Organizing Conference Notes

My friend and fellow library media specialist Debra Truss recently queried the NYC School Librarians List (NYCSLIST) the following:

I have now had the pleasure of working as a librarian for five years and during those five years have attended many wonderful PD [professional development] events for librarians and teachers.  I have learned many valuable skills and gleaned inspiring ideas from colleagues at these events.  All of these are recorded as notes, or on handouts, in folders, etc.  They are starting to really pile up, and I am sure I will only be collecting more as time goes on.  I don't want valuable ideas to be lost in a pile!

So I am wondering, how do all of you organize your PD notes and materials so that you can use them for reference effectively?

This was my reply: 

I have my notes from various workshops and conferences (now mounting up!) in a variety of formats:  "old-school" paper notes shoved into manila folders, or notes filling up the nifty little journals that are handed out at conferences.  Occasionally I peruse these and flag with Post-its or mark up in highlighter anything that seems pertinent at the moment.  I've also scanned many of these into PDFs and saved in Dropbox, where I've created folders (time-consuming).   Then there are the notes that I've typed up in Word or Google Docs (now Drive).  Relevant websites that are mentioned during talks I bookmark in Diigo (useful because you can tag them); and--more recently--apps on the iPad like Penultimate and my current favorite--Notability, which has an audio record feature and ability to organize into folders (but, alas, no tags).

How do you organize your notes?  

Century of the Child @ MoMA

Ellen Key

Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000 at  the Museum of Modern Art surveys 20th century design for (and by) children.  

The exhibition takes its name from an eponymous book by Swedish feminist writer and suffragist Ellen Key, who was an early advocate of a child-centered approach to education and parenting.

The show looks at Frederic Froebel's philosophy of the kindergarten in the context of the development of modernism, where "great value was placed on the child's enjoyment of the creative process and intuitive investigation of materials.  The new pedagogy prized authentic expression, the inspiration of the natural world, and the creative potential of every individual, every child."  (from exhibition wall text).  Key believed that homework should be moved back to the school. As far as possible, teaching should be aimed at the pupils, their search for knowledge and in shaping their own opinions. "Our age cries for personality, but it will ask in vain, until we allow them to have their own will, think their own thoughts, work out their own knowledge, form their own judgements; or, to put the matter briefly, until we cease to suppress the raw material of personality in schools, vainly hoping later on in life to revive it again."  In our current educational policy, where play has been sacrificed for "college readiness" the exhibition begs the question: Is the century of the child a relic of times gone?

America's Largest Cookbook Collection

Fun Food Factory by Nanette Newman
c. 1976

   

 Date bait,the younger set's picture cookbook
    Robert H. Loeb, 1962
Weird--wouldn't a pictorial recipe be
designed for the pre-dating set?  

Yesterday I had the privilege of taking a trip through the stacks of the Food & Cookery Collection at Fales Library at NYU.   The collection has approximately 50,000 volumes, 26,000 of which have been catalogued.  I had the privilege of rummaging through the stacks of children's cookbooks on a tour led by the most gracious librarian Marvin Taylor, who oversees this awesome resource and is himself an incredible resource for food and cookery literature.

I got a sneak peek of 101 Classic Cookbooks, edited by the Fales Library, with Mr. Taylor at its helm.  The editors compiled cookbook favorites by such notables as Florence Fabricant, Judith Jones (Julia Child's editor), and Alice Waters.  Taylor launches his introduction with a description of his childhood food memory of onions sauteeing in butter in his grandmother's kitchen.  I can't wait to get my hands on this book!

Coming in October 2012

Week 2, Day 5