Library Blog

Use LinkedIn to learn about the Getting Things Done system with David Allen. 

By Buffy McDonald, Reference Librarian

LinkedIn Learning has thousands of online courses from industry experts, including David Allen’s Getting Things Done system.

This system is a great way to help you organize your tasks and projects into an organized system you trust so that you can get things done effectively and with less stress.  Think in terms of defining for yourself – What is the desired outcome? And, what is the next action?

Here’s how to access the 30-minute video tutorial:

• Go to the Library’s website
• Scroll down to the “Apps & Digital Services” section
• Click on LinkedIn Learning
• Scroll down to click on “Get Started”
• Enter your library card number: XXXXXXXXXXXXX |  PIN: XXXX
• Search for [getting things done] in the search bar

In this training video you will find what the five steps of the Getting Things Done system are and how to implement them. You will learn:

• how to capture everything that has your attention.
• how to make decisions about what these captured items mean and what you are going to do about them – think desired outcomes and next actions.
• how to organize the outcomes of those decisions you have made into a trusted place that you will find at the point you need them.
• how to step back and reflect weekly on the previous choices you have made.
• how these prior steps will then help you determine what to do next.

It is worth taking the time to watch this video and learn about this system. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.  It is also worth looking around at other video tutorials you might enjoy while you are in the LinkedIn Learning platform.

Happy learning,

Buffy

Janet Ross-Heiner, Library Assistant and ELL Instructor, recommends Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora.

I invite you to enter and deeply feel Solito. Javier Zamora, who will be a guest at The Community Library July 19, 2023, is a writer of authentic magnitude and epistemic experiences. A special man, a poet and an activist; Javier a boy alone. “Solito” journeyed from El Salvador to the US to be united with his parents in Los Angeles. This beautifully written memoir is a testimony filled with compassion, trust, and a deep belief in the human spirit. It offers the intimate account of a young boy’s treacherous journey through Guatemala, Mexico and across the US Border.  

Can you remember when you first learned to tie your shoes? Javier at nine years learned. During this time, practicing with laces he could hear whispers “La USA” and a forthcoming trip-trip-trip. His parents had crossed years prior with a coyote. He was left in his loving grandparents’ care until the early dawn of the day that was to arrive soon. “Listo nieto.” The 3,000-mile journey was to begin. 

This beautifully written memoir is a testimony filled with compassion, trust, and a deep belief in the human spirit.

“He writes in the pitch-perfect voice of that child as he makes his perilous way, on foot, by boat, bus, and truck, recalling moments of true terror and unexpected tenderness.” – Mitchell Kaplan interview  

The “trip” in 1999 from Herradura, El Salvador, to Los Angeles took Javier on a courageous journey. A trip that was to take two weeks, took two months. Reading or listening to this story that he narrates, you will experience Solito’s crawling and groveling atop dust, prickly cacti, snagging barbed wire—surviving the sizzling and freezing desert temperatures. But underneath whirling helicopter blades, Solito searches for his Cadejo. He developed idioma skills when in Mexico. He used popote NOT pajilla as a Salvadoran would verbalize. He must hide his identity in route.  

Aubade from Shakespear means; How we deal with death’s inescapability. In the pre-dawn darkness. Solito’s Cadejo was with him.  

I’ll be back soon mijo – But in our windows still no glass,  
When raindrops hit the sill they touch my skin like her eyes did  
That morning she said I’ll be back soon mijo.  
I touch the larvae growing in old tires in our backyard, I know she won’t return.   

Aubade – poem from Unaccompanied 811.6 ZAM (2017)  

Javier had an intuitive sense of character at an early age. He knows it might have been the gifted amulet, a Cadejo that his grandfather told him would protect him on his journey. The Cadejo, is a Salvadoran legend about a dog-wolf like creature with red eyes and goat hooves that protects those who believe.  

As a note: Javier & Francisco Cantú are the best of friends. As a border patrol officer, Cantú resigned his position and authored the book: The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border. Both books hold close in my heart and hands. 

Find Solito: A Memoir in 92 ZAM, SPA 920 ZAM, Axis360 E-book & E-Audiobook. Javier Zamora holds a BA Alma mater from Berkeley, MFA from NYU, is a Wallace Stegner Fellow, has a Radcliff Fellow at Harvard.  

Note: Javier Zamora will be speaking at The Community Library at 6:00 p.m. on July 19, in partnership with the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. More/register here.

Will Duke, Information Systems Manager, recommends gaming resources at The Community Library.  

