This is their mission and the choose to accept it! #1

Anyway, yesterday the class discussed one of my classmates brought up the subject Library Mission/Vision statements. She mentioned that she was floating around the internet looking for how different libraries (both public and academic alike) craft their mission statements. Actually, she brought it up when the class was starting to lose momentum (it was getting kind of late) and it actually sparked a second wind in  the whole class. Tracey picked up on it immediately and had us look up a bunch of different examples.

I guess I’m pretty nerdy, but I thought I would make an effort to study up on library mission statements.

Here is the mission statement for Arlington Heights Memorial Library:

Unique graphic mission statement

Arlington Heights Memorial Library’s unique graphic/visual mission statement is really awesome. I guess technically, this is their brand/logo, but incorporating incorporateing it into their mission statement, bridges the gap between brand and mission. Clear, concise, and lively, the three overlapping leaves shows you what they do for the community. The graphic suggests circularity, and at the same time the points of each of the leaf-like layers seem to stretch just beyond the reaches of their pointed tips. In addition, the leaf-like image lends the mission an organic feel. It suggests the library is the lifeblood of the community.

I knew Shawn Johnson was super awesome!

Okay, so this is totally unrelated to LD or adhd and all that, but I am so jazzed that Shawn is an Obama supporter!

Queen of the Beam supports Obama!

I found this on the Yale Daily News Blog.

Al Gore and Shawn Johnson, buddies?

I found this image AMNewYork.com (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

I’ll admit, I was nervous that Shawn would turn out to be a right winger (like Mary Lou Retton). It turns out she as awesome as I audaciously hoped.

thinking through my cognitive style

I can’t resist a good story. If I could read morning, day and night, I would. Oddly enough, the mechanics of reading were difficult for me to master. My reading speed was, and still is, far below average. Most kids with these difficulties grow to hate reading, but for whatever reason, I was a persistent, voracious reader. In fact, aside from the pace, I was reading at a high school level in elementary school. My family saw me reading and discussing challenging books from an early age, and thought it was easy for me. I did everything I could to disguise my reading problems because I thought they were my fault. I thought I was lazy, crazy and stupid. This caused me trouble in school. In class I’d get sick to my stomach. I’d start dropping things on the floor, bumping at the legs of my desk, or tearing at the pages of my book until my teacher got mad.

Understanding the way my brain works, or my particular (and sometimes peculiar) cognitive style has cleared up a lot of confusion for me. I’m learning to be patient with myself, and I’m at peace with my cognitive style; I’m even grateful for it. If I could read faster I would understand less of what I read. When I take the time to weave my way across the page and between the lines of a book the stories stay with me. This makes me happy.

Olympic Fever

Watching the Olympics this week has me thinking about athletes with ADHD. Like jillions of other people I watched Michael Phelps win and win and win (+5 more times). I read about Phelps’ ADHD several months ago, (I admit this got to me), and was hoping to see him live up to and beyond all the talk and expectations. But I have to say, I was blown away when, in their interview with Bob Costas, Phelps and his mom, openly discussed his experiences as a youngster with ADHD. They explained how swimming helped him counteract the tough times that discourage many young ADHDers. I’ve also been glued to the set during gymnastics. (it isn’t surprising, since I was a gymnast when I was a kid, and I’ve never been able to shake it.) However, I have to say, I think Shawn Johnson is really something special. It’s not just because she’s an awesome athlete, there’s always an awesome American gymnast on the US team. There’s just something about the way she carries herself, she’s like a live wire.

Anyway, USA Today ran a profile piece on Johnson and her Coach Liang Chow. As I was reading it, something struck me as a little odd. The article quoted Chris Korotky, publisher of Inside Gymnastics magazine comparing, “‘Johnson’s ability to concentrate to that of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, who won six gold medals in Athens in 2004 and remains atop his sport heading to Beijing.’” The article continues, “‘When you are focused the way athletes only like Michael Phelps and Shawn Johnson are, you reduce the risk for injury,’ he says. ‘Your mind is not wandering.’” I got a kick out of this because of all the athletes he could mention (and obviously Phelps isn’t just any athlete, but still) he named the one who openly admits to having attentional difficulties. The human brain is such a weird little device. So three cheers for super-focus!

Back to gymnastics…Shawn Johnson in USA Today… they spoke to her coach, Liang Chow, who recalls the day he met this little superstar. He describes her as a “bouncy 6-year-old who needed an outlet for pep that had her climbing the family’s entertainment center” I think is is a pretty common beginning for gymnasts. My experience was very similar.

To say I was a handful from day one would be an major understatement. Everyone who knew me growing up remembers perpetual motion. I was an early roller, crawler, stander, walker, talker, and runner. When I was a little older than 1 1/2 years old I learned to climb trees, and this new skill made my mom a nervous wreck.

