Two unrelated things:

Thing #1 - our building's been 'under wraps' for a couple of months now, as they were cleaning its historic stone outsides. The LUP Library has two walls made almost entirely from windows, so having them swathed in scaffolding and white waterproof sheeting has made quite an impact on it's appearance.

They're finally unwrapping us, which is a slow process - we're into week two of the careful dismantling at the moment. There are two desks through in the stock room with a view out across the street - set in the two lit 1st floor windows of this photo, in fact. I don't think anyone used them during the whole summer program, or for the first few weeks of semester, but I can't help but notice that at least one of them's been in use most of the last week, since the wrapping came off. What a difference a view makes! Makes me wonder if there might be any way of re-arranging our furniture to make more use of the windows in the main room ...

Thing #2 My App Inventor invitation came through, which was a moment of geek-joy :D

It took me a little while to get set up, compared to my partner's plug 'n play experience, but once I'd finally downloaded the relevant drivers for my handset it really is as simple as it's made out to be.

I've only had time to work through two of the tutorials, but thus far everything makes sense. I'm thinking about some actually-useful-to-me tools I'd like to make - I just love the idea of being able to roll my own.

* Android photo by Svet, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

digital delights

I've had a dedicated e-reader for a few months now, and I love it. (It's not a Kindle or a Sony, rather, it's another brand, which Waterstones used to sell, but doesn't seem to any more.) It's fantastic to have a ton of books at my fingertips, all in something lighter than your average magazine, let alone paperback.

For most of those months I've been meaning to write up a proper review, and link in a bunch of the conversations about ebooks and pbooks, and DRM and format wars and ... I'm never actually going to have the time to do that, so instead you get this set of scrapbook notes, if for no other reason than to clear the decks so I won't feel constrained if something else comes up in the future on a related topic.

- I think I spotted a couple of e-readers being used by students over the summer, and at least 1, and an ipad amongst the current cohort. Several smartphones being used as readers as well.

- I had a play with some of the ebook aps available for my smartphone, and no. Not unless I had absolutely no other choice of reading material. The screen's just too small for any sensible amount of text. (Clearly folks who use their smartphones as readers feel differently, and more power to them!)

- neat to read about ND doing ebook studies, although I read this and all I can think is 'surely that's a study into tablet computers, not ebooks?'

- I had a play with an ipad at the weekend, and, yes, it's pretty impressive, but my first impression was surprise at just how heavy it was, and maybe they had the contrast settings way up, but that's one bright backlit screen. It certainly seemed much closer to a laptop than an ebook reader to me.

- One of the things I love about my reader is the e-ink screen. I can read in bright sunlight, and I can read in low light without giving myself a headache from the screen light. I prefer it to reading on screen by some margin - enough that I've taken to pulling across pdfs and long reports that I need to read for work, just to break up my screen time.

- I really thought the 'flicker' of the e-ink refresh on a page turn would drive me nuts - that was one of my real concerns before I got the reader - but I've realsed recently that I just don't notice it at all, any more than I notice the 'break' in my reading when I turn the page of a pbook.

- It's not ebooks vs pbooks, it's ebooks AND pbooks, at least if you're a word addict like I am.

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

it's alive!

The new semester has arrived; classes start Tuesday, and yesterday was the first serious load-test for the new library management system - textbook check out - 748 books to 130 students, and I think things went pretty smoothly. There were a couple of moments where my assistant was scanning barcodes faster than the system could process them, but the whole system was much more robust than it's predecessor, we didn't run into any data-conversion problems, and the whole process was faster.

I had scheduled longer slots for each batch of students, knowing that because we had books for the new core course, we'd be checking out about 260 more items than last semester, and seeing closer to 100% of the students (plus, I had to re-introduce some paperwork), but I think we could have got away with 30 minute blocks instead of 45 after all. Not a bad problem to have, really - having short breaks between groups meant that there was no chance for long lines to build up, and that I and my assistant got moments of downtime to grab a snack or a drink, which made the whole thing less exhausting than it can be.

