, we also decided that you didn’t need the pressure of preparing a song for competition, so we are just going to be taking requests and anyone who wants to can rock with it. I’ll provide some Christmas music, pizza, pop, and a laptop (whereby we can look up songs on Youtube) and you bring yourselves, your friends, your ipods, and the desire to have fun and rock out. It is going to be open for grades 6th through 12th, and will be going on December 22 from 7:30-9:00. (Don't worry it won't only be Christmas music; we can play anything you want to)

Even though it seems kind of ironic to be thinking of summer during this wintery blizzard that is also what I did this week. We order things from our Summer Reading vendor a couple months before we actually need the stuff, so I’ve been figuring out what incentives, prizes, and promo stuff we’ll need for June, July, and August. There is some fun stuff coming up!

Once again, I hope you had an amazing Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you in December.

Playing Some Catch Up

Hello again everyone!

So, there have been quite a few things that have come and gone without me having a chance to talk about them, so this week, I am going to play some catch up. I know I’ve been mentioning that for a while, so I figure that I’ll actually follow through and do it today.

But before I do, I mentioned the Community Library Network last week, and said there would be more on it this week. Without getting into a long explanation, our library district (formally called Kootenai Shoshone Area Libraries) has brought on a new library (Post Falls) and has changed its operating name to Community Library Network. I won’t have time to go into some catch up if I keep going, but we’ll come back to this story in the future.

So here’s your catch up. I mentioned the Wrestlemania Reading Challenge for quite a while before Teen Read Week, and people actually participated which is cool! Around fifteen students turned in pledge forms, and I consider that I good start for what I hope we will be able to do next year as well. I also think it is cool that many of those students heard about the competition from one of our school librarians that partnered with us. I love having the opportunity to work with other educators!

The other big thing that happened during Teen Read Week was Airband Awesomeness (click the link for a fun recap video)! This was one of our most successful programs to date, which is, well, AWESOME! We had about 35 people attend, and even though they weren’t all in the tween/teen age group, they all had a great time. Two airbands performed, and the teens did a great job with choreography, lip syncing, and just having fun with it. But, I think the most successful part of the program was the fact that teens I didn’t specifically invite actually came and had a great time at the program. In the past, most of the teen programs have consisted of my family members coming to the programs. (Well, you have to start somewhere, and my family enjoyed the pizza, pop, and fun programs). But, it was really encouraging to see teens I didn’t know coming into the library for a program I put together. It energized me to keep learning from the programs I’m doing, and to make the programs I do in the future even better!

A Long Post on Science, Happiness, and All Staff Training Days

Well, well, well, well there is once again, so much to talk about. Blogs are funny things. I figure that I want each blog post to be between 300-500 words (closer to the 300 so I don’t get too wordy). That doesn’t sound like too many words…if you have something to talk about. There have been weeks where I sit for fifteen minutes staring at a blank screen, wondering what I did that week that would be interesting. But, then there are weeks like this week (where I’m still playing catch up) where that number of words won’t be near enough.

Anyways, let’s talk a little about what I did this week, and if we have enough space, I’ll back track to something I did in the past, but didn’t have time to talk about. This Monday, I had a chance to do my Ka-Boom Science Experiments program again. I just have to say, SCIENCE IS AWESOME! Of course, my kind of science is putting Dawn in some warm water and adding dry ice (just so you know, that particular experiment was awesome!), but science is just way too much fun to do, and talk about. I find that I’m getting a whole new crowd in the library for Ka-Boom, and they are critically thinking about why something happened in the experiment. Some of it they have just heard in school or at home. But some of it is legit curiosity and wonderings, and I’m glad I’m allowed to have this kind of program at my library! (If you think about it, Play-do here, and Dry Ice there tends to add up. But my boss, and my boss’ bosses are supportive of this program, and that also makes me excited. Also, for those keeping track, we didn’t have a special quest last week. Miss Emily, one of my colleagues, wasn’t quite able to join us, even though it would have been great to have her).

Also this week, I got a little bit of time to catch up on my email and social media postings which was nice. But, the other big event was the Community Library Network (more about what that means next week) All Staff Training Day. Each Veteran’s Day, my library network gets all of the staff from our seven (now eight) libraries into one building and does a conference. Lunch is provided (which is always nice), and the topics this year were marketing and happiness. The last couple of months, there has been a large marketing grant going on at my library, and the marketing topic was an update for the staff on what has been going on with their research.

The happiness workshop was put on by Anne Abrams from the Idaho Commission for Libraries (ICfL). She discussed research on happiness, and had us do some role playing activities which wound up being quite hilarious. The thing that stuck out to me about the topic of happiness is that your response to the topic of happiness comes down to your outlook on things (how much happiness or lack thereof that you already have). Having someone discuss happiness when you aren’t very happy doesn’t work too well, but discussing happiness with someone that is happy is sort of redundant. But, I think Anne did a good job finding research and some things to laugh at, and it can’t be a bad thing to be reminded of the benefits of having a positive outlook. I think myself and some of my colleauges were also quite ridiculous and tired during the afternoon, so there was plenty to laugh and be happy about.

Anyways, it looks like I’m already over my word limit, so I’ll sign off for today and see you on Wednesday for an uber-epic-awesome book blurt (not like all the rest of them haven’t been uber-epic-awesome, but I felt like closing the blog that way today).