Hi there librarians. The last time I made a post on Tame The Web was 628 days ago. Those six hundred and twenty eight days have come and gone by in a blur. It was a combo of my day-to-day work as a library director and my desire to spend all of my non working time with my family that has caused such a lapse in writing and sharing about libraries here at Tame The Web. But don’t let that make you think that I’ve stopped thinking about libraries and how we as librarians can continue to encourage the heart. […]
Tags Justin Hoenke
67 posts
One year ago I made the jump from a career full of youth services to a life as a director of a small public library. It was a jump that I knew I wanted to make for awhile and when I had the opportunity to work at the Benson Memorial Library in Titusville, PA I jumped right at it. YOUR COMMUNITY IS UNIQUE. UNDERSTAND THEM. We can’t rely on an article in a library related publication to spell out exactly what we need to do in our library. Every community is different, and with that you have to adapt to […]
From the moment that I began working in libraries in around 2007, I was not a fan of Summer Reading programs and the themes they were generally packaged around. They were boring, cookie cutter, and out of date. The themes seemed to be 1-2 years behind what was popular at the moment. As a teen librarian, my job was to take these themes and put some excitement around them. I found it to be a difficult task that took energy away from what I consider to be the most important part of any public library: the community that uses the […]
When people ask me why I became a librarian, I offer them a two-part story. First, it’s so I could get married to my wife Haley. Her mom (who is an amazing librarian doing great things) told me that I would make a great librarian. Being that I really wanted to get married to her daughter, I took her recommendation and here I am today. The second part of the story was simply because of the fact that being a librarian allowed me to combine everything that I wanted in my life into a career: the opportunity to do really awesome […]
The last time I posted on Tame The Web was on August 6, 2014 in a post titled Catching Up. The title of that post sort of sums up the past year and a half in my life here at the Chattanooga Public Library…lots of work for the community and not enough time to sit back, reflect, and share with everyone in the world. It’s all good. In that time, I’ve had some ideas floating around in my head and over the months and days they’ve been revised, edited, and now they’re ready to go. In my role as Manager of The 2nd […]
It seems like I’ve been here forever, but as of this month I’ve been at the Chattanooga Public Library for 1 year, 4 months. In that time, we’ve accomplished a lot of great things for the Chattanooga community. At the same time, I haven’t been able to share as much because….well, things just got really busy in a good way! So this post is my Chattanooga catch up post….a way to share all of the positive things that have been happening around Chattanooga over the past few months. Management One of the big new things in my world is library […]
http://chattlibrary.org/events/night-out-kids-tweens-and-teens-2nd-floor I’m very excited to share our new NIGHT OUT program that we’ll be running next month at the Chattanooga Public Library. It’s a simple idea, but it is one of the best library programs I’ve put together. Why? Let me tell you. Basically it goes like this: while parents and guardians enjoy an evening at our June 5th event featuring New York Times Bestselling Author Jeff Shaara on The 4th Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library, their kids, tweens, and teens can hang out on the 2nd Floor (without their parents/guardians) and enjoy all that the 2nd Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library has to offer. Parents and […]
Here’s one of the neat little things we’re testing out on The 2nd Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library: using an Apple TV/Projector/iPad/blank wall combination to stream random things while the library is open. This morning, we used our streaming service Hoopla to show folks just how awesome your library card can be. Then we listened to some Daft Punk for a bit and finally switched it over to a complete walk through of The Legend of Zelda which is running as we speak. Why are we doing this? We’ve got a lot of wall space on The 2nd Floor and […]
Oops! I broke the 3D printer! And you know what? It’s OK. One night on The 2nd Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library I attempted to make 3 Stretchlet bracelets on our 3D printer at one time. We’re taking our 3D printer to the local children’s museum later this month and wanted to built up our arsenal of 3D printed giveaways. My idea was to attempt to speed up that process and boy oh boy did it not work. I came back to see the mess you see below. Something went wrong and our whole extruder was covered in plastic. […]
Warren: Hi Justin! I found this weird avant garde art video online that you’re featured in! I didn’t realize you were into that – tell me more! Justin: No, not an art video…I was actually testing out On Air Google+ Hangouts with my co-worker James McNutt. We’re using the On Air Hangouts to record the guest speakers we have for our DEV DEV:<summer of code/> camp at the Chattanooga Public Library. W: So it was just a test? Why put it online? J: Yah, just a test. We put it online because that’s the whole point of the on air hangout…to record […]