Bibliocycle

Today I was awakened by the gentleman (“butler”) who delivers coffee to my room each morning.  The coffee comes with a small pitcher of hot milk, and it is a lovely way to begin the day.  But before today I have been awake for hours before the coffee arrived, so I haven’t set wake-up calls.  I am really very tired.

The rains continue, but it is not as hot here as it is at home.  There is almost no drainage, and so when it rains, the streets fill with water.  Yesterday when we left the campus we had to ford a small, spontaneous lake where the road should have been.  Children were playing by the side of the road, and as we passes we sent up an enormous spray of very dirty water over their heads.  They were delighted.  Eighteen people have died in

Karachi

in the last two days as a result of the flooding.

The seminar program for today focused on librarians as information specialists.   We began with the candy exercise—I asked them to “organize” small bags of various objects.  They developed unique and very elaborate schemes, and it built a framework for the rest of the day.    We explored the identification, classification, and use of sources of various types.  The enjoyed the activities which practice in developing good searches using Boolean logic. Even though they are MLS librarians, they were tentative in comparing sources and uses.  I think that the activities we did will be helpful to them.

Because the computer lab has no electricity, we brought 6 computers into the room and set up a network.  I showed them the Collaboratory blog and each of them wrote a comment.  Several of the teachers used blogger to create their own blogs, and we discussed how they could be used.  I had a scare when the Network Administrator, without telling me, detached me from the PA workgroup.  I was afterwards unable to log in, until I reached Michael Blake at the OWHL for help.