She knew I needed an outlet so when I was three she signed me up for ice skating. On my first day we drove to the rink, I was so excited. She laced up my skates, introduced me to my teacher, and I met the other kids. When it was time to start class she lead us onto the ice, and the second I stepped onto the ice, I took off as top speed. I hadn’t learned to stop, an oversight that didn’t bother me in the least, because I plowed into the wall, stood up giggling like maniac, and took off again in the opposite direction until I hit the wall on the opposite end of the rink. My poor mother remembers with a combination of humor and horror. She can laugh now, “but the sound of you crashing against that wall was so awful, so loud, I thought, for sure this time, you were going to crack your skull or break your neck.”

It took two skating instructors to chase me down and escort me off the ice. They said I was too high energy for figure skating. They recommended she sign me up for gymnastics, and gave her the number for Northbrook Gymnastics Training Center. My mom called and spoke with Jerry, the owner and head coach to make sure she wouldn’t have a repeat of the ice skating debacle. She didn’t want to freak him out, but she told him what happened. He just laughed, and said “sounds like you have a gymnast on your hands.” He assured her they’d take good care of me, and that they’d teach me how to be a daredevil without getting hurt.They could not have been more right, a week later I bounced into the doors at Northbrook Gymnastics Training Center for Tiny Tots Tumbling, and never wanted to leave.

When I was a kid gymnastics was my favorite thing in the world. Now, I was no Shawn Johnson, (I hated meets, but I put up with them because) I loved practice. I have been interested and excited about a lot of stuff since, but I don’t think anything will ever quite compare to my experiences in the gym. Gymnastics taught me to look at something that seems scary and impossible and say, “I am going to do that.” That feeling has stuck with me, even when I didn’t understand it.

Even on my worst ADD days, when I’m anxious, restless, bored or I can’t seem to do anything quite right, I respond almost automatically. I give myself a minute to to shake off the doubt and frustration, and think “I’ll just give it a shot.” Sometimes this gets me on track, sometimes it doesn’t, but I always feel better for trying. It activates me, and makes me feel more connected and present in my life.

Cluster Lust

Google is driving me nutzo when I want to find information that is even remotely useful. And after the hullabaloo about Cuil (the absolute most useless, horrible search engine ever invented) so I’m exploring new search engines. I want a search engine that doesn’t make my brain hurt. I want to be able to 1) perform search, and then 2) organize the results 3) identify useful search results 4) find a reasonably reliable answer to my question before I toss my laptop across the room in panic and disgust. I’m always puzzled by loyal Googlers. Don’t get me wrong google is amazing for when I want to check my spelling, find out who someone is and what they do, Google Maps is awesome, Gmail is awesome, Google Docs is awesome, (and there are others I can’t think of right now. But as a search engine, it blows dead bears! To me, searching with Google makes me feel like I’m having a really bad ADHD day after I slept like 3 hours, forgot to take Adderall and ate birthday cake for breakfast. I don’t want a million “popular results.”

Anyway, I just think there must be a better way. I’m taking Clusty for a test spin. I know the name sounds a little dirty, but it’s got a lot going for it.

Clusty is Vivisimo’s newest meta-search product that allows you to query multiple sources, such as Ask, MSN, Gigablast, the Open Directory Project and Wisenut, using a single search. On the surface, Clusty seems very similar to its competitors. Like many of the major search engines, Clusty’s employs a simple, even minimal user-interface, which allows you to perform queries quickly, and returns results in a matter of seconds.

Clusty diverges from the competition when it returns the search results. Unlike some of the major search engines, Clusty does not boast the most results in the shortest amount of time. In fact, Clusty generates fewer results the major search engines. However, Clusty’s interface gives you more information about the nature of search results than any other search engine. This gives you more control over their results, which makes it easier to evaluate the quality of the information they find. In my opinion, this makes Clusty’s results far more usable than the results found on other search engines. While I am generally skeptical of search engines, particularly when I need to find credible research for an assignment or something like that, but I was pleasantly surprised my Clusty results. Clusty allows you to be more productive in their search strategies by combining the familiar search functions for fast searching with innovative tools for sorting results making it easier to identify reliable information.

While Clusty’s search page is similar to other search engines, the results page is unique in that it employs a variety of techniques to help you sort and examine the documents more effectively. Most search engines deliver millions of search results in a single list ranked by popularity. Clusty, on the other hand, groups—or clusters—the results by topic, search engine source, and url (e.g. .com, .org, etc). You can move back and forth between cluster options. Clusty results are more manageable since they are presented in a format that is understandable. You can quickly inventory their results, rather than scrolling through page after page of rankings that may or may not be relevant to their information needs.

In addition, you can breakdown clusters further into sub-clusters that reflect the contents of each cluster. Sub-clusters will display indented under the main cluster label. Browsing the clusters can help you narrow the focus, organize similar results, find relevant information outranked by more popular sites, and identify related terms that they failed to consider when they built their query.

