Working at Reference I’m at least aware of many of our web resources. I don’t always remember them, but I do know about them. I love looking through VILDA, especially with my parents who’ve lived here over 55 years now. They can tell me about some of the places and people in the Fairbanks pictures, and I can show them thing I’ve found while helping patrons, or becoming more familiar with the tool. Last year I took a class on Fairbanks history with Dermot Cole, and VILDA came in very handy!
I’ve tried a couple of the audiobooks from ListenAlaska, and while I like the portability, I wish there were more books to choose from, and more that would allow CD burning. Working with Apple and iPods would be nice, too, especially because most of the people I know have iPods, not generic MP3 players. One of the audiobooks I downloaded and burned to a cd was a book of nursery rhymes for my son. It would have been nice if I were able to go to individual tracks, but unfortunately each cd is its own track. That way, if I want to skip forward to a different nursery rhyme/chapter/etc, I’d always have to listen to the first ones until I got to it. I can only take so many readings of “Little Boy Blue” with a strong English accent! (nothing against the English, but it was at a time my son was learning to speak, and we didn’t want to confuse him with all the different accents and dialects at the same time).
I wish we had more time for movies lately. Maybe we will as fall and winter approach, we’ve actually been enjoying this nice summer. For once we had no smoke, and the weather was relatively warm and dry compared to recent years. It was nice being able to be outside more, and to let Kieran outside to play. The first summer after he came home was the big smoky summer, so we were cooped up inside whenever we didn’t have to be outside. This is such a nice change, but not too good for catching up on movies and DVDs! Soon, we’ll start checking out what we have at the media desk again!
