Archive for the ‘Chit Chat’ Category
Change is coming – a new job for me
There is no way to say this other than to just come out and say it.
Effective May 18th I will be the Digital Branch Manager of the Chattahoochee Valley Regional Library System. This is a new position they have created for the purpose of planning, building and managing the Digital Branch, its going to be a lot of fun (and hard work!) I’m excited, nervous and about 20 other emotions right now, but most of all I’m really looking forward to it!
For those of you looking at your atlas CVRLS is in Columbus, Georgia, which means I will be spending the next couple of weeks packing my things and relocating. 
Back in the game
After taking a week off from week and all things library and we related it’s hard to get back into the game so I’m just going to jump right in. Here are some things that caught my eye as I’ve been playing catch up
- Stephanie Zimmerman sang the T is for Training theme song
- Karin Dalziel blogged her thoughts about librarians learning to program, Dorothea Salo responded to Karin, as did Meredith Farkas. My two cents, I lean towards Karin’s side.
- This article about woman gamers
- Joshua Neff’s appearance on his local NPR station to talk about libraries
- It’s time to register for Computers in Libraries if you’re going
Looking back – the year in review
The year isn’t even over and I’m already looking forward into 2009, as far forward as April! I thought before I get too caught up in what’s to come, I should take a look back at 2008. This list is more for me than you, sometimes I get so busy I forget what I’ve been up to, so I’m picking one major event from each month to remind myself of all that has happened in 2008
- January – Library Learning 2.1 kicked off
- February – cohosted a two day Web 2.0 workshop for the state library
- March – attended Kansas Library Camp
- April – Presented at a conference in England
- May – the laptops from my grant arrived enabling the library to offer new patron and staff training, starting me on a 6 months journey of patron training
- June – presented at Mobius (state consortium)
- July – I successfully start my first library meme – A Day in the Life of a Library …. takes off!
- August – cohosted a 4 day workshop on Web 2.0
- September – I brought this idea back from a vacation in Denver, we’ll be using it during our National Library Week celebrations in April 2009
- October – I am tempted to make the Mini my major event of October, but I think I’ll stick with the two presentations I did at the state library conference
- November – the presentations and workshop I did in Malaysia for the International Conference on Libraries, Information and Society,
- December – I haven’t blogged either of these yet – my proposal to start circulating MP3 players at my library is a success and an idea I brought to the Directer for fund-raising is implemented!
Happy Holidays!
What DO you wish your patrons knew?
My local library
I copied this post from The MLXperience to ask you – What DO you wish your patrons knew?
Seattle Books Examiner’s Danielle Dreger-Babbitt took an informal poll of librarians in Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, New York City, and Portland about what they wish library patrons knew or did. Here’s the shortlist:
1. Use us!
2. We support Intellectual Freedom
3. Be respectful of our library patrons
4. Pay your fines
5. Return your items on time
6. Tell us what you like
7. If possible, check out all materials at once from the circulation desk
8. Please listen to us the first (or even second) time we say something
9. Practice good hygiene
10. Let your librarian know what materials you’d like to see on the shelf
11. The library has almost as many DVD’s as your local video store
12. Hang up your cell phone when you come to the reference desk (or circulation desk)
13. Please be patient with us
14. We like it when you thank us
15. Please respect the desk barrier
16. Come to our programs!
17. Do not leave your child (or children) unattended- for their safety
18. Ask us what we read
19. Ask us for what you really want
20. Enough with the “sexy librarian” jokes
What would you add?
I’d like to add
21. If I’m sitting at the reference desk, please don’t talk to the back or side of my head, it is polite to stand in front of the person you’re addressing.
22. Be an empowered library user, we’d love to show you how to search the catalog, place holds and renew your books online or how you how to use one of our many online resources, just ask!
My Dell Mini 9 – a review
using the Mini at a conference
A lot of people have stopped me and asked me about the Dell Mini over the last few days. Ok, fine, maybe I was flaunting it at MLA a little bit and I’ve been going on endlessly about it on Twitter, but it’s completely deserving.