You can use this information to perform the same searches on a different search engines without wasting time slogging through a long redundant list of results. While the scope of Clusty’s searches are smaller than those of the major searches engines, Clusty offers you an opportunity to search more effectively for reliable information, and provides a necessary buffer against information overload.

I felt that Clusty’s results page made this process easier. I was able to identify the highest quality material immediately. Reading the most reliable information first gave me a better baseline for evaluating the rest of the sources on subject matter. I found the clusters tab provided a decent organizational framework to start the source evaluation process.

However, the sites tab was by far the most helpful because it gave me a direct view of all the most credible sources of information: the university and government websites.

Clusty offers another interesting feature that automatically retrieves definitions when they are available through Wordnet.com, a large English language lexical database developed at Princeton University. This access to an authoritative dictionary definition also gives you an excellent starting point for process the information they find.

Clusty is by no means a perfect search tool. The quality of search results varies widely from search to search. The fact is, the quality of information available on the web varies. You cannot believe everything they read. Learning to examine a source based on its relevance and authority is the basis of good research skills.

If you want to check it out go to www.clusty.com

Happy Searching!

I want to be a librarian!

I can think of three words that describe my academic experience: roller coaster ride. I loved learning from an early age, but I was always out of step with my peers. In elementary school, I spent more time in the hallway than I spent in the classroom. Despite my constant trouble-making, and unfulfilled potential, no one suggested that ADHD was the root of my problems. Like many adults with ADHD I thought I was lazy, spazzy, crazy, and hopeless. When I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age twenty-four, and then specific learning disabilities in working memory and written expression (I’m still trying to figure out what that means) four years later, it was like finding the light switch in a dark room. Suddenly, I could see the challenges ahead of me clearly. Over time, l learned how to use my strengths to improve my personal and professional life. A year ago, I felt I was ready to go back to school for a Master’s of Library and Information Science.
Most people think librarians must be quiet, mousy, reserved, bookish, and innately well-organized; in other words the opposite of ADHD. It turns out this assumption is completely false. Librarians are like made-to-order study-buddies; they help their patrons gather information that meets their needs. But there’s more to library service than organizing and retrieving information. A great librarian galvanizes a patron’s love for learning. Once I understood this aspect of librarianship, I realized that my energy and enthusiasm for learning and novelty is an asset in this line of work. In sother words, it is the ideal career path for a person with ADHD.
For me, librarianship emerges as the perfect avenue for indulging my impulses, to be involved in collaborative learning environments, and to establish important links to members of my community. My ultimate goal is to improve library services for people with physical, developmental, and learning disabilities. As an individual with ADHD, I bring to the table a unique perspective and empathy for less motivated learners. As a librarian I want to use my expertise to develop programs and service models that make the library a place where people with disabilities enjoy learning. I am very excited by the prospect of being a librarian in a public library and know that I have the commitment, confidence and intellectual capacity—and even the motivation—to make mine a valuable presence within the profession.

Anyway, I’ve said this before (and I don’t doubt I’ll say it again): I really want to commit to posting to this blog regularly. Writing is really tough for me, but it’s not impossible. So I’ll give it a whirl.

It’s a new day…let the learning begin!

Every morning, when your child gets ready to go to school he or she is miserable, afraid and anxious. What wrong with this picture?

The school, teachers, and even his or her peers decide your child can’t measured up against a preordained, standardized model of intelligence. Standardized tests measure only a fraction of the skills and cognitive abilities that the human brain can use to learn new information. These tests determine what makes one child smart, and another child stupid. These tests determine who will thrive and who will fail. If you find that your child, try though he or she might, is pulling up the rear, you’ve probably noticed how miserable he or she feels. It may be confusing because at home your little buddy is a sweet, insightful, little person, who is perhaps a little quirky, but full of imagination and energy. Does he or she enjoy making up funny stories at home?Drawing? Building? Learning new things? So why is school such an ordeal? If all kids have to go to school, does it really seem fair that only a small set of children should actually enjoy it? Learning disabilities, LD, learning difference, neurological deficit, what ever they call it, does it have to mean your child must struggle to keep up or stay out of trouble everyday just to get by?

Why should only children who are able in learn in a certain way, have a system in place that perpetually supports their abilities? Supports their their strengths? When a child is different, if he or she doesn’t fit the norm, learn differently, the school system sets this child up to never amount to anything. In no uncertain terms the school system says these kids are too lazy, too out-of-control, too stupid to do well.

The schools are wrong. Every child has the right to learn, the right to enjoy learning, and they deserve the support in an academic environment that prizes and nurtures cognitive diversity!

Anyway, sorry about the rant, but it brings me to my point. I want this to be a space to explore new ideas of how libraries and librarians can help people with LD of all ages become enthusiastic, life-long learners.

Who cares what they say, learning is fun! And everyone has the right to learn, not just the people who fit the so-called “norm”

To learn more about LD and find a number of reliable sources of information on LD, check out the various sections. Feel free to write with any questions!

Cate