We have games. If you bring your laptop to our Wi-Fi, you can play our games, for free. We are, in fact, a Steam PC Café. As a PC Café, we license specific Steam games, and anyone connected to our Wi-Fi can play them. Oh, you’ll need your own Steam account, but those are free! On the positive side, your Steam games will follow you here, and you can use our Wi-Fi to play with your friends or with people you meet here. 

…these computers are smoking-hot gaming machines… Everything you need to bring the heat.

For those over 18, you’ll need to bring your own gaming laptop. You can sit outside under an umbrella, or inside by the fireplace—with headphones please. Nobody needs to hear you stomping aliens or blowing up WWII Destroyers. You can even sit in your car and play, because our Wi-Fi has you covered outside the building.  

For teens, we have gaming computers available in our Juice Box. Sorry ages under 9 or over 18, the Juice Box is for teens only. But these computers are smoking-hot gaming machines. Gaming Keyboards. Gaming Mice. Gaming monitors. Headphones. Everything you need to bring the heat. Every Tuesday morning, I update them with the latest from Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, and all the games from the Library’s PC Café.  

For teens, we have gaming computers available in our Juice Box. … with the latest from Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, and all the games from the Library’s PC Café.  

For kids under the age of nine, the Children’s Library has Nintendo Switches with games to check out. Play Super Smash Bros., Splatoon 2, Mariokart 8 Deluxe, and more games here at the Library—free with your library card. 

So, swing on in and check out our technology. All the savvy kids are doing it. 

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If you’re not a gamer, we have you covered with computers with Office on them in the Learning Commons. We also have two Spanish computers/keyboards. Need to print? We’ve got you covered there, too, with a high-capacity laser printer, copier, and scanner. We even have laptops you can check out at the front desk.  

We keep everything up-to-date, safe, and secure for you. At the end of every session, these computers reboot and wipe themselves clean.  

If you need specialized tech help, the Library offers a free Tech Help Desk with Paul Zimmerman in the Learning Commons twice a month. Drop in between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on the first and third Wednesdays of the month. Check our online calendar in advance to confirm dates and times, because sometimes they vary. 

Martha Williams, Director of Programs and Education, recommends Good Night Irene, by the 2023 Hemingway Distinguished Lecturer, Luis Alberto Urrea.

“The real service was that their faces, their voices, their sendoff might be the final blessing from home for some of these young pilots. The enormity of this trivial-seeming job became clearer every day.”

In his newest novel, Luis Alberto Urrea tells of a crew of American Red Cross workers as they drive across Europe supporting World War II Allied troops. The story was inspired by the real experiences of Urrea’s mother, Phyllis Irene, who worked as a “Donut Dolly,” caravanning from airfields to war zones in a 2.5-ton GMC “Clubmobile” equipped with a deep fryer, coffee maker, and record player.

The novel follows the fun-loving and sophisticated Irene and the hard-edged midwestern Dorothy, who both come to the war effort escaping painful pasts. As their beast of a rig traverses the continent, Irene and Dorothy follow troops into the heart of battle. They find carefree moments at the edge of war and terrifying days of violence and terror that they’ll carry for their rest of their lives.

In the book’s early pages, a soldier who’s come home tells Irene: “If you get to come home, you will be so grateful you won’t realize at first that you survived. But once you know you survived, you’ll only be starting to understand.” A young and inexperienced Irene can’t yet understand the soldier’s words, but she will reflect on them later as she and Dorothy witness the aftermath of D-Day, remnants of French towns destroyed by the Nazis, and the Battle of the Bulge.

Urrea writes with a propulsive energy and a deep care for the real-life Clubmobilers and the soldiers they served. He creates entire worlds of wonder and reality inside vans and hotel rooms, on tarmacs and beaches, under bomb debris and back home. Each character―those based on real figures and those who are completely fictionalized―bring us into this under-explored but extraordinary war history.

Goodnight, Irene is at once a beautiful historical novel, capturing the ARC Clubmobile story, and an ode to Urrea’s mother and all the women who went to war in the only way they could: bringing a bit of home to the young men who traveled farther than they knew to fight a war. It’s also a love story, a story of a great friendship and of the lasting effects of war on hearts and minds.

Urrea opens to us an imagined experience of all the women who smiled and laughed and served donuts and coffee, even as they, too, longed for home and could never forget the losses incurred even when a war is won.

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Urrea joins us for this year’s Hemingway Distinguished Lecture, which he’ll deliver on Friday, June 30 outdoors at the library. Learn more here.