Let me state for the record, I do not have an IT background, I am a slightly more Techie than average person but that’s it. The opinions expressed in here are based on my love of the Mini & the hour or so of research I did to find out about solid state hard drives. I have only had the Mini for 7 days & I reserve the right to change my mind, update or modify my opinion at any time
Why I wanted/needed the Mini:
For the last year I’ve been painfully aware that I needed a new laptop. Now I have a desktop, a fine workhorse of a machine with a 19 inch monitor and plenty of hard drive space left. So I don’t technically need a laptop, but I travel a fair amount and I enjoy working from my sofa or kitchen table or local coffee shop or brewery on occasion. If I wanted to keep enjoying this option I needed a new laptop. But I was torn, I didn’t really need a high end one and even the low end ones were expensive & still pretty big.
The Mini & the 17 inch Gateway
Enter the Mini a couple of weeks ago. I decided with MLA, Internet Librarian, a trip to Malaysia in the works & teaching a class in the Spring, it was now or never & the mini was everything I wanted – small, light & Internet ready. So I ordered one & never looked back.
The specs on mine:
- Inspiron 910 Intel Atom processor N270, 1.6GHz, 533Mhz512K L2 Cache
- 1GB,DDR2,533MHZ,1 DIMM
- 8.9 inch Wide Screen WSVGA TLLCD
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
- 16GB Solid State Drive (mini-card Module/PATA)
- Genuine Windows XP Home Edition
- Wireless 802.11g Mini Card
- Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
- McAfee Security 9.0, 30-day Subscription – uninstalled & installed my software of choice
- 32WHr 4-cell Battery
- Microsoft Works 9.0 - worthless using OpenOffice
placement of the apostrophe
- small
- light
- fast
- easy
- does everything I need or want
- attractive, or cute
- Kensington lock slot & I ordered one right away. I never really worried to much about locking my other laptops down, but someone would walk by, pick this up with one hand tuck in a pocket or under a jacket & be gone in 30 seconds, so I will be locking it up.
- the placement of the apostrophe – seriously bad choice on Dells part, what the heck were they thinking?
- How is the battery? – Good, it could be better, but so could all laptops. It lasted all day at the MLA conference, we’ll know about IL soon enough.
- How is the Keyboard? – surprisingly easy to use. It might be an issue for people with larger hands, but it seemed pretty comparable to the 17 inch Gateway.
- Why didn’t I get Ubuntu? – At the time it showed it as a “pre-order” option which meant to me it wasn’t available yet, and I wanted mine like yesterday.
- What does Solid State Hard Drive mean? - er, well I did a bit of research & here’s what I found – “A solid state drive is designed to act just like a hard drive as far as the user or the computer is concerned (and even looks similar on the outside), but it has no moving parts. SSDs have no spinning platters; instead they are based on flash memory” and “SSDs are faster than hard drives (up to hundreds of times faster), use less power, and weigh less than traditional spinning hard drives. They don’t crash when you drop them, and they don’t make any noise” - http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/null/65761
- Why didn’t I get something with more hard drive space? You’re right they are out there.
The Mini & the 19 inch desktop
- I dont’ need it. I have a desktop that’s awesome, a 360 gig portable hard drive, endless flash drives and SD memory cards. I don’t know what I’d put on here that would use up the 16 gigs of hard drive space I have. Anything will be migratory, a presentation, a photo whatever.
- From my research about SSD vs traditional hard drives, a SSD is faster, always good and more sturdy, great for something I’ll be carrying in my purse.
Tornados in Denver
I just happened to be in Parker Colorado (near Denver) yesterday when the Tornadoes touched down. I was headed into a restaurant for dinner when we looked up and saw this. There were no sirens and at first the people around us didn’t notice.
I didn’t learn until later that it’s the most dangerous when it’s straight up and down.
I head conflicting reports of how close it actually was to where I was at. The odd thing I didn’t notice until it was over was how still it was. No wind. Despite living in both Iowa and Missouri, this is the first time I’ve seen a tornado. There were two tornados that touched down and luckily no one was hurt.
Make your own READ poster & Superhero
It’s Friday, I have to work this weekend, so let’s have a little fun. I saw the Read posters popping up all over yesterday, so this morning I grabbed some of my favorite books and got a coworker to snap a photo. Some of the other staff are making their own too, you’ll be able to see them over a MRRL’s Flickr account.
You can make your own here
Last night I noticed one of my flickr friends had a superhero on his photostream and a link to where he made it. Since for me “Librarian by Day” is full of superhero implications (Barbara Gordon, anyone?) I had to make one of my own!
