Happy 60th Birthday to me!!

I celebrated my 60th birthday with the help of my good friends and staff of the North Channel Library. See my smiling face on my profile!!

New Job as Branch Librarian

On September 4, 2008, I was appointed Branch Librarian for the North Channel Branch of the Harris County Public Library, Houston, TX. One week later, Hurricane Ike hit--!! We survived with minor damage to the roof. We served customers by flashlight for one week until the power was restored!

Carolyn Dial featured in Harris Co. Kids Newsletter

Meet the HCPL Children's Staff
Harris County Public Library (Houston, TX) has 26 branch libraries across the county. We have over 60 staff members dedicated to serving children in our community. Let's meet one of them!

Miss Carolyn
Carolyn Dial is the Children's Librarian at the North Channel Branch Library. She has been at North Channel for over two years. The children call her "Miss Carolyn" in that fine old Southern tradition!

What do you like to read?

I like to read all kinds of books!! New children's books, fiction books and biographies. My favorite new children's book is Ivan the Terrier by Peter Catalanotto. This is SUCH a funny story!

What was your favorite book when you were a kid?

My favorite book was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. There is a whole series of books about Oz and I eagerly read ALL of them!

What are your hobbies?

I enjoy music, both listening to it and making it. I am now learning to sing alto in the church choir. I also enjoy storytelling. I collect stories, learn them and tell them to children as often as I can. I especially like family stories. I present a program each summer for the kids entitled "Little House on the East Texas Prairie." I share stories from my family and show old photos, tools and clothes to enrich the experience. I wrote some of these stories for a book entitled, Trinity County: A Legend of Its Own. My book is now "in processing" at the Library of Congress! I am SO excited!!

What was your favorite subject in school?

My favorite subject in elementary school was Library Time--any surprise?? In junior high and senior high, I took advanced math classes and I really enjoyed these. In college, I was an English major and took many Humanities classes as I also love music and art, but I still found time to take calculus!

What do you like best about your job?

I love sharing tales with kids in Story Time! It is also fun to help kids and parents find the books, videos and web sites that they need. I also like to find good new books to order for our library.

Anything else you want to share about yourself?

When I attended Sarasota (Florida) Junior High School, the kids called me silly names based on my last name, like "Sun Dial" and "Soapy." Since I smiled all the time, they also called me "Smiley."



Miss Carolyn with a young Harry Potter.



Arrgh!! A pirate's life for me!

Week 10 - No. 23 The End

At the end of the iHCPL experience, I will say that my favorite discoveries are the Zoho products, especially ZohoWriter. This will be a great resource for home use--and a way for library customers to save their work quickly if they want to continue editing, for example, at school the next day. I was surprised and pleased with the ability to make mashups. I liked Wowio for its ease of use for audios and for the way it lists other products of interest based on your search. This will be a great adjunt to reader's advisory services we provide at the libraries.

Week 9 - No. 22 Downloadable Media

I explored the OverDrive materials. The home page gives a good variety of titles, both adult and juvenile,to choose from. Each title is available for a 14 day loan period. Titles include summaries and some include viewable excerpts. In addition to using the search box, you can also search by topics on the left-hand side of the screen, exs. eAudio, new eAudio. In terms of classics of literature, I did not find the poems of Emily Dickinson on this site, but I did find Moby Dick. I noted one title that will be of help to parents that I have worked with: Spanish on the Move for Kids. When I explored the free sites, I liked Wowio best. It has an attractive home page that draws your interest to new releases. Also, each book brings up a list of related titles that may be of interest. You can also search by category. Brave New World is included as a new title. LibriVox is less attractive from the homepage and on into the site. I did find the poems of Emily Dickinson and the classic, Moby Dick.

Week 9 - N0. 21 Podcasts

I looked at podcast.net. This yielded an interesting result that would be useful for libraries: Audio Literature Odyssey. This included professional readings of many well known authors and poets, including my favorite, Emily Dickinson.
Then I went onto Podcast Alley: it seemed more "hip," but required more steps that I was willing to do.
In contrast, Yahoo! Audio was VERY easy to use!! I found audio recordings of author/poet Richard Brautigan. These recordings were transferred over from LP records, so you can even hear the skips and hisses in the background--sounds of my youth!
When I looked at library uses of podcasts, I saw that one featured an exhibit and another introduced a new librarian. These are both interesting uses of this new technology.
Last, I added the Yahoo Audio feed for "Brautigan podcasts" to my bloglines rss feed list.

Week 9 - No. 20 YouTube

I explored YouTube today. I watched the example videos on iHCPL. Youtube can be used in such a variety of ways!!! I searched for videos on my favorite author, Richard Brautigan. I found several, including a few that used recordings of his voice, reading his poems.
Library uses for YouTube and similar technologies are numerous. If an author gave permission, he could be videoed as he presented for us. That way those that could not attend would still be able to see and hear him.