February « 2006 « Tomb of the Unknown Librarian

Archive for February, 2006

Saturday Programs?

Tuesday, February 28th, 2006

I scheduled two programs on Saturday that were not very well attended. Granted the subject matter of Medicare or Japanese Interment may not be very compelling but my thinking was that more people ~~would come~~ could AND would come to a Saturday program. The Medicare program had 5 people and the Japanese Internement Slideshow had a dozen attend.

Saturday is generally a big day in terms of circ and activity. I probably needed to do more marketing, a press release for both would have been nice.

We held a Dance Dance Revolution Tournament this afternoon/evening that was pretty well attended with 25 teens. Most of the credit goes to a teen volunteer, Tasha (Rock on!), for marketing it at school and the campus DDR Club. Pizza, prizes, and DDR on the big screen TV. As an added bonus we had Katamari Damarcy on the LCD projector to kind of fill the time when people were on the DDR. Everyone seemed to have a good time especially when they found out they each got a prize. Kelly, a teen librarian friend of mine, brought her husband and step-daughter. Angie, a local high-school librarian, came to check it out too. Thanks guys!

A number of younger kids showed up and they really wanted to play too. So we’ll just have to do one just for kids. Not sure how we’d organize it but I think it is in the future.

Marketing lessons: don’t count out word of mouth, do a press release(didn’t happen), direct market to audience, ie. high schools, teen community centers, local establishments that cater to teens (didn’t happen enough). Z’all good though.

Pictures coming soon.

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135 Million Served

Thursday, February 23rd, 2006

An ALA survey conducted by phone reports that 135 million American’s visited libraries last year, that 7 in 10 are either “extremely satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their libraries, 85% “agree” that libraries need more funding, and over half think that $41 or more should be spent on libraries.

These are all pretty much improvements over that last survey conducted in 2002. The survey and results in PDF form can be found here.

There is hope that libraries are still relevant. But we have a lot of work to do. $41 per year is not much and that is only 52% of respondents. With many states requiring a two thirds vote to pass any local tax, libraries have a long way to go to be appropriately funded.

What does this tell us? That we need to continue to offer books, great collections, computers and electronic resources, and programs for children and adults. We need to keep marketing library services and programs and showing that we are an important part of every community.

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Upcoming Programs

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006

Last December I attended a workshop about creating partnerships between the library and other organizations. It was a great program and really redefined the way I look at pitching partnerships, programs, and relationships. Some of the things that really stuck with me are that you have to lead with your strengths, take it slow, and look for how what you have complements what they need and vice-versa.

I’ve begun working with the Alzheimer’s Association to hold some programs at the library in May and June. Maximize your Memory and Maintain Your Brain. Both are geared towards Baby Boomers and Seniors without Alzheimer’s and encourage them to keep their minds (and bodies) active to help prevent and delay the disease. I encourage other libraries and not just public libraries to contact the Alzheimer’s Association to hold programs at the library. What better place than the library to keep the mind nimble. They provide the speaker and materials and we supply the audience and the space. Should be great.

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Public Access Applications & the new Library PAC

Friday, February 17th, 2006

What OS is on your public computers?… Soon it won’t matter. Even though I am a long time Mac devotee, and use Linux and Windows on a regular basis, I am really looking forward to what is being described as The Web As Platform (TWAP?). There are so many web based AJAX applications popping up lately that hopefully the library will be able to shed all that cumbersome software and operating systems. With licensing, installation, security, and updating issues it only makes sense to move everything to a browser and the internet. A recent ZDnet post by Don Hinchcliffe profiles the AJAX Desktops like Miscrosoft’s Live.com, Netvibes or Pageflakes that include customized feeds, applications, and widgets. The article lays out exactly why this is the future. It makes a lot of sense for library public computers where bandwith and processer power (Don’t get me started on undersupported terminal servers!!!) seem to be the only physical limitations. Libraries won’t have to be tied to a single OS for public computers; they will only need something that can run a browser.

Privacy is the other issue. Ideally the library world will develop or license a suite of in house applications, like Zoho Writer or Writely, that handle word processing, can output doc, pdf and html files, and run on library servers. With how easy these types of applications are to develop and use, and how ubiquitous they will become, profiteering from these types of apps will be difficult. Regional library systems could possibly buy into development and maintenance of the servers and platforms for their users.

Eventually, everything from photo editing to DVD authoring to could be done on the web. Hopefully, library catalogs fall somewhere in between.

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Redefining the Public Library Catalog

Thursday, February 16th, 2006

Thanks to Jean for this link. ALA Techsource blog reports on one of the coolest innovations in Library Systems developed by Casey Bisson. It’s open source and has a lot of bells and whisteles but coolest of all it’s built on WordPress blogging software and customizable. The best part of it is that it offers an interface that is user friendly and independent from the main ILS vendor who typically offer their own at additional cost.

