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.

The only certainty is change

There are a lot of things that are up in the air at the moment, a lot of ideas and hopes and plans and questions flying around. That's good, but it does mean that this poster - and the Usable Libraries site that goes with it - appeared in my RSS feeds at the perfect moment - thanks, jessamyn @ librarian.net!

Supporting students' in their learning and faculty in their teaching.
Creating improvements.

That's my focus, right there.

* Posted by Team INFLUX , used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Without your televisions

I learned something this week. I learned that nothing says 'dodgy' like sauntering across Trafalgar Square carrying a smallish TV, except possibly hurrying across Trafalgar Square carrying a smallish TV.

Which is what I was doing yesterday morning.

(Even a small CRT tv starts to weigh a fair bit after a while, and anyway, I didn't want to be late for work.)

So why was I braving the suspicious looks to cart a tv into work? Context might help.

I record broadcast tv for use in class, under an ERA license. This is a good and fruitful source of resources, and well worth the investment in licence fee and tech, but does mean that I have a tv set up in my office, which isn't exactly standard equipment.

Our old set-up was getting more and more unreliable, so we recently upgraded the key bit of kit - the DVD recorder.

One shiny new DVD recorder - one cranky old tv that didn't want to cooperate. Problem.

Specifically, the cranky old tv is of the age that means it doesn't respond to the signal that new devices send out to signify 'switch to Aux mode now'. Cranky old tv has no remote control, no button for 'Aux', no desire to cooperate with any of the same-brand or Universal remote controls we could scrounge up to test with.

Which is roughly when I discovered that it's no longer possible to buy cheap nasty tvs - one can only buy sleek, flat-screen, lovely tvs, and they're not particularly cheap.

Frankly, I'd rather we spent the money on something we need, that will make life better in some way for our students, faculty, or staff, so I've been keeping an eye on my local freecycle and reuse groups. This past weekend I spotted that someone very local to me was was offering a portable tv. A flurry of emails and a 20 minute walk later, said tv was mine, ready to be donated on to work.

Right now, it's sitting on the side in my office, doing it's job of letting me see that the DVD-R did, in fact, record the test-program I set it to record last night. I think that's worth a few suspicious looks!

* Photo by Susan E Adams, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Magical mystery tours

I must admit, I've never been inside Kensington Palace: the strong associations with Diana have always put me off, and there are so many other fascinating places to go - there are four more Royal palaces just in London for a start!

That said, this article about the new Enchanted Palace exhibition has just catapulted it up my to-do list!

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

One foot in front of the other

Reference by walking around - I think I ran into that concept under that name in the One Person Library / OPL Newsletter, about a decade ago, when I was just starting out as a solo librarian, and at least once a week I'm glad that it's a tool in my tool kit.

It's so simple and yet so effective; reducing the 'friction factor' of asking a question to almost nothing. The questions I get asked when I pass someone in a corridor, or when I'm straightening the newspapers or doing any one of a dozen small jobs I intentionally space throughout the day to give me reasons to be walking about the library being visible and ready to be asked, often start 'I wasn't going to bother you but as you're here' or 'I don't suppose you know, but' or 'this is probably a really dumb question, but' - which is to say, exactly the kind of things that people might *not* ask if they had to come up to a desk, or come across to my office, however open-door and accessable I try to make myself. They're very often questions I can answer, so that people get whatever it is they need, whether that's directions to Abbey Road or advice about how to untangle an unclear citation, or where such-and-such a book is shelved. It also gives me some clues about what people are not asking, which is useful when I'm thinking about signing, or 'how do I...' tips, or reminder emails. And the newspaper rack gets straightened. In short - everybody wins.

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

Little things

It's a small thing, but I just managed to put together two MySQL queries that extracted the information I needed from the system, without help, in a reasonably sane amount of time. Several different logic-checks seems to prove they're both giving me what I thought I was asking for, and the numbers match up with the pattern I was expecting. It's a long way from mastery, and it might be a small step, but it's a step in the right direction.

Check point

This has been a very productive three day week, and I did achieve my goal and clear my cataloguing backlog. There are just two copies of a single title still on my 'to process' shelf, and they're waiting for a call number to be generated for it by my wonderful colleague back on campus who lends her expertise with particularly tricky titles.

I also did a spot check on the dvd collection, had a couple of really productive conversations with colleagues, got all my paperwork up to date and filed, chased a batch of outstanding book orders, fitted the new shelf-ends, updated the shelf signs, and generally did everything I was hoping I'd get done to make sure I was starting the second half of the semester on a sound footing (except clear all the shelving created by my cataloguing spurt, but if that's not a task for a Monday morning, I don't know what is.)

So, I may still be here 45 minutes after I should have finished for the day, but I'll be off tomorrow with a clear conscience, and come in on Monday to a clear desk in a more organised office, which feels like a good place to leave things.

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

Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll's Alice stories were some of my favourites when I was a child - not my absolute favourite, which was Black Beauty, but books that I read and re-read, and have a great affection for. I never took to the Disney version, but I am a Tim Burton fan, so I've been really looking forward to seeing his take on the stories, and carefully avoiding interviews and reviews so as to go and see it with fresh eyes and an open mind.

Burton's film is not a faithful adaptation of the books, more an 'inspired by' fantasy, and it leaves out some of my favourite moments and characters, but it picked me up and carried me away, and I don't think I stopped smiling or being delighted at any point. The colour-scapes, the design, the use of the 3-d, the costumes, the whole rhythm of the piece, as well as some absolutely fantastic performances - well worth having paid out the extra for the big-screen 3-d screening.

If you want to see just how far both the technical medium and the conventions of our visual language has come since 1903, have a look at the first film version of Alice in Wonderland, restored by the BFI for its centenary. The long version is here, or the 3 minute highlight reel is here.

(If you've been meaning to re-read the originals, Project Gutenberg has the e-text of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.)

* Photo by seriykotik1970, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

World Book Day

Today's World Book Day in the UK, National Grammar Day in the USA, and National Procrastination Week wherever created-by-press-release holidays are celebrated. It's also the last full class day before break week for my students, which is why I'm not using any of those occasions to hang an event on - the library's been getting quieter and quieter all day as people finish their last classes and head off.

I am spending some quality time tonight curled up with my current book, though, which is at least in keeping with the theme of the celebrations.

My break plans are to take a couple of long weekends*, to dig into a couple of ongoing projects in between, and to blitz my cataloguing backlog, so we can start the second half of the semester with the richest possible array of resources on the shelves, and a clean slate in my office to use as I start to focus on resources for the Summer School classes.



*(although, seeing as the last couple of days have been fuelled by the power of Lemsip and hot and sour soup, I suspect I'll be spending the first weekend succumbing to this cold.)

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

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!)

words, words, and more words

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.

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.