I've just checked, and the overnight tweak that was to make sure all the due-dates for the textbooks match up with the end of semester has worked, so I think we're off to a reasonably solid start to the semester, at least as far as the LMS is concerned. Hurray!

There are still some loose ends to tie up, and feedback from students may lead us to undiscovered problems, but having the library records converted and accurate, the OPAC set up, the stock check done and processed, and the staff interface ready and working in time for the start of semester is a pretty good goal to hit!

Switching LMS was never going to be a small job, and we started about 6 weeks later than planned, so the last couple of weeks have been really intensive, and I'm really glad that it's a bank holiday tomorrow, to rest and recover so I can dive into the first week of classes with recharged batteries. (I know it's carnival weekend, but I must admit that the closest I'm going to get to the festivities is a cup of Notting Hill tea from YumChaa)

* Textbook photo by Marquette La, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Zoo nation

Work continues apace with the move to the new LMS & catalogue, overlapping with the usual preparations for the start of a new semester, which has rather meant I've been all work and no play recently. I did take a break last night, though, to go up to London Zoo, who are running a series of special late night openings in August.

The queue forming when we arrived was a bit daunting, and some areas of the zoo were really crowded - the lions and tigers were super-popular - but it was fantastic to be able to explore in the twilight.

Some animals were sleeping, but others were maybe more active than they would be mid-day, so that balances out, although my camera really didn't like the active animals in the low light, so - very few photos to share.

It's been many, many years since I last went to London Zoo - I think I was a school trip! - and a lot has changed. The move towards more open enclosures is great, both for the animals and the visitors - the exotic bird and the monkey walk-throughs were two real highlights for me. It was fantastic to be so close to the animals, and to see them without bars - spotting the bright flashes of tiny birds in flight through the greenery and watching monkeys playing through the branches is pretty magical.

It's been a really long week, so we didn't stick around too late for the bars and silent nightclub, but it looked like a lot of folks were having a really good time there, on top of exploring the zoo proper.

Next week's the last late, so if you think it sounds good, book your tickets ASAP!


* Photo by me

A day in the life of a librarian - round 5

(The collected Days make for some interesting reading)

I'm a solo librarian in an academic library. All my students are on their summer holiday at the moment, and the library is closed, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be a quiet day!

Check email on the 3 accounts I monitor. Forward a handful of messages to colleagues, reply to the most urgent of mine, and batch together the rest by project to tackle later, or - as it turns out - tomorrow.

Clarify quotes with potential shelving and furniture suppliers, and pass them on to the rest of the people working on plans to maybe move our library within our building.

Measure up existing library furniture, and start making scale plans for some of the possible layouts that have been discussed.

Phone calls with boss, updates on the library move plans.

Pop out to pick up lunch, and caffeine supplies for the next few days. Collect armful of incoming book orders from my mailbox on the way back in.

One of our faculty members pops in for a chat about how resourcing is coming together for a new course - show him the relevant new arrivals, make some suggestions for titles that would fill the need he describes, and then order the two most likely looking ones. (Frustratingly, there's a brand new book that might be relevant but might be too technical - we can't tell from contents page, and none of our partner libraries have a copy yet. I'll call around local bookshops tomorrow to see if anyone has a copy he or I can go and page through before we order it, as it's a fairly expensive HB)

Check in on progress of another faculty member's course reader - she's finished up her part, so the ball's back in my court to double check the permissions, and send it out for a proof copy.

Call our main book supplier to try and find out why I've got an invoice, but no books - miss our rep both times I call, so - onto tomorrow's to do list with that.

More email and phone calls with suppliers and colleagues about the library move plans - forwarding quotes and requesting clarifications, and trying to make sure everyone involved has the information I've collected, ahead of our meeting later in the week.

Data cleanup - we're in the middle of transitioning to a new LMS, and the test transfer of our data threw up a number of anomalies that need me to investigate and make judgement calls. Today's area for focus was duplicate patron barcodes, and miss-matched bib and item sets. Picky and detailed, but satisfying. Really looking forward to going live on the new system.

