Storytime at the Stoughton Public Library

Although the fall semester has come to an end, there are still many assignments I haven't gotten to share.  One assignment that I definitely want to note before the Spring session starts (in a week!) is the storytime that I observed at the Stoughton Public Library.

If you've read my short bio, you know that I worked at the Stoughton Public Library for five years before I came to the Ames Free Library.  So, when I had to observe a storytime for my Children's Programming class and couldn't observe in my current workplace (a requirement for the assignment), of course I immediately emailed my old friend, Barbara Pally, Children's Librarian at the Stoughton Public Library. 

I observed Barbara's storytime for 2 and a half to three year olds, and I had just as much fun as the kids! It was a great storytime that included age appropriate books, songs, games and a craft at the end.  Because the storytime is structured for this age group, there was a lot of movement and interaction that made it fun for this sometimes jumpy group! This storytime zeroed in on many of the skills needed to encourage literacy and vocabulary in this young age group, promoting cognitive development through rhymes, repetition, singing and following instructions.  Overall, it was a great experience to see a librarian put all of these techniques into action.  Barbara also provides lists of age-appropriate books at the library, which is a great hand-out for parents to get ideas and promote literacy at home.  Here is her guide for 2-3 year olds:

Exciting Stories for 2-3 year olds.

Thanks again Barbara!

Cataloging a Music Collection

My final project for my Information Organization class was to create my own system to catalog a group of items.  As many of you know, I am a music lover so I chose to tackle a collection of music Cd's.  I fictionally based my project here at the Ames Free Library based upon the users of the collection.  It was actually very interesting to think about the ways people look for information in order to create searchable attributes. This enabled me to create a system that reflects these guidelines in the cataloging fields used when creating surrogate records in order to promote high precision and recall for searches.  Click on the link below to view my project and let me know what you think! 

CD Cataloging Project