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Book Review: Work 2.0

Monday, February 6th, 2006

Work 2.0: Building the Future, One Employee at a Time by Bill Jensen, 2002 (preface 2003) is as much corporate leadership self-help as it is innovative restructuring rah-rah. The book actually has a wealth of great advice even though much of it is cloaked in corporate cliches, and tries to invent catch-phrases that really don’t have a lot of traction. The premise of the book is that in order to survive in the new economy, leaders are going to have to rethink the way they organize and manage work, workers, and themselves. The books refrain, My Work My Way, is Jensen’s way of saying that workers need to be given the leeway to dictate how they work, get respect from leadership, and be heard when important customer and front-line decisions need to be made. Jensen also urges leaders to become Extreme Leaders who give their employees respect, listen to workers who know first-hand what needs to be done, and hold themselves accountable. The book offers a few tools for leaders to gauge their work like worksheets, but it mostly preaches about what changes will happen in the workplace with and without the adoption of the Work 2.0 ideology.

One of the more intriguing ideas is that the Invisible Workplace, the place where social networks within the company, know what’s going on before the senior execs and often before the market itself. Much of it simply riffs on a variation of the tipping point personas (Gladwell’s connectors, mavens, salesmen) using another management consultant’s terminology. By tuning into the social networks that exist in any corporation, Extreme Leaders will have a better idea of what is really going on instead of surrounding themselves with brown-noses and kiss-asses who insulate and isolate themselves and leadership. No matter how it is put this is the difference between poor leadership and great leadership.

The writing is snappy and informal, and a little repetetive. The text, full of bulleted lists and bold headings, flows quickly and won’t tax a casual reader despite occasional SHOUTING outbursts.

Scant on real case-studies, solid research, or many concrete examples the book is a quick fix for managers and leaders who are looking for one, today. The recent fad for the 2.0 convention (Business 2.0, Web 2.0, Library 2.0) makes the book a management resource for today, but not really tomorrow.

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“Did you mean…?” in Horizon iPac

Monday, February 6th, 2006

I usually don’t like to re-blog but this is too great and always thought that this was a major problem with our public catalog. Dynix, with its next upgrade, will be offering spelling suggestions in the same vein as any search engine worth its salt. Thanks to Davey P. I know we are getting our upgrade this year but when is anyone’s guess.

So if i was going to make a wish list for a library catalog

A simple search that offers a page rank type of feature
Spell Check & spelling suggestions
RSS Feeds for titles, subjects, authors, item status, whatever
RSS Feeds for items out, requests, overdues
Email notifications
Keyword relevance clustering & clouding
Patron ratings and comments (like Netflix & Amazon)
Table of contents for items
Skins for patron personas
Image galleries of indexed ISBNs
If you like… referrals
A simple Queue feature with Drag and Drop
A portable multiple platform toolbar that users could install
Search all local libraries feature
Popularity & bestseller flagging and Media tie-in integration (if they can grab the bookcover based the ISBN why not a database of popular books)

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Silicon Valley Reads event at the library

Friday, February 3rd, 2006

I attended the Silicon Valley Reads conversation with Julie Otsuka, author of When the Emperor Was Divine held at the library. She read the first chapter of her novel aloud, a couple of other shorter passages and answered questions from the audience. About 75 people showed up and almost all of them had read the book. I actually listened to it on CD and really enjoyed it.

Even though it was a work of fiction based on the reality of Japanese internment, I got the impression that most people thought that it was non-fiction. She was very gracious as she talked about her mother and grandmother and life in “camp.” She talked about how she looked at pictures of life in the internment camps as research and the difference between Ansel Adams staged photos versus Dorthea Lange’s stark images . Earlier this afternoon, I showed a photo slideshow of Lange’s photos developed by The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco. The photos show the evacuation of Japanese in the early months of 1942, their temporary housing in the filthy stables at Tanforan, and their arrival and conditions at Manzanar. The presentations are available here. I hope that other libraries will use them especially since she used these very photos as reasearch and inspiration. I think that comes through really well in her fiction.

I particularly enjoyed Julie’s comments of how she writes in the same New York cafe and gets inspiration from the regulars at the cafe and the creative energy. Her next novel is a prequel of sorts about picture brides from Japan in the 1920s.

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Library School Social

Thursday, February 2nd, 2006

The social set for Gordon Biersch in San Jose had a minor set back last night. It turns out that GB was closed for a private party. When our social director called she suggested PF Changs right across the street. We still had about ten people show and I was late. I was surprised to see they got a table instead of staying in the bar area.

Most of the students were new to the program so we hadn’t met yet. It was great to meet our SLIS program webmaster, Debbie F. She is really nice and very, very knowledgable and has done a great job with the SLIS website redesign. She also teaching part time for the school which sounds like an incredible workload.