Add 9 new dvds to the catalogue - the one thing I'm not looking forward to on the new system is media cataloguing, so I pulled these to the top of my 'to enter' pile to make sure they'll be included in the record transfer!

Stop - at half past leaving time - to look around, see what needs doing and to think about priorities. Make a few notes, and put together tomorrow's to-do list, so I can get off to a clean start tomorrow morning.

Go though reception on the way out of the building to discover a late delivery has arrived, containing those missing books, so I took a quick detour on my route home to drop into the book shop and leave a message for our rep to let her know that all is well after all.

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

London Lives

London Lives looks like such a new fantastic resource! We don't have any history courses running at the moment that focus on this particular period in the UK, but the assembled biographies tagged with 'transportation' provide some fascinating individual sketches for the British Empire history class, and I hope the site comes in useful for historical context in some of the other classes, too.

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

More museums and galleries

I am, admittedly, quite a fan of wandering around museums and galleries, but even for me, four different London locations in eight days is more than I can usually manage unless I'm on holiday. They were a very inspiring eight days, though, London Architecture, the National Gallery, the Summer Exhibition at the RA on Saturday, and the Science Museum's late on Wednesday, where they launched their new 'Who am I' galleries with a fine, if somewhat warm, evening event.

I am a fan of museums in general, but especially a fan of the various Lates - I don't think I've been disappointed by one yet, and I think they're well worth scheduling around. There's a different feel to them, and any time a museum has a queue round the block to get in, you know they're doing something right. Especially if they have staff roaming the queue distributing maps, event guides, and lollies!

Lunch hour location appreciation

One of the many advantages of the London Centre's location is that I can nip out to go to a 50 minute long tour at the National Gallery, pop across the road for a sandwich and be back at my desk inside an hour.

Which is what I just did - thank you to Alan Crookham, National Gallery Archivist, for a fantastic architectural tour, delivered as part of the London Festival of Architecture. I wish we could have been allowed downstairs to peek at the 70s rooms in their 70s splendour, but that's absolutely the only thing I could criticise about it.)

Likewise, yesterday I popped over to the Mall Galleries for their 50 years of London architecture exhibition in my lunch break, which was fascinating. Not so much for the big public projects, many of which were fairly familiar, but for the domestic ones. Who would have thought that the much maligned late seventies would have produced so many beautiful, functional homes!

Interesting for me, to, seeing so many local things - there's a strong showing from east London, including two schools that I'm more familiar with from hearing about the Building Schools for the Future project, my local cinema, the station I go through and the bridge I cross over to get to my *other* local cinema... Plus all the Olympic Park plans, of course.

Stunning photography two, to showcase the work, including this one for the footbridge joining the Royal Ballet School with the Royal Opera House, which I have long admired, but never knew was called the 'Bridge of Aspiration', which is just so perfect for it.

The exhibition closes on Sunday, so if you get a chance, do drop in soon.

An entirely internal milestone

AKA, the power of round numbers on the human psyche - it's fairly meaningless in reality, but it feels significant enough that I want to mark it: I just added item record ten thousand to the library catalogue.

(That's 10000 bibliographic items, not 10000 copies - the copy IDs are currently in the 14000's)

The item in question? Capital affairs : London and the making of the permissive society by Frank Mort.

(Why meaningless? We hold just under half that number of items in reality - the extra record IDs being a mix of deleted records, lost and removed stock, and the artefacts of the last two data conversions, both of which introduced gaps into the sequence.)

Possibly more significantly, the record does seem to function - I wasn't quite sure if it would, or if the change in number length would break something! (Plans are afoot to make questions like that a thing of the past, but said plans have not yet come to fruition.)

removable notes

I don't think these transparent tabbed sticky notes are on sale in the UK, unfortunately, but I wish all our students came equipped with them.

Writing in borrowed books is a huge bugbear for me - one person's highlighter and annotation makes life so much harder for all the readers who come after. Something like this would be perfect - perfect for the current student who learns best by getting hands-on with the text, and perfect for preserving library and textbook books for the future student to use.

way more than 140 characters...

