Friday 26 February 2010

I'll just ....

"I'll just" is such a dangerous phrase! All the major projects I'm working on at the moment are in that 'waiting for someone to get back to me' stage, and I was heartily fed-up with the old, clunky, non-accessible library webpages, so I just spent a couple of hours giving them a new CSS layout.

Thank you to Blue Robot's Layout Reservoir for my foundations! (The long term plan is to integrate them more closely with the library catalogue, but who knows how far away that's going to be, and in the mean time, at least they're not still using tables for layout.)

So, why's this dangerous? Because I'm pretty sure I'll go home, look at the pages, and find at least five things I'll need to fix on Monday morning - which is a risk I'm happy to take, really, given that waiting for a time when I can check and re-check and test and test again to make 100% sure it's perfect in every way is almost a guarantee that the update would never get done at all.

(If anyone follows that link and spots something that seems broken or undesirable, please do let me know!)

Thursday 25 February 2010

words, words, and more words

words from the post, via Wordle This post about the term graphic novel reminded me that I've been meaning to write something about the vagaries of terminology.

I'm British, but working primarily with American students, so that's one language divide right there, but I've been talking with various people about library management systems recently, which throws up a whole other array of library-specific terminology choices.

"I want to to borrow / loan / check out / book out / take out this thing, so I'll use the self-check / self-issue / self-service machine or point or station."
"Someone else has an item out at the moment, so I'll request / recall / reserve / book / trap / wait-list it."
"The book we all need to read for our paper is in the reference / reserve / non-circulating / no-loan / closed section, so no one can take it away."

At least renew is pretty stable, although I have heard 're-check'!

It would be invaluable to know which terminology is the most meaningful for our specific users, but it's hard to get that kind of feedback - I suspect most people really don't give it that much thought. Common questions and misconceptions do provide some clues, though - something to use as the basis of experimental changes, at least.

Which terms do you use? Anything else to add to the lists, or ones that you'd never heard before?



* Photo by , used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Monday 1 February 2010

Just got home after a very interesting RSA lecture by and discussion about Jaron Lanier and his new book 'You are not a gadget' - he's speaking again tomorrow evening at LSE, also for free, but on a first-come first served basis, or, if you wait a few days, the RSA will have audio and video up on their site.

Some very interesting stuff, but I need to read the book to really get into the meat of the matter.