Some of Don Schindler's tweets from a conference jumped out at me yesterday, this pair especially.

"Where to put money/time? 1. scanable text 2. mobile 3. facebook 4. photography 5. student comment 6. sharing ability 7. blogs #bigtenplus"

"Spend less time on 1. podcasts 2. twitter/linkedin 3. chats 4. online video (unless music, sports, instruct) 5. click thru news #bigtenplus"

The priority given to text is particularly nice to hear: I never feel like I can quite trust my own judgement on the issue, because I have a very strong preference for text over video which I suspect is a-typical. Or maybe not. There's work to be done re-writing and updating copy for our sites, though, to make them more web friendly, and scan-able.

It's easy to see the rise of mobile amongst our students in London - we issue them with very basic UK mobiles as emergency contact points, but in the last 18 months, maybe 2 years, I've started to see more and more students who bring their US smart phone with them, using them on an international data plans.

(I think it would be fascinating to be able to issue our students with UK smart phones and encourage faculty to develop their courses and assignments knowing that all their students would have a camera / video / online collaboration tool, modelling some of the research that's being done on using twitter and wikis and so on in teaching. I suspect we're not so many years away from effective smart phone ubiquity, but it'll be much longer before we reach a stage where we can assume/require that everyone has one.)

Relative order of Facebook / blogs / twitter is interesting, too - I'd have guessed blogs / Facebook/ twitter based on our experience, both metrics, formal feedback, and verbal impressions.

We haven't had as high a take up of our fb page as we'd initially expected - although far higher than the last time we experimented with it - but judging from the student feedback, that's at least partially an advertising / awareness issue: we could definitely promote it more. The blog is, so far, our most successful online experiment, but essentially we're only still using Twitter because a couple of us staff use it and find it useful.

On facebook I think it's that a lot of students use the service, but either don't know about or don't want to follow our page - Twitter is just a much smaller constituency of students using the service. ( Podcasts and video are both things that have come up as something we might want to introduce, but - maybe it's ok that we haven't got to them yet.)

Photography - plenty of room for us to improve here - and maybe linked to student comment, as I know we've had some truly superb photographers coming through the program, although I'm less sure what we might do to encourage them to share their images with us.

Plenty to think on...

* Photos by Timmy Toucan (RAF Eagle) and mrwilleeumm (G1 demo), used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Questions answered

From the Albertsons Library at Boise State University, via Travlin' Librarian, because - it's true.

(Although there aren't a lot of silly questions, really. Plenty of questions that the person asking thinks are silly, but - if you don't know and want to, then the question's not that silly.)

quick note to self - I really like the layout / design of the Wellcome Collection's events calendar - beautifully clear, inviting, and stylish.

A confession, of sorts

I finally joined my local public library today - it's only been mumblemumble years that I've been living here, after all!

That sounds quite bad, but I've been an active user of Westminster libraries - who have branches close to work, and who have been very good to me - as well as The London Library and, of course, my own library's collections, but not - until today - my own local library.

This somewhat undermined the strength of my position last week, when I was discussing with a friend how important and usable public libraries are for everyone, including people - like both of us - who work full time out of their local area.

That said, my local does have weekend and evening opening hours, on-line recalls and renewals, and an external book drop, plus their book clubs are primarily in the evening, which makes them an option. I don't think my friends' local library does the book group thing, but they do do everything else, plus offering e-books, so - still provision for people who can't pop in during the weekly working day.

Are you a regular visitor at your local library?



(NB - my local library isn't in Anne Arbour - I just liked the photos, and didn't have my phone with me this morning to photograph my actual library.

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

Why does the RSA have so many really interesting things happening at lunchtimes, when I can't quite get there in time? (I really shouldn't grumble - they have lots of evening things as well, and for the 'impact of the internet on the general election' one I was at last week they'd even moved the start time back to 6.30, which is much easier for me to make.)

Also, on a planning ahead note : Walk London's Spring into Summer events are this weekend - 22nd